Translating Cuba

Three years ago, when I decided to open up a blog, giving my real name and my surname, I began timidly to write. I remember my first post was to describe the year-end party, to which had been invited in Centro Habana. That was something amazing, I could only describe it as a wild west.

Now, on my third anniversary, I thought I would post something happy, cheerful, or at least entertaining, because after many adventures, and years of separation, I finally came back to visit my family in this beautiful Alsatian city called Saint Louis, in France on the border with Switzerland and Germany, where just crossing a bridge, investing about twenty minutes, you can find yourself in either of these two countries, without anyone along the way asking you for your identity card.

But, like the drunk has one idea while the winemaker has another… even though I hadn’t had even a sip of the excellent and famous wine produced in this region. I had a misstep: je me suis trompe, et puis tombe (I put my foot wrong and fell) downstairs.

So I ask my faithful and patient followers, as well as my regular commentators, to forgive me for having neglected my blog a bit, but I just started writing, although with difficulties, with my right hand, whose fingers, no longer inflamed, thank God, were free of the cast that still immobilizes my arm.

From my heart, I hope that you have happily begun this year 2013, in which I have asked, as the most precious gift, after health, of course, the liberation of our beloved captive country captive. A big hug!

January 11 2013

The first time I heard the phrase “we will convert the setback into victory” it was in the speech delivered by the otherwise Invincible-in-Chief after the failure of the Ten Million Ton Harvest* (1970). At that time I was 11, but I remember the the sadness of many adults–who had blindly believed in the success of Castro I’s adventure with sucrose–and the apotheosis of applause that followed. If the Commander said it, it was so: after the setback a new era of victories would begin. The spell of as single sentence of the hypnotizer, everyone forgetting that he had pronounced on the same subject during the previous months, assuring with equal conviction: “there will be ten million…”  And there never were.

The passage of years has shown that, in fact, in “socialist” Cuba every possible victory has been turned into another failure. But this text today is not about that topic, but rather it is about the latest decontextualization of that statement about the metamorphosis of setbacks, now applied to the current reality.

Here we have the Granma newspaper of January 2013 bringing it to us renewed, like a gift, in a huge red headline on the front page that announced: Moncada** taught us to turn setbacks into victories. Under the sentence, almost as old as the legend of Moncada, is an enlarged photograph of the Castro brothers–and only them in a photo that was originally of a group–raising a fist and a rifle respectively.

However, taking into account the antiquity of the statement and the photo–and also that in the recently concluded session of the General Assembly, the General-President delivered a strongly optimistic speech about the progress of Cuba in 2012 and referenced the achievements to be produced in 2013–one would have to ask what setbacks threaten that were reflected in the first proposal of the new year by the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party. January started off confronting a “setback” not shown, but obvious.

Chavez’s death

You don’t even need to be a specialist in deciphering the cryptic language of the Castrocracy: any reader can guess the worsening crisis that will come with the obviously soon-to-come death of the Venezuelan President, when his subsidies to the Cuban dictatorship will be reduced and finally extinguished.

Last Friday the 4th, also on the front page, the same paper was commissioned to begin preparing public opinion for the imminent demise of the constitutional dictator of Venezuela: President Chavez suffering complications from lung infection, read the headline; and inside the official communiqué read by the Executive Vice President, Nicolas Maduro–where he reports on the serious condition of the President–was reproduced in full. In a country where information secrecy rules, such a confession is practically equivalent to a final goodbye.

Personally, I do not feel a particular delight in the suffering of any human being, which does not mean that we can’t understand that some people are more beneficial dead than alive. The death of the caudillo definitely does not depend on our desires or aspirations. But the fact is that Chavez left the game; he simply is not; and what will result from his absence will have a major impact for Cuba and for the immediate future of Cubans.

Sooner or later Chavismo will also be extinguished, after the death of Chavez, because regimes that are based on the charisma and populism of a leader lack a firm foundation and cannot sustain themselves without him or her. Populist governments squander national wealth to support both disproportionate social programs as well as handouts and political commitments to buy the support of the masses and to bribe and involve broad sectors. But, incapable of creating economic wealth, they ruin the economy of their nations. Despite its vast natural resources, Venezuela is now suffering the consequences of the Chavista irrationality and certainly, in times to come, the full weight of the “Bolivarian freebies” will be seen. All populism is inherently unsustainable.

What lies ahead

Nor does there seem to be visible on the horizon a ship to save the decadent Castro regime in Cuba, at least none that could replace the amount of aid it has been given in the form of Venezuelan oil for more than a decade. For my part, I am among the unbelievers about any hidden last card General Castro might play. This time the setback that looms will also strike hard at the Cuban leadership.

Having been proactive, Castro II took strong steps in to try to implement effective measures, particularly those relating to food production as well as others to improve the miserable domestic economy. But we can see that without the recognition of essential political freedoms it is impossible to reverse the general decline.

Contrary to what common sense says, this year the most draconian and unpopular reforms will be implemented: they will raise taxes and impose new burdens on the tiny private sector. At the same time, the nickel plant has closed and food production hasn’t quite taken off, keeping us dependent on imports, grants and subsidies. The government will be left with only three visible sources of direct income: tourism (still insufficient), family remittances from Cubans abroad, and whatever is left to enjoy of the Bolivarian gifts.

So far, the official compass points toward the exploitation of the work of the anemic private sector via the new tax provisions. The coming months will tend to mark a challenge, not only for the government but for society as a whole.

Thus, from the perspective of today, the triumphant phrase of the boastful olive-green guerrilla assumes a gloomy tone. While the Venezuelan leader is dying backstage, we are left with a complicated scenario, both for our own country as well in the palaces of the leaders in Havana. During the past 54 years the Castrocracy has marked only setbacks in national life. It is time that we Cubans choose to define and achieve our own victories.

Translator’s notes:
*Castro turned all the energies of the nation to harvesting ten million tons of sugar cane, exceeding all previous harvests. The effort failed and sugar cane production has declined ever since; in 2012 it was reported to be in the range of 1.5 million tons.
**The failed assault on the Moncada Barracks that is considered the start of the Castro Revolution.

Translated from DiariodeCuba.com

11 January 2013

To enter and leave one’s country, while retaining one’s nationality, are rights that Cubans have not been able to access for decades, because of the prevailing political system and social theory in Cuba. One of the reforms introduced by Raul Castro is the implementation of a new Migratory Law, as of this coming January 14, which does not, however, eliminate government control over the “exit permit.”

Most Cubans discern the solution to the crisis of rights which confronts us within the Island as getting a visa to settle elsewhere. The exodus has not been effective, however, in changing the situation within the Island with regards to the State’s recognition of these rights.

Cubans don’t protest but they leave the country. It is a phenomenon that can be observed with respect, such as the right to remain indifferent to the political present and future of the country of your birth. It is not that Cubans are less ethical by nature. Vaclav Havel, who illustrated the complex situation in which the individual finds herself in these kinds of societies, imputed to the advent of responsibility in one’s conscience the determining step to overthrow this type of dictatorship.

Much has been written about the changes that occur in human nature when it is subjected to the violence, direct or covert, of a totalitarian system. One of the products of that violence is submission. The capacity for intimidation of the totalitarian system that has triumphed for 54 years in Cuba has been revealed more by the submission of the masses than by their complaints and protest. As it’s about surviving at all costs, leaving the country is the only solution that appears to be left to Cubans.

Solving the problem of Cuba only by sea or air is what seems to be available to Cubans at this time. The ballot boxes will remain closed as long as this silence endures. There is no lack of alternatives such as the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba, or the New Country Project, and supporting them is the best investment in the future, which will arrive more or less immediately depending on our participation.

Human beings do not give up freedom willingly. Just as the Communist regime cannot renounce violence. To leave the country should be just a withdrawal that does not put an end to the controversy. As long as we have some shred of perseverance left in our original nature tending toward freedom, we are condemning the regime. But if we change such that we betray ourselves and even forget our conscience, we are giving our main aggressor the gift of perpetual triumph.

January 11 2013

This blog is now celebrating its fifth birthday. In reality, it was the end of December 2007 when the first posts if Sin EVAsion appeared. I remember one of them in particular, “Year-end Yearnings,” in which I mentioned the many friends of my early youth who had emigrated from the country and of whom I kept the fondest memories.

On the date it opened I wasn’t administering my own blog yet, and had only connected to the Internet on a few occasions, so my friend Yoani Sánchez, with her usual cyber-enthusiasm, which — not content with having gotten me all excited and having opened my blog in the blink of an eye which decided me on the adventure — posted the first texts I wrote for this space and urged me to write more.

In January 2008 I started posting, aided and supervised by Yoani, until I was able to fend for myself without causing a disaster. That’s why I mark the true birthday of Sin EVAsion from this moment. Because of this, and also because at some point the cyber-security-agents torpedoed the site , the first posts that came out on this blog were lost and haven’t been recovered.

In any event, due to the haste imposed on me by my scant connection time, there are still many times my fingers slip and I start to experiment with the goblins of the web and things get twisted…

My usual readers know that from time to time the little imps in the keyboard commit technical errors, but so far you have always forgiven me these lapses. Luckily, my good friend and teacher always throws me a lifeline and helps me to clean up the mess. It was also she who clothed the blog in a new image so I could be all dressed up for this new anniversary.

There has been a lot of water under the bridge in the last five years and neither the national scene, nor the Cuban reality nor I are the same. I have seen all around me that conditions have been changing, and quietly but inexorably social forces that were sleeping have begun to move.

This blog is inserted in a wide and varied Cuban phenomenon that one day historians might call “the transition from Castroism to humanism.” I feel privileged and happy to be a part of this. Personally, Sin EVAsion and you have made me a person more apt to debate, more respectful of the opinions of others, more inclusive and — undoubtedly — more useful that I was before.

This is not about a feeling of childish pride for something that doesn’t belong to me because I am no more than a speck in the midst of the yeast. What I really feel from the depths of my heart is gratitude: toward life, that it gave me this opportunity to be in the right place at the right time to discover the magic of expressing myself freely; to my friend Yoani, for initiating me in the rudiments of the fascinating rites of cyber-technology; and to all of you, for having accompanied and sustained me throughout this time, in good times and bad.

Thank you! We will continue together.

January 11 2013

An article in Juventud Rebelde on Sunday, January 6, caught my eye. It felt like a gift from the Three Kings — although a modest one, written for my pleasure by its author, Osviel Castro Medel. With the first of his last names many might suppose that he would have opinions diametrically opposed to the view expressed in his article. The title of his work is “Harmful Chicharrones” and alludes to the sycophants that exist in all societies. These excessive flatterers constitute the well-seasoned sauce on the main course of the boss, Snow White’s magic mirror to slobber over one’s superiors about how competent and “enlightened” they are: as if in regime’s such as Cuba’s the perks attached to some jobs aren’t enough, especially for those in jobs of a political nature.

The most widely-used term to refer to these people was “guatacas” — an agricultural instrument that in other countries is called a hoe — perhaps because in their function of clearing the land for cultivation, the action with which the tool is manipulated made someone think of a gesture meaning “for me.” This definition held sway on this tangle of islands and predominated until a few years ago, when popular slang came up with another synonym.

The guatacas or chicharrones are the armchairs where the sickly egos of many leaders lounge, while making themselves a poison for society and an obstacle to the necessary alternation in office. They are flattering their superiors like dirty pig skin, like an adipose adhering to their low self-esteem and the unshaven practice of their servility.

Of course, the journalist, who works for the official press and possible has passed through all the direct and indirect ideological screens to get there, doesn’t dare to point out or mention the character who in our country institutionalized the term guataca, rewarding the chicharrones with foreign travel, positions with greater respect and pay, as well as other benefits, with the purpose of mass producing this negative behavior.

Anyway, after ripping off a strip of the hide — as if they were dealing with pigs — the people accustomed to undertaking such practices lead the rest of us to conclude that “the chicharonnes are the triglycerides (bad fats) of the whole collective or society.“

January 10 2013

Today, January 9, I can post my first post of the year. It was my first chance on the internet in this country where the connection is a luxury that few can have. Some may wonder how in the world of the global village it is that it is only on the ninth day of the year that I have managed to publish something. Others will say what a privilege! And the vast majority of those who inhabit this archipelago will have no internet access of any kind in all of 2013.

The most important thing is that I take advantage of this little connection for my first post for, despite all the pessimistic forecasts and ill omens I wish everyone who reads my words the best in this new year that has just begun. I do not know when I will to connect again, I will try to schedule a new post for next Wednesday the 16th on which some celebrate the Day of Freedom of Religion. The truth is that my hugs and my prayers are for everyone right now. I wish with all my heart, may God bless you.

January 9 2013

General Raul Castro’s new migratory regulations have aroused enthusiasm in many Cubans. Like the gold rush in the nineteenth century. Or the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

We agree: migratory reform will not bring democracy, political tolerance and respect for human rights. Things will remain the same in Cuba. More or less.

The Special Services will continue to be particularly hard on dissidents. Military employers will continue to expand their economic power by controlling an 80% bite of the strategic sectors that generate hard currency.

But if you visit the island and speak frankly with the Cubans, you will notice that many have burned their bridges waiting for the starting pistol, on January 14, 2013.

In a Havana neighborhood, five people feel that 2012 will be their last year to Cuba. Rosa already sold her three-bedroom home in Vibora Park for $22,000. “Thanks to the efforts of friends, with the money I can get a temporary residence in Costa Rica. I have a job offer. I hear it’s a beautiful country, not for nothing is it called the Switzerland of America,” she says, expectantly.

Antonio is another story. “I signed the document authorizing my daughter to travel to Chile for two years with her mother. We will be apart, but she has a work contract at an IT company. The agreement was that if she can establish herself, she will earn money for my ticket plane,” he says. At least Antonio didn’t demand money to authorize the travel of their minor daughter, which is common in these parts.

Even elderly people opt for a future far away. Rodolfo, 60, a German translator, has a married son in South America. But his dream is to look for a few euros in Germany. He has good contacts with German businessmen and in mid-2013 expects to spend some time “clicking” in the land of Goethe.

Norberto, meanwhile, is determined to sell his car, a 1957 Chevrolet, and with the money he can afford a six-month stay in Angola. “According to Angolan friends, job opportunities abound. I know Portuguese, I have technical skills in construction and could work in any of the projects being carried out in Luanda and Cabinda.”

Niurka has it harder. She is an engineer, and the new immigration measures look very closely at professionals. “With money and gifts I got my release from my job. I studied in Moscow and I have many Russian friends. I hope to travel with my husband, who also graduated in the USSR. We know Russian. We have been told that Russia now abounds in the new rich.”

Please do not try to spoil the party for these habaneros, talking about how hard life the life of an immigrant is, or about the bestial crisis raging through Europe. Or think they are Party functionaries or walking idiots who blindly believe what is published in the official media.

The economic crisis affecting many nations today is no invention of the newspaper Granma. But when a person has sold all his possessions, he does not want to hear bad omens.

While waiting for January 14, people are still making plans. For two convertible pesos, Internet you can download the list of countries that do not require visas to Cubans. Or you can copy from Wikipedia the customs of peoples considered exotic.

And many on the Island are now looking at countries that historically have not been the traditional destinations of the diaspora. Spain and the United States are still coveted options. But Spain is scary with its suffocating economic crisis and 40% youth unemployment.

The United States, meanwhile, is the natural destination. If you ask any potential emigrant to choose which country they want to live in, eight in ten say our northern neighbor. But few in Cuba believe that rigid U.S. immigration authorities will grant visas to Cubans, knowing that because of the Cuban Adjustment Act they would not return home.

So those with the possibility of travel have widened their horizons. And they’re thinking they will land in Serbia, Brazil, South Africa or any small island in the Caribbean.

In any event, many in Cuba excitedly await Jan. 14. The Government has announced that more than 200 offices dedicated to immigration procedures will be opened throughout the island

It’s like a Mariel Boatlift. But legal.

Ivan Garcia

10 January 2013

All four sleep in the same bed. Under the mattress there is a pair of suitcases and in the corner of the room a hanger with just a few clothes. Every day they buy pizzas or snacks because they don’t have anything to cook with, no dishes, no spoons. They’ve sold everything, or almost everything. The house, the car from the fifties, and the home appliances they once had. They even got rid of the family vault in the cemetery, the porcelain vases and a post-office box – at the neighborhood post office – which they barely used. They gave their relatives in the countryside everything no one wanted to buy, the used clothes, the faded toys and the old sewing machine. Then they rented the little room where they are now, waiting for this coming Monday when the immigration reform goes into effect.

Like so many Cubans, this couple has waited for years to be able to emigrate with their two minor children. Only when the new flexibilizations go into effect will travel finally be permitted for those under 18. It seems like a trivial detail, but I know many parents who are tied to this land because they can’t leave their children behind. People who have had to choose between living anywhere else on the planet, alone, or staying here, accompanied but frustrated. For decades the only children who managed to travel were those few privileged ones whose parents served on official missions, or – on the contrary – who left “definitively,” with no return. There was no middle ground when it came to children.

So, like eager runners at the starting line, many are waiting for the signal to head toward the airport, their children in tow. Meanwhile, they live in rented rooms and try to change their convertible pesos into a currency that will work abroad. From last October, when Decree-Law 302 was published, this fever to escape has swelled. No sooner was the notice published than digital sites started to fill with classified ads offering houses and other property for sale. Part of the capital to pay for the tickets and start a new life somewhere else is obtained through liquidating assets in the national territory. Getting rid of everything to leave, dismantling oneself to exist. A trend that started with the authorization to buy and sell houses at the end of 2011, but that now has intensified.

Despite various embassies strengthening the requirements to get a visa, we should not underestimate the ingenuity and the thousand and one tricks Cubans can boast of. Including circulating a list of nations that don’t demand a visa from those whose passports bear the shield with a solitary palm. Although, sadly, there are no direct flights to most of these destinations, and so permission is needed from the country where the plane touches down en route. But this is not enough of a reason to discourage those who want to emigrate. They have patiently waited for this moment and no obstacle is going to destroy the illusion. Counting the days, vegetating at half speed, January 14^th could be the start of a new life for them. Will they reach it?

10 January 2013

I turn on the TV and see a woman giving birth in front of the camera at some hospital in the interior of the country. The voice of a spokeswoman explains the birth figures for 2012, while I wonder if they asked the woman’s permission to film her during childbirth. The most probably answer is no. Ten minutes later a friend comes by and gives me an article where Alan Gross’s attorney protests because the Cuban government has released the medical history of his client. The subject reminds me of that scene where a hidden camera in a hospital captured Orlando Zapata Tamayo’s mother talking with a doctor, not knowing she was being recorded. The footage was broadcast in prime time to millions of viewers to see, clearly without her authorization, the suffering of a woman who was about to lose her son.

But the saga doesn’t end there. Last September the director of a polyclinic explained the symptoms of a dissident who fell ill while on a hunger strike. All the details were relayed without the least shame about violating the privacy of a patient and also violating the Hippocratic oath when it says, “I will remain silent about everything that, in my profession or out of it, I hear or see in the lives of men.” I myself, resolved more than three years ago never to step foot in a doctor’s office again, after the frightened doctor who treated me was forced to testify in front of an official lens. I decided – fully considering the risk – to take charge of my health and safeguard, in this way, my privacy. Still today, every time I think about a hospital visit, it’s as if I see myself on a stage with lights, cameras… and a vast public looking at my insides, my guts.

Now, the same media officials who have used intrusion into medical records as an ideological tool, defend the secrecy over Hugo Chavez’s state of health. On TV where we have seen attacks on the privacy of so many patients, they now charge that those who demand information about the Venezuelan president are being morbid. They forget that they are the ones who have accustomed their audience to snooping in hospital records, as if it were ethically acceptable. And all these little people with their privacy violated by the national press? Don’t they also deserve respect? And all these physicians and medical institutions that failed to hold to their most sacred principles? Will they be penalized now that medical indiscretion is no longer politically correct?

Yoani Sánchez

10 January 2013

 

By: Julio César Gálvez.

The current economic and social crisis spreads and worsens among the most vulnerable sectors of the population: children, elderly, disabled, women, ethnic minorities. It is not an isolated case. It is a well-structured plot over 50 years ago to control an entire country. The lack of ethical and moral values and rampant corruption of the ruling class is added to the above.

Despite the illusory reforms announced by President Raul Castro on assuming leadership of the nation, the reality is quite different.

Unemployment, cuts in public budgets, the inefficiency of the political, economic and productive system, and repeated promises for more than 50 years, have led to the impoverishment and marginalization of an entire people, accosted and frightened by the constant harassment and repression.

Although 64 years have passed since the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Cuban totalitarian regime attacks anyone who dissents from the official discourse, and even if the offense or insult is verbal, the State resorts to physical assault and even murder if necessary.

There were more than 440 political arrests during the month of November, which tripled what happened in 2010, is an example of increased repression unleashed by those who for over 50 years have held power in the island.

There is perennial harassment is against the Ladies in White, who were beaten on November 4th and 11th in the provinces of Holguin and Santiago de Cuba, for the crime of attending Mass and asking for freedom for the political prisoners who are still behind bars.

Calixto Ramón Martínez, an independent journalist, 42, who remains on hunger strike since 10 November in the Combinado del Este prison in Havana, is held in contempt for uncovering the existing uncontrolled cholera outbreak across the country; he is is one of those who daily risk their lives so that the reality of what is happening in Cuba will not be forgotten.

The writer Ángel Santiesteban, winner of the Casa de las Americas of 2009 for his novel, is sentenced to five years in prison on a false accusation – dismissed by the trial court – announced with sarcasm and irony in advance by political police officer who calls himself Camilo.

There are 21 members of the Cuban Patriotic Union currently imprisoned without charges or justification for peacefully demanding freedom and democracy. A quarter of all its members.

Antonio Rodiles, held for nine days; Angel Santiesteban, Angel Moya, Librado Linares and nine opponents beaten and detained, from November 7th to 9th; for inquiring about the arbitrary detention of a young couple, both independent lawyers.

Physical aggression against Guillermo Farinas, 2010 winner of the European Union’s Sakharov Prize, and even the threats to Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights, in mid-month, after leaving a meeting of opponents, something that didn’t happen two years ago.

There was the savage aggression against the young woman Berenice Hector Gonzalez, in the province of Cienfuegos, for defending the honor of the women of her family who are Ladies in White. The 15-year-old suffered countless stabs the face, neck, forearms, thighs and buttocks received, while her assailant, daughter of a colonel in the Ministry of the Interior of the province, is paraded through the streets of Perla del Sur without any problems, these were actions of gross violations of human rights.

The Cuban regime degrades itself before the fear of loss of power and control of the streets, but the increase in public and street protests, the denunciations of repression and abuses committed by the political police and paramilitary mobs, the call to reflection and alternatives used by dissidents to achieve the needed freedom and democracy, show that the Cuban people have said: Enough.

December 9 2012

The “massification” in almost all aspects and areas of Cuban life has left the common citizen completely isolated. The sites of participation have been and are increasingly operated and controlled by the omnipresent one Party and its scapegoats. Every day free spirited citizens suffer inhuman social isolation, persecution, and at the same time continue to speak more frequently of uncontrolled beatings, of incredible criminal prosecutions and even imprisonment.

The lack of spaces for pluralism and participation, is another of the causes of the lack of freedom in our country, and the margins in which a healthy climate of pluralism and respect for diversity can exist remain narrow — particularly in the socio-political sphere — where rights  that allow for personal initiative, creativity and innovation independent out of state can be discussed and exercised.

The inconsistency between what they say and what they do is becoming increasingly obvious, the work of hard-line control on the part of the moderators toward the elementary exercise of freedom has not let up… With continued use of these mechanisms they will only manage to exclude citizens, who with a beautiful love for our society and country will not accept being locked into a double standard, in the framework that supports corruption and social disorder. It’s clear that after decades of looking for him the “New Man” has never appeared, we have only demonstrated results of laziness and apathy. The fear of criticism — even constructive criticism — has become widespread, like a pandemic of evil that spreads and contaminates.

The emerging practice in knowledge for the exercise of freedom is vital, existing civil society has been turned into an amorphous mass, leaving microscopic spaces for freedom… docilely ceding to the control and intimidation of a State what no longer hides its repression of the inevitable desire for freedom of an entire people. Those who are aware must educate themselves and raise awareness of rights and responsibilities, that will bring the full exercise of freedom that we so desperately need.

Achieving freedom does not happen solely through protests, but through social responsibility and collective pain… for I read someone who said, sadly their name doesn’t come to mind right now: Freedom is not given to man with blows of freedom… Freedom is without any doubt the fruit of the inner dominion, not a trade in vindications.”

I invite us all to come together, with courage, creativity, responsibility, honesty and skill.

Joisy Garcia Martinez

January 9 2013