Translating Cuba

As a prank for the Day of the Innocents*, Alicia Alonso has ordered the National Ballet of Cuba, the same one as in The Man from Maisinicu, that Cuban film that not one of her young dancers has seen: “stab it, stab it …”

In this case it’s about stabbing a hanged corpse, one still kicking, of the Revolution and it’s imaginary forgotten. No one can be left out of the bestiality: everyone will have to embarrass themselves in public with their choreographic commitment.

And there is nothing better for this than dressing your entire company as if, instead of an aesthetic elite, they were obscene workers from the sixties. With the March of the Guerrilla, anachronistically interpreted by the choir of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (in olive green suits), Alicia Alonso made a mockery of everyone in the audience at the Grand Theater of Havana yesterday (with prices for foreigners ranging up 25 CUC ), in a supposed Tribute-Gala for the centenary of the conductor Enrique González Mántici.

Almost centenarian herself, this retro-revolucionary clown Alicia Alonso, recalls the one who starred ages ago, Rosita Fornes, in her UFO landing in Sports City (the same Rosita Fornes who today, Friday December 28, will go on stage at a concert, perhaps in memoriam to that capitalist prank for the Day of the Innocents).

It seems that barbarism in Cuba has mutated into nonsense, and that this will be the popular sign of our 21st century, in response to a the Realpolitik of a government increasingly less ideological but also less democratic, where the rights of citizens are already kidnapped in perpetuity behind the scenes of a transition of intrigue, blessed in its constitutional criminality in all the churches of this small island equally abandoned by the exile and by God.

Scaling the Sierra Maestra to sing opera without sound or pictures, wearing the boots of sugarcane workers instead of classic ballet shoes: the humor is a superb kitsch of these gestures that vainly try to hide the despotic power of more than a few international bank accounts. The dancers themselves chaotically chatted and cackled while pretending to march into a coda that might well title itself after that obsolete signature of the Ministry of Education: Comprehensive Military Readiness (PMI). I wonder how many of them, hilarious in their humiliation, have decided tonight to defect from their next foreign mission.

Then, as an epitaph, the woman who for decades saved a ballet shoe secretly buried under the floorboards appeared in the stage, as a gloomy talisman against the new generation of Cinderellas with pretensions of being a prima ballerina. The director of the local ballet and wanted to postpone as long as possible a future of freedom, where no one should be so godlike as to endow themselves with the archaeological title of Absoluta.

The worst, then, was the applause our island neo-bourgeoisie dedicated to Alicia Alonso, instead of sounding the trumpets of resistance, less rabid than ridiculous, at her institutional burial.

A sick joke, like Fidel Castro’s moringa** manifesto, or the rheumatic immigration reform his younger brother, the truth is that I left the García Lorca Room wanting to hang myself, preferably from a guazuma (bay cedar) or caguairán (a tropical hardwood): “stab me, stab me,” I would tell the transhistoric thugs of this Cuban atrocity.

They can now stick their sharp daggers up to the hilt in our throats. I promise them that no totalitarian tracheotomy, be it legal or mafiosa, is going to invalidate or vacate the truth that is already innocently incubated in our voices. Let it be, then, that this December 28 is the perfect date to announce the joke that there is no military mummy that lasts a hundred years nor a ballet troop that resists it.

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Translator’s notes:
* December 28, the day Herod had the male children of Bethlehem massacred.
** Moringa is a kind of tree. In one of his last public utterances Fidel Castro announced that Cuba would meet all its needs — including for meat and milk — from moringa.

Translated from Diario de Cuba.

December 28 2012

The Infinite Circle

By Yoani Sánchez

Anyone who has ever taken a strip of paper, twisted it, and then glued the ends together, knows they have created a unique figure. It’s called a Mobius strip in honor of one of the German mathematicians who discovered it.

But beyond an amusement or a tribute to the sciences, the object we have in our hands will challenge our comprehension of form and space. If we slide a fingertip along one of the sides of the paper we see that there is no inside or outside, the strip has only one side. Running our finger over it again and again brings us to the same place, we invariably come to the beginning of an identical path.

The film Una Noche — One Night — by the British director Lucy Mulloy, has come to be like that strange figure of geometry. It began inspired by a true story, later jumped to the big screen, and ended up getting away from its director and provoking a reality similar to the original.

The flesh-and-blood youngsters whose experiences are told in the film, are played in turn by two novice actors who ended up realizing, in real life, the dream of characters. The point of departure – again and again – of that peculiar Mobius Strip has been emigration.

The desire to escape from Cuba, though frustrated for so many people, became a concrete reality for those two actors. When Anailín de la Rua and Javier Nuñuz decided not to travel to the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, but rather to stay in Miami and take advantage of the Cuban Adjustment Act, they glued together that day the ends of two very different dimensions: fiction and reality. Thus converting them into a single continuous side of their own lives.

Despite the absence of some of its cast, Una Noche left the Tribeca Film Festival with three awards. Best film by a New Director, Best Actor — shared by the two male leads — and also the award for Best Cinematography. The latter was richly deserved given the true picture that is achieved with the interiors and exteriors framing the narrative.

The harshness and misery in a Havana with very little resemblance to the city depicted in tourist ads, which invariably show the Capitol building, the beautiful and tall Focsa Building, or the Plaza of the Revolution. Instead, in the film the visual background is of architectural decadence and urban slums, long forgotten by the restoration processes undertaken along the paths of our foreign visitors.

The locations were chosen to form an inseparable part of the portentousness of the story. The setting of the stage is essential, including some minor characters overwhelmed by the force of their surroundings. Among them is a man who sells illegal medications, hiding his precious pharmaceutical treasures in a fake bed, and a transvestite who fusses with his clothes while waiting in one of those dusty and forgotten Havana doorways. There is also the woman sick with AIDS who, like her house, is dying. Nothing is purposefully exaggerated, no wall is stripped of paint, no fake dirt is put in front of the camera. The decrepitude is authentic, touching and painful.

Thus the physical environment accentuates the oppressive atmosphere that leads the protagonists to escape. At one point you, the viewer, also want to climb aboard a rustic raft and launch yourself into the sea, just to be able to look away from so much physical and moral impoverishment. There is no way to remain impassive in your theater seat, because the story told in Una Noche is like those Greek tragedies which, from the opening scenes, offer presentiments of the coming drama. The main characters are drawn toward a wretched misfortune, against which they can do almost nothing. Trapped in their circumstances, pushed onward by them.

Una Noche, from its first moment, is a movie without guile, centered particularly on one generation. The same generation that repeated every morning at their school assemblies, “Pioneers for Communism! We will be like Che!” and yet who are, today, desperately seeking something to believe in. It is precisely these youngsters under thirty who have ended up living in an ethically deteriorated Cuba, a Cuba where the most strongly shared ideal is emigration.

The film differentiates itself, in this way, from most of the films shot by foreigners on the island. It does not seek out the laughter, or linger on the stereotypes of rum, salsa, and beautiful brown women. All this, in one way or another, is rolled into the story, but with a dramatic and stifling weight, rather than as an enjoyable mechanism of disengagement. Although it’s worth pointing out that not even this film has managed to avoid all the stereotypes. For example, a moment of improvised music in the street, with a group of neighbors dancing, calls forth an image too close to the vision foreigners have of the Island.

Love is treated as an escape, like a raft to cling to at sea. Fleeting intercourse, tracing the forms of breasts or penises lying hidden under clothing, and sexual innuendo as an inseparable part of the urban language. A disincarnated way to represent the national lust. Far from that mix of power and romance which so often has been called on to try to encompass the passion of Cubans. Or the sweet and affectionate wink that almost passes for a kiss, nearly impossible given the circumstances within which the characters move.

The lives of several families are interwoven in their youngest members, in their offspring. Beings constantly moving between legality and illegality. The excellent performance of Dariel Arrechada in the role of Raul, confirms that the Cuban school of acting continues to give the world innumerable talents. Also appreciated is the use of virtually unknown faces, as in national productions the same names are excessively repeated.

The music selection, as well, shuns the commonplace. Viewers will find themselves privileged in the soundtrack, with songs ranging from hip hop and reggaeton and even the more traditional genres. The most modern rhythms serve to introduce many of the scenes.

The British director has said that her intention was not to send a political message, but “to tell a story about emotions.” But in Cuba to narrate reality, to portray real life today, is worse than shouting protest slogans or composing hundreds of opposition documents.

So Una Noche is a sharp blow to illusion, to these vestiges of a paradise located in the Caribbean that still remain in the minds of many who do not live here. But it is also a kick in the pants for hope; so it is no wonder that the end of the story could be interpreted as an opportunity to begin anew, even though little has changed.

Ninety miles between Cuba and Florida. So close yet so far. So easy when you imagine crossing in a rustic craft, but so suicidal when you try to do it. The waves seem to say all of this, as they cross the strip of sea between Cuba and the United States. A sea that incites and frightens, present in the film from the first scene.

With the final credits about to appear, there is the sea crashing on a beach, perhaps to emphasize that the journey returns to the starting point. The circle is closed, a Mobius strip that brings us back to the same place. To an Island that draws us to it like a fateful magnet.

6 January 2013

We call the twelve giants of Greek mythology the Titans, the children of Gaia and Uranus who wanted to storm the sky. Perhaps for this reason, and with a good dose of imagination, Mr. Juan Esteban Lazo, a poor street kid from Matanzas, is called the Titan of Jovellanos.

Lazo was one of the Communist militants who in 1985, as part of the process called rectification of errors, ascended to the party leadership because of the color of their skin and thanks to an urgent policy to show the world the image of a Cuba without racial discrimination.

Since 1992 he has been one of the five vice presidents of the Council of State. He was first secretary of the Party in Matanzas province, his work characterized by its impermeability to reason. Some people say that his brand of eyeglasses does not correspond to his way of looking.

Later he held the same position in the wild and hospitable city of Santiago de Cuba where, afraid to return to the abandonment of his childhood, he awoke the passion doing his civic (and cynical) duty of stealing.

It is very well-known that young rebels, when they attain a certain status, lose some of their momentum. No wonder a the spontaneous intuition of a conga in Santiago de Cuba read: IN SANTIAGO THERE IS MOURNING, IN SANTIAGO THERE IS MOURNING / WE HAVE PUT A BLACK IN THE POPULAR POWER.

Havana did not have the honor of freeing itself from the irrational embezzlement of this black neo-pirate who in the filmmaking of suspense awoke this strange affinity for politics. When the commander-in-chief fell ill, Lazo went from being the steward of Fidel to become the slave of Raul. A logical mutation, when the bribe is higher, you can fake it better.

Lazy, big and fat, it’s thought that a good medicine with natural impunity makes this planet a better place; he is a simple liar who can not transcend, consume good cognac, suffer from job dissatisfaction and play baseball very well.

In repeating a rumor we distance ourselves from the news and credibility; but making the rounds of the corridors of MINREX sotto voce is an alert, practice austerity and remove from the visual radius of Titan anything of value, because of those bad habits. Everyone knows it’s racism, however some Cuban officials abroad, pray to receive a visit from the mentioned leader so they can justify losses, thefts and excesses.

January 5 2013

In the TV program “Round Table” on Thursday, October 18, Teresa Amarelle Boué, a History and Social Science graduate and Secretary General of the Federation of Cuban Women,more or less said that, thanks to the 1959 revolution, Cuban women had gained the right to vote. Since then she has been interviewed on various occasions about this claim, which gave rise to my decision to compile the following notes.

Since the 19th century, various Cuban intellectuals have constructed models for women’s rights. The Countess of Merlín reflected in her literary work her feminine feelings, her national roots and her points of view. Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda edited Álbum cubano de lo bueno y de lo bello, a woman’s magazine in which she challenged male domination and urged other women to do the same.

Marta Abreu, sublime personification of charity and patriotism, extended charity to the long-suffering people of the country when José Martí put the Cuban people on a war footing.Referring to her,Máximo Gómez said, “If you thought about what rank such a generous woman should occupy in the Liberation Army, I dare say it would not be difficult to see her on the same level as me.”

During the wars of independence Ana Betancourt de Mora defended female emancipation in the Constitutional Assembly of Guáimaro.

In 1895 María Hidalgo Santana joined the insurgent army and participated in the Battle of Jicarita upon the death of the standard bearer. She took up the battle flag, charged forward, received seven gunshot wounds and was promoted to captain. Edelmira Guerra de Dauval, founder and president of the organization Esperanza del Valle, helped to formulate the revolutionary manifesto of 1897, which stated in Article 4, “It is our wish that women be able to exercise their natural rights by allowing women who are single, widows over twenty-five years of age, or divorced for just cause, to vote.”

In 1897 María Luisa Dolz, a professor at Isabel la Católica girls’ school, linked educational reform to nationalism and feminism. For this she is considered to be Cuba’s first modern feminist.

In the early days of the Republic a group of women founded associations and press outlets to defend women’s interests. Among them were Revista de la Asociación Femenina de Camagey, the first feminist publication on the island, Comité de Sufragio Femenino, Club Femenino de Cuba, Alianza Nacional Feminista,Lyceum, a predominantly cultural organization, which considered change to be impossible without access to education and culture, and Unión Laborista de Mujeres, a radical organization which gave priority to workers’ issues over women’s suffrage.

In 1912, after the crime against the members of the Partido Independiente de Color, a group of black women began a campaign seeking approval for a law granting amnesty to those who had been incarcerated. At their meetings and conferences they expressed support for women’s rights, such as the right to vote and divorce. In 1923, when the Asociación de Veteranos y Patriotas was formed, among its founding members were ten directors of Club Femenino de Cuba.

Among the notable women during the era of the Republic it is worth mentioning Mari Blanca Sabas Alomá, Ofelia Rodríguez Acosta, Ofelia Domínguez Navarro and María Collado, who played important roles in the struggle for women’s rights. They and other feminist leaders held conferences, submitted petitions to politicians, established coalitions among diverse groups, held street demonstrations, informed the public through print and broadcast media, built obstetric clinics, set up night schools and health programs for women, and established contacts with feminist groups in other countries.

Although the constitution of 1901 recognized the equality of all Cubans before the law, the Spanish Civil Code, still in-force at the time, held that women were inferior, which hindered their advancement and closed the door to women’s suffrage. Thanks to the civic movement of 1914, however, debates on divorce began to take place. On July 18, 1917 women were granted parental authority over their children and the the power to control their assets, and in July of 1918 the Divorce Law was adopted.

By 1919 Cuban women had achieved the same level of literacy as men, and in the 1920s Cuba was graduating proportionally as many women as American universities. These developments weakened those opposed to the female vote. In this context the battle for women’s suffrage gained strength.

In 1923 thirty-one organizations attended the First National Women’s Conference, and in 1925 seventy-one organizations attended the Second National Women’s Conference. As Pilar Morlón said, this was “a congress of women, conceived by them, organized by them, brought to fruition by them, without any official help whatsoever!” and, I would add, without any men presiding over the event.

This congress had such an impact that Cuban President Gerardo Machado promised to grant women the right to vote. When he named a constituent assembly to legalize his reelection, women’s suffrage was included among his proposals. Due to his failure to fulfill this promise, however, feminist groups allied themselves with other political groups after 1931, and when rebellion broke out, the issue of votes for women became a symbol of Machado’s abandonment of democracy.

On August 13, 1933, after Machado was deposed and Carlos M. de Céspedes (son and namesake of Cuba’s founding father) assumed the presidency, the Alianza Nacional Feminista sent an appeal to the new president, demanding the right to vote. Subsequently, the government of Ramón Grau San Martín promulgated Decree no. 13, which called for a constitutional convention, which in turn recognized a woman’s right to vote and be elected. Six women from the provinces of Havana, Las Villas, Camaguey and Oriente were elected as delegates.

In February 1934, during the presidency of Colonel Carlos Mendieta, a provisional constitution was approved. Article 38 of this document formally extended the vote to women. In February of 1939, prior to the Constituent Assembly, which drafted the 1940 constitution, the Third National Women’s Conference was held during which various resolutions were approved, one being the demand for “a constitutional guarantee of equal rights for women.” The feminists Alicia Hernández de la Barca from Santa Clara and Esperanza Sánchez Mastrapa from Oriente took part in this appeal, which was discussed in the Constitutional Assembly.

The struggle that began in the 1920s ended with the adoption of Article 97 of the constitution of 1940, which states that “universal, equal and secret suffrage is established as a right, duty and function for all Cuban citizens.” As a result, Cuban women were able to exercise their right to vote – including in the elections of 1940, 1944, 1948, 1954 and 1958 – until revolutionaries took power in 1959.

Dimas Castellanos

Published 13th November in Diario de Cuba.

November 16 2012

By Ignacio Estrada Cepero, Independent Journalist

Havana, Cuba. According to an announcement on television, for the year end festivities broadcast by Cuban TV (TVC). Last Sunday, December 30, 108 music bands played in unison in different places across the whole country.

The presentation began when Cuba’s clocks marked the hour of 10:00 am. The Cuban concerts on the programmed date were meant to salute the arrival of the new year and be the publicity announcement of the 54th anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution.

At this point it is not know if similar presentations were carried out in previous years.

January 4 2013

The officially designated “Year 54 of the Revolution” has come to an end. No one can deny that in 2012 some changes were made to the comatose Cuban “model,” but it is true that the majority amounted to the legalization of absurd, long-standing prohibitions, or in other cases to simple measures that were only skin-deep and without much depth. These changes have had no affect on the economic structure, which is concentrated mainly in the service sector rather than in industrial and agricultural production where, at least rhetorically, there is a continued preference for the “great socialist enterprise,” albeit with some tweaks and adjustments. Although too slow, things are, nevertheless, starting to move.

Basic logic and the need to preserve the “model” mean that there will have to be further changes made in 2013. Until now, though, they have been focused solely on the economy since the subject of political and social change remains taboo. Although they have so far been minimal, economic changes have led to the realization other changes will, nevertheless, have to be carried out, even though there is no will to do so. Otherwise, we arrive at dead-end. Although it has been tried, economic issues cannot be separated from political and social issues. They mutually impact each other.

Whatever happens, regardless of what the authorities do, will more than anything be the result of citizen pressure and attitudes.

January 4 2013

By Ignacio Estrada Cepero, Independent Journalist

La Habana, Cuba. Last Friday, December 28, the Karl Mark Theater was the scene for a recognition of the Cuban actress Rosita Fornes in a grand celebration of her 75 years of artistic life.

The Cuban star was joined on the stage by well-known figures. Among those who stood out were Rosa María Medel, Guillermo Rubalcaba, Lourdes Torres, Farah María, Pablo Santa María, Waldo Mendosa, Leo Montesino, Reinaldo Montesino, Barbara Zamora, Idania Valdez, Jean Marc Rodríguez,  the comic Carlos Ruiz de la Tejera, Ismael de la Caridad and the Ballet de la Televisión Cubana, the Habana Tango Company, among others.

As expected by the capital’s public, Rosa Fornes closed the year with a flourish and with all the wealth of exponents Cuban culture for all times gathered at the scene. The spectacle was called “Rosita Fornes and her Life.”

The show was hosted by “Chiquitica,” Rosita Fornes’s daughter, under the general direction of Jose Antonio Jimenez.

January 4 2013

By Ignacio Estrada Cepero, Independent Journalist

Havana, Cuba. Recently the Cuban media alluded the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Luis Díaz Soto Hospital in the capital, known as the “Cuba Naval Hospital.” The news  reflected only on the good role of the medical services offered and a record of the countless kidney transplants done each year.

These comments are clearly true, but if we are to congratulate what this group of doctors and  workers accomplish we should describe the conditions under which they work to improve human life.

The Naval Hospital perhaps in the early years of its foundation experienced moments which today are very difficult to revive by those whom they keep alive. Shortcomings, deficiencies, tardiness, irresponsibility, poor communication between workers and even insubordination of the civilians working there even though this is a military hospital.

In this note I do not not want to judge any worker in this hospital in the Camilo Cienfuegos neighborhood (Neighborhood of the Russians or Pastorita) in the Havana municipality of Habana del Este. I want instead to do this, to speak about a topic directed to those responsible for managing it and to the competent authorities. It’s been just over a year since the laundry area for this hospital has been out of service because of breakdowns that have not been fixed. This deficiency has not been addressed by any official means. The breakdown brings delays in delivering clothes to patients and the delivery of clean supplies to the therapy areas and operating rooms just to name one example.

The problem is at the feet of everyone who is responsible but according to some workers the key to the solution is for everyone to rally without dropping the ball.

It’s true that the Havana Naval Hospital just made it through one more year, but this anniversary has not solved a problem that can be repeated in different Cuban hospitals.

January 4 2013