Translating Cuba

At least once a week (Fridays) I acquire the newspaper Granma, to track its Letters to the Editor section, the only place where people can raise some problems and give some opinions other than the official ones, which occupy its daily pages and also all the other pages on this day, monotony piled on top of monotony.

What when it first appeared created some expectations, however slim of course, in an opening in the impenetrable wall of controlled information and opinion in Cuba, with the passage of time has become a resounding disappointment.

Here, instead of a civilized meeting space for different opinions, looking for the best solutions to the problems that beset us, are usually laid out inconsequential complaints about particular minutiae of city life, and the responses — more and more justifications and bureaucratic — from the agencies and institutions involved. In addition, it teems with the extensive views of some representatives of the most backward thinking and caveman-like who, on principle, oppose any change, however minimal.

I am not suggesting they not publish them, but there should also appear,on an equal basis and in equal space, opinions from those who think differently, so that the readers, educated, trained and cultured, as the official propaganda says, would have the possibility to compare and come up with their own opinions, in a climate of tolerance.

Maybe someone, a staunch advocate of immobility, contended that this is the organ of the Party and so it must be this way. In short, in Cuba, all national and provincial newspapers are official Party organs, because there is only one Party that controls them all, and they only publish what it decides or approves.

However, there is a latent contradiction. When some senior leaders, in their speeches and statements, talk about necessary changes, changing the mindset, allowing different opinions, etc., in official journalistic practice the opposite happens: every time the media tightens the straitjacket. In other words: rhetoric and reality are not in sync. Letters to the Editor is a great example of this.

December 7 2012

I do not know if I’m “ratting someone out,” although I do not think that I am because the illegal hardware and housewares market that has flourished alongside the Carlos III mall could not be more evident. About a year ago they closed an old tenementand self-employed vendors set up shop across the street from the park entrance of this commercial hub. There on organized stands you can find everything from a lightbulb to a selection of faucets, from pipe fittings to waterproofing.

In any event, trying to place the blame here would have no effects on such a flourishing market, today comprising most of the housefronts of this area, which display an amalgam of the same products forbidden last year and more as well. Young people strive to be more solicitous than their peers and expound in detail about the virtues of this or that merchandise, or if they don’t have what you need they assure you they can get it in two hours, or it can be resolved by the following day at the latest, all this with a professionalism that is lacking in State-run establishments.

These kids have learned the laws of the market on the fly and without a single class in theory. The technocrats who “update the model” could learn a lot from a visit to Retiro Street.

December 6 2012

For those who believe that in writing I mean to do harm, release repressed hatred, or seek the sympathy of those who argue with dangerous vehemence to defend extreme positions, I hope that with this article they will reflect and understand that I do not belong to the left or to the right. And for me, the anarchists venerate too many rules.

There are more than a few people who compared to Ernesto Che Guevara with Jack the Ripper. I agree with many of them, for example, both studied medicine. Today I do not intend to talk about such a controversial parent, but about a criticized son, little known, and with strong values, from my point of view.

Ernesto Guevara March, the youngest son of Aleida and Che, is accused of being egotistical. And he is, he is also kind, charming, and extremely sensitive. It’s not easy to be yourself in a society that professes equality. The media accentuates certain things, but I will try to put almost everything in context.

Ernesto never knew his father, he was born in 1965, and although there were victims of the revolution that deserve our respect and consideration, we can not forget that it was a time of euphoria in which the winds of passion raged, and the “bearded ones” were as idolized as democracy is today. These men, turned into dictators, represented for many the image of the spotless hero, the unblemished sun.

Ernesto, similar and different from his three older siblings (Aleida, Camilo and Celia), grew up in the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood in Havana, studied in “Fighters of Bolivia” primary school, attended junior high school at “La Lenin”, and then went to Vedado high school. He became a lawyer, and I can assure you unequivocally that, with that name, and the semantic weight that it carries, had been for him as influential as the flattering environment and persistent ghost of an absent father who, like it or not, is known around the world.

Let’s do an experiment. Let’s take a greased baking sheet and on it put an idealized portion of economic deterioration, season it with internal chaos, knead the mixture until it has the texture of enthusiastic support and popular worship; put the product in the oven, and after a dusting of the night of long knives, it is ready; the dish is called dictatorship. It is not difficult to make a list with the names of those who actually did and do the damage; but we can not include children for being children.

Equipped with a roguish charm, Ernesto is a good man, sometimes stubborn and at times temperamental, with a strong sense of friendship. He is an extrovert and not prone to confessions, he shelters in his own inner volcano. He willingly acknowledges his mistakes, likes to hold onto his childhood, though it is in the past, and has been saddled with an unfair guilt foisted upon him. I understand that it is harder to recognize than to attack; but to ask, seek, find information is very easy with a country teeming with informants eager to be bribed. Pull the trigger only against those who deserve it.

December 10 2012

Havana, Cuba – The reaction on the part of the parliament to the modification of the Cuban family code lays bare the institutionalized homophobia of the government structures led by Raul Castro Ruz.

The discussion of the new family code was again dismissed by the National Assembly of People’s Power. The family code was drafted by a group of lawyers working under the direction of Ms. Mariela Castro, head of the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX).

Mariela Castro, in different interviews to foreign media and the national press, declared the agreement or the consent of her father to this new code, which is intended to provide for the first time in Cuba the right to legal recognition of same-sex couples. It is not the first time so far this year on the island that such a scandal is revealed that is nothing more than a political ploy intended to keep the Cuban Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community immersed in a total crisis of absence of their most basic rights.

There is evidence that in last Population and Housing Census of 2012, as well, that the Cuban government did not recognize those couples that are made up of people of the same sex who live together in the same dwelling. The events are reason enough to raise unrest in the Cuban LGBT community and to demonstrate the bad behavior of the self-proclaimed leader of this community, although she still has never confessed her reasons for identifying with it or what makes her supposedly march at the head of these proposals which are increasingly inadequate.

Different voices have been raised in protest at this new outrage against the LGBT community; human rights activists, organizations, journalists and civil society leaders have recently expressed concern in different ways and have denounced this latest act of outrage by a regime that is afraid to restore or establish the rights of its nation.

It shall be demonstrated despite the Cuban government’s lack of commitment and the evil role of CENESEX and its director, that in CUBA, despite the constant denials, Two Who Are The Same Also Make A Couple.

December 10 2012

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias announced that he will again have surgery for malignant cancerous cells found in in medical check up performed in Cuba.

Cuban television interrupted regular programming on 8 December 2012 to let Cuban citizens know the current state of health of president Hugo Chavez.

Chavez commented that he is having problems that are preventing him from fulfilling his presidential duties, counseling the Venezuelan people that there may be new elections to choose a new president. “Vote for Maduro,” Chavez said.

Tomas Gonzalez, 65, says, “Now we see the desperation of the government, when I saw them interrupt the broadcast I thought something serious had happened in Cuba but it was Chavez crying for a miracle. He also emphasized that, “Sadly, this is a hard fight, to keep the cancer from winning, it is another surgery and possibly the last. It reminds me of the song by the group “Queen” when they declare they have AIDS and could die at any moment,” Gonzalez said.

Pedro Lopez, 49, commented that president Hugo Chavez has confidence in Cuban doctors and that they might be able to save his life. “But there are better specialists in the world but he would be afraid to receive medical care from an “enemy”, a completely crazy aberration.”

Lopez comments that the situation could become even more difficult. “Venezuela is the principle source of Cuba’s oil and if Chavez dies we Cubans could experience blackouts all over again.” Of even more concern is a new “Special Period.”

December 10 2012

For more or less the last five years the national media has begun to talk about human rights. But not all of them. Education and health seems to be “the Human Rights that we advocate,” a narrow concept that allows them to appear to be talking about the subject when in fact they are ignoring it.

If in the United States (I mention it because in the official press it is obligatory to do so) Human Rights are violated, it is the concern of the Americans. Individually, in organized groups created for that purpose, or appealing to the courts, they can fight for their rights. What worries me is that in Cuba those that “are not advocated” in the official propaganda are “forgotten.”

So the government is procrastinating — and will continue to procrastinate — in ratifying the U.N. Covenants on Human Rights (which they already signed in New York). We can’t speak selectively about Human Rights.

December 10 2012

The news about Calixto Ramon Martinez is worse and worse. We have to jump out of our chairs and agree it could be us or one of our brothers. The last thing we know, thanks to Hablemos Press, is that Calixto is continuing his hunger strike and refusing medical care. According to reports from some inmates in Combinado del Este prison, yesterday the agent “Rodolfo,” chief of Unit 3, ordered that he be given a savage beating. He is still confined in the punishment cells, naked, beaten and on hunger strike. He is demanding to be treated with respect, respect that includes his immediate release.

Woe be it to Fidel and Raul Castro that someday, if they escape from the Courts of this world, they cannot escape God’s judgment. Eternal death is too small to punish those who in life have produced so much pain and the deaths to so many people, so many families. So much terror in a population, so many lies, so much physical and spiritual harm to a nation. Calixto can have screamed in rebellion for the treatment he was given by the agents of State Security and the police: “Down with Fidel and Raul Castro!!” As a universal citizen is entitled to do so, but in Cuba these two figures, so reprehensible, in order to protect themselves have declared it crime. It is a shame and a scandal, they are both so small that they have to retaliate for so little against that which merits greater acts of rebellion and civil disobedience.

But they have achieved something worse than fear in this population: they have achieved that many people don’t have a hint of conscience or responsibility for their acts.

I ask for help from all of you in an explicit way. I have sent an email to Amnesty International, an account so public that I am afraid it won’t be read quickly. Colleagues and friends of Calixto can provide Amnesty International all the information it needs to declare him a prisoner of conscience and give him international visibility so that the Cuban government is pressured to release him immediately. According to data published in October by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation the number of political prisoners on the island is 82.

Regulating the coexistence between citizens and the state is urgent in Cuba. There is a tremendous disparity between the two powers. And compared to the macro ideas that have been injected into the population, human rights are understated and the sensitivity of many natives is dulled with regards to their ability to recognize the situation in which we all find ourselves.

December 10 2012

On the evening of November 4th some members of the Coexistence team had the privilege of being invited to participate in the activities celebrating the 50th anniversary of Christian Life.

The occasion brought together many at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, where there was a mass presided over by the Cardinal of Havana Jaime Ortega Alamino, his auxiliary bishop Monseñor Juan de Dios, Father Alberto Garcia, director of Catholic Sunday publications and other priests of the Jesuit Congregation.

God wanted the Gospel proclaimed this day, as appropriate for the occasion, with love your neighbor as the central theme. In his homily the Cardinal emphasized that love conquers all, all hopes; he recalled the words of Father Felix Varela when he said “There is no Fatherland without virtue”, highlighting that virtue is in love rather than knowledge and recalling the first Encyclical Letter of Pope Benedict XVI making a call to live in faith and love in all its facets.

After the Mass there was a cultural evening that began with a few words about Christian Life followed by the invitation of Father Alberto for other voices to take the floor. I remembered when he shared in Pinar del Rio, more than six years ago on the 10th anniversary of the magazine Vitral and ceded the floor to who was at that time director, and is still the director. of the project and the magazine Coexistence, the engineer Dagoberto Valdés Hernández.

Dagoberto focused his words in an infinite gratitude to this publication, “this little leaf” as everyone there calls it, a symbol of perseverance, of how much can be achieved by the love of Christ, for others and society. He emphasized that Christian Life today is a sign of how far we can get if we truly believe in the power of the small and the usefulness of virtue. He thanked also the older sister of all publications that later emerged within the Church, for this necessary catechism, simple but direct, for all the good both do for the Cuban family. Finally he thanked Padre Alberto, the Editorial Board of Christian Life and God for allowing us to participate in the celebration and for teaching us that “everything has its time, and there is a time for everything under heaven.”

The Editorial Board and staff of the magazine Coexistence are most especially grateful to Father Alberto Garcia and his invitation to the team, congratulate Christian Life and urge them to continue working for the love of Cuba and its Church.

by Yoandy Izquierdo Toledo

November 8 2012

“Notes for a History of Pinar del Rio” is now, after the hard work of almost five years in the hands of reviewers and a reward to Wilfredo Denie Valdés for the work of his lifetime, a gift for all natives of Pinar del Rio on the island and in the world. Under the label of Coexistence Editions (which adds another three titles: “Draft economic thought for the future of Cuba” -2008, “Cuba: Time to raise its head” -2009, “Anthropological damage and human rights in Cuba” – 2009) appears this new way of building bridges of history, to fill gaps despite the distances, to chase away forgetting with the remembrance of places lost to the mind, but resuscitated in sight with just the contemplation of a broken image in the recesses of our existence. It is the humble contribution of these sons of caiman’s tail, weaving coexistence between the two shores, to intensify the Cuban identity and fulfill the legacy of Blessed John Paul II who, flying over our Diocese on January 21, 1998, said about the wealth of spiritual values, “We are called to preserve and transmit to future generations for the good and progress of the nation.“

On Thursday, November 1 at seven in the evening it was presented in conjunction with Casa Bacardi, the Institute for Cubans and Cuban-Americans, University of Miami, by the Pinar del Rio in the Diaspora and by the wall of Coexistence in Pinar del Rio, by those from Pinar del Rio who worked on the design and realization of the book, its author and some guests. In Miami the panel included Dr. Omar Vento as moderator, and panelists Marcos Antonio Ramos, PhD in History and Theology, Wilfredo Cancio Isla, PhD in Information Sciences, and Belisario Pi Lago, poet, essayist and professor from Pinar del Rio , founder of the magazine Coexistence (www.convivenciacuba.es)

Wilfredo Denie, author of such a precious jewel, very excited at 86 years, offered a special thanks to all who made this history of our beloved province see the light. Everyone in Pinar del Rio expressed their thanks and congratulations for a well-deserved and needed work.

Today we have a detailed view of Pinar del Rio that puts in the hands of the reader more than 200 articles, 170 images and 70 tables. A small contribution of the children of the westernmost province of Cuba, an offering to the hometown and an example of how much can be done to rescue our roots, the defense of our identity and the reconstruction of Cuba, from civil society.

By Yoandy Izquierdo Toledo

November 8 2012

In spite of the decay and the grime, it is still a vain city. A varied architecture, rows of archways and tall columns topped with plaster figures. Neighborhoods with their own flavor.Atarés, El Pilar, Carraguao, La Víbora, Lawton, Sevillano, Mantilla, Párraga, Buena Vista, Pogolotti, San Leopoldo, Colón, Cayo Hueso, El Vedado o Miramar. Each with its own contrasts.

For a true Habanero there is no better baseball team than the Industriales. Nor a seaside drive more spectacular. Nor a view more beautiful than from the other side of the bay. The neglect and indolence have not prevented Havana from being a unique metropolis.

It is true that it is a city of first-world prices and a fourth-world infrastructure. Poverty-level salaries. Devastated sites. Streets filled with potholes whose broken pipes spew water in torrents. Houses that scream out for extensive repairs. Neighborhood movie houses where we first saw Charlie Chaplin now converted into state-run grocery stores, bicycle storage areas or places where couples go to have sex among the debris.

Everyday in underground Havana a new jargon, incomprehensible to the rest of the world’s Spanish speakers, is invented. And on the black market you can get a pound of beef for 2.50 CUC. Shrimp for 60 pesos. Apparently, the real Havana is not what we see in newscasts or in the headlines of the official media.

The real Havana is the one with people who live off profit and invention. Where objects never die. Like the old cars made in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. Thanks to Havana ingenuity they are still running. A Chevrolet with a Hyundai engine from South Korea, a gearbox from Germany and brake pads from Italy.

In the rooms of countless homes furniture from the mid-twentieth century that belonged to our parents and grandparents is still used. Cribs, playpens and highchairs are passed down from one generation to the next.

Nothing is impossible in Havana. Not even snow or dinosaurs. Everything can be gotten under the table. Colombian cocaine, pure or adulterated. Marijuana grown in Guantanamo. Bottles of Santiago and Caney rum that leave through the back door of the old Bacardi factory and are sold at half price. Mobile phones like iPhone and Samsung Galaxy. Apple laptops and tablets. High-definition Sony TVs. Xbox video games. Converse, Nike and New Balance shoes. Guess jeans and denim jackets from Levi’s.

In spite of a strict embargo, there are hard-currency stores selling products stamped “Made in USA” that range from California apples to Coca Cola. All this and more makes its way from Gringoland and is for sale in houses whose residents have set up sumptuous illegal stores.

In Jesús María’s tenement flat you can also get powdered milk imported from Brazil for 40 pesos a pound. Hams stolen from Suchel. Homemade ham. Viagra. Vitamin C from a pharmacy in Hialeah and two Hershey bars.

On the weekends, when night falls, other things become available. Discotheques with a 10 CUC cover and a trendy reggaeton musician. Discotheques with a 2 CUC cover where, amid the Cristal beer and bolero music, middle-aged men and women pass the time. The park on G Street, a hangout for emos, mikis, repas and roqueros,* is free.

The all-night discos are in the poor neighborhoods. Outside, with their exotic hairstyles, young men hide their arsenal in the vegetation. It includes hundred-year-old Colt revolvers, pistols, knives, razors and pick axes. Not infrequently, the parties end with people mutilated and someone dead.

If you have enough money and want a busy night, there are girls for all tastes and price ranges. Stunning lesbians for 25 convertible pesos the pair. Mulatas to take your breath away for 20. Blondes for 10. Adolescents recently arrived by train from Bayamo for 5.

On a stretch of the Malecón you can hook up with a homosexual. On a corner of La Víbora a lineup of transvestites prostitute themselves for hard currency.

Havana does not have skyscrapers like New York. Nor an Eiffel Tower like Paris. But it does have the Fountain of the Indian in Brotherhood Park near the National Capitol, a meeting point for Cubans and foreigners. Unlike Juárez or Caracas you can walk all night through Havana’s streets. Your life will not be in danger if you cross paths with a thief.

In twenty years perhaps the capital of Cuba will be much better. If the winds of democracy blow through these hearths and an intelligent vision revives it, we will have the Havana we all desire. Until then, we must wait.

Photo from Cuban Screen. The Hotel Saratoga with the Fountain of the Indian (or Fountain of Noble Havana) in the foreground. It was created in the neo-classical style in 1837 by Italian sculptor Giuseppe Gaggiani. Originally located at the end of Paseo del Prado, it was moved in 1863 to Isabel II Park, now Central Park. In 1875 it was moved to its current site, looking east. With the inauguration of Brotherhood Park in 1928, it was left in the same location, but turned to face north. Historians claim it was the first image of Havana to be photographed, the photo taken by a Frenchman, Antonio Rezzonico, in the 19th century.

According to legend, when Spaniards arrived at the port of Havana in 1519, they saw an Indian woman seated on an enormous rock, looking on in silence. She later cautiously approached them and spoke the word jabana. It is said that one of the sailors drew an outline of the Indian on the rock and called her “La Habana.”

Sculpted from white Carrara marble, it is three meters high and it sits on a square pedestal with four dolphins, one at each corner, whose mouths spout water onto enormous shells which forms its base. Named Guara, the woman is the wife of the Indian chief, Habaguanex. She wears a crown of feathers on her head and a quiver of hunting arrows over her shoulder. In her left hand she holds a horn of plenty filled with Cuban fruits and in her right the coat of arms of the city of Havana. (TQ, with internet sources.)

Translator’s note: Followers of current styles of rock music.

December 8 2012

When we got to the police station Aguilera, led me to the dungeons. The guards held me by the arms, I was almost dragged. I had no energy, the pains ran all over my body, but mostly because of blows in the ribs I did not get enough air and it was like a knife stabbing me again and again. I did not want to scream in pain so as not to give them the pleasure of seeing me suffer, but I certainly felt like doing it.

They took me down to the basement of the building. The stench warned the proximity of the dungeons. Several doors of bars were opened. I had my eyes closed because my clouded vision bothered me. They left me in a cell on a concrete bed. I spent several hours struggling not to stop breathing, every time I took a breath it was like a knife cutting into my ribs. Then, slowly, I began to get relief.

A guard asked me if I wanted lunch. I told him no. Is this a hunger strike? I told him yes. He walked away and I heard him inform his superior, meanwhile what he said gave me to understand that he didn’t care. He said what he had done. Which was not true, because when I communicated my decision not to eat, he looked at me worried, very worried.

Soon the photographer Claudio Fuentes, who had arrested with me, walked past my cell. They brought him lunch.He greeted me with his eyes and I saw the surprise of seeing my state of calamity with my shirt torn and bloodied. I asked about Yoani Sánchez, he told me that he didn’t know what happened to her. I asked about the lawyer Laritza and he told me she had been released the night before and had been in the same cell as I was now. At least I had a few seconds of joy. What about Antonio Rodiles? Nothing, no one else knew, he said, and the guard yelled at him to hurry up and not to talk with me.

That night, after I refused to eat, they decided to change my cell. They put me in with Claudio. We took tremendous joy in being able to talk. On the wall, in huge letters, someone had written: Down with Fidel. Long Live Human Rights. We barely slept. We passed the time talking about movies, photography, girlfriends, literature, history, and the dreams of justice we both long for, for Cuba.

The recurring question we kept returning to was whether Yoani had been released, or if she remained imprisoned. I remembered all the time, during the altercation with the police, that my greatest worry was that they would beat her so I tried to stay close to her to avoid their doing that at all costs. Luckily this time that didn’t happen.

The circus of finding me guilty begins

The following morning they came to get me up and “formally” accuse me. They charged me with two things: “resisting arrest,” and “Injuries.” I explained the events as they happened and said it was a shameless and blatant attempt to try to accuse me of something I didn’t do, rather the accused should be the entire troop of abusers who presented themselves as “Counterintelligence Agents,” a perfect name for those repressors and paid assassins, as Yoani shouted at them.

The “Instructor” (a combination of investigator and prosecutor) barely spoke, he was only following orders. He did his job as best he could, because I did not agree to cooperate with the injustice. I reminded them that they were the first to violate the law, that I had not been allowed my phone call as established by their own laws. He was quiet, he did not know what to say. He said he would consult with superiors and then tell me. Of course, I never saw him again, much less received permission to make the phone call.

On returning to the dungeon I told Claudio what happened, and we laughed so as not to cry from anger at the government cynicism and its injustices. A while later an officer came to tell me that my family was at the station and they had brought me toiletries. He asked if I wanted to send a verbal message. I told him to let them know that I was happy and I was where my heart led me. The officer looked at me like I was insane. I thought he wouldn’t pass on the message. Later I learned that he did tell them, and then my family was able to confirm that I was there. I took advantage of the opportunity to send them my shirt torn and stained with my blood. I thought that maybe the guards would take it out of the bag and not give it to my family.

At moments, Claudio and I reminded the jailers that we had the right to a phone call, and they responded that they were only allowed to give us food and watch us, but they was no authority over other aspects, that this was the power of the “State Security”.

Meanwhile, we saw how they authorized ordinary prisoners to make phone calls as many times as they wanted. As I had been able to hang on to my phone card, it occurred to me to negotiate with those offenders who, if they made a call for me, I would let them use the card, and they agreed. But when I asked them to pass on my request to take picture of the bloody shirt and put it on the internet, they were nervous. Then I talked with one who had a deposit of 500 pesos, and his family didn’t have the money. I told him to make the call and that my family would pass on that amount. He finally agreed.

After lunch they released Claudio. While gathering his belongings, including his camera, he tried to take a movie peering into the dungeon where I reached out with the index finger and thumb held out in the L-shaped, as a symbol of Liberty, but the jailer realized what he was trying to do and was furious.

The Claudio left and I felt the full weight of my loneliness bearing down on me. Some common prisoners called to me from their cell. One of them, I knew from childhood, told me that if I would accept it he would pass me hidden food. I said now, that this trick would hurt me, because it undermined my decision to remain on strike. In any event he didn’t understand. Nor will I ever know if he was sent by my captors. Soon they brought in a detainee for beating his wife. We just talked, I suspected he might be an envoy of the “State Security”.

I called the jailer to let me wash up, but he said that the prisoners who weren’t eating weren’t allowed anything. After a while they took my clothes and sheets. That night I had to cover my cold shoulders with my shorts. Then they brought in three black men, very burly. It was obvious they were in the service of the “State Security”. They told their false stories. And I played the game, but took the opportunity to say everything I wanted to scream at my captors.

The only thing they responded was that if I were out of the country, that “God gives a beard to he who has no jaw”; they were mocking me because I could be abroad, I had traveled to the United States, Europe, America, and look where it got me, that was the crazy thing. I told them again and offended them with my sentiments. Meanwhile, they went quiet and I sensed it pained them not to be able to shut me up with punches.

In the morning an “agent” of the “State Security” came. I yelled, from my cell, I did not want to talk to anyone, the only thing they could do was go back to hitting, but they wouldn’t get any conversation out of me. The officer entered the cell after taking the other inmates out. I thought they would beat me.

December 8 2012

The National Theatre of Cuba half-opened three of it numerous doors (always closed), with access to its main and older hall, the Avellaneda, to receive the large crowd that crowded together in the entrances and adjacent areas, up until the early hours, to finally attend the concert which was held under the auspices of the United Nations, the Federation of Cuban women, and other institutions:  NO TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN.

The crowd congregated there, the majority young people, started to worry and show its discontent, due to the delay and slowness with which, almost “drop by drop”, they permitted entry into the hall.

The social lack of discipline, expressed in pushes, nudges, and shouts, on the part of the young people, students and primarily South Americans, who together with the natives of Cuba, made their way without any type of consideration for others, trying to pass through the narrow gap left by the half-opened doors, now going against the very spirit of the concert.

Evidently, the administration of the cultural complex favored this situation, with its mistaken policy of “closed doors”, not to mention that the concert started 20 minutes later than the planned starting time.

After the presentation and performance of our singers Rocy and Feliu, as well as a brilliant performance by the instrumentalists Calzadilla and Garcia, piano and flutist respectively, an “intermission” of thirty minutes was allowed for preparing the stage and equipment, with a view to presenting the main figure of the show: Julieta Venegas, excellent singer, instrumentalist, and composer, greatly followed and admired by the international and Cuban public.

Juliet finally appears on stage before the delirious cheers and applause from an audience which admires her and is under her spell, with over fifteen songs, many of them sung in chorus by her fans. The concert, due to delays, lasted until midnight. Around eleven many young people were leaving, very reluctantly, due to transportation difficulties if they stayed any later.

When I was there, enjoying the wonderful show, I could not help but think about the paradox that occurred that very day in which all of the foreign press echoed the brutal attack suffered by Berenice Hector Gonzalez, which almost cost the life of this fifteen-year-old, inflicted by another teenager of nineteen years, both of Cienfuegos.

But the greatest irony of all this is that the medical certificate, irresponsibly and cowardly issued by Gustavo Aldereguía Hospital doctors in the city of Cienfuegos, who treated the victim, said that this girl barely out of childhood had suffered “minor injuries” in the attack. And her  attacker is still free today.

Just as this news is coming to be known through the media and by those who, in one way or another, enjoy Internet services, is the same exact moment in which a concert is being held “against violence against women and girls”, under the apparent indifference of its sponsors.

December 4 2012