Former presidents Castro and Lula. From noticiasvenado.com.ar
Cuba assumed the presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) during the Summit held in Santiago de Chile over the last days of January. Among the governments of the 33 member states, Cuba’s stands out for its lack of political pluralism, intolerance, repression against the opposition, and a longstanding dictatorship
Authoritarian leaders competing among themselves, on Sunday February 3, when the votes were held to elect deputies to the provincial assemblies and the National Assembly of People’s Power in which everything was pre-planned, even the results.
During the closing of the Third International Conference for World Equilibrium in Havana, the former president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, spoke about the achievements of his country in the eight years of government under his leadership, which now continues to expand under the leadership of Dilma Rousseff. He appealed in his speech for the integration of Latin America and the Caribbean and urged President Obama to advance, among other things, the end of the blockade on Cuba.
The U.S. president, meanwhile, told reporters that relations between the U.S. and Cuba can progress in the next four years and noted the importance of continuing to press for Cubans to have our own voices and to strengthen civil society in Cuba.
The Foreign Ministry quickly issued a statement declaring the island’s government’s willingness to work for the advancement of bilateral relations. At the end, the note states that Cuba is a country that is changing and moving. Now, if General President Raul Castro assured, publicly, that current changes were for more socialism, understood to more of the same, then the advance seems headed in the opposite direction.
So we Cubans started off 2013. Confirming the universal validity of the thought of José Martí on his 160th birthday; listening surprised in the midst of disaster to the story of Brazil’s progress; seeing the disinterest of democratic governments in Latin America in the oppressive situation of our people; observing another predetermined general election in our country; and hopeful that the interest of winning the North American market, will lead the totalitarian authorities to move towards democratic freedoms.
“Nobody does anything for free any more,” says a character in a comedy we enjoyed on our movie listings earlier this year. Directed by Daniel Diaz Torres, La película de Ana (Ana’s film) was chosen as the best feature film in 2012 by the Cuban Association of Cinema Press. However, beyond the institutional awards and other awards that it will surely receive, for now it has received the invaluable audience award from a public that has welcomed it with abundant smiles and applause. In the title role, Laura de la Uz portrays the life of an actress lurching between one mediocre role and another, between bad adventures for teenagers and worse soap operas for housewives. Spurred on by material problems, and especially by an urge to buy a refrigerator, she decides to pass herself off as a prostitute for a documentary being produced by some Austrians. What could have been one more role, a sequence of stereotypes and exaggerations, becomes Ana’s best performance.
Like a game of mirrors, the film superimposes reality and falsehood, the emotional and the histrionic. Not even the humor and jocular speeches manage to seriously detract from the drama that unfolds like a survival tool. It gets complicated for Ana, as she puts herself fully in a world she thinks she knows, but that overwhelms her and drags her down. She poses her family without their knowing it; films her neighbors to shore up the improvised script, and lies, lies, lies. She herself becomes the director of a film with innumerable planes that want to meet the expectations of the foreign producers. However, to the commonplace is added the hardness of her life, no make-up, no need to over-dramatize it.
La pelicula de Ana causes us a female, national, human, shame. Embarrassment at all those who see us posing as others. The man who smokes a cigar — even though he doesn’t like it — so the tourists will take his photo and pay him for it. The official whose mask of ideological simulation has now merged with his own face. And also those who feed the simulation, because they themselves have lost the capacity to distinguish which part of the story was invented, and which not. Like an Ana who, although she takes off her make-up and turns off the camera, she will continue acting and pretending.
Now that TeleSur is broadcast live on Cuban TV, will the island see an end to censorship or is it just another “fraudulent change”?
At the beginning of the 1950s Cuba stood as a pioneer of commercial television broadcasting. However, decades of hard-line state censorship have transformed Cuban television into a weapon of ideological subjugation. Despite this fact, in January, 2013 the island’s government authorized the live transmission of a foreign network: The Bolivarian network TeleSur, which was originally based in Caracas, but is overrun by Cuban presenters and crew.
…Read the rest of the article at Sampsonia Way Magazine, where Orlando has a regular column in English…
Whether the glass looks half full or half empty is the best way of describing the consumption of drugs in Cuba. Let’s make a trip through different neighborhoods of Havana in which marijuana, psychotropics and different kinds of cocaine are sold and consumed.
Emilio has been smoking marijuana since age 13. “My father told me, if you’re going to have harmful vices, it’s better to smoke herb than drink alcohol.” And he not only smokes marijuana. He also sells it. Right now, he offers a Creole marijuana cigarette for a convertible peso. Months ago he sold several ounces of “yuma” herb.” A premium quality joint costs 5 CUC.
“Business is booming. You invest 400 convertible pesos and serving the client well, you earn a little more than half. Of course you run the risk getting caught by the police,” says Emilio on a pleasant January night.
Contradicting what was expressed by General Raul Castro in Santiago de Chile during the CELAC Summit, that in Cuba drugs do not exist except for “a little marijuana,” an anti-drug police body specialized in combating the sale and consumption of drugs operates in the country.
If they catch someone selling drugs, the criminal penalties can reach 30 years. Even a life sentence. Since 1998, combined police and State Security forces have conducted lightning operations trying to dismantle the emerging Havana drug trafficking cartels.
On these raids people have fallen that years ago were outside of the business. Like Samuel, a habitual drug addict. “I give him anything. When I have money, I prefer crack or sniffing powder. But these are luxury drugs. The usual is smoking herb or drinking ’methyl’ or Ketamina.”
Samuel has been to prison twice for drug possession. “I’ve never been involved in selling,” he explains. In the old part of Havana, probably the township with the highest level of drug consumption in the country, crack and melca are in fashion.
A gram of powder is through the roof. From 30 to 35 convertible pesos four years ago to 80 to 100 CUC that it costs today. “And it’s flying. The prices have shot up because of the scarcity of the product. The police are doing a better job. Every day it is harder to find a fisherman or farmer that will offer you cocaine from the packets that arrive on the shores,” notes a retailer.
The flow of drugs in the seas adjacent to the archipelago is intense. Residents of coastal regions are dedicated to hunting for the stray packages because of maritime accidents or due to harassment by the coast guard when the traffickers get rid of their merchandise and throw it into the sea.
Not just the marginalized
Hitting a bale of cocaine floating on the coast is like winning the grand prize in the lottery. A kilo of melca at wholesale represents a good quantity of money. And that’s why many risk their hides without stopping to think about the dire consequences that consumption causes.
According to a source that preferred anonymity, another route for drugs to Havana is through corrupt recruits that appropriate a share of the confiscated narcotics. “When they go to burn the confiscated drugs, I assure you, many times part is missing,” he says.
In the capital there are people dedicated to the retail trade. In Central Havana crack, that lethal mix of chemical products with melca is much in demand. Also the “yuma” — that is foreign — marijuana. The dispensers claim that it is Colombian.
Drugs in Cuba are not just a thing of the marginal slums or incurable drug addicts. In the intellectual world also a joint or a gram of cocaine is appreciated. Above all among the Havana show business world. “Reggaeton musicians and certain cinema and television artists pull more dust than a vacuum cleaner,” claims a melca” seller.
And drugs on the island are not a new phenomenon. If in the ’80’s consuming marijuana or amphetamines was a minority thing, in the later decades, at a glance, consumption has grown. For lack of governmental statistics, the streets speak for themselves.
When asked, ten young people ages 18 to 26 years assured this journalist they consume marijuana frequently. They have snorted cocaine. And they are fans of methylphenidate, a substance that is similar to amphetamines but whose pharmacological effects according to doctors are similar to those of cocaine.
Although the official press barely speaks of the phenomenon, in all the townships of Havana there are clinics for assisting people hooked on drugs and psychotropics. An anonymous telephone number exists to help those affected.
Also, radio and television air publicity about the harmfulness of narcotics. It is evident that the military autocracy prefers to live with its head in the sand, fueling a discourse about the purity of the Revolution commanded by Fidel Castro that no longer exists.
The authorities prefer to hide stains like corruption, prostitution, and drug addiction. But, let there be no doubt, drugs exist. Their nonexistence in Cuba is another myth that now can be thrown in the trash can.
Wearing tight clothes, short and with a skinny build, the Frenchman Alain Robert scaled the façade of the Habana Libre Hotel on Monday. With some 27 floors and over 400 feet high, this building has one of the best views over the city. People gathered underneath, with cameras and cellphones to capture the feat of this famous “spiderman,” who has already scaled the heights of the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, 2,716.5 feet high. The little man commenced his climb just one day after a much larger national event, although one with much lower expectations. The election of deputies to the National Assembly failed to attract people’s attention as much as the sympathetic Spiderman.
Unlike the Cuban electoral process, at least the man climbing the walls could produce some surprises. Meanwhile at the polls everything was “signed, sealed and delivered” ahead of time. Instead of voting between one candidate or another, Cubans simply had to ratify the 612 people proposed for the 612 seats allotted in parliament. One seat for each name that appeared on the ballot, a place in the highest organ of the People’s Power for every individual whose photo was posted outside the polling places. In short, no surprises.
Perhaps this is why the theme of the bold climber gave us so much more to talk about than did the results of the valid votes nationwide. As expected, there was not a single opponent to the government who managed to enter parliament, no one with different political ideas will become a member of the National Assembly. Not even a single deputy who doesn’t possess the same ideology as the party in power. The boring homogeneity of the same thinking.
Although I have not written anything for quite a few days, a thousand ideas are turning over in my head that I cannot seem to organize enough to put down in black and white.
As usual, events on my planet are annoying and even painful, and although far from the theatre where they are taking place, they still affect me. Especially troubling is the five-year prison sentence of Angel Santiesteban, whose only crime was civilly and publicly expressing his opinion without defaming or offending anyone.
On a separate note, there is the news that Yoani Sanchez has finally been issued a passport, which will allow her to travel, and that Eliecer Avila has already dons so, and at this moment is in Sweden. The fact that this has not led to a “turbulence in our air space” gives me comfort. However, I have grown used to thinking that these supposed “gifts” are often traps that cause some resentment, which is only overcome when travellers return to “our planet,” myself included. Of course, I am always nervous when I pass through Cuban customs after a trip, although on this occasion, as in all my other previous trips, I do not think I will come back weighed down so as “not to give them the satisfaction.”
For my part, I am still convalescing from the fracture in my right hand, and mentally preparing myself for another surgery to remove the fasteners used to set the bone. As much as I can, I am trying to enjoy the company of my sons and granddaughters since there is no guarantee that I will see them again. Not only is there the distance and expense of a trip, for which they are paying, but because my meager pension and whatever I earn from my work as an artist barely provide me with an adequate diet in my country, I cannot afford to do as I please.
Nevertheless, I am enjoying the experience of new landscapes and cultures, which until now I have only known through books I have read.
Within a few days I will travel to Spain, where years ago I lived for a time and where my younger son currently lives. I then hope to break my days of silence to tell you about my stay in the mother country.
The boy stands to the side of the entrance, on his left is his girlfriend who has accompanied him to say goodbye. He carries a bag over his right shoulder and looks around as if startled. On the floor a dark suitcase where he’s packed maybe a few clothes.
Today I arrived at a very different airport from those many times in which tears of pain and impotence were like stones behind my eyes. Also my passengers had been other who didn’t flee, or retreat in fear and resignation of living in fragments terrorized by communism. Today the rivers of tears sometimes seen in the past, have decreased and undefined goodbyes sleep in the past. Many hands will be raised in goodbye but it will no longer be the solemn gesture of a possible eternal separation.
I return to the past for a minute. My daughter’s back lost on the other side of the dictatorship’s dingy hallway, having abandoned her medical studies so as not to get caught in the shackles of tyrannical government. Someone who loved her had paid ten thousand dollars to a network of human-traffickers, well-structured by corrupt state officials, perhaps all honorable members of the Cuban Communist Party. It was a payment for the exercise of one of the Human Rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration.
This afternoon I arrived there with some exceptional friends to say goodbye to Eliecer Avila, the young man who, with the ingenuity of the peasant who believes in integrity and respect for the human person, some years back publicly asked Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly, for a simple explanation of why Cubans cannot exercise Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — the one regarding arbitrary detention — and the mediocre satrap with one of the most ironic stupidities by a representative of the Communist government, under whose direction a nation has been torn apart, its people enslaved and the country crushed: If we give permission for everyone who wants to travel travels, the airspace would be so congested: power not only corrupts it also leads to imbecility.
Those words, so offensive to the intelligence and contrary to the human condition of freedom, rights and justice for all, was the trigger. From that moment, the boy was selected for social exclusion. The boot of the tyrant was placed on top of him to squash him like a repugnant insect, but the boy under the boot turned into stone. It is the blindness of power, confuses butterflies for lions, humility for weakness, hatred for love, forgiveness for submission, and bread and wine for the Lord’s Supper, excrement and sewage for their own waste.
I approach him and give him a hug as if his veins run with my own blood and more. Later I ask him to answer two questions.
How do you feel to be traveling today and having been, I think, one of the first people to directly demand from a government official the right of all Cubans to travel?
Eliecer: Well, first I’m thrilled and second satisfied that in some way my desire to have a country in which, in order to change a law to better the country, no one has to do anything violent, disrespect anyone or start a war; it is simply enough to clearly express the opinions of the people and the leaders act in response to this. So I think this step, however small, can be very important in all of our lives.
Do you think that this form of peaceful demand is right for everyone, most beneficial for everyone?
Eliecer: For me it’s the only way to ensure a future of peace and harmony. I think that opening new wounds doesn’t close old wounds. Therefore, I believe that at least for me, respect and dialogue will be my only attitude.
Thank you and I wish you success, I tell him.
No longer the naive peasant (and I say this as the greatest praise), who asked Alarcon with kindness, respect and decency for the right corresponding to the human condition, not from the pressure of the independent press, giving to know the reality of the day-to-day life, the strength of the opposition under the prison regime, the exclusion, exile, discrimination and open repression in criminal acts of barbarism, we would never acquire this right. It’s good that we don’t incite to violence, but the government has never been willing to transparent and respectful dialog with people who think differently, and until this is achieved, what is left in Cuba will continue to live in bondage and uncertainty.
When he was nearly inside the NBC cameras approached. Some curious people approached and asked who this character was, but the people don’t know anything beyond what the hypocrites, demagogues and perfidious dictatorial programs say in official discourse.
This has been one of the largest and most efficient achievements of the Revolutionary press, hiding the truth and hiding the sons of the nation that make it honorable behind the word mercenaries. Its essence was the betrayal of decency and ethics.
I hear a taxi driver who works for Cubataxi for hard currency ask another, “Why don’t they take a picture of me?” And the other one answers, “You want to lose your job?”
Once inside the terminal a young woman approaches Yoani and says to her, “You’re Yoani, right? I’m from Spain and I read your blog.” The painful irony of love. What is freedom. Most travelers are Cubans, none has come to greet any messenger of freedom. The people you love the most, for whom you demand their rights, some ignore you and the majority don’t know you. Your people for whom you have risked everything and for whom you write, and they don’t know who you are.
The dictatorship has been charged with murdering information. But we have the consolation of Christ crucified by those he came to save. The young man who went to Europe today with the right of return, shows his ticket, delivers his suitcase, raises his right hand and is lost behind a door.
We turned around and left the airport, I looked up at the sky looking for airplane congestion blocking the view, but all I see is the afternoon light dispelling the darkness of the foolish minds of tyrants who rule the people by force of power and not through waving the flag of freedom.
This time I entered the airport happy and left happier, I had fulfilled a promise I made to myself when I watched my daughter leave with tears in my eyes. Today I melted but with passion and love, not for feeling shame on my conscience for having betrayed my people.
HAVANA, Cuba, December, http://www.cubanet.org. On November 15, the People’s Provincial Court (TPP) in Havana planned to evict Yamilé Barges Hurtado from her home, located across from the Hotel Cohiba, after annulling a home-exchange that made nine years ago.
That day they also planned to evict the heirs of Teresa Luisa Rivero Domínguez, the other party in the home-exchange in the Bahia neighborhood, a suburb to the east of Havana, Yamilé’s birthplace. According to anonymous sources, the eviction was not due to lack of transportation.
To date, the TPP of Havana has not changed its decision, an action taken at the direction of the Municipal Housing Office (DMV) in Plaza. In the Cuban legal system there is no eviction action. Evictions, euphemistically called “extractions” are made by the DMV, after declaring the occupants of a building illegal.
Yamile Barges Hurtado received a court notice on November 27 to appear on December 6. The Rivero Dominguez heirs were also cited.
In judicial practice, after a sentence has been handed down it is not usual to summon the parties again. But the judges warned that in January they would be cited again to review the case and carry out the eviction, although Yamilé is not an illegal occupant.
The Plaza DMV must act when the TPP recognizes the property to one of the heirs of the dispute. The action of the court is limited to communicating its decision to the Housing officials.
Yamilé’s mental state deteriorates with each threat of “extraction.” She broke the doors, windows and floor that she managed to build with so much effort. “I will not leave my house with the amenities that I created for my family to anyone,” she said.
She argues that she can’t live any more with the uncertainty. “I think my problem is already solved,” she added. Her daughter stopped going to the university so as not to leave her alone for a single minute. Her depressed state and the effects of her medication are obvious.
The Cuban writer Ángel Santiesteban–as almost no one knows or cares to know–is sentenced to five years in prison, a sentence he will have to serve unless a miracle happens and the island’s government pardons him. To secure the conviction, Cuba has constructed a legal pantomime, behind which is hidden Angel’s one and only cause: trying to write as a free man.
But in dictatorships freedom always has its price and the price is always punishment.
Now, it happens that Ángel Santiesteban is a very unlucky man. Yes, because the vast majority of those of us who could prevent–or at least make the effort to prevent– his going to jail, are busy with our lives. Some in Cuba, others in exile.
Yes. Cuban intellectuals, regardless of which shore we inhabit, this time like so many other times, we have put our heads down and again, instead of our mouths having air to scream with, we have stuck them up our asses.
And the dictators know this: with a band of asses for intellectuals, writers, actors, artists, university professors, filmmakers, libraries–and the list goes on–you can’t defend the dignity of a man, his right to write for or against whatever he pleases, to say that is where he believes the truth lies, however false.
But that’s the way things are. Those who live on the island are thinking right now about some silence or abstraction, instead of about Angel Santiesteban. They are thinking about themselves, generation after generation, gift after gift, complicity after complicity. They are paying for that silence the exact value of their submission and the favor of settling in the decorated penury in which they live. If someone dares to raise his voice–everyone having been warned ahead of time–they will end up sharing Angel Santiesteban’s fate and the totalitarian prison usually treats rebels with special violence.
Here in exile things are no different. The price of survival is to take little interest in the fate of Angel Santiesteban. Everyone raises their personal reasons, the exact size of their withdrawal, their disbelief on reading the news of that out-of-the-way place from people who are so obstinate–to the amazement of this majority–that they insist on shouting into the wind.
The most fortunate, those who could incite public opinion, which is often deaf to the injustices unless the horror shows up in the newspapers, are too interested in not bothering anyone with extraneous questions to take the side of a writer who. sadly, lives in Cuba without much influence abroad though a great talent, they say.
And so Angel Santiesteban, who doesn’t expect miracles, already knows that everyone, here and now, here in exile and on the island, is concerned about tomorrow and what will happen to them this year, and what they expect will finally end up being their lives.
Cuban writer Ángel Santiesteban, one of the most outstanding storytellers of the Island’s literature in recent times, has been sentenced to five years in prison. His offense: “housebreaking and injury.” However, the one sentenced said that “No court sanctioned me: State Security sentenced me for opening a blog and opposing the government.”
They have tried Angel Santiesteban for crimes of a “housebreaking and injury.” However, those who brutally beat him, who locked him in a cell for several days, where they humiliated him with gestures and words, did not have to try him, although they live under the same Penal Code.
CUBAENCUENTRO interviewed the Cuban writer, about to go to prison.
Everything indicates that in the coming days you will go to prison to serve the five-year sentence, how do you feel?
Ángel Santiesteban (AS): I feel sad, but I felt that since before the imprisonment of Sonia and Calixto, among others; but before them there were others who also went to jail unjustly, including the poet Raul Rivero. I’ve been sad since I was born, since my mother taught me that Communism was the symbol of human misery and that we lived in a dictatorship. As I saw starting with my biological services and my writer brothers left for other places in search of freedom and a better future.
Despite everything I feel strong, and a strange happiness even though, because I feel that a government which imprisons its opponents does it because it is weak, that its stay in power is becoming increasingly short, time is running out. And that makes me very happy. And that’s what matters.
Are you still saying you’re innocent?
(AS): Totally. But more than this affirmation, the evidence presented speaks for me, where we see the disrespectful handling of the law against me, where the lie is unveiled. No one is guilty until proven otherwise. In Cuba it’s the opposite, so I already showed that I am innocent, but even that is not enough.
Do you consider your sentence is the regime’s revenge for what you’ve been writing in your blog, The Children Nobody Wanted?
(AS): I started writing the blog at a mature age, therefore, my sentiments and work were already tested. Only a few months after opening the blog and starting to criticize the system, I’m discovered to be an unknown monster. It’s too coincidental. You don’t have to be very smart to understand.
Are you afraid of retaliation against your family while you are in jail?
(AS): My biological family is in Miami. Anyway, we all suffer reprisals in Cuba, from the point of view that you can not defend your rights. Cubans are accustomed to shutting up because they can then be threatened, judged and abused.
Is there anything you want to say to the international public?
(AS): Despite the economic crisis afflicting the world, please, stop for a minute and turn your eyes on our archipelago. How long will we have to suffer so much injustice? In Cuba there is a fear of dissent, of opposing the State; but international aid can awaken the courage and pride that all human beings hold in their hearts. I can assure you that only rarely in history has there been such a repressive dictatorship, they barely allow us to look up, they watch us constantly and if we make a single move that threatens their confidence we are already surrounded and suffer terrible from state security. I can assure you that the Castros do not violate our rights, because we don’t have any. We live in a state without rights.
Last week, according to the official Cuban press, between the First Summit of CELAC in Chile and the UNESCO-sponsored Third International Conference for World Equilibrium, the elections and homages to Jose Marti, it seemed that we were on the international hit parade. Nevertheless, if we make a dissection of each event, we show that it is not exactly so.
In the First Summit of CELAC, as is usual in this type of event, there was a lot of talk about the same as always, and the same words were allowed to be heard that are always heard: peace, justice, development, mutual understanding, consensus building, integration, sovereignty, solidarity, cooperation, dialogue, and many others. Now it remains to be seen how the gap between the words and the deeds is overcome.
In the Conference about World Equilibrium, a group of old Latin American intellectuals from the left (those on the payroll), accompanied by some from other latitudes (also on the payroll) digressed about how to resolve the world’s problems, and came to the conclusion (there could be no other), that it was necessary to banish capitalism at once, and implement a system that might or might not be called socialism of the 21st century. A pity to waste time and resources to arrive at such a genial conclusion.
Also, as in these days Jose Marti is remembered for the 160th anniversary of his birth, they felt obliged to introduce some aspects of his worldview, as much to shore up the principal thesis as to, out of the blue, condemn the Spanish daily El Pais, as an example of manipulation by the mainstream media. Also, proclaimed by one of the speakers was the process of global extinction of the written press, and he even said that, if Marti were alive today, he would be a blogger, on facebook, on twitter, with that unhealthy habit of transferring people from eras, through ideological spiritualism, and making them talk. It was not clear if forming part of the official camp or the alternative.
In case that were not sufficient, in the elections of February 3, the presence of the Apostle — as we call Martí — was not lacking, this time admonishing the young people to vote in demonstration of their Marti vocation, together with revolutionary principles. As it is easy to prove, once again, and it already constitutes an epidemic, Marti has been used and used again, according to the convenience of everyone.
Taking into account these events, the profits January left to us are quite poor. Hopefully the coming months will be more rewarding.
Friend Angel, thank you for your companionship and your unconditional presence.
Angel and his son Eduardito next to Antonio G. Rodiles in the hospital during the illness of Antonio’s father.
Angel and his 15-year-old son Eduardito. Love and admiration between them.
Angel and Jose Daniel Ferrer, two free prisoners.
Angel and Eliecer Avila in the hospital during the illness of Antonio G. Rodiles’ father.
