In the decades of the ’60s and in the ’70s, leaving the country was a journey with no return, which for many represented losing one’s family forever. Therefore, the goodbyes were more traumatic, overwhelmed with more grief, and fertilized with more tears than they are today. Only the hope of reunification in democratic countries kept the family together despite the distance, the repeated scorn, the correspondence examined by police microscopes, the packages opened, broken, confiscated or lost — as it still happens — and the sporadic, torturous phone calls via third countries.
The emotional breakup that the Cuban government produced in the early years, is far from the solidarity in misfortune that is established today between those who leave and those who stay. Migrants of the early days were despotically abused, and they included political and wealthy capitalists from the previous regime who created, using mass media, statements of opinion in the migrant communities where they settled. Those who have left in recent decades do not have the same influence nor the same wealth, but they have a more constructive vision, and they maintain a more or less regular exchange with their friends and family who stayed here.
Along with the change in language, public announcements in the form of cries were also recycled. Hearing them in the hustle of daily chores, it is inevitable to see how previous offerings of fruit and services have been traded for announcements such as “I buy gold eyeglass frames, old gold watch cases, any little pieces of gooooold” etc. There are also those who even buy old irons, clothes, and empty bottles of rum and beer. They voice with their needs, the general impoverishment of the society, since they seem more like cries for help or a shameful promotion of our miseries.
Havana, Cuba: The Cuban graffiti artist Daniel Maldonado known as “El Sexto” (The Sixth*) has recently plastered his signature in different places along the central 23rd Avenue.
23rd Street in the capital municipality of Plaza, is the site chosen by the Cuban artist recognized for graffiti, to leave his autograph in protest against those who have recently been erasing his work in different public places.
According to recent statements from the artist he is trying to retake the streets again this year and to show that despite government censorship he will continue giving Cuban the gift of a genuine work without government contamination. Recently in a conversation Danilo Maldonado said “…if these little guys keep crossing out my stuff, I will continue crossing out theirs…”
One of the recent signs of El Sexto’s authorship is just a few yards from the central corner of 23rd and L, a writing that reaffirms his will and I quote “…This is my path… Going down…”**
Translator’s notes: *”El Sexto” takes his moniker — “The Sixth” — as a take off from the “Cuban Five” — five admitted Cuban spies imprisoned in the U.S. and lionized in Cuba (one of the 5 is now on parole). *”Este calle es de Fidel!” — This street belongs to Fidel — is a slogan commonly used in Cuba in support of the government; it is often shouted at repudiation rallies against dissidents such as the Ladies in White and others. El Sexto’s take off is “This street/path/way is mine…”
Without being very skilled in medical matters, and with onlyslight knowledge, I read that cholera is a very infectious disease, sometimes serious, produced by bacteria of the genus Vibrio. Itmanifestsas an epidemic where deficient sanitary conditions, overcrowding,war and starvationexist. And, its high mortality because ofdehydration is due fundamentally to the delay of patients in going to hospitalor to the lack of access to health services.
It was a sickness eradicated on our island, and according to information extracted by the Medical Sciences Information Center of the Matanzas Province, before this reappearance, the last cholera patient in Cuba was Manuel Jimenez Fuentes, who died of this illness August 3, 1882, when the island was still a colony of Spain.
Nevertheless, the number of people afflicted with this gastrointestinal infection exceeds four figures; and a well-informed friend from theMinistry of Health assures me that the institution expects this epidemic to affect more than 15 thousand people across the national territory because already the illness hascrossed the borders of the eastern provinces; today cases are reported in Camaguey, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Havana and Pinar del Rio.
The health authorities are urgently developing measures and, it is believed, a system of epidemiological vigilance over acute diarrheal illnesses. The international doctors arrived from Haiti have experience in treating patients with this disease. But this is not a task onlyfor the Ministry of Health; it should also include each and every one of the areas of government. They are all responsible.
It is true that with the absence of cholera cases on the island for more than a century, they managed to maintain in the population a low perception of risk; aside from the terrible conditions of national unhealthiness.
The fault, the abundant rains and high temperatures. In Cuba it has always rained cats and dogs, and the heat is geographic; the true cause is the lack of cleanliness, the lack of social awareness, and the inaccessibility of the population to information and themeans of prevention and keeping good hygiene. The epidemics are inextricably linked to — among other factors — the consumption of poor quality water, contamination, and thecrowding of the population in slums that lack basic infrastructure.
What is unfortunate and brazen is that Raul Castro’s government opts again for silence, complicity and deceit.
Why manipulate opinion and lie? Why say that they are working on the creation of a vaccine capable of fighting the epidemic if the available vaccines against cholera in the world only offer partial protection, 50% or less, and for a limited period (from three to six months at the maximum)? That is exactly the reason why immunization is not recommended, because it offers a false sense of security to the people vaccinated and, also, to the health authorities.
The most effective prevention in the face of an epidemic is personal and collective hygiene. Even so, this government applies taxes to imported hygiene and cleaning products, which makes them scarce, and basically they can only be acquired with convertible currency. For me, that is profiting from the health of the country; and in the penal code those are wellestablished as CRIMES AGAINST THE PUBLIC HEALTH.
I remind the General; for he who does not know how to lead, resigning is an excellent option.
Once again Mr. Jose Ramon Machado Ventura addressed the issue of the speed of “the transformations” driven by Raul Castro, warning that these processes are distorted from the outside by voices “paid by the empire” who demand more rapid progress naively believing that they are going to lead to capitalism.
On this occasion Cuba’s first vice president had the audacity to add that Cubans enjoy freedom of expression because “the people are constantly stating their views and opinions without any type of coercion.” According to the version published in the newspaper Granma, “Cubans talk on the street, on the block, at the meetings of the CDR [Committee for the Defense of the Revolution] and the FMC [Cuban Women’s Federation]; and if they are students they freely express themselves in the systematic interchanges in the student organizations, and everyone is heard.”
The second Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party forgot the detail that the freedom of expression of a nation is not measured by the examples he mentions, but by the access people have to the media. On the other hand, to affirm that there is no type of coercion for offering views and opinions is to deny the existence of the repudiation rallies, of State Security’s taking note of who on the block and in the workplace dares to push the limits of what can be openly criticized.
It is true that people are increasingly less afraid, but that is not a credit to the executioners but rather to the victims. To say that people express themselves freely is like saying that the number of people who drink milk at breakfast is three times the number who receive it on the ration book, or that in Cuba no one is barefoot, or that the number of people with cellphones is already equal to those with land lines, data that may be true but that are not the results of the achievements of the system, but rather a victory of the citizens who find alternative paths to earn a living and better their standard of living.
The so-called measures of perfecting or updating the model are not steps towards capitalism although they do, indeed, deviate substantially from what we once described as Socialism. In proportion to their ceasing to resemble that deceiving egalitarian utopia, people feel better. The aged leaders can disguise as continuity what is clearly a dismantling, but life will have the last word. Perhaps by then “they” will no longer be among us, or no longer occupy their current positions; and then the blame for the final collapse will fall on the new wolves of their own litter, who today applaud them and who tomorrow will tear them to pieces without pity.
In Havana you can get a hooker to make a house-call for 20 convertible pesos. Illegal “cable” antennas for a monthly fee of 10 CUC. Pirated internet connections for 2 CUC an hour. And illegal copies of soap operas, mini-series and movies, especially those from the United States, are on the rise.
There are houses where on weekends spectacular dance parties with enormous plasma screens and techno music take place. They charge a 10 peso entrance fee in hard currency. If you like sports, for 25 pesos you can go to certain homes whose residents have converted their living rooms into actual mini-stadiums. Between swigs of run, you can watch the Atlético-Real Madrid match.
At the moment the local Cuban video game market is also on the rise. Of course it does not have the power and scope of foreign companies which in 2011 alone earned 74 billion dollars worldwide through non-stop distribution of cinematic quality productions.
It is almost all illegal, but Cubans do it by cobbling together a minimal infrastructure. Using pre-historic access to the internet and obsolete technologies, they have created a fledgling entertainment industry. Why do they do it? To provide distractions for their stressed-out loved ones, neighbors and friends, who spend most of their time looking for food.
Pirated disks with the latest editions of video games can now be purchased at private stalls which also offer CDs and DVDs of movies and music videos. If you so desire, you can also call a guy who knows about information technology.
The man will arrive at your house with an external hard drive and a long list of games for sale. The prices range from one to two convertible pesos, depending on how recent they are. Within a few minutes he will install SIM 4 or FIFA Player 2012 on your computer. There are also experts at “cracking” Xbox, Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation in order to read their disks. In case anything breaks down, there are no state-owned shops which repair video games, but there are any number of private shops that will do this work.
If you do not have relatives on the other side of the pond who can send you sophisticated video games, you can buy them on Havana’s black market, but you will need a fat wallet. If it is a new PlayStation 2 still in its box, you will spend between 100 and 120 convertible pesos. A used one will cost perhaps 40 convertible pesos.
Prices for recent versions of PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo vary between 300 and 400 convertible pesos. Video games are not for sale in hard currency stores. Some owners will rent them for 20 pesos an hour. And, believe me, there are plenty of customers. Everyone in the neighborhood with gather in someone’s living room to play violent video games in which blood and mayhem abound.
Many parents will gladly pay these prices to keep their adolescent children entertained with video games and off the street corner, a place synonymous with bottles of rum and Parkisonil* pills.
Sometimes the entire family gets in on the act. After 7PM the Gonzalezes and their eight- and eleven-year-old sons plug a video game into their 32 inch plasma screen TV and keep playing until 9PM, the time when the soap operas start.
“I made the investment (of buying the video game) as a way of being together during the dead hours of Cuban television when they usually broadcast reruns or those suffocating round table talk shows. It’s true we don’t realize it most of the time, but playing the game is more interesting,” says Roberto Gonzalez.
Faced with a bleak future and a hard life which produces waves of anxiety and hopelessness, people prefer to take refuge behind a joystick. And it is not only the young who take pleasure in video games.
Just ask Juana, a 68-year-old housewife. She often sits for up to ten hours in front of a computer, and any number of times has left the beans to burn after becoming absorbed in the search for clues in a detective game.
Iván García
Photo fromdiario ecuatoriano Hoy. Havanans also like going to the movies, especially in December when the city hosts the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, as it has done for the past 34 years.
*Translator’s note: Also known as trihexyphenidyl, it is a drug used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and to treat the sides effects of anti-psychotic therapies. In recent years it has become an illicit recreational drug in Cuba. Untreated overdoses can be fatal, especially in children.
An old-fashioned TV antenna projects from the window, but it’s just a masquerade, a simulation. The television signal actually comes through a cable running across several roofs and one street. The illegal tendon brings several families a selection of cartoons, soap operas and musicals for some ten convertible pesos a month (a little more than ten dollars U.S.). Only the owner of the satellite dish can decide what can be viewed at any moment. Remote control in hand, he has the power to change the channel and to decide what all the clients on his network will have access to. He avoids political topics to stay out of trouble, and favors reality shows. The final result is escapist TV, something to get away from the daily grind, a collection of little cultural value but a lot of fun.
As a rival to this “entrepreneur’s program schedule,” as of this Sunday, we have TeleSUR, the Venezuelan channel sent via satellite to Cuban State TV. For years Cubans have had access only to three hours of the programming offered by this multi-country channel. Now we will have 13 and a half hours of live broadcasts, with content ranging from the informative to the educational; from crime reporting to professional sports. A novelty, indeed, that won’t lack a big dose of ideology. TeleSUR takes after the productions of our Cuban Institute of Radio and Television in its broadcasting axiom: the ALBA countries are as close to paradise as the rest of the world is to hell.
Fortunately we don’t have to choose only among these two options. The “leaked” satellite TV or the biased vision of TeleSUR are not, today, our only choices. For months now the alternative market offerings have been widening, with collections that join documentaries and series. A kind of on-demand television, a programming for every taste, distributed on digital media such as hard drives and USB flash memories. If the national production doesn’t diversify and expand, it will lose a part of its audience to these new competitors. And it will end up being a collection of programs borrowed or pirated from other broadcasters, an overlapping of unattractive audiovisual material without its own personality.
Many people wonder what on earth does “sats” mean? Does it have something to do with the SAT I and SAT II college entrance exams in the United States? Could it be an acronym? Well, it’s none of that. Although it is (wrongly) written as an acronym, it is a Scandinavian term used in the theater world that means, “the point of departure in the action, the point when the movement begins and, in turn, the opposite of the sense in which the action unfolds.” A concept, in my opinion, quite convoluted and excessively subtle.
Prominent Cuban dissident Antonio Rodiles explained in an interview some time ago how he decided, in 2010, to apply this moniker to his think tank:
“We were thinking of a name for the project, and as a physicist I was leaning toward something relating to resonance, something that would encompass this state in which we all start to look and think in a similar direction… Then Esther [the actress Esther Cardoso] told us about Estado de Sats [State of Sats], a term used in the theater to describe the moment where all the energy is concentrated to explode on the stage, to put into action, finally, that which one has been preparing for a long time.”
Managers of the Citizens’ Demand ‘For Another Cuba’ — Activists
The managers of the Citizens’ Demand for Another Cuba have articulated an initiative capable of uniting a large share of the peaceful internal opposition, as well as hundreds of Cubans both on the Island as well as in exile. Activists, attorneys, journalists and independent artists, professionals, human rights defenders, bloggers and citizens in general, demand that the regime ratify and implement the the UN Covenants, signed in February 2008.
In 2012, the Citizens’ Demand for Another Cuba was delivered to the headquarters of the National Assembly as proof of the definitive will to fight for changes that allow a democratic transition in the nation.
Despite the repression and harassment to which they have been subjected, the managing group, headed by Antonio G. Rodiles, continues to publicize the initiative in the country, as well as to stress the need for public debate on issues such as the dual currency, immigration and travel restrictions, the rights of workers to a living wage, the right of all Cubans, wherever they live, to promote economic initiatives in the country, the demographic crisis, free access to the internet and new technologies, and the exercise of democracy.
On January 6 Three Kings Day is celebrated in the “Luis Quevado Remolina” independent library, located in the town of Regla, east of Havana.
The librarian and freelance journalist Aini Martin Valero hosted a party for the children of the village. Beautiful toys were delivered to more than 70 children in the community. Candy, sweets, dancing and smiles lit up Sunday afternoon.
In conversation with Digital Spring the journalist said, “Thanks to many friends of the social network Facebook we are able to celebrate this holiday. The toys were donated by hundreds of Cubans living in exile, who helped so that the children of Regla had a beautiful day of the Magi. To them all my blessings,” concluded Martin Valero.
The “Luis Quevado Remolina” independent library has been operating every Sunday with children in the community. According Aini Martin they have been working with children in their “Special Sunday” project for more than five years. E Mail: ronnysay13 <at> yahoo.com
Yesterday I attended an interesting lecture by the architect Miguel Coyula, on the history and current state of the buildings in the city of Havana and its continuing deterioration. It was held in the old Provincial College of Architects of Havana, today transformed into the Union of Architects and Engineers of Cuba, and the attendees were mostly old architects and engineers as well as some young people.
The theme, no doubt, controversial, was presented with an abundance of data and photographs, demonstrating the serious and thorough investigation by the rapporteur. Some of his ideas were already known to me from his and his brother’s previous work — his brother, Mario Coyula, is also an architect — but other ideas were completely new.
Summarizing the main content of the lecture, it became clear that 80% of the buildings in the city were built before 1959, with most between the years 1900 and 1958, mainly in the years of the Republic (1902 – 1958). Also, due to lack of maintenance and absurd actions (for example the elimination of all independent trades), 80% of them are in poor condition, causing an average of three (3) collapsed buildings per day, one thousand (1000) per year without any of them being replaced.
The accommodation of those affected, when it occurs (120,000 waiting for shelter continue to reside in homes declared uninhabitable), takes place in makeshift shelters, without the minimum conditions for living, or in adapted structures, or hurriedly constructed ones, which in reality are simply barracks with overcrowding and promiscuity guaranteed.
The road network and water supply systems and sewerage as well as electricity and gas, are the same as half a century ago, there has been no maintenance or repairs of any quality, which is visible throughout the city, regardless of some measures taken in recent years.
In addition to this, there is no well-coordinated plan among all those responsible, for a solution, as the city, as such, actually lacks a central government to defend its interests and to lead it. So far, the existing government functions as a mere administrator of the interests of the State institutions and bodies, which act or don’t act according to their whims, some out of ignorance and some out of arrogance.
This chaotic situation, the product of more than fifty years of improvisations and voluntarism, tries to equate Havana with the rest of the provincial capitals (which, of course, is not achieved and further deepens the differences), forgetting that the capital, where two million people live and which produces 45% of GDP, is not reflected in the current “updating of the model,” nor other phenomena that, sooner or later, require solutions.
Unfortunately, economic, political and social phenomena are forgotten, although they are inextricably linked and we can not be expected to solve one of them (or part of one), while ignoring the rest. This misguided policy only leads to failure.
It is unfortunate that the content of this material has not yet attracted the attention of the authorities, as it could, from an unprejudiced viewpoint, provide summary information and be greatly useful to many in fulfilling their responsibilities to the city.
He spoke of the existence of a commission to project Havana 2030. I wonder: What will we do with the current city? Will we let it disappear? If we don’t manage it so that those living in Havana can identify with it, love it, respect and care for it, everything will be in vain, and that, necessarily, apart from the regulations, passes for public education from the most early age.
The city has regressed and does not respond to the current needs of its inhabitants. This is the terrible reality. Right now, no lights appear in the dark tunnel.
An article appeared recently newspaper Granma the official Organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, entitled Italy eventually to eliminate forty provinces, which aroused my curiosity.
Italy has developed industry, is an exporter and importer, a state with a long trading tradition, famous for the well-known Italian Mafia, and within its entrails a Lilliputian state coexists, recognized as the Vatican with the Pope. However, it could not escape the expanded worldwide economic and financial crisis.
The article goes on to express that regions and provinces in Italy are often pockets of corruption and waste, which, we must assume, due to geopolitical reasons as well as reasons related to governance and the full exercise of power of those who detest the sovereign power and, therefore, dominate the basic means of production and therefore the economy.
It strongly draws our attention that we are a small, long and narrow Island which, since the time of Spanish colonization, was divided into six regions or provinces. After the Revolution and with the new political-administrative division, it was divided into 14 provinces and the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud.
Although one would want to say otherwise, this new territorial division forced the dispersed regional or provincial governments, which have different locations, to redistribute the infrastructure, which meant more means and resources for these new settlements, such as transportation, communications, building materials for the exercise of government and administration, signifying that some would be closer to central power than others.
With the shortcomings, limitations and other consequences that coexist in our context — the mechanisms of control, supervision and oversight — it’s not the same to perform these tasks, for example, in the single province of Santiago de Cuba, formerly the Province of Oriente, as in Las Tunas, Holguin, Guantanamo, etc. The current division presupposes the siting if director, officials,party cadres , and other administrative order to provide coverage for the structure that was generated, with decision-making power in economic, political and social spheres.
If the dispersion of so many regions or provinces in Italy has caused concern and seems in that country to lead to the ineffectiveness of control to be exercised, and also is cause and conditions conducive to corruption and waste, how to explain and understand that in our small, narrow and long island or archipelago, this social phenomenon does not occur, when the movements, demotions or removal from office of directors, officers or cadres, filled by citizens appointed or designated by the sovereign power, have become commonplace.
Is the division into many more provinces well thought out and in keeping with true reality? What will be the results? Will there be the LAW there?
