Christmas of 2012 / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo




(Translation from the original Spanish “Navidades de 2012″ of OLPL by El Niño Atómico, juanrpollo@aol.com)

This prayer
is
actually
a plagiarism.

It was read
ten years ago
her voice cracked with anger
by a girl
who was dying of cold
by a spring
without a name
in Matanzas.

It was
the Christmas of 2002
and we
were saying goodbye
to ourselves.
None thought
we’d survive too long.

It was Cuba
and the illuminated sadness
of each December
and new year’s eve
crackled
in our desolate
sexes
with a silence
so
atrocious.

She wanted to die
but dared not as much
sitting
alone
in her long table without parents
after days of fears
which ended
in decades of betrayals.

I would have liked
to bring death closer to her
with my hands of loving her
of smearing
the wonders and lies of love
but I dared not, either
and that mediocrity
was our pettiest fear
and penultimate betrayal.

I remember her now
as then
reading her poem
“Christmas of 2002″.
A fucking awesome poem.
Inalienable
instinctive
unpronounceable.

She read and wept.
She unread herself in tears
rather physiological
for no other reason
than hearing herself reading in Cuba
her own poem without a country.

In a tin cup
we toasted with bodega wine
that became the blood of the child God
in every sip
and every kiss without lips
without even a drop
going down
our throats.

The naked walls
like us.
From the ceiling hung
a dim couple
of saving bulbs.
In the neighborhood TVs
rang the hollow laughter
of a proletarian country
that demonic grin
that is all homeland in perpetuity.

We were excited.
We were crazy.
We could give birth to creatures
taken out of our heads.
We starred in a domestic gospel.

Never before the abyss of the sacred
looked at us from so deep.
Each slightest act
was immediately inscribed in eternity.

At twelve o’clock
she lowered his head
on the Formica table
and surrendered.

Dead tired.
Dead of words.
Dead time.
Dead of us.
Dead of treason.
Scared to death.
Really dead.

I carried.
I put her in her bed
as if in a womb
or a coffin.

I turned off the lights in her house
or crib
or manger
in a river neighborhood of Matanzas.
I laid at her feet.

The window open
to the sky’s clockwork.
The stars turned
always counterclockwise.

Then I began to cry
with that dirty silence
that scares even the suicides.
Crying of beauty
crying of gratitude
crying of humility
crying of perfection
and of being ephemeral.
How long will I take
to be able to tell this?,
I thought.

Ten, a hundred or a thousand more new year’s eves?
How many more times will in Cuba
again
be those
Christmas of 2002?




Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Hold on and wait a few minutes please. The lines are busy. / Rodrigo Chavez Rodriguez #Cuba

1356696026_chavezLic. Rodrigo Chávez Rodríguez

Shall we carry on waiting a few minutes? When we have already waited decades, we continue every day a bit more painfully dealing with the lines, or rather the twists of this “planet Cuba”

When I talk about twists, what I am obviously getting at is that at least they should give us some idea of how to follow the tricky route to actually communicate something, which is every day more controlled by the armed institutions of our Republic of Cuba. PNR*, DTI*, Immigration and Aliens, DSE* (Eyesight Test, known as Cajoteros because of its old initials KJ, as in “KT”, meaning illegal Phone Tapping).

We are also becoming subject to the latest technology such as “KE” (Checks in the Ether), “KF” (Checks on Films), “KM” (Microphone Checks) and the customary checking over letters and documents official and unofficial “KC” (Correspondence Checks) , like those to do with Illegal Arrest, without any legal recourse and completely ignoring what is expected and established in the Laws of this PLANET CUBA, on the part of the police instructors (DTI, DSE), who expect to be called Lawyers, when all they have is a Degree in Rights, which isn’t the same thing. Respect them!

Everyone is subject to this. From a Cuban citizen or foreigner of any position in society, to a tourist and including political leaders, and accredited diplomats both national and visiting.

Our Public Prosecutor will watch out for the true and only legality in any proceeding, delivering with absolute and clear justice its verdict and firm sentence via POPULAR TRIBUNALS, or, as applicable, those of the People, in relation to people of whatever position in society.

Those who find it impossible to give in to the powerful, will not be waiting for a few minutes please nor GETTING OFF THE LINE

In this way, phone calls are not guaranteed, and calls for our RIGHTS confirmed in our CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC, in the unknown UNITED NATIONS AGREEMENTS, which are  unknown to the great majority of the population and whatever RIGHTS experts.

Don’t hang up, don’t let them carry on making us wait any longer, for the only opportunity to speak more and more clearly. Don’t block the lines PLEASE.

Translator’s Notes:
PNR: National Revolutionary Police
DTI: Technical Department of Investigations
DSE: Department of State Security

Translated by GH

December 28 2012

Hallucinations? / Miriam Celaya #Cuba

Pierrot and Harlequin. Work by Paul Cezanne

Apparently, two weeks of home confinement, a prisoner of TV, have left me somewhat dopey. Flat out in bed, in a forced rest and without Internet access — except through some merciful friends who texted me with information not reported here, and another one who brought me a recap of news articles he downloaded from the web — I resigned myself to follow televised excerpts of the Seventh Legislature of the National Assembly and news of the schedules. In addition, I listened patiently to all the “reports” of each of the ministers, and I even stoically put up with the General’s euphoric speech in his eternal boring and nasal manner. It’s all in vain, it turns out I don’t understand a thing. The worst part is that Cuban TV seems to cause hallucinations.

I don’t understand, for example, why the “complete” repair of a stretch of 24 km of rail — which has a total of 800 km — conducted throughout the year 2012, is considered an achievement. If one adds the additional fact that the plan for 2013 is to “complete” 40 km of this important pathway (suggesting that only 16 km will be repaired in the coming year), is it not also a plan to go in reverse?

Another issue is that, if almost all parameters projected for 2012 have failed, such as agricultural production, housing construction, production of construction materials, the export plan (with an alarming increase imports of food and other goods), etc. If, in addition, the eastern region was hit by a vicious hurricane that caused huge losses to the economy and the already inadequate and deteriorating housing stock, if an important coffee crop and other crops were lost, among other items, and the few sugar mills we still have, which should have started producing sugar this harvest have been unable to do so… I wonder how it is that the economy has registered a growth in GDP of a respectable 3.1% and what indicators the General took into account to declare that, in the year about to end, “the favorable growth trend was preserved”; that we have been able to maintain a positive correlation between the growth in median income and productivity, which contributes to the internal financial stability” and that Cuba moves ahead in a “gradual reduction of its external debt, on the basis of strict compliance with its financial commitments”? I am so very confused!

I must confess that in the midst of fragments of this and that official trite speech which I have been listening to these past few days, unsurprisingly, I fell asleep. Let my reading friends have consideration for the real torture my brain, already sluggish because of the flu, underwent. The truth is that, though much of it was about economics, I never heard anyone speak of numbers, nor did I find out for sure what the total budget for 2013 was, though it was approved unanimously, as always, by our seasoned representatives. Small omissions that make me suspect that perhaps they too were suffering, like me, from a bad case of the flu and that’s the reason they were somewhat obtuse.

Closing this post, the stellar news this Sunday, December 16th, just released a report that has increased my confusion: Fidel Castro Ruz has been nominated for deputy of the National Assembly. How do you like that? In other words, the zombie politics includes reintroducing the Decrepit in Chief in life, symbolically, I would imagine, through the superior organ of the “people’s power”. Or maybe such a great farce is only one of those morbid pre-mortem tributes which are the fashion in Cuba in which old age seems to be the greatest merit of the honoree. I wouldn’t be surprised if they invent the post of “Absent Deputy”… just saying. Nothing new: in some ways it reminds me about the case of that other dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who achieved his last fantasies of retaining some political power through his appointment as Senator for Life. Latin-American dictatorial histories have a curious recurrence.

But we must not be too surprised. In short, judging by the inefficiency of the system, dusting off the sacred mummy could very well be part of Raul’s strategy for the “renovation” he has undertaken in this kingdom of the dead.

By Miriam Celaya

Translated by Norma Whiting

December 17 2012

Couldn’t the Journalist Wait? #Cuba

By Osvaldo Rodríguez Díaz

In the month of November 2011, the concern and emotional state of the family and friends of an accused person reached an intolerable level. They were shocked at the in-your-face and disrespectful manner in which the press referred to the defendant.

The following appeared in the newspaper Granma on 8 November 2011 in a piece headed Theft and Killing of Cattle:

One of the accused, ex-director of CENOP, in a municipality in the capital city, refers, in a totally impertinent manner, to the insecurity of the control arrangements, which he took advantage of, in order to carry out illegal acts, and he boasted of having got round the requirements of laws and decisions, making use of wide open gaps in the arrangements. 

We don’t know how the journalist got access to the information during the preliminary investigation stage, as neither the attorney nor the lawyer, as parties in the legal procedure, were notified of this.

The obvious concern of the relatives of the accused was that this report in a national newspaper could, from that moment, have a negative influence on the views of the judges appointed to deal with the case, which is unhealthy in terms of due process, apart from the fact that in our country we have complained when other parts of the media have got up to such tricks for this kind of purpose.

Fortunately, the judgement has already occurred and it is possible that the tribunal members were not aware of the aforementioned article.

The journalist doesn’t know whether the information provided by the accused is very useful, and it is a great source of regret that tribunals take it into account as mitigating circumstance, by way of Article 52 of the Penal Code.

But, remarkably, the same journalist says that, taking into account similar judgements (to those of the accused, presumably),the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) now expects to make the procedures more flexible in order to deal with the present gaps.

Beware: every accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty in open court; couldn’t the journalist have waited for that?

Also, it wasn’t proved in the judgement that the accused would obtain any personal benefit, but would only assist the owners of the cattle in getting the better of the bureaucrats.

Translated by GH

December 26 2012

Guillermo Garcia, a Stallion Difficult to Characterize / Juan Juan Almeida #Cuba

Comandante de La Revolución Guillermo García
Commander of the Revolution Guillermo García

The Commander smiled and said, more with an air of conviction than inclination to repentance, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, we are of a certain age, and certainly will not be returning to school; but to prisons, nobody knows.”

This true story sums up the personality of a gentleman whom I should not describe with adjectives. A man for whom yachting is an ordeal, and although he does it with the boss, sailors, servants, bodyguards, and a very heterogeneous range of escorts, as he sets foot on land again he repeats, “The sea is no place for farmers.”

Guillermo García Frías is one of the Commanders of the Revolution, a very picturesque type difficult to characterize, to describe as stupid or genius. A native of El Platano in the heart of the Sierra Maestra, Pilon municipality, Granma province, he possesses an interesting view of life.

Not long ago someone threw him a party to try to reunite his countless children. No lack of food, beverages, cheerful guateque chords enlivened with cockfighting, pile driving, a greased pole, décimas, and the infectious beat of his inseparable and legendary oriental organ. But the singular touch was when Varguitas (his loyal chief of bodyguards), presented his sons and Guillermo asked, “What about you, my boy, whose son are you, who’s your mother?”

I remember once we traveled to Las Coloradas in Bayamo in the executive helicopter. I was born on December 2 and, as a birthday present, for many years I was invited to the ceremony commemorating the landing of the yacht Granma. On that occasion, perhaps from nervousness, or excess alcohol, Guillermo did not stop talking; and taking advantage of his permissive tone, irreverent, folksy, while his conversation was passing what appeared to be an analysis of the socio-political situation in Cuba, I approached him and disagreed with great respect, “…but Guillermo, in Cuba there is discontent, there is even dissent.”

“You think so?” For a second he looked something he didn’t find, called out to his security chief and without arrogance ordered, “Varguitas, serve us some Jim Beam and tell the driver to slow this thing up a little bit so that we can look at the faces of the people in the city.”

His order was carried out ipso facto, and in the brief descent we began to discover distracted people walking with their heads down, barely knowing they were being spied on. Children playing, running happily looking at the sky, trying to reach our craft like a dream. Old men who raised their arms and toothlessly smiled saying goodbye. And at every three or four corners we could see a small group of friends gathered around a bottle of rum or a game of dominoes.

“Look, my boy,” Commander Guillermo begin to prophesy with a definite aesthetic that I still can’t place, between shameless irony or wisdom, “There will always be the discontented, but there is no dissent, just a few dissidents who share the same passion of us, the leaders: Power.”

He paused, took a breath, swallowed a sip of his favorite Bourbon Whiskey and continued, “But these dissidents are lost competing among themselves, passionate in seeking outside what they don’t want within.”

Within grandiosity he approached the window and, with more guilt than pain, passed sentence, “These people you see have not lost their values, but time has petrified them, the inertia they are used to makes them behave like oxen facing cows in heat. Smart people say this is called Entropy.”

Juan Juan Almeida

December 25 2012

The Turn of the Outraged / Jeovany Jimenez Vega #Cuba

In March 2007 the Attorney General of the Republic replied just once to the first of three applications by two doctors who had been unjustly disqualified. It wasn’t just a technical report issued by a non-political and autonomous body against two citizens who considered their rights had been fundamentally violated, but this retrospective response was a vendetta, a written crucifixion using biased and politically-chargedlanguage.

But for some mysterious reason, and in spite of the fact that more than five years have passed, I woke up this morning with a couple of doubts circling in my mind. This is what they were about: if, hypothetically, the two people affected were now to decide to file a lawsuit at the Peoples’ Tribunal against those responsible for the serious injury suffered, what process would they have to follow? Would it now be considered appropriate for our Attorney General to accuse these officials – who doubtless still occupy public service positions – of having subjected us to public humiliation and grave professional and family damage?

Above all, the conclusion would unavoidably be drawn that we should be reinstated in our profession and recompensed for the salary owed to us to cover the period in which we had been disqualified; the implication would be clear that it was a total injustice, and that in order to throw the book at us they played with the truth, they slandered us and, obviously, someone was responsible. Today I would ask our “honorable” Attorney General who five years ago dismissed all the evidence in our favour, if we still have the right to accuse those persons who, enjoying full authority, never did anything.

I wonder if one could still proceed on the grounds of perjury and defamation against the then Provincial Director of Health of Havana, Dr Wilfredo Lorenzo Felipe, who is now Municipal Director of Health of Guanajay, and his wife, Doctor Beatriz Torres Pérez, who was then Dean of the Western Branch of the Institute of Medical Science of Havana, against the then Minister of Public Health, Dr. José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, who is now the Head of International Relations of the Central Committee of the Party, who ignored the 10 letters sent to him, and the present-day Minister, Dr. Roberto Morales Ojeda, who ignored several others.

I wonder if one could proceed against the President of Parliament,Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada on the basis of perversion of the course of justice, and against Esteban Lazo, Vice President of the Council of State, and Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, First Vice President of the Council of State, or Raul Castro, our President, who received four letters which were not replied to – just a question. All these persons, even if they weren’t responsible for what happened, at least knew about it for years and did nothing about it.

Moving on, I ask myself if the Attorney General of the Republic would consider it to be in order to commence an action for perversion of the course of justice against itself as an institution, for having, since mid-2007, rejected the evidence which should have resulted in our immediate readmission, as it showed that the facts were twisted in order to punish us for political reasons. I am supposedly living under a Rule of Law – as my government assures us – which gives me the authority, I believe, as an ordinary citizen — perhaps Citizen Zero — to place before the relevant powers such resources as I believe necessary to guarantee my personal liberties.

I am not proposing to dig around in the shit. My long and patient struggle to return to work in my profession has made me grow and rise above my miseries. Now I am only driven by curiosity, because although I have the right to feel resentment still, nevertheless I have decided to follow the noble advice of Reinaldo Escobar and Yoani Sanchez, those blessed miscreants who, just a few hours after my reinstatement, proposed that from that moment I should concentrate on my health and forgive everything; after everything it was those “warmongers” who – paradoxically – put it to me that I should have the courage and stature to forget.

by Jeovany Jimenez Vega.

Translated by GH

November 13 2012

 

A Smoky Exploit / Regina Coyula #Cuba

During these final days of the year the chatter in my neighborhood has focused on a woman who traded up from a nice little house to a gorgeous residence on a corner lot. This neighbor spared no expense in order to create the home she wanted. An array of private and state-owned trucks delivered material to the site where a building team repaired and remodeled the home over the course of more than a year, following the owner’s instructions. Residents of Nuevo Vedado are used to seeing nice houses—ones that are in good repair and well-maintained—but they were astonished by the magnitude of this project. When they told me about it and I later saw the house, all I could say was, “They are waiting for her to finish it so they can seize it.”

I do not know if the house was ever completed, but the owner was fired from her job. It is rumored that she is facing investigation at a farm called “La Campana,” which I believe is the place where corruption cases are handled. The police conducted a search and filmed the entire house, but the neighbors found out, to their great surprise, that the remodelling project was not the cause but a consequence. It seems the owner, who was recently fired as director of a cigar factory, is under investigation for matters related to the factory’s output.

Since November we have known about the detention of the company’s general manager related to the shipment of contraband cigars to Europe. I won’t deny that I immediately thought of my neighbor, the director of that same company. For a long time she emerged unscathed after anonymous and on-the-record accusations were made by her own workers.

I understand she was very confrontational, and was even offered the directorship of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution to which she belonged. She also active in the Cuban Communist Party and cracked the whip at her workplace. I am not surprised. Someone told me it was a shame what had happened—it was a way of personally profiting by robbing the state because, if these managers are harming anyone, it is their employer.

The neighbor has not been tried and remains innocent until proven guilty. But I am not happy about this. Corruption depletes my county’s patrimony and that of all its citizens. Anyone who has followed the recent history of Russia and the other Soviet republics will know that many of the USSR’s now-discredited company managers shielded themselves as they set about getting rich. With of all their stolen gains, they are now rich and powerful businessmen, mafiosi or both. When it comes to the multi-million dollar tobacco industry, it seems that robbery is practiced on a grand scale.

Regina Coyula

December 25 2012

A Complex Scenario / Fernando Damaso #Cuba

Photo: Peter Deel

When power has been exercised unilaterally in a country by one person for too long—applying formulas capriciously by using political and state institutions and organizations, as well as others created specifically to implement them—it becomes very difficult for whoever replaces him to effect profound and substantial change, regardless of whether or not there is the will to carry it out. Unfortunately, this is the situation in which Cuba currently finds itself.

To systematically dismantle a system that, in spite of its innumerable and repeated promises, has not only been unable in more than fifty years to resolve the economic, political and social problems, but has aggravated them while creating new ones, is a very complex task. Adding to the difficulty is the intention to carry out this process without affecting the already very diminished reputation of the former leader. Complicating things further is the fact that the person carrying out this task is someone intimately linked to his predecessor by familial bonds as well as by shared responsibilities, and whose efforts are either supported or questioned within his own inner circle.

Given this complex scenario, it is understandable that the economic measures, which have thus far been approved, are so shallow and that their implementation so slow. The stated rationale for these measures also ignores the need for social and political changes by refusing to even mention them. Even if we assume there is a desire to “update the model,” this will not solve the problem since it is precisely the “model” itself that is not working. Dedicating a large amount of the time remaining to drafting a framework of laws, rules, regulations and limitations with the goal of salvaging it can only lead to the most abject failure.

No one will deny that a country needs laws and regulations to assure organized development and harmony among its citizens, but that is one thing and this is another. Laws which are approved and applied like a straight jacket to prop up something that is being maintained by “miraculous stasis,” will not satisfy people’s expectations. It seems that this is what is happening in our country when what it is really needed is for change to be deepened, broadened and accelerated.

Fernando Damaso

December 26 2012

This Is Not Spoken Of / Yoani Sanchez #Cuba

Brick by brick Eliécer builds the pen for the pigs, washes the floor with a hose and feeds the plump sow that recently gave birth. A neighbor passes by and shouts to him, “Hey! ‘Your friend’ Alarcón is no longer in Parliament!” The words are out of sync with the situation, bringing a dose of highly charged politics to the harsh day-to-day. But for the young man from Las Tunas such contrasts are already common.

Five years ago he was in a meeting room at the University of Information Sciences with a microphone in his hand. Today, he tries to earn a living in the midst of the material shortages and misunderstandings of a provincial town.

When the list of deputies to the Eighth Parliament was published a few days ago, many immediately thought of Eliécer Ávila. In January of 2008, then a student at the University of Information Sciences (UCI), he questioned the President of the National Assembly who responded with Manichean — and even ridiculous — arguments.

The video of that moment spread with a velocity unprecedented in the newly opened alternative networks for distributing audiovisuals. This event contributed to the acceleration of the countdown for Ricardo Alarcón. A fall from grace already anticipated by his not being included in Fidel Castro’s proclamation when he delegated power to the men he most trusted. The veteran diplomat become parliamentarian was not among those chosen to occupy one of the major posts of the government. It only remained for his replacement to become effective, which — at the slow-moving pace of the Cuban Nomenklatura — will occur in February 2013.

Beyond the ousted official and a young man with the energy and clarity to go much further, it’s worth analyzing how the news has played in the Cuban press. Over the entire week it has published the name and a short biography of each deputy. It has also analyzed the percentage of women, farmers and young people who will occupy the seats in the Palace of Conventions… but without a single word about the current parliamentary president who will step down from his post.

Can you imagine a press, truly attentive to reality, that doesn’t mention what is spoken about in every street, every corner, every Cuban house? Can you conceive of Eliécer Ávila’s neighbors having a better “nose for the news,” being better informed, than all the reporters of the newspaper Granma?

Yoani Sanchez

New Zealand Butter / Yoani Sanchez #Cuba

atrapadosThe chicken comes from Canada, the label on the salt says it comes from Chile, the “tropical marinade” is “Made in the USA” and the sugar is from Brazil. The milk has a Dutch cow on the tetra pack, the lemon juice was processed in Mexico and the hamburger meat advertises in large letters that it is “one hundred percent Argentine beef.” The cheese package says that it’s Gouda from Germany, and the cookies have some Chinese characters explaining their origin, while the rice was cultivated in the paddies of Vietnam. We are drowning in the foreign!

So I asked an economist friend why the butter from the kiosk in our neighborhood is from New Zealand. Is it because we can’t produce such a basic food? And, I demanded, isn’t there some place closer we could get it from? The young woman, a graduate from the University of Havana, responded with the same phrase as the title of one of our comedy shows, “Let me tell you…” Then she told me that after finishing her studies they assigned her to complete her Social Service in an agency of the Ministry of the Food Industry. There, the fat freight invoices paid to transport goods from distant countries came to her attention. She took a list of some of them to the director, among which was one for powdered milk bought from some distant place in Oceania. The man cleared his throat and told her, “Don’t get mixed up in this because it’s rumored that the factory over there is owned by a Cuban higher-up…”

It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that individuals well-placed in the framework of power of this country own industries abroad under cover names. Equally unacceptable would be privileging the importing of products from these companies over ones that are closer and cheaper. That is, that so much money from the national coffers would end up in the pockets of a few — also nationals — who are the same people who decide where to buy from. Like a skilled magician passes a wad of bills, without our being able to see it, from his left hand to his right hand. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why certain brands — really bad and exorbitantly priced — monopolize the shelves in our stores. The old trick of “buying from yourself” would cause the country to incur excessive charges and crowd out domestic products of higher quality and lower cost.

I know, reader, that all this seems to be the fruit of great paranoia on the part of my friend… and on mine as well; but I hope that one day we’ll know, we’ll know everything.

27 December 2012

Carromero’s Flesh / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo #Cuba

The phase of foul play against the exterminating Angel of the youth wing of Spain’s Ruling People’s Party will be tomorrow, October 5th, 2012

It’s rumored that his interrogators, in imitation of King Juan Carlos facing some babbling idiocy from Chavez, have forced him to remain silent and not make a fuss: “Angel, why don’t you shut up already?!”

We will see each other on the 12th in the cafe at the Spanish embassy in Havana

Before Carromero and After Carromero

Anything he says will be used against him. His biography itself accuses him: speeder with dozens of fines, entangled in matters of finance, twitterer in favor of the cuts of the Spanish government while dancing drunkenly in Seville.

Angel Carromero, in addition to being a member of a party considered fascist in Cuba (in imitation of Comandante Hugo Chavez), had his 15 minutes of infamy this first Friday of October, when he was condemned in a brief trial (according to the dictates of our Foreign Minister), where no Cuban demands anything at all from this Iberian.

It doesn’t stop drizzling in Havana lately. After the flood of more than a hundred thousand hours with Fidel, the Socialist State is mired in its transition to a Chinese-esque capitalism light, where the only thing that won’t fit well are the rights of the Cuban people, on the Island as well as in the Exile. And Angel Carromero will be a key piece in this unlikely vaudeville against all and for the evil of all. Although the coquettish prisoner from Spain’s People’s Party doesn’t imagine it on his Cuban Communist scaffold.

Only a foreign “enemy” fully immersed in “subversive activity” within the Island could be a pretext for the violent death of Oswaldo Paya Sardinas. A death announced for years by paramilitaries, even in front of his own family (and foreigners, to openly disseminate the terror of such an exemplary punishment). Well then, promise kept. There are things that the Castro regime doesn’t play with. Things about which the Castro regime never lied. Those who lack the revolutionary genes to assimilate this sinister sincerity, we don’t want them, we don’t need them…

That fateful Sunday of July 22, hours after the impact and the text message in Swedish heatedly typed after the harassment, in a hospital in the provinces and without evidence of urgent intensive care, another pillar of the Christian Liberation Movement also died, Harold Cepero Escalante, who survived the crash conscious but it didn’t occur to anyone to take a declaration from him (or to allow his family to see him before he died).

Much less do we know the testimony of the ambulance attendants, forensic doctors, and the security personnel who, within minutes, seized this stretch of highway and the city of Bayamo (who alerted them that the ID card of the dead-on-impact read: Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, putative president of post-Castro Cuba?). Only some half-literate peasants declared with precision on Cuban TV that the death car was traveling at a rate of speed of more than 60 mph: “a tin can…”

That dawn, as Oswaldo Paya Sardinas left home without saying goodbye to his wife Ofelia Acevedo Maura, the apocryphal Twitterer @Yoahandry8787 had already revealed in real time his trip to the interior of the country, misrepresenting that it was an excursion to the beach in Varadero. Indeed, nearly a decade before, in the official book “The Dissidents,” we could enjoy some photos violating the privacy of the vacationing Paya-Acevedo family.

There, a teenager of 14 appears to look into an empty future while her father dives and disappears under the grayness of the sea. It was Rosa Maria. It is Rosa Maria, suddenly become, today, the new leader of the Christian Liberation Movement (MLC), the principal moral voice of recrimination against all the violence of the State that corralled her citizen father from the time she was born. Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo, accused before she opened her mouth of meeting false foreign tourists at the edge of the sea for a handful of euros, to fund the youth wing of the MLC.

Not one of the loved ones of Oswaldo Paya Sardinas or Harold Cepero Escalante is accusing the exterminating angel of the New Generations of the People’s Party. The State enterprise that owns the Hyundai Accent with license plate T311402 has not publicly demanded compensation for a single screw of its vehicle. Nor has any rice or forest cooperative spoken out in defense of the crops mowed down by the scars of the homicidal tree. It is a case, then, where legally no one is affected, except governmental innocence.

After the videoclip presented to the press, where a young Spanish politician asks the world not to politicize his case (filmed by the political police, but that’s a circumstantial detail), we already know Angel Carromero’s worst enemy will not be the Cuban State, but the drugged panic of Angel Carromero himself.

At the right hand of his steering wheel, like a perverse character of Perrault or the Brothers Grimm, a Social Democratic Swede snored through the nightmare under the midday sun on a pavement under repairs and a slamming on of the brakes at top speed. According to his testimony and with “European soil under his feet,” and despite his dreamlike innocence, Jens Aron Modig was also taken prisoner and held incommunicado in a windowless room, where his interrogators offended him with impunity, until they coerced him to testify against himself on camera.

From Kafka we know that justice in totalitarian systems is never interested in the Truth, this bourgeois prejudice of the Gospels. Much less in Life, this bizarre statistic. Angel Carromero, the talking cadaver, like the American Alan Gross, and countless Cubans who have been through the experience, declared like a ventriloquist that he still holds out a certain hope that he will come out safely. It’s called self-preservation and is a symptom of the mediocrity with which the old Europe of the 21st Century throws a tantrum.

In extreme situations, democracy is only for oneself. Western Christianity, then, has no neighbors. Angel Carromero wants to be Angel Carromero, even though he’s sunk in a concentration camp or humiliated in the cemetery where two human beings were plunged and disappeared under the grayness of the Sea.

The drizzle will not stop these days in Havana, before Castro and after Carromero. When this Friday the 5th what we all know and don’t know how to pronounce is finally verified, a new Cuban era in the history of the Revolution will commence. We will all be more alone, more desolate, more exposed to the paparazzi lenses that pornographically exposed his family and later expired Oswaldo Paya Sardinas.

As in the foundational good times of a cynical more than civic war, we will go quietly to survive under the obscene downpour. The free exile will be a million euros farther away than now. The pro-human rights solidarity activists will prefer to operate in any other corner of the world. The Chinese scribbles and the squeal of this collectivist language will make a little more sense to our individualistic sensibilities. The unethical etymology of the word “disappeared” will suffer a terrible updating. In a small air-conditioned room in eastern Cuba, the year zero of the Carromero cosmology is about to begin. Praise be.

Translated from the original in Diario de Cuba

October 4 2012

Estado de Sats is Nominated for an Emmy Award / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo #Cuba

Antonio Rodiles (left) hosting a panel discussion at Estado de Sats in Havana, Cuba

Antonio Rodiles (left) hosting a panel discussion at Estado de Sats in Havana, Cuba

The debates organized and filmed by Estado de Sats and broadcast from Florida by TV Marti has earned the show a nomination by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences of Florida for an Emmy award.

October 16 2012

Patricia Gutierrez Menoyo Invites Free Cuba to the Mass This Sunday at the Colon Chapel at 8 am Before the Ashes of her Father Eloy / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo #Cuba

The body of the former Commander of the Cuban Revolution, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, has already been cremated today

His daughter, visiting Cuba, announced that TOMORROW, Sunday October 28, at the chapel in the Colon cemetery, at 8 am and not at 10 am as was announced in the press, there will be a mass for the eternal repose of his soul, and that all Cubans with a heart free and open to the future of our nation are invited to attend by her and her family.

Amen… !

RIP

October 27 2012