Last night I went to see Esther en alguna parte (Esther somewhere), Chijona Gerardo’s new film with a script based on a play of the same title by Lichi Diego I have not read. At the risk of screwing up, I imagine a Borges aura around the Lichi’s story, but the movie, with a splendid cast, is a succession scenes where Reynaldo Miravalles and Enrique Molina are marvelous, despite the awful sound dubbing and the darkness of the copy, technical defects added to the artistic defects that I truly regret, because the “old cinema” is a rara avis and I think Chijona missed a great opportunity.
It was not the first time I went to see the move. The day before the premiere, I tried to go to the six o’clock show but the theater administration decided not to open the door for me and another lady and someone else who had gone before. Last night we were more than twenty people.
A vague sensation of being at the end of an era that I had already glimpsed when I sent to see La película de Ana (Ana’s movie) materialized last night in the Acapulco. For having always lived so nearby, this theater has been my theater. From children’s matinees on Sundays, I’ve attended its successive transformations: when candy was sold from a rounded display case just next to the stairs leading to the offices; when the fifties amoeba-shaped glass on top of the facade was replaced by another on the side by the parking lot; when the phone booths disappeared from the upper floor; when the children’s potties that were my delight as a little girl and they I complained to my mother about not having at home disappeared; when the annex bar-cafeteria (which I was never old enough to enter) disappeared and reappeared much later as a video room, or when in the same place they opened a video rental (I think it still exists).
I waited for the credits to finish rolling, and when the lights came on I could see the deterioration of the carpet and the lower level, and I could see a couple of bats, restless under the sudden light. No, it wasn’t dirty, I mean, dirty with trash left by messy visitors, because the dust has made my movie theater its home. The bathrooms I haven’t entered in years, those clean well-lit bathrooms that were as clean as any public bathroom in the city.
Defeated by the film and the vision I’ve just described to you, I returned home with my husband commenting that not long ago I’d seen the Acapulco on the list of the ten most important (?), singular (?) of the world, I can’t remember why it was listed, but except during the Film Festival or some premiere, the Acapulco languishes, waiting for times better or worse, but definitely different.
The recently unmasked infiltrated State Security (DSE) agent, Raul Capote, is not a member of the Writers Club of Cuba.
This was confirmed by former prisoner of conscience, a member of the Group of 75 and a writer and independent journalist Jorge Olivera Castillo who chairs the Club.
The question arose when among the signers of a statement of solidarity with fellow writer Ángel Santiesteban, issued by the Writers’ Club of Cuba, the name “Raul Capote” was slipped in. Olivera said that the name was slipped in as a signatory of the declaration, a product of those who in times past were effectively part of the Club. “We have files, secretaries, or bureaucratic structures that are normal in the abnormal conditions we develop our work,” he concluded.
The Writers Club of Cuba develops its work in the same circumstances as the entire fabric of society, civil opposition and dissidents, present on the island and subjected to the same pressures. Notwithstanding this, their work feels like an active and successful effort in promoting a literary art made with passion, dedication and commitment, but still fails to empower all of its aspiring promoters.
After giving a lot of thought to Cuban mountains I realized that I have a tremendous obsession with the Escambray, in the center of the island. It fascinates me far more than the famous Sierra Maestra, the mountain range that helped end a dictatorship and start a new one. I really don’t care that Pico San Juan is slightly smaller than Pico Turquino. None of that makes a difference. I’ll stay with the Escambray, which is where I’ve felt more freedom. Every time I think about how hard is to obtain permission to visit the Sierra Maestra or the warning of how militarized the Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa mountains are I feel like those mountain ranges are prisoners, but the Escambray, even though it lost its war still feels free.
Every time I visit Guamuaya — the ignored but official name of the Escambray — I feel between its mountains a certain frustration for all the freedom we finally lost there, for the dead on both sides, for the guerrillas and the workers in the Cuban Literacy Campaign, for those who collaborated with the “Revolution’s” army and the government’s informers, for the farmers kept captive against their will — not in the Mambisa war, but in the 1960’s- and for the militia who fought for the cause of the little bread and no freedom. I don’t think they’re equivalent in goals or ideas, nor do I now try to understand them or forgive them for their mistakes, I wouldn’t dare. I’m just in pain. continue reading
Certain too cruel sites hurt me with the truth. Years ago I visited with indignation the Trinitarian Museum of the Struggle against those rebels that the enemy called bandits because the fought for their freedom with the same intensity with which they’d fought those of the Sierra, a museum full of manipulated history and hate. I should take a walk in La Campana, the old camp, and now a museum where they show so many Cuban prisoners, how many in the end? Will they ever publish the figure here some day?
And I owe many pages to commander Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, who was a military man before becoming an affable man of peace, and I met him, already an old man in his little apartment in San Agustin in La Lisa, full of ideas and hidden gaps of our history, entrenched in his iron will of change with respect and dialog.
Although the ease with which the men of this island have gone to war astounds me, and I look with a certain suspicion at so much of our ancient violence converted into respectable myths; what a bad example for our children in school if we want to teach them to resolve problems peacefully; what a bitter pill for us who want to change the country without beatings and we have no Cuban history we can grab hold of — what happened in the Escambrey confuses me.
Of course it was a war, and as always happens, all sides had stains. Surely there were victims, for not being anti-communist enough, or for not being communist enough. That’s the trouble with wars, it doesn’t matter what idea you’re defending, blood is always spilled. But at least the evidence is left of so many people who understood the word freedom, and who launched an almost suicidal battle to get it. In the Escambrey, looking at the hills and the stream valleys, relieved a little of my shame at loving a country accustomed to keeping its head down, saying yes when it thinks no.
Maybe in other posts I talk about the infinite cascade of Guanayara — the highest in the region and most beautiful in Cuba — a temple made by nature itself: El Nicho — just staying near there I would fight for these mountains — of how they discriminated against me for being a Cuban photographer before the Jibacoa reservoir, and the 5 CUC the State and La Gallega wanted to charge me just to put up my tent. Maybe another day. Today I don’t want to talk about the nearness of nature. Today I want to talk about the nearness of freedom.
Note: In January 2012, the manager of this website arranged for Prof. Michael Cheers and his photo-journalism students to visit Yoani while on a study tour to Havana. This is the resulting video, by Melissa Rios. More photos and reports from the trip can be seen here.
[Note: This version was posted on Luis Felipe Roja’s blog. A longer version is available here.]
By Amir Valle
I’m sorry… I can’t cry victory only because (finally!) Yoani Sánchez, Eliécer Ávila, Rosa María Payá and others who, of course, will do it in the next months, now can travel without the humiliating exit permit. I read that many people are happy and sing victory and sentences abound like, “We won this battle,” and “We kicked the Castros’ ass.” “Now with freedom to enter and leave the island, the opposition can launch a strong campaign from the Exterior.” …even when all these and other “changes” are pure face makeup, more than ever, for the convenience of the regime in Havana. continue reading
I repeat, although it sounds alarmist: I don’t think that now is the time to claim victory. A dictatorship, even less so the Cuban one, never offers its arm to be twisted. A regime that rearranges itself in order to guarantee its future (that’s the only thing that has happened today on the island) does not take false steps.
I’ve learned that well. And I know that taking these steps that the world catalogues as “changes,” although they have been forced by some circumstances, already the masterminds of power in Havana must have established their national strategies, elaborated their connections with other similar powers in the rest of the world, and positioned their soldiers in the new game that they have already planned as well as possible and future plays.
One of the most recurrent mistakes that we Cubans have made during these five decades is to gloat over supposed victories against the Castro totalitarianism, which, as history has already shown, this dictatorship has not delayed in molding, demonstrating how silly we were to believe ourselves victors.
And it’s under this impact that, since they announced a couple of years ago that they were modifying the migration law, I have been poking around in certain historical sources that show the strategies used by Leftist dictatorships against the political opposition; I have been digging into, with my questions, the experience of established political analysts of the Socialist block; I have been irked with some investigative encomiendas (system of tributary labor in colonial Spain) and journalist colleagues of several countries where the “Cuban issue” still appears in the news from time to time.
“Do we Cubans want a true democratic change on the island; are we prepared to face something like that”? I wondered when I read the annotations that I made in all this time of investigation.
And the dictatorship plays cards that I already knew but which it held only to throw down so thoroughly as, I’m sure, it did on January 14, 2013, when the new migration law went into effect.
As with everything in the island of the Castros, there are two standards for alcoholic beverages. If you travel outside world with an official passport, or receive dollars or euros, life on the green cayman is much more pleasant.
With hard currency you can eat in an established restaurant such as El Aljibe on 7th and 24th Streets in Miramar, or Los Nardos across from the National Capitol. Or acquire stuff with registered trademarks from China.
You can have a decent, furnished house. Or a refrigerator stocked with beef and shrimp. And at night treat yourself to a Heineken imported from Holland, or the domestic brands Bucanero and Cristal. You can also get rums with the Havana Club label, or the wonderfully aged Caney and Santiago, produced in the former Bacardi factory in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.
Drinking rum or beer is almost a national sport. Any event, family party or special occasion will serve as a pretext to open a bottle. Rum allows people to relieve their daily stresses and romantic woes. To admit their doubts about the future of the country. To speak openly about the health of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. To discuss baseball statistics or NBA matches. continue reading
According to official statistics 45.2% of the Cuban population over the age of fifteen consumes alcoholic beverages, with a 7% to 10% degree of prevalence. Alcoholism and prostitution are two of the the topics on which independent journalists report most often.
The difference between an affluent drunk and one of limited financial means is striking. While generals and government ministers enjoy ample tumblers of Scotch whiskey or Jack Daniel’s, the neighborhood drunks have to make do with the explosive rum sold in bulk at some liquor stores.
The last rung for someone who takes pride in belonging to a certain alcoholic culture is drinking homemade booze. It is the worst of the worst. Truly the drink of the forgotten. It is made in a sordid backroom or house in the neighborhood. Industrial charcoal or cow dung is used to refine this cheap liquor. It is pure fire. Tears well up when it goes down your throat. It’s potency makes it suitable only for hardened alcoholics or suicides.
Among the masses it goes by different names – trainspark, tigerbone,drop-your-bloomer, jump-backwards. Blacktears is a lethal combination of boric alcohol and Homatropine eyedrops filtered through cotton.
A bottle of this diabolical stuff costs ten Cuban pesos, while the exquisite Santiago rum – the best in Cuba today – is worth between 7.00 and 9.60 convertible pesos – some 175 to 230 Cuban pesos, or almost half the average monthly salary.
When it comes to drinking, in Cuba there is no distinction as to age, race, sex, ideology or religion. It does not matter what your educational or cultural level is. There are social drinkers who do things in moderation. When they feel they are at the point of getting drunk, they know it is time to stop.
Others drink like pirates – bottle after bottle – as if they were trying to beat a Guinness world record. Everyone drinks as his pocketbook will allow. Rum and beer appeal to intellectuals, dissidents, hookers and party activists alike. It is rumored that President Raul Castro likes to drink vodka – Russian and perfectly pure.
The Cuba government’s ratification of the UN covenants imply recognition of the legal and constitutional rights of citizens such as:
-Free entry and exit from the country, freedom of movement within it.
-Full recognition of property rights.
-Dignified wages.
-Freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
-Judicial independence (fair judicial processes and with representation of counsel from the beginning).
-Parents’ right to freely choose their children’s education.
-Possibility for all Cubans, wherever they live, to invest in their country.
-Freedom to receive and disseminate information by any means (freedom of opinion, expression and the press).
-Free access to the INTERNET.
-Multiparty system and free elections.
-The implementation, in short, of a Rule of Law, which was the aspiration of the heroes of the Cuban nation.
It is January 28, Monday, I get a call from Yoani earlier than usual, it was 7:55 am when she told me we should go by Rodiles’ house; she always thanks me as if my work were a favor and not an obligation, I was ready and found myself behind the wheel, at 8:07 I was already at the side of the container only existing in our imagination, a few minutes later el Indio and La Gacela got out, we went to pick up Regina Coyula and then Claudio in el Vedado, taking 23rd Avenue to 12th, which goes to the tunnel before coming out on 10th to First Street, then continuing on 60th to Rodiles’ house. A close look around suggests to me that the dictatorship’s henchmen aren’t around, or are hiding like rats in the sewers. The writer Angel Santiesteban opens the door to us and we exchange hugs and enter the house. I was immediately surprised by seeing the casket before me, I didn’t expect it. continue reading
El Indio had told me it would be a family ceremony and I supposed they would bury him or cremate him quickly, but now, there with the front turned toward the sea was the coffin. I greeted the man who was sitting in the chair at the entrance and tried to remember his face which escaped me, perhaps I didn’t know him, my mind struggled among the gaps, a useless effort. I hugged Guillermo Farina and Jose Daniel as is greeting my brothers many years since we’d seen each other, feeling an immense joy at every meeting with these men with the bravery of many men.
El Indio, La Gacela, Claudio and Regina had already gone in and expressed their condolences; I came upon Rodiles and hugged him with a lump in my throat and just said I’m here with you, these moments move me but not for the dead who are already at read, but for the living, we who are left in frank defiance with the pain, I would hope that some day we would all exist in the world promised by God, free from suffering and evil, sheltered by love. Borges was sitting on the right, I also give him a hug, then I went and shook hands with a graying gentleman accompanied by a lady, both unknown to me.
I went to where the widow was on the left hand side and near the head of her late husband and gave her a kiss on the cheek, touching her gently, and continuing my tour greeted Lia and her husband and another couple I didn’t know, and then came to the old man Alfredo listening to the story of his birthday some days back where the henchman Camilo abused and taunted him over his condition as an old man, his anti-Castro position — these types have to be charged and taken to court, not for vengeance but for justice — and so I turned and approached the coffin.
Behind the glass is the old man’s face, but for the marked paleness of his cheeks one might think he is only asleep napping, an aura of peace surrounding him, I looked at him trying to guess him last thought, then try to remember our first meeting, where I do not know because I got the impression that he was weighing life and not the years, my mania of uncovering supposed pains that perhaps are my own and no one else’s, later on other occasions in the Estado de SATS debates already pressured by the political police who stationed themselves on the corners around the house to intimidate some and arrest others.
It was here, in his house, where for the first time I could say publicly something he thought many years ago about this clumsy, mediocre and incompetent government, the words came out of me with such emotion I was trembling, changing the constitution, practically forced to say to a socialist panelist that socialism doesn’t work. If El Indio and La Gcela baptized me as a man of the time in the house of the older Rodiles, they would allow me to wear the crown.
When it came to these meetings and I sought him and greeted him with all the respect I would put into words until they got used to me, an incomprehensible affection for my part, I guess he was too overwhelmed to notice. Later came the fateful day after Paya’s doubtful accident when, under a strong police operation the funeral motorcade left the chapel and the mob fell on his son, Rodiles, along with Fariñas and other opponents, and police and security guards took them to a cell at the fourth season.
Then when we demanded the freedom of our friends I saw him there with his wife leaning against a wall with a serious face and looking at the floor, the group became large and an officer with a star on his lapel asked us leave the place. Disobeying the orders we stayed in front of the police station, the old man stood there and I saw him addressing the officer gesticulating mumbling words that I couldn’t hear but I had the certainty that they were threatening him in some way, for a moment I thought the old man cold drop dead, he had been there since late at night, between evasions and deceptions about the release of his son, and he was not allowed to see him and give him the food he had brought, we were there they promised to release him the next day at 9:00.
The agents brought an ambulance fearing a fatal event. But old man stood up to the onslaught. When I looked at him arguing with the officer my mania to discover past and present, mixed with this infernal imposition of times out of time made me think of the ironies of fate. What impression did the old man have, someone who had fought to establish this dictatorship believing in justice and now inveighing against the injustice against his son.
The last time we saw him wasn’t that, the difficult time of the last arrest of his son, beaten and jailed for several days with the threat of prosecution for assault and contempt, something incredible for a country that respects rights and freedoms prosecuting a man for defending himself against aggression, at last after many days of negotiations with lawyers along with publicity and protests set him free, but this must have stolen from the old man half the days he had left, the day of the release I saw him with very little desire to talk, he didn’t tell me but I would speculate that he wanted a break from everything.
Behind the glass was the still and pale face, oblivious to our presence always giving the impression of a nap. I said goodbye, although from this side of the glass where there seemed to be life, and we said goodbye to everyone leaving the body with the head towards the sea, waiting for his sister to arrive for the crematorium to interrupt the natural process of the body and after the ceremony we solemnly threw the ashes into the blue ocean. It has been three days, it is the evening of January 31, some gray winter clouds are carried by the wind from the north where the exiled or escaped Cubans seek freedom, as if freedom were some specific site or the privilege of selected nations with ancient predestination.
For him it must have been unbearable, and he wasn’t strong, he wasn’t overcome but he was weakened, however the next day when we met at his house to share the joy of Antonio’s release I saw him animated without a premonition that another onslaught by the regime awaited him that would be worse. Seeing him with his hair carefully combed as if it were a party, he looked like my grandfather.
As I entered the house accompanied by El Indio and Dagoberto the religious ceremony paving the way to eternity had begun, we stood at the end while Catholic priest Castor prayed all the sweet gospel prayers, asking the blessing of the great Creator of all things and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Solemnity, silence and the notes of an organ with a song that rises to heaven, a Bible that opens alternating with the voice of the messenger of the Lord, and peace that spreads through the room hosting the remains of the deceased, now introduced in a small ceramic device. I am amazed that so large a body now fits in a container so small, it is death that reduces everything to nothing or into a hope for those who believe in Christ and the resurrection.
Besides those who were with the coffin with the body rigid in the peace of those who sleep, was now added other persons unknown to me. I try to guess which is the sister who was expected from the other side of the sea, life and death, torment and agony of many Cubans seeking freedom, but that functions in the face of the inability to conquer it with dignity. I gather she is the stout and ruddy woman who stands by the widow and the orphan and at some point will crumble and cry sadly.
The homily of bread and wine, blood and flesh, finished, Rodiles’ son between words remembering a hand lost to time tenderly stroking his head and others that stuck in his throat in a pain that is more than pain, thanked those present and moved by the goodness of his father.
We went out to the terrace overlooking the ocean, the north wind blows harder, the waves rise up and lick the reefs leaving a white foam on the rocks. They put a ladder down the wall to where the water roars and groans, in their hands of the one they loved and into the ocean they poured the dust that a few days ago was the body of Manolo.
A giant wave approaches and foam covers the spot where the dust spilled. Everything ends, behind the north wind is blowing hard, rough seas, a memory falling into oblivion and silence death unknown always ready for a day before or after. You come with nothing and you leave with nothing, live according to your strength and not your efforts.
In the condolence book I wrote: One of the events that have marked my earthly existence in recent times has been the opening of the doors of this house, goodbye friend Rodiles.
Dust thou art and to dust thou will return and the spirit will be renewed.
Laura Pollán being assaulted by a government organized mob. Source: http://paraclito.net
In Cuba celebrating the birthday of someone as special as Laura Pollan has become a sin that the Castro brother’s regime won’t tolerate. Right now, at her home on Neptune Street in Central Havana there is a full manhunt. The women who managed to get there, some fifty, and those who for several days have been heading there from the East, some twenty-eight, are right now surrounded by the hordes that State Security manipulates to assault them and shout every kind of impropriety. Others who tried to get there were caught and beaten, right now I have dozens of witnesses to this.
The state that was established by God to watch over and care for its citizens subverts what should be its purpose and encourages violence. For two years, on the first anniversary of the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo I tried to give shelter to the Ladies in White Juana Oquendo and Lilian Castañer so they could go to their “literary tea” and I myself was hunted by hordes and taken to the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) station in Santiago de las Vegas, along with to Hector Julio Cedeño, freelance journalist, who right now has spent over a week under arrest for taking a photo.
Today I couldn’t even reach the headquarters of the Ladies in White to celebrate the birthday of Laura Pollan, who remains among us. They wouldn’t let me go there by any means and, indeed, my name is in the blacklist of people they are sent to kill, seizing the opportune moment to give me one of those beatings that over time prove to be fatal, as happened to Laura herself, bitten and scratched just days before her untimely death.
But yesterday afternoon I could meet with their leader Berta Soler and besides my prayers Yoaxis Marcheco, my wife, and I delivered about 50 copies of the “Every Day” devotions published by the Reform Ministry dedicated to the sensitive topic of “Women and Violence” to accompany us throughout the month of March.
Hopefully they have been able to receive this latest version and are already reading some of the prayers while the wolf pack assaults their headquarters. I now pray for them and pray God to hasten the day when this despotic regime which, for some reason, has taken especially against women disappears altogether.
Over the last 24 hours groups of Brazilians orchestrated and directed from Cuba and its diplomatic site accredited in Brazil, have led acts of repudiation against the visit of the Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, creator of the blog Generation Y.
The Brazilian Socialist Youth repeat every humiliation that the Cuban government itself, its official media and intelligence have made against the Cuban journalist. It is unfortunate that the interference of Cuban intelligence reaches the democratic world especially in all of America.
With this letter we want to show solidarity from Havana, Cuba, with the Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, and extend a call to countries in the region to put an end to the work of Cuban intelligence interventionists trying to break the democratic order of each of the Latin American nations.
The signers of this letter bloggers, tweeters, independent journalists, media, human rights activists and supporters worldwide all stand beside Yoani. We say no and we accompany her on every step of this journey where she is simply narrating the Cuban reality in real time.
Ignacio Estrada Cepero, Director of the Cuban League Against AIDS
Wendy Iriepa Diaz, Open Doors Foundation
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo Writer, Photographer, Twitterer and Blogger
Lucas Garve, Foundation for Free Expression in Cuba
Laura Pollan Toledo Ladies in White Organization
Passing through the control booth at the Havana airport. AP photo
I’m sorry… I can’t cry victory just because (finally!) Yoani Sánchez, Eliécer Ávila, Rosa María Payá and others who, of course, will do it in the next months, now can travel without the humiliating exit permit. I read that many people are happy and sing victory and sentences abound like, “We won this battle,” and “We kicked the Castros’ ass.” “Now with freedom to enter and leave the island, the opposition can launch a strong campaign from the Exterior.” …even when all these and other “changes” are pure face makeup, more than ever, for the convenience of the regime in Havana.
I repeat, although it sounds alarmist: I don’t think that now is the time to claim victory. A dictatorship, even less so the Cuban one, never offers its arm to be twisted. A regime that rearranges itself in order to guarantee its future (that’s the only thing that has happened today on the island) does not take false steps.
I’ve learned that well. And I know that taking these steps that the world catalogues as “changes,” although they have been forced by some circumstances, already the masterminds of power in Havana must have established their national strategies, elaborated their connections with other similar powers in the rest of the world, and positioned their soldiers in the new game that they have already planned as well as possible and future plays. continue reading
One of the most recurrent mistakes that we Cubans have made during these five decades is to gloat over supposed victories against the Castro totalitarianism, which, as history has already shown, this dictatorship has not delayed in molding, demonstrating how silly we were to believe ourselves victors.
And it’s under this impact that, since they announced a couple of years ago that they were modifying the migration law, I have been poking around in certain historical sources that show the strategies used by Leftist dictatorships against the political opposition; I have been digging into, with my questions, the experience of established political analysts of the Socialist block; I have been irked with some investigative encomiendas (system of tributary labor in colonial Spain) and journalist colleagues of several countries where the “Cuban issue” still appears in the news from time to time.
“Do we Cubans want a true democratic change on the island; are we prepared to face something like that”? I wondered when I read the annotations that I made in all this time of investigation.
And the dictatorship plays cards that I already knew but which it held only to throw down so thoroughly as, I’m sure, it did on January 14, 2013, when the new migration law went into effect.
CUBA DOESN’T MATTER
Let’s search for our country on this map of the world.
This is the first card in favor of the dictatorship. The immense majority of exiles or Cubans residing outside the island have barely stepped foot on “lands of liberty” than we discover that we are not the center of the world, as the “revolutionary” political propaganda would have us believe.
In reality, Cuba is only one little island more among hundreds of countries filled with terrible conflicts. The conflict in our country, although it’s also hard, terrible and has lasted more than 50 years, is only one more of the conflicts that happen in the world.
And because of that, even if it is logical that it be that way, our country is in the international news only on this that or the other occasion, and always scarcely for a few hours or a few days. We are not in any way, as Fidel Castro once said, the country where the destiny of humanity will be decided.
Raúl Castro’s dictatorship, like Fidel’s before him, knows very well how much blindness inoculates us, and we pretend we’re the center of the universe and that because of this the sacrifice of the people is vital for the human race.
A Soviet diplomat, now a well-known writer, commented to me some weeks ago that “in these 50 years Cuba was at the center of the international panorama uniquely on two occasions: when the Revolution triumphed in 1959 and during the Missile Crisis.” The other times, the feeling that all the eyes of the universe were watching Cubans, was a very contrived lie by Fidel (or that Fidel came to believe in his grandiose delirium, as another Polish colleague told me).
The dissidents who go out into the world must face this truth: Cuba doesn’t matter, or, to not wound our national ego, it matters very little. So the dictatorship counts on this to impede the impact that opponents who leave the island can have outside the island: “The new opposition will have their moments of media glory and later no one will remember them. We don’t have to worry about the old or the ones in exile, nobody now believes them,” said a Cuban State Security analyst recently in an event at the University of Computer Sciences.
THE DISEASE OF THE PRESS AND THE POLITICIANS
Hurry, it’s losing a lot of information.
The Cuban novelist Justo Vasco told me in 2004, in Gijón, a truth that struck me: “We Cubans are important to the international press and the politicians as long as we feed their disease and their pockets. They love martyrs, not survivors.”
And that’s almost the whole truth: While you are a prisoner in Cuba, while the political police are beating you and throwing you in their prisons, while the paramilitary mobs pull at you and kick you, while you are stripped of all fear and confront the dictatorship of the island, the journalists of the world quote you from time to time, the politicians of other countries mention you in their beautiful speeches about universal democracy and human rights.
When you are already off the island, you serve them only while the media impact of your case lasts.
There are thousands of examples that demonstrate this truth: Cuban dissidents who political parties and powerful international institutions support by word and for whom they brandish the flag while they are suffering in Cuba, were (and still are) forgotten nobodies, even humiliated when they travel to those countries where they were spoken of so well. Their names are only rescued from that embarrassing oblivion when it’s convenient for some little battle of the politicians.
This is the other card that the dictatorship holds in its hands. And worse, because now the old opponents “have the liberty” of leaving for the world to denounce the repression, but they also carry in their suitcases an explosive cargo: “A system that permits its opponents to mount a political campaign outside and return to the country cleans up its image in such a way that whatever repression really happens on the island will be less credible.”
“Now, on the international scene we will no doubt witness a rebound of the idea that it’s false or partially uncertain that in Cuba a dictatorship exits.” These words were spoken to me by a very worried German friend, a member of the European Union parliament, just when I was interviewing him for an article that I published the past month of January on this theme in the German press.
This strategic loosening makes understandable the applause of the International Left for this type of dictatorship to permit the exit of its most notable opponents, just like the other “changes” that have happened lately on the island.
In one of my articles a few years ago I wrote how several of the intellectuals who historically, by cape and sword, defend the regime had confessed to me that the stubbornness of the Cuban government in not relaxing some rules tied their hands and legs because, these are their words, “You have to perform magic to defend the indefensible.”
And I am reminded of something that in this case is important: Although the Cuban government and its international acolytes crow the opposite, in the most important countries of the world (and above all in those where Cuba continues being of interest), a good part of the press is in the hands of a false Left that leans toward totalitarianism by using the same dirty strategies of manipulation and lies that the “enemy” press uses.
And for that reason we can’t hope that what the Cuban opposition says or does outside the island will have a true impact: for the Right (and other political tendencies with a certain power over the media), these opponents already don’t mean much because they have lost the “news disease,” and the Left will do everything possible to ignore them or, if it’s strictly necessary to talk about them, they will always attack them with defamation.
It’s a perfect game that favors of the dictatorship.
CAUDILLISMO: THIS NATIONAL ILLNESS
Lech Walesa recently launched what I believe is the most serious and profound criticism against the Cuban opposition when he said, “There are too many leaders in the Cuban opposition.”
This, the disunity derived from the caudillismo inside the ranks of the Cuban opposition, is another of the cards that the dictatorship has masterfully played in all these years.
But now there is a new nuance: “These mercenary dissidents, fabricated and financed by the United States, will start to preen before the international press, will give homage to their falsely heartbreaking political careers, and surely some stupid journalist or another will believe their lies. And that suits us.”
That phrase “That suits us” draws my attention because it was said by a Cuban diplomat in Europe at one of those so-many activities that Europeans encourage who continue looking at Cuba with the nostalgia of the ‘60s.
What the illustrious diplomat said made me remember that one of the papers by an official blogger in another event in Havana (celebrated in the Ministry of Exterior Commerce) says the following: “The opposition is full of cardboard caudillos….they look only at their navels, at the dollars that they receive, and the spaces of power that they are creating….That prevents them from occupying themselves with what, if they could accomplish it, would be the real work of the opposition, working with the masses, mobilizing the masses.”
And I emphasize this for a simple reason: In one of those press articles of the Left that supports the Cuban dictatorship (the radical press in Mexico that, scandalously everyone knows, is financed from Havana), I read in a reader’s comment the following:
“Erected by their own glory as heads of the opposition, a miniscule and ridiculous opposition, upon confronting the journalists of the monopolistic media, always avid about saying bad things about the Revolution, these bogus dissidents open their wings like peacocks and destroy themselves, already by speaking through the media they lose the credibility of their people who know very well who’s behind that press.”
It’s enough to tie together the coincidental ends to understand the strategy: The dictatorship bets that wrapped up in their leadership, these “caudillos” (as they call them) will miss the center of the target where they must aim if they want to foment change: working with the people, with the simple folk, taking their ideas every time to more people…and it bets also that, as a result of entire decades of manipulation, a good part of the people will increase the distrust they feel today for the dissidents, now that the government can present evidence that these “dissidents” attack the Cuban Revolution through a press that, they will say, has historically been on the side of imperialism.
OPPOSITION OR CHAOS?
Divide and conquer
“With the quantity of Cuban parties, Cuban political groups, and pro-democracy institutions that Cubans have outside and inside the island, and with the quantity of money that the Cuban opposition has received during decades of exile, it’s inconceivable that none of the changes that occurred inside the dictatorship are due to the work of all this support,” a Republican politician in the United States said in 2010, one whose name I prefer not to remember, announced as a “Cubanologist” at the event we were attending.
For him we Cubans were one of two things: either silly or stupid, and I would need to write a book to summarize the almost two hours of our discussion in which, among other things, I remember having said to him that a good part of the Cuban problem lay in the silliness or stupidity with which successive North American governments had assumed relations with the dictatorship.
But essentially his words, quoted earlier, were right. And it sickens me to verify that, in spite of counting on an ample platform of political tendencies that would guarantee a real democracy in a future Cuba, in spite of counting on an economically powerful exile community, and in spite of being certain that the struggle for democracy in Cuba receives some millions of dollars annually (to speak only of the monetary resources coming from the United States), we Cubans have not known how to put aside our differences, our interests (including some that are really dirty, perverse and opportunistic) in order to unite ourselves in a common mission: defeating the dictatorship which, whether or not we deny it, by our fault and only ours, is the longest dictatorship In history.
I am, in this sense, pessimistic: The actual state of disunion will continue. And I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think that the Cuban opposition (neither on the island nor in exile) can confront disunited the repositioning strategy of the dictatorship. The opposition should also renew its strategies, should reposition itself in unity, if it doesn’t want to continue losing before the thrusts of a dictatorship that reinvents itself before our eyes every day.
THE CHALLENGES
First:
The leaders of the opposition (on the island and in exile) should place their bets on one word: unity, unity, unity. After accomplishing the goal of being united: rout out the dictatorship. There will be time to spare in a democratic field for returning to the differences that separate us.
Second:
An opposition without a press platform with concerted interests on the island, in exile and in the international environment, will continue being, as it is today, a silent opposition that won’t be able to have real impact on its people nor on the rest of the world. It’s no longer enough to have news groups in Miami, Madrid and some other capital.
I’m speaking about combined interests in the sphere of the media, as the powerful press media that today we consider monopolies did first, and how, most recently they have reunited nations around the ALBA project (governed by Caracas and Havana).
While the present state of news dispersal continues, we will continue to hear only this chirp of frail, lost chicks that today is “the Cuban press in exile.” (And note: This isn’t anything offensive against the excellent work that, on their own account, many of these press organs have done. It’s only a call, once more, for unity.)
And third:
As much for the opposition leaders on the island as those in exile, I think it’s important to not forget that, yes, it’s good that the world knows the truth about what is happening in Cuba, but it’s our people on the island who have to open their eyes, rid themselves of the fear sowed during years of dictatorship, make themselves see that among everyone, those there and us in exile, by uniting forces, interests, within the framework of plurality and respect for dialogue, we can accomplish that true change that Cuba, our common native land, needs.
That, lamentably according to what I see, is the only card that can give us success faced with the macabre and power-hungry strategy of the dictatorship. If we don’t do it, in 20 years we will be remembering, sadly, that one day they let the dissidents leave for the free world, that one day the government put blusher on its hairy mummy’s face, that the new Yoanis and the new Eliecers and the new Rodiles protested and are protesting from the island….but above all we will remember that, through our own fault, we Cubans continue to mourn, looking with nostalgia and pain at a past that we didn’t know how to change.
The title of this post is a phrase by Eliecer Ávila, who, while still a student at the University of Computer Sciences (UCI) in 2008, ridiculed the President of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo Alarcón, perhaps unintentionally. On that occasion, the young man unambiguously publicly questioned the emigration policy imposed on Cubans by their government.
The short video circulated in Cuba back then from one computer to another at the speed of gunpowder, marking the initiation of someone who was not aware he had crossed a forbidden line: just by posing the question to a senior official Eliecer had become a dissident.
A very short time after that the young man, who had already graduated as a computer engineer, got in touch with the independent blogosphere and with other civil society groups and created his own space for debate. Since then, he has been active in the field of civic and political public opinion in defense of democratic opportunities for all Cubans. Without a doubt, Eliecer has all the qualities of a born leader. continue reading
In the past few days, Eliecer once again has made news, not only because he is the first Cuban dissident to travel outside Cuba after the recent emigration reform went into effect January 14th , but by the extraordinary revelations he made in a video-taped interview by journalist and blogger Yoani Sánchez, which was recently published on the Internet.
Under the title of “Operation Truth”, which is the focus of the interview, an entire cyber-espionage conspiracy masked and orchestrated by the Cuban government from the UCI (Computer Sciences University) through its reliable and talented students. Eliecer discussed in detail the existence of a permanent operation, of which he himself was an important part, dedicated to fighting the activities of the independent blogosphere, to create an array of opinions over matters of government, to monitor all pages and networks in cyberspace making references about Cuba and the leaders of the revolution, to hack sites officially considered hostile, and even to establish the Ecu-network database, a cyber-monstrosity full of mistakes and blunders known popularly as “the Cuban Wikipedia” a fountain of dubious source of knowledge which — as part of the system’s indoctrination — is taken in by Cuban schoolchildren, particularly those in primary and middle schools.
Paradoxically, the contact these young people of the Castros’ cyber-command had with our blogs and with other places of free expression at numerous websites, as well as their intense relation with the internet, opened up their perspective to a different reality, contrary to the ideological objectives conceived by the government in this program, and inevitably exposed them to the contamination of attractive “enemy” ideas. Obviously, the falseness of the Castro regime is most evident as Cubans gain more information, which explains why the authorities prevent the spread of internet use in Cuba. Eliecer is a living example of how government intrigues and experiments can ultimately slice through its own floorboards.
“The Internet has its own soul,” is the synthesis Eliecer uses to interpret his natural conversion: from soldier of the official ideology to a citizen who battles against it. Any of us, the free bloggers from here and former captives of the system, know very well the meaning of his words. To some extent, we are all converts who arose from the darkness. The internet has made us freer, has allowed us to meet again, and, without a doubt, will continue to help us in attaining the Cuba we want.
But above all, we must thank the presentation of this revealing interview to the public, the colloquial fluency of the interviewer’s questions that keep us interested in the story being told, and the courage of a young man who knows very well the dangerous nature of the demons he is summoning. Let’s not leave him alone in this crusade.
Many thanks to “maracaibo” @caibo666 who does the daily work of turning Yoani’s Spanish language tweets into English ones. Here is the afternoon report from Brazil.
Last night I went to see Esther en alguna parte (Esther somewhere), Chijona Gerardo’s new film with a script based on a play of the same title by Lichi Diego I have not read. At the risk of screwing up, I imagine a Borges aura around the Lichi’s story, but the movie, with a splendid cast, is a succession scenes where Reynaldo Miravalles and Enrique Molina are marvelous, despite the awful sound dubbing and the darkness of the copy, technical defects added to the artistic defects that I truly regret, because the “old cinema” is a rara avis and I think Chijona missed a great opportunity.
