Translating Cuba

The luxury of good art, and the quality and magic interpretations of the American singer, musician and songwriter, of Mexican descent, Julieta Venegas, assaulted the Havana National Theater artistic proscenium with ’Songs of Love’ on December 5. She arrived with her musicians to give us a concert without the roar of the leading international stars as part of the World Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls, promoted by the United Nations. This interpreter of Latin pop rock and winner of several Grammys, brought us with her fragile appearance and her performances ranging from the playful to the profound, lyrics that seem to emerge on the run and with the naive naturalness of her talent.

She gave us, with “Lemon and Salt,” the courtesy of a tequila with rum in Havana, to toast her songs expressing joy at being in Cuba for the third time. With “You For Me” she made it so that those of us who didn’t go to the theater experienced in our homes the emotions of that night, although we had to wait a few days for it to be broadcast on television. The soloist involves us in the complicit mystery of not knowing if she is telling us her songs or singing to us her experiences. I am pleased to say that the work and stage projection of that young woman pleased me. Simple and complex, green and ripe, naughty and candid, small and large; so I briefly define her in all her contrasts.

Juliet came to stay in the memory of the Cuban Romeos and all who admire her integrity and artistic quality. She is already among our favorite singers and I have learned this from the quality of her art, and not precisely through the wind…”

December 17 2012

In my family Christmas was the most anticipated and desired holiday. For us, the Christmas spirit stared on the last Thursday in November (Thanksgiving Day), with the lighting of the tree and the display of the Nativity scene, and continued through Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year’s Day, until the Day of the Three Kings — Epiphany.

The doorways of Galiana, Reina, Monte and other shopping streets were filled with natural pines of all sizes, brought from Canada and the United States, which filled the air with the aroma of resin and wood. In addition to apples and pears — available year-round — came from California in wooden boxes with each fruit wrapped in purple Chinese paper), were piled up, competing with white and purple grapes from the same source. Stands were erected on the corners to sell caramel apples and roasted chestnuts, the latter from Spain, along with wines, ciders and champagnes, and nougat in different size wooden boxes, imitations of the old boxes that were used to pack merchandise on boats, with the brands woodburned into them in sepia.

Local quinces in multiple colors also appeared, along with papaya and orange wines, Red Seal nuts and hazelnuts, and dates and figs from Arabia. The stores and streets were decorated, filled with colored lights and Christmas carols, including even the most modest shops in the poorest neighborhoods: it was a fiesta for everyone.

As Christmas Eve approached, pigs, guinea fowl and turkeys appeared — the main dishes of the dinners on the 24th and 25th. From the 23rd the bakeries were overwhelmed, roasting the pigs in their overs, and impregnating the city with their characteristic aroma. There was constant movement, on foot and by vehicle, traveling to the traditional Cuban family dinners, where everyone made an appearance regardless of where they lived. After dinner people went to midnight mass — called the Mass of the Rooster — in the nearest church, where at midnight the figure of the baby Jesus was placed in the manger, empty up to that point.

Christmas Day was for a family lunch of left-over roast turkey from the night before, a walk in the afternoon to the movies or the circuses scattered around the city: Ringling Brothers at Paseo and Malecon, the Santos y Artigas at Infanta and San Lazaro, and the Razzore at Cerrato and Orbay in Infanta, to mention only the most important.

The 31st was more of a night for clubs, cabarets and restaurants, and parties at the recreational societies, with twelve chimes and twelve grapes at midnight, and cups of cider or champagne, to say goodbye to the year that was leaving and hello to the one coming in, with a toast. New Year’s Day lunch was late, after sleeping off the hangover, with chicken, salads, nuts, hazelnuts, nougat and wine, and the evening was for showing off one’s new clothes and shoes and promenading.

The night before Epiphany belonged the grown-ups, first buying the latest toys, at bargain prices, in the doorways of the shopping streets, and then quietly placing them next to the beds of the children, who had gone to bed early to wait for them. Three Kings Day belonged totally to the children, waking early while it was still dark, and being excited and rowdy until dusk. With January 6th the Christmas holidays ended..

Today these traditions, forgotten (and even banned) for too long, are slowing being taken up again, as a necessary return to our roots. The multitudinous hosts to the Virgin of Charity of Cobre during her tour around the country last year, was a great sign that the wind that has blown over all these years may have left the trees leafless, without fruit and even no branches, but it could not uproot them and, despite everything, they are being reborn. I hope the same happens with Christmas. It always was, and should be again, the holiday for everyone.

Translated from Diario de Cuba

23 December 2012

MY VERY BEST WISHES ON CHRISTMAS AND I HOPE THAT IN THE COMING YEAR ALL YOUR WISHES COME TRUE.

December 23 2012

It seems that the dictatorships invented it but the inverted C is the counterpart of the Copyright symbol. It was created in 1976 and published with a small software to save RAM memory in the then rudimentary computer industry.

Although its origin has nothing to do with human rights, it leads me to draw a parallel with the errors and injustices that still exist in the world and which prevent entire peoples and large social groups, for ethnic, cultural or other reasons, from having the guarantee of a decent life.

Many governments evade the accusations about their negative records on respect for fundamental rights on the grounds of poverty. Others wriggle out of the issue with the simplistic justification of the role of rich countries and the shameful scar of colonialism.

There are also places like Cuba, where governments prevent their citizens — under the guise of an ideology and historically outdated disputes with their American neighbors — from exercising their rights fully.

We are a gagged people of whispers, while most of the world calls out their achievements and demands more and more freedom for themselves and their children. The Cuban totalitarian system bases its strategy of manipulation of human rights on the pillars of the right to life, education, culture and health, while the all other rights are routinely violated, even if all are interdependent and indivisible.

Thus, they have never published the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, issued by the United Nations in 1948. Their cadres and empowered notables, repeat the unsustainable argument that the Cuban government is the best example in terms of respect for these rights, although they are reluctant to ratify and implement the International Covenants and Protocols, which they are legally obliged to honor.

Generally, Cuban authorities tend to stain Human Rights Day, which precedes Christmas, with intransigence and arbitrary arrests harmful to freedom of thought, the conciliatory and fraternal spirit of the festivities, while the alternative political society in Cuba celebrates this significant date with various civic activities.

At present, the Cuban dictatorship has introduced to the part of society that responds to their interests a certain permissibility to public recognition of Human Rights Day on December 10. Gradually the clouds of intolerance are moved by new winds which — manipulatively or not — incorporate new phrases into the rigid vocabulary of the slogans of the adherents of totalitarianism.

This more than fifty-year old model imposed on us forces us to live in a sociopolitical and economic order in which they determine the concepts and categories of rights and decide what we may exercise and enjoy in society.

We Cubans who love liberty, watch with indignation as one part of the human leaders of Cuba re-emphasize their attitude of considering themselves above the rest of us, and fundamentally save and preserve their left, without considering the civil and political rights of the rest of their compatriots.

We continue working with the certainty that the day is every closer when we will eliminate this rod, more punishing than disciplinary, with which the government beats us and prevents our advancing toward the gradual introduction of the exercise of the rights and freedoms of our people, as a preamble to full democracy we Cubans deserve.

December 17 2012

My greatly appreciated fellow travelers and cybernauts of the world:

Again I post the tree I posted last year for Christmas not only because I like it but because the principles and basis that shape its structure and messages are still current for Cubans and other peoples of the world.

I wish and hope that this new year will bring us the changes we need for the good of all Cubans, because we need to express ourselves freely in the historic platform of a democratic dawn.

We offer to our brothers and sisters born in Cuba, without exclusions of any kind, our message of love, peace and hope in the inevitable coming together and embrace of the children of our beloved people. I wish that we could live as family in the beautiful country God has given us with the respect, dignity and liberty that we deserve.

Feliz Navidad and a prosperous 2013 for my compatriots and for all the peoples of the world!

Havana, Cuba, December 2012

My esteemed friends, collaborators and visitors:

Again I tripped, fell into the hole of in-communication and some posts fell out of sequence because of the impossibility of getting on the Internet. Well, you will understand that I would like to divulge every time I’m developing a theme but in Cuba it is impossible, more so when one is staring at the wall of the political police, who constantly try to blockade us. However, I managed to slip through once again and here are some posts that I wanted to share with you and that I will persist in publishing. Hopefully you will enjoy them!

December 17 2012

Photos from Twitter, of Yoani’s “Christmas tree with only 2 branches.”

24 December 2012

The Kabbalah, the number is not mentioned, a superstition with numbers, the calamity that even pronouncing eight letters could bring. I remember when I turned thirteen the many jokes at school that revolved around it. “How old are you?” asked the upper grade students to mock my confusion when answering. I had to respond with “twelve plus one” or “fifteen minus two,” because to say those cursed digits landed me in a wave of laughter. They also might launch a “cocotazo” with the cry of “Gotcha!” as they rapped their knuckles into my skull, and still today I’m not really clear on what that meant in that context. So I grew up assuming that thirteen not only brought bad luck, but also scorn, derision, insult.

When I moved in with Reinaldo, I thought, “What a relief! At least we live on the 14th floor and not the one below.” I imagined what if, every time I gave my address, someone shouted that sarcastic “Gotcha!” of my adolescence. The embarrassment wouldn’t reach me. Years later the doctor predicted that my son would be born on August 13, 1995, but — luckily — nature moved up the date and freed us from that “dark day.” And so, bobbing and weaving, leaving off saying it at times, and using addition and subtraction at others, I’ve escaped the dark superstition of “ten plus three.” Like me, many others have done the same, sometimes more as a precaution than from true belief in the bad omen. But now comes an ordeal for everyone: the year 2013 is about to begin.

I have the impression that for Cubans the next twelve months will not be fatal. Looking ahead, I can predict they will be full of moments of change and great times. Much of the country we know will change, for the better, and a little for the worse; new names will emerge on the national stage and others will be finally inscribed in the marble of a headstone. An era will end, making the Mayans right this time. But all this depends, perhaps in the first place, on how we citizens handle the challenges presented to us, how aware we are that we are living at a turning point in history. Beginning now I am already preparing and I repeat like a mantra: thirteen, thirteen, thirteen, thirteen, thirteen…

* To all my friends, colleagues, bloggers, journalists from all over the world, readers of my texts, commentators have made this blog yours, translators who voluntarily turn it into so many languages, to those who with your true criticisms or your acidic tirades have helped me become a better person, to all of you, I wish you happy holidays and a wonderful new year.

24 December 2012

Design by Amalia Iduate

24 December 2012

Design by Amalia Iduate

24 December 2012

Design by Amalia Iduate

24 December 2012

Death displays no stars on his epaulets, nor in civilian clothes (as they placed him in a box with a single family wreath). Death is a gradation of colors, from the intimidating olive green of the uniform to the cadaverous yellow of skin about to be cremated. Death is, also, the silence of the official newspapers and the national television news. Death is the absolute helplessness of Chapel J of a famous Cuban funeral home, where the body of commander Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo lies, while outside the sea roars like a cyclone through all the streets of El Vedado, crossing the patrols extorting the prostitutes, and the United States Interests Section Office is cut in the wee hours like a futuristic lizard.

The men who led the Revolution of January 1, 1959 can be counted on the fingers. Very soon they will be counted only with the word. Say what they will, the post-guerrilla court physicians, the Utopia of founding a Club of 120 Years proved to be just another fallacy of the socialist emulation. They also die, comrades: no one was immortal. After more than half a century of the so-called “historic generation” in power, this is all that will remain (before my desolate eyes at the wake): fewer than a dozen mourners, zero curious, the press in passing for the photo op, not even police or state security personnel, an unlikely emptiness of plastic chairs and functionaries in threadbare suits. Nobody has died or perhaps we are the dead, the effects of pedestrian apathy and the disintegrated forgetfulness of our nation. Like in a photo of the broken family of the troubadour Carlos Varela: it doesn’t help…

It’s a full moon in Havana, a transparent night that makes us weightless. The Revolution has turned into a volatile bubble, gas that adopts the form of the repression that contains it. The cypresses here no longer pretend to believe in God. There must be cypresses in Cuba to prop us the sky. At this hour there should exist at least a warm and rather bitter sip of God.

I remember my readings of Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, including literary readings. I remember speaking with a crystal clarity and his lanky body in countless class documentaries that circulate computer to computer, although no one in Cuba today sees them, they’re boring, ugly, criminal. The new generations don’t believe in the prestige of death, so they have abandoned this gentleman to his fate. I remember him accused of being a Castro supporter (and in an epistemological sense he was right up to his last breath) by the undercover Castro agents. I remember trying to erase all the rancor from early on, despite the violence that in person altered him. I remember him tired of going up against death, provoking it to make life less miserable. One has the impression that in epic families such as the Gutierrez Menoyos, in that era of wholesale dictatorships (that one?), in whatever part of the world he would have sought vengeance against the Presidential Palace.

The testament of this excommunicated commander is a startling allegation. He dictated it to his daughter, Patricia Gutierrez Menoyo a couple of months ago. Both knew. This is a prescient text, bitter and hopeful. She, who reproduces her father’s features with a candor that makes you want to cry, sent it to the press as soon as she knew the inevitable had occurred. There, recently fallen from the airport after an aerial tour of the Island from Puerto Rico, she gave me a sheet that still smells of exile, of life, of liberty.

The commander Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo gives us, in his farewell, a lesson in style. It feels opaque and so seeks maximum transparency, the spontaneous metaphor in the bitter heart of the people. Being a man of submachine guns (nothing was more popular in Cuba than the language of submachine guns, which in the comics and literature of the seventies sounded symphonically rat-a-tat-tat-tat!), this Spanish Cubanism clings to a last butterfly that will alight in the shadow: thin, quiet, frail, full of joy, converging with the poetry of the New Trova that no one hears in this country any more.

Today they will cremate him, all the protagonists of our political 20th century, so his remains will not later be vandalized when, after the Great Death, the alarm sounds the democratizing ring-ring of the Transition. For now, rest in peace in this city that without wanting to he helped to ruralize, civilian commander of a barbarian in chief.

October 27 2012