Commerce Like In Colonial Times / Rebeca Monzo #Cuba

I’m sad to see the streets of the city filled with trash and red earth. The doorways of many of the old mansions and residences in the Vedado neighborhood are converted into improvised stalls which, amid the grime and decay, display all kinds of merchandise from radio batteries to clothes and the worst taste and equal quality.

Beach umbrellas, nestled in the midst of what was once a driveway, with a makeshift and wobbly table, indicate places where food is sold. You see pedestrians passing by with a decorated cake in their hands, without any kind of protective covering. Others carry, as if it were a briefcase, pigs’ heads grabbed by an ear, or a mattress in a makeshift wheelbarrow dragging on the pavement.

You can see the same images in a country town and in the Havana neighborhoods, Vedado or Neuvo Vedado. The entire city, as our writer Leonardo Padura says, has been ruralized.

But the most painful of all this is to observe the numbers of young people, still school-aged or who should be learning a skilled trade, pushing wheelbarrows uphill loaded with produce. Today I saw with a certain sadness a young man, good-natured, with a face that reflected intelligence and pain,busily pushing his cart up 25th Street, loaded with fresh, clean and well-organized products, having to stop every three or four steps to gather his strength.

That young man probably did not continue studying on perceiving that, in this other way, he could earn more than a badly paid professional. I felt sorry for him and his parents. It is a very unfortunate state of affairs, but the majority of people who have chosen self-employment are the young whose talents are being lost and the country, in the future, will not be able to count on them.

If they weren’t young they wouldn’t have the physical strength to push these heavy carts, which recall those of the colonial era, when the country had not yet been developed and the Cuban nation was being born.

Of what value are those massive calls to study in the universities, after 1959, if the conditions for reversing the fruits of this education in factories, industries, etc. were not created for the development and benefit of the nation. This unfortunately form of commerce in the colonial style is what has proliferated in our battered country, taking us backwards in development.

December 1 2012

Raul Castro’s Racist Grandson / Juan Juan Almeida #Cuba

RaulitoI do not mean to criticize children for being children, nor grandchildren for being grandchildren, I will just talk about a sector that just because we haven’t heard of them, that doesn’t mean they are not full of it. Today I’m answering questions about Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the son of Deborah Castro Espin and Luis Alberto Rodrigues Lopez Callejas.

The marriage of Vilma and Raul was the most iconographic of the Cuban Revolution. He personified the hero, and she her heroic role of compañera, volunteer, submissive and party functionary. Four lovely children were born from the Castro-Espin union, children who in time became spoiled. The first of the grandchildren, the little Rodriguez Castro, was a solitary baby, naughty, lively and stubborn, already demonstrating in his behavior an authoritarian tendency.

Having been born male, with a skilled calculating father, and a sixth finger inherited through his mother, he awoke in grandfather Raul what we might describe as a mixture of love, joy and compassion. Raulito became the favorite. And on more than a few occasions the jubilant El General presented him with a phrase that provoked mockery rather than admiration. “My grandson is a marble beauty, a colossus with a baby face.” The general’s creativity, although it had improved somewhat, continued to be invaded by grandiose and epic concepts.

Surely hoping to construct a paragon of virtues, the family made this little angel a useless mess. So when he was enrolled in “Gustavo and Joaquin Ferrer” primary school, he walked alone accompanied by an inseparable flattery and an unbearable escort that cast a disagreeable spell over boys his age.

Surrounded, or perhaps well-attended by, his scandalous loneliness, he arrived at “Josue Pais” junior high. By then he was already a youngster who liked to annoy people and disliked everyone. Allergic to the entire spectrum of respect, he felt the holy grail of control and enjoyed a certain morbid knowledge that he featured in others’ nightmares.

The eccentricity of the age, plus the constant vision of his family environment, pushed him to drink, smoke, and to choose paths that others older than he called “missteps.” He adopted a vehemently racist attitude that at times managed to embarrass his most loyal friends, family and benefactors.

Out of respect I will not mention the name of the girl who was expelled from the classroom for being black, or rather, because The General’s Grandson announced his decree that he would not share the same space with this classmate because — according to him — blacks are not only ugly and gross, they stink.

By that time, the words “thank you” had been eradicated from his vocabulary. Quite understandably, Cuba suffers a feudal system generous with a dictatorial and anarchy ruling elite; no one has to be grateful for what they believe is rightfully theirs. Nobody learns to say thank you if they are not truly appreciative.

Ungrateful, unmanageable, and at the precise moment when economics is the latest hot topic, Raulito, now the presidential escort, decides to study at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Havana. It is common, and even reasonable, that high performance athletes study for degrees in Sports making international competitions their state exams.

Using this same principle, and after some convincing that included pressure, the rector of the university was left with no options but to understand that the student in question, tall, blond, with a strong build and uncouth manners, should be awarded a degree with honors due to his participation as a special guest at government events. His repeated absences from class were not taken as a sign of intellectual impairment, but as support to the national patrimony.

The winds of change blew, the world map transmuted its colors and this family, by order of their patriarch, needed to be more united. In an act of humility and sacrifice, Uncle Alejandro Castro, known as the Colonel with less body fat than grey matter, paired up with an ex-girlfriend of his nephew Raulito, and so hoisted the flag of the strange family passion for common property.

So, on Sundays, the clan enjoys the exotic delicacies still prepared by old Chute (the cook Jesus); and the rest of the week nephew and uncle review the proper code of conduct for sharing the same woman. It may seem immoral, but it’s nothing new; it is known that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his wifeNadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, went with, lived with, and were entertained by Elizabeth D’Herenville (Inessa). Sure, there are differences, the leader of the Bolsheviks, his partner, and their mutual concubine, were not united by consanguinity.

The boss of the State Security Staff of the Ministry of the Interior, and some others under his command, feeling threatened by the real possibility of being cruelly supplanted by a healthy and powerful chip off the old family block, try with incredible care to ridicule him, subtly launching a few phrases into the mouths of public opinion: “Bodyguard 2,” “no one knows if the grandson takes care of the granddad or if the granddad takes care of the grandson,” “I have to look after one and watch the other”… in short, the boy is criticized, but untouchable.

Raulito married, and at the wedding was heard the contagious strains of La Charanga Habanera, an orchestra that, among others, decided to exchange talent for the caresses of power. Later he divorced, leaving a daughter on the way, and making plans for another wedding.

The Castro Espin lineage is like a charitable organization committed to pettiness where common sense is the least common of the senses. Raulito is a victim who didn’t manage to be different. Today he calls himself a patriot and a defender of those ideas that perhaps nobly inspired looting and revolution.

He recreates a sickly ardor to impress the people beneath his social status. He is paranoid, and has only read some of the alternative pages of the life of Julius Caesar; he is really convinced that the end of his grandfather Raul will be reduced to assassination in an act of revenge on the part of his own bodyguard. To say more would be redundant.

December 2 2012

A Necessary “Rescue” / Fernando Damaso #Cuba

Photo: Peter Deel

In 1959, “the year of the accident” as a friend of mine likes to call it, there were any number of well-known people who had degrees in business administration and public accounting. They practiced their professions in different manufacturing and service companies and in general their salaries provided them with a good standard of living. Accounting was practiced universally throughout the country, contributing to a healthy economy.

At some point “someone” determined that there was no need for all this, and the system was dismantled. Overnight, business administrators, bookkeepers and accountants either became nothing more than check writers for nationalized companies and agricultural businesses, or had to change professions if they wanted to to survive. In order to cut “the evil” at its root, provincial business schools and university accounting departments were closed. With these measures, economic controls disappeared since “under socialism they, as well as money, were no longer necessary.” Life, however, stubbornly and amply demonstrates what a big mistake this turned out to be. The country paid and continues to pay the consequences, while those who were responsible have never accepted responsibility or answered for their errors.

For some time now there has been a renewed emphasis on the importance of economists and accountants. They even have their own organization—ANEC (National Association of Economists and Accountants). One day, November 26, was inexplicably chosen, however, to be the day on which someone, who knew nothing about economics or accounting much less banking, assumed the presidency of the National Bank of Cuba. After reading about the duties currently assigned to him, while ignoring the gray years as if they had never happened, it seems like there will be a lot of them he will surely find difficult to fulfill. Let’s see. He must contribute to the implementation of the guidelines, design the theoretical foundations of “the model,” develop courses for bookkeepers as well as courses for entrepreneurs, provide advice to strengthen the work of accounting teams and the control of resources, coordinate the preparation of economic reports by directors, and develop a culture of economics, among other things. In other words, try to rescue (one of the verbs most widely used nowadays) all that was lost during the years of improvisation and failure.

It would be beneficial if he were successful, for the good of the nation but also as a palpable demonstration that they never should have done away with these economic activities. Although it is a bit late, it is good to correct things.

December 1 2012

Turbulent Phenomenons / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado #Cuba

Found in “Wikipedia Kiwix”

How much does a portable radio cost in Cuba?

It is known that during the first days of November the Eastern Cuban provinces suffered from the passing of hurricane Sandy, and that despite its pretty name, it was a destructive meteorological phenomenon that resulted in more than 10 deaths and multimillion material damages.

It will remain in the memory of the eastern province residents as a cyclone that could have crossed those provinces “as a mere meteorological tantrum”, but due to the general poverty of the area, the humiliating and infinitely bad roof tiles — made of cardboard, asphalt, and sand — used as permanent cover, many zinc rooftops and roofs held down “by the goodwill of God”, rusted by the passage of time, in addition to intense rain and floods, created a unique condition that destroyed, due to this Belcebú hurricane, the puny material possessions of many in the region.

We don’t know if most of the damage happened because when they cut electricity due to the high winds nobody coud use a radio receptor to find out the path of the tropical phenomenon, and if those who did have radio receptors, had batteries to make them functional; or perhaps the civil defense did not function with the usual swiftness and order. It caught my attention that the interviews of the local and provincial authorities, conducted during those days, reported that many families evacuated on their own (auto-evacuated?) to houses of families and friends. I don’t know if that was true, if it was guided from the capital, or if it was an easy way out that the local authorities adopted to save fuel. If that was it, where did the saved fuel go?

A few years ago, my mother and I discovered in a neighborhood store a portable radio, no taller than 10 centimeters, selling for 90 CUCs – hard Cuban currency, not the same as the currency used to pay Cuban workers. Some time afterwards, the dollar market was invaded with Chinese radio receptors at $10 which required batteries, solar and rechargeable — the most commonly used one — but they only lasted as long as it took to charge them.

We hope the state believes the people regarding this situation in order to be prepared, individually and collectively, for another phenomenon of this kind, thereby minimizing impact and damages, so that among the hurt and the sarcasm there will be no need to paraphrase the song of the Dominican singer Juan Luis Guerra:hope that radios rain down on the Cuban fields.

Translated by: Marina Villa

November 27 2012

Leonardo Padura: The Man Who Loved Books / Yoani Sanchez #Cuba

The Mantilla neighborhood exhibits a rare blend of a Havana suburb with a rural village. Its park, its church, its streets that foreign tourists rarely see, and even its famous writer. This last is Leonardo Padura, born in Havana in 1955, a journalist and author of numerous novels. Despite his international recognition and his possession of Spanish nationality, Padura has preferred to live in the same town on the Island where he was born, which has been the scene of so many of his stories.

The name of this universal Cuban is associated with detective stories, but his work also includes journalism and screenplays. A baseball fanatic, incisive in his opinions and of a proven nobility, on the even of his sixth decade he is an unusual man. His “rarity” lies fundamentally in having been able to sustain a critical vision of his country, an unvarnished description of the national sphere, without sacrificing the ability to be recognized by the official sectors. The praise comes to him from every direction of the polarized ideological spectrum of the Island, which is a true miracle of letters and of words.

Padura commands the force of talent. He has been received with respect, even by those in the Cuban Writers and Artists Union who observe him with resentment for his books that feature the detective Mario Conde. In the hard years of the Special Period his novels took a deep look at a reality that others preferred to whitewash.

His literary honesty, his tenacity, and also a good dose of luck, allowed him to reach th dream cherished by every Cuban writer: to be published in other parts of the world. Publishers ranging from the University of Guadalajara toTusquets in Barcelona, have helped him to position himself as an acclaimed novelist. This international recognition has also prevented the local censorship from simply making him invisible, and instead they try to accept him, although reluctantly.

The “writer of Mantilla,” as many call him, has the rare privilege of seeing his novels photocopied and circulated as pirated editions among his compatriots. This insatiable appetite for his pages is also due to the small runs the local presses have made of his most popular titles. If we were to measure the success of an author by the number of times someone makes an illegal copy of his work, then Padura would earn the highest score of any living Cuban.

If 2011 was a year full of accolades for the author of Past Perfect (Tusquets, 1991) and The Novel of my Life (Tusquets, 2002), it now ends confirming Padura as the great Cuban novelist of today. In 2012 he has continued to build on the favorable track record left by his book The Man Who Loved Dogs (Tusquets 2009), which deals with the life of Ramon Mercader, Leon Trotsky’s murderer. In November, he was also celebratd with an Author’s Week in which Havana’s Casa de las Americas presented a collection of his stories and essays under the title A Man and an Island.

Currently working on the book Heretics, which he has defined as “three novels which have a tenuous and invisible thread.” The movie 7 Days in Havana (French-Spanish co-production, 2012), which he collaborated by writing the script from one of his stories, has given us a lot to talk about by showing a city if interwoven hardness and sensuality.

Leonardo Padura is now the face of Cuban literature inside the island and we are tremendously lucky that this is so.

1 December 2012

Bloggers and Twitterers at Paya / Mario Barroso #Cuba

In addition to the traditional groups and opposition personalities was very emotional for me at Paya’s funerals to interact with new trends in the opposition which are the bloggers and twitterers who are independent, non-partisan and who are not directed by others, whom I met spontaneously while paying honors to Paya.

I will never forget the gesture Yoani Sanchez herself on meeting me that strange night in the parish, as she did with many other pilgrims, motioning me to come the nearby park where there was an active group of collaborators who offered me water, coffee and a T-shirt with an excellent picture Payá in which the Cuban flag was also illustrated next to a picture of Varela, which I keep as a relic and still hope to wear at relevant times to come.

From that moment I was part of a large group of participants wearing the garment which became one of the most eloquent tributes paid during those historic hours of tribute to he who was the coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement.

Our army of technologists with a vocation of humanity narrated tweet by tweet every scene of this historic farewell that cost Cuba one of its best sons. And it was not only those of us who were present, the privileged who could get there. Countless colleagues worldwide constantly called up and helped to recharge our mobile phones, without which we would not have been able to send so many tweets into cyberspace.

Some of us “opened” our cellphones so distant friends could hear live such important moments as the mass officiated by the cardinal in the morning before the burial, and even the radio stations took advantage of our contruibution to broadcast it live, no matter the quality or the interference, because the information was must more valuable than any problem with the effectiveness of the transmissions or the channels.

Following the instantaneous character of Twitter, surviving the still not exhausted posts of many who were present, or of those who followed in from a distance, whatever could be done, all the issues relating to this man who shines so brightly in his absence as he shone in his presence.

November 6 2012

Members of the internal Cuban Resistance reaffirm their pledge to keep up the fight for democratic change in the streets of Cuba / Jorge Luis García Pérez Antunez

Today is the 27th of November 2012 and after having sung the notes of the National Hymn a group of Cuban resistance members, militants from different organizations of the peaceful opposition, are here in the city of Placetas on the roof top of the home headquarters and we are and are going to give a reading in the voice of Sara Marta Fonseca Quevedo of a joint statement of various organizations about themes of the Cuban resistance.

Statement:

Many opposition organizations gathered in the city of Placetas this November 27, 2012, in order to draft and make known this joint statement in which they express their commitment and collaboration, as well as their reciprocal loyalty in moments in which the regime through its political police becomes embroiled in a dirty and pre-meditated campaign to bleed the vital forces of the Cuban resistance, specifically those who have contributed most to that important breach and earnedareas of freedom.

The Cuban Party for Human Rights affiliated with the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights, the House of the Prisoner Ernesto Diaz Madruga, the Mario Manuel de la Pena Movement for Human Rights, the Cuban Association of Free Yorubas, the Pedro Luis Boitel National Civil Resistance Movement, want to let emerge in an open and responsible way our resolute decision to respond with unity, commitment and activism to the despicable effort to remove the internal resistance from the streets and public spaces in order to return them to their homes and enclosed places.

Those present here, all promoters of civil disobedience as a fighting strategy, want to make quite clear our unconditional support for any civilian project that may be put into practice, emphasizing our priorityof those initiatives thatfurther international repercussion and other media impacts that may promote change, from the citizen, from the actual phases and taking into account the potential factors for democratic change.

Signed:

Damaris Moya Portieles, Central Opposition Coalition

Yaite Dianeyes Cruz Sosa, Rosa Parks Movement for Civil Rights and Central Opposition Coalition

Orestes Eusebio Hernandez Guevara, Cuban Free Yorubas Association and Central Opposition Coalition

Blas Augusto Fortin Martinez, Mario Manuel de la Pena Movement and Central Opposition Coalition

Yris Tamara Perez Aguilera, Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights and Central Opposition Coalition

Arturo Conde Zamora, Pedro Luis Boitel Civil National Resistance Movement and Central Opposition Coalition

Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez, Orlando Zapata Civil Resistance and Disobedience Front

Also added to this statement:

Jorge Vazquez Chaviano, Cuban Party for Human Rights affiliated with the Andrei Sajarov Foundation and the Central Opposition Coalition

Segundo Rey Cabrera Gonzalez, Cuban Committee for Human Rights and the Central Opposition Coalition

From the Youth Movement for Democracy and the Juan Pablo II Movement for Human Rights:

Roberto Gonzalez Pelegrin

Rodai Matos Matos

Yunier Jimemez de la Cruz

Francisco Luis Manzanet Ortiz

Jorge Leiva Serrat

Jesus Pena Ramirez

Luis Noa Silva

Emilio Almaguer de la Cruz

Reinier Reina Salas

Randy Caballero Suarez

Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina, National Coordinator for the Eastern Democratic Alliance

Donaida Perez Paseiro, Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civl Rights and the Central Opposition Coalition

Loreto Hernandez Garcia, Cuban Free Yorubas Association and the Central Opposition Coalition

Luis Enrique Santos Caballero, Central Opposition Coalition

Jose Lino Ascencio Lopez Central Opposition Coalition

Barbara Moya Portieles Central Opposition Coalition

Juana Contreras Aguilar Central Opposition Coalition

Yanoisis Contreras Aguilar Central Opposition Coalition

Xiomara Martinez Jimenez, Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights and the Central Opposition Coalition

Sara Marta Fonseca Quevedo, Cuban Party for Human Rights affiliated with the Andrei Sakharov Foundation

Long live the internal resistance! Viva!

Long live the Cuban Party for Human Rights affiliated with the Andrei Sakharov Foundation! Viva!

Long live the Pedro Luis Boite National Civil Resistance Movement! Viva!

Long live the Rosa ParksWomen’s Movement for Civil Rights! Viva!

Long live the Front! Viva!

Long live free Cuba! Viva!

The streets are of the people!

We are all Resistance!

Attention, attention, we are informing you that before undertaking this activity military troops armed with bladed weapons have just entered thechildren’s circlelocated next to my home, the Golden Age, there is stupor, there is fear, there are several relatives that have approached this circle to take their children and we are blaming the communist Castro tyranny in the person of Raul Jazares, chief of the political police for the psychological damage that the sight of those firearms may cause to those little children.

Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez, Orlando Zapata Civil Resistance and Disobedience Front

We want to highlight that we dedicatedtoday’s celebration to the honor of the eight medical students who one day like today werekilled by the cowardly bullets of the Spanish colonialists.

Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez, Orlando Zapate Civil Resistance and Disobedience Front

Translated by mlk

November 27 2012

A Better Quality Shadow / Lilianne Ruiz

S
Antonio Rodiles, left center, Father Jose Conrado, right center

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My blog is now 4 days behind, but I was fortunate enough to be present last Monday night for the presentation of the Tolerance Plus award to Father Jose Conrado at the home of Antonio Rodiles, within hours of his release.

The release of Rodiles was undoubtedly the most important event of the week and the most anticipated by his friends. Thinner and with a blackish crescent below his lower left eyelid from the bruise caused by the beating, Rodiles returns to his home like a big brother coming home from the war wearing a star on one of his pockets that announces the triumph of the light.

That night brought the scent of others gone by, songs of warriors from another dimension of time, when Father Conrado read the words he had prepared for the occasion. Martí settling like a nocturnal butterfly over the Monday night, opening the spirit of all those gathered there so as to receive the dew which, if it comes at night, is always the dew brought by the shadow of the Holy Spirit: that of infinite possibilities.

Father Conrado, in turn, presented to Ofelia Acevedo (widow of Osvaldo Payá) the award conferred by several organizations under the umbrella of Nuevo Pais (New Country Project). It was my second time seeing the widow and I approached her, always having to suppress the desire to cry for her loss and ours.

I admired each of the persons congregated there. It felt like I was witnessing a historic evening. Beyond the outcome of our actions, the punishment with which the regime attempts to intimidate and even annihilate,those who dare oppose it, the denial by means of violence of the respect we deserve and the attempt to brush us aside as if we were nothing. Beyond the success or failure, always fleeting in a Universe governed by change, a change that will come to them like a tsunami that will sweep them up and give each the just retribution for his actions, the feeling of being in the right place, being sure that God is with us, was confirmed within me, in a part of my being which makes me stop the fabric of time and feel that we are saved.


November 30 2012

Interview with a State Security Official / Anddy Sierra Alvarez #Cuba

At 2:00 PM on November 22, 2012, I was interviewed at the People’s Revolutionary Police (PNR) Capri Station, located in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality of Havana, with the Lieutenant called “Junior” from Department 21 (the State Security department that deals with dissidents).

The interview began after 20 minutes since he could not find a place to hold it:

Official: (He introduced himself as a Department of State Security (DSE) official but did not show identification, and began)

What has motivated you to do these types of things? I believe it’s probably due to something that happened in your past, such as losing in sports, or due to the time you were assaulted and not fairly treated.

Interviewee: That was in the past, it no longer interests me.

Official: How did you find out about the course in journalism from the United States Interests Section (SINA)?

Interviewee: Well, I don’t remember well, but I think that since 2009 I was in CAPF (Commission of Attention to Prisoners and Relatives), and visiting the embassy I found out about the course.

Official: I did not know that you were from CAPF, why do you write blogs? referring to everything published that is true and not invented.

The official continues to ask me why I’m writing blogs because it is not in line with my character. You have nothing in common with those people, you are a professional, he says.

Interviewee: I’m not the only professional, Miriam Celaya, Yoani Sánchez, Reinaldo Escobar, and many others.

Official: Yes, but there are only a few.

Interviewee: That’s what you say.

Official: Tell me what you intend to change with what you are doing?

Interviewee: Everything that’s wrong. Explain to me why is Estaban Lazo in charge after he had the problem with the pig farm in Oriente.”Nothing happened because the people  were not made aware of the situation and instead of being ousted, he was promoted”. You profess that children in Cuba do not go hungry and if you go to Lumumba there are children there who go to bed with bread in their stomachs but don’t have shoes to wear to school. If this is a free country why is there no freedom of expression?

Official: Well, freedom of expression is relative all around the world. If you watch the news you see protesters suppressed with tear gas and beatings. Here we don’t do that.

Interviewee: So why was Rodiles kicked on the floor?

Official: In reality it did not happen that way. Rodiles resisted arrest.

Interviewee: But that did not warrant being brutally beaten.

Official: What happens is that sometimes, due to insufficient police training, some errors are made. That’s why we are always there to make sure nothing happens. However, department 21 does not look after people like Rodiles, it is department 3.

Interviewee: Then you don’t need to look after me.

Official: Yes, you are from CAPF

Interviewee: I was.

Well, now you know what I think. Tell me, what motivates you to be an official?

Official: Well, “that none of the hungry children in the world are Cuban, that none of the illiterate people in the world are Cuban, that education is free, that violence in Cuba is minute compared to the world index,” he said.

Interviewee: So you are the one that takes care of me.

Official: Yes, since you graduated from the course on journalism.

Interviewee: Then if something happens, I’ll come to look for you.

Official: Yes, you tell them to find the Official Junior from 21 and that’s it. Keep in mind that how the situation evolves depends on you. We are here to maintain a dialogue, not to confront. That depends on you. I don’t wish to call you some day to say, look, what you published here is a lie because I saw that person, “this, this, and this are lies”.

Interviewee: Look, the first time that I was taken prisoner to the Unidad jail in Lisa (Havana municipality), I was interviewed by a young lieutenant like you whose name was Marcos, and he said I was making fun of him, and that he was going to hit me. What would have happened if he had hit me?

Official: You would have been in a fight.

Interviewee: No, if I defend myself by hitting him in the head with the chair, what would have happened given that I did not start the fight? “They would have accused me of disobeying the authorities and other things.” Who would have lost? Me.

Official: Stop, I hope that when I send you a citation, you’ll come.

Interviewee: No, I hope this is the last encounter, why come back to you now that you know what I think.

Official: We need to continue to meet because we must talk about other things, and also one day I’ll tell you not to go to Estado de Sats — to make an example of you, if you go I’ll put you in prison. “I hope that when we talk man to man you’ll have the decency to do what I say.”

Interviewee: Well, if you know that Yoani works for the CIA why don’t you jail her?  What’s published in the newspapers and broadcast on television must be lies since you don’t arrest her, only a way to defame her so that people stay away from her.

Official: I don’t like to talk about people when they are not present, but Yoani is a mercenery. If you don’t know what that means, it means “people who are paid to serve the interest of a foreign country.”

Interviewee: Well in regard to the citations, send them personally to me, don’t go through my mother. If you do, I will not come. That’s personal.

Official: The reason is that you need to be at home but yet you stay elsewhere.

Interviewee: I have rights, don’t I?

Official: Tell me the number of your house.

Interviewee: I don’t remember the number. There are three houses with the same address.

Official: Which is it? The first, second, or third?

Interviewee: The second one

Official: The one with hibiscus on the fence.

Interviewee: All the fences there have hibiscus.

Official: Then what’s the color of the house.

Interviewee: Yellow.

Official: Is it the only one of the three that’s yellow?

Interviewee: Yes

Official: The name of your girlfriend I think is a name of an older person: Caridad, María, Carmen. I have it written with the first surname, I don’t have her last surname, so that I can look for her address and give you the citation personally.

Interviewee: OK

Official: What’s her last surname?

Interviewee: What’s her first surname?

Official: I don’t remember. I have everything written down, but I can’t remember everything.

Interviewee: Caridad is her name. Last surname is Torres.

After two hours of conversation he told me I could go.

Translated by: Marina Villa

November 26 2012

Paya’s Funerals / Mario Barroso #Cuba

I always had the dream of getting to know that worker whose speech on receiving the Sakharov prize I heard live from Hapsburg, vibrant with excitement thanks to the magic of radio. I never thought of a future post-Castro Cuba with Payá physically absent.

Much less did I imagine it on that Sunday morning of July 22, while rejoicing in our church as we concluded a week of intense work in what we call Bible School, but that afternoon when I intended to rest from physical fatigue an text message came to my mobile with the unexpected news that would take me off my normal path, just like the car had been made leave the road, the car in which I was unaware that in the eastern part of this island they were then removing the inert body of my admired Paya.

It is impressive that the rhythm of a life and of a whole nation can be so drastically altered. If someone had told me that Sunday morning in church that in barely 24 hours I would be traveling as clandestinely as possible from Villa Clara, the province of my residence, to Havana, to participate in the funerals of Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, I would not have believed it. But so it was.

Prevented from attending, in October 2011, the brief funeral tribute to the leader of the Ladies in White, Laura Pollan, due to the huge police cordon around my house, I was forced, this time, to take extreme measures to escape Villa Clara. But I especially had to do it because I woke up on the morning of the 23rd listening on a short wave broadcast from abroad to the ragged voice of Oswaldo Paya’s daughter, Rosa Maria, which reached the depths of my soul.

Not only did she confirm the death of her father, but also called into question the official version of an chance traffic accident. She was clearly that young girl who had been shown happily playing on the beach with her father in those pictures released by the regime. I also woke up to the harsh reality that it was not a nightmare, and that the news of the inconceivable death of Paya had not been a false rumor the previous day.

And I managed to undertake the sudden journey, and also arrived, although I knew that many others were arrested along different parts of the national highway, and forcibly returned to their homes, especially at the point called Aguada de Pasajeros where many opponents were caught, as was the case with my friend Javier Delgado Torna from Caibarien.

Just ten minutes before the arrival of the body the heavy-hearted crowd had been waiting hours for, and that had been dazed by the hand of God itself, I was already on the esplanade that surround the Savior of the World Parish, at Santo Tomas and Penon, in the el Cerro neighborhood, an historic site and nest of all the spiritual and political battles of the martyr.

The same church where the Paya family had celebrated many significant dates, had now become the grounds to say goodbye to the lifeless body of someone who took as paradigms  Christ, Varela and Heredia Varela, claimed and in fact opened the way to change the sick and betrayed history of Cuba.

The experiences I had in this church between three in the afternoon of July 23 and the morning of 24 consolidated in me all the influence that at a distance and for so many years I had seen exercised in an epic civic project, a Movement and a Man who had the virtue of facing one of the most totalitarian regimes clinging to power the chronology of the Americas has suffered.

The scenes, so full of different emotions and feelings left no place for the physical fatigue of those who had made the long journey, and the night that would separate us from the following day, the 24th, when the burial would take place, was too short to contain both reunion and solidarity.

All of the different trends in the political opposition were present, as never before, as I had dreamed of seeing Payá in life and as so many had sought to recall if there were concrete examples as demonstrated by the manifesto “All United”, written by him in 1999 to turn his Varela project into a project of all Cuba, beyond himself or his movement, as indeed came to pass.

Far beyond his church as well, he become a bridge to change for all Cuban Catholics, Protestants, other believers, or unbelievers, because ultimately the same totalitarian power affects us all.

I cannot forget an inner strength that is impossible to describe, the same as accompanied me on the journey from Villa Clara allowing me to break the cordon of those confused State Security agents who dared to try the door of the temple when the coffin entered, and block passage to those who remained outside.

I remember in front of me seeing the freelance journalist Ignacio Estrada whose neck was detained by the burly arms of one of those agents; that’s when I fell to the floor and crawled through his legs to make my way into the enclosure literally running, surprising those guardians who vainly stretched out their tentacles to catch me when they realized I was part of the crowd that was pushing into the church, and advanced at the same rate along the crowded aisle on the left side near the alter where no one could stop me.

Once inside I applauded Paya with all my strength as part of an immense multitude for about ten minutes that could have been multiplied into ten hours if one of the bishops present hadn’t given the word about the Catholic rituals appropriate for the occasion.

A few minutes later we were already a multitude and sang with all our might the National Anthem, which at the end was followed by the cries of innumerable slogans that came together into a united and overwhelming cry of “Freedom!” A word that honors God and the country to which Paya dedicated the major efforts of his life.

We would still be shouting “Freedom!” if Paya’s widow Ofelia had not reminded us from the alter of the imperious and comprehensive need to pray and to say goodbye to the face so loved in life.

A sea of people of all political and religious persuasions then paraded before the coffin and gave their condolences to the grieving family.

5. Paya and the Catholic Church in Cuba

The Catholic Church dedicated to Payá all the honors he undoubtedly deserved. The number of lay and religious men and women present were uncountable. The church hierarchy was also present. Not only the auxiliary bishops of Havana, Bishop Alfredo Petit and Bishop Juan de Dios, also Bishop Alvaro, Bishop in Granma, where the fateful events took place, had come to Havana, after playing a key role on the previous day because of the disinformation surround the death of an extraordinary man; it was he who showed up at the hospital in Bayamo where the body of Payá was taken and made the final confirmation of the tragedy.

Personalities as relevant as Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and many others with dedicated chairs were there. The Apostolic Nunciature, at the end of the Mass celebrated by Cardinal Jaime Ortega himself on the morning of the 24th, before leaving for the funeral, delivered a note of condolence sent by the Vatican Secretariat of State, which was read to all present.

There is no denying that the family felt accompanied by its church from the very moment the rumors of his death started and I suppose until this moment. This was reiterated by Rosa Maria and Ofelia in every public statement they were allowed to make, both in the parish and in the cemetery, on behalf of the whole family.

I can not help but confess, however, I found counterproductive all the undeniable support of the Catholic hierarchy with the contradictions that in recent years they had had with Paya, demonstrable in such controversial statements in Lay Space magazine, as in the recent editorial “The Commitment to Truth” which is heard in the voice of Oswaldo himself refuting through radio interviews, and with a firmness no at odds with his unquestionable and always present Christian ethics, because he was, like other Catholics, committed to the justice of the Kingdom of Heaven and therefore logically contrary to the totalitarianism that rules in Cuba, as do people such as the Lay Catholic Dagoberto Valdes and the priest Jose Conrade, followers of a line of lay and religious people that continue the work of those who came before, Pedro Meurice, Perez Serante, up to heroes like the knight Jose Agustin, Varela, or Bishop Espada.

I myself was one of the hundreds of victims of repression during the papal visit of Benedict XVI in March, placed under house arrest in the house of a friend in Alamar under a scandalous siege by the political police, and I am still waiting for a single word of regret from the Vatican, or at least from the senior hierarchy of the Cuban Catholic Church.

I imagine the immense pain that Payá must have felt, in notable contrast to the visit of John Paul II in 1998, when if he thought about it, he had literally been thrown aside this time.

I find it very strong and contradictory that we throw aside people in life when we have at least the opportunity to spend at least one second, to greet him, and then in death we grant him every honor he was denied in life. Of course, I refer to sections of the hierarchy, not the church that Payá always loved and defended, and that until the last moment was voice and part of and which is he now a martyr of.

November 3 2012

Oswaldo Paya Was Also Sentenced in the Black Spring / Mario Barroso #Cuba

In 2003 José Oswaldo Paya Sardinas received the greatest tyrannical onslaught that preceded this other well-calculted and final one of 2012. Even without being on the list of those imprisoned, he was the grewatest victim of the so-called Cuban Black Spring.

The greatest part of those affected in this witch hunt , at least some fifty of them, were involved in the collection of signatures for the opposition project led by him, the Varela Project, that had the capability of hitting Fidel Castro as no opposition project had managed to do, to the point of forcing him to reform the constitution; only the genius of Oswaldo could exploit these cracks.

The fact that they left him out of the well-planned operation was an ignominious affront to the great pacifist strategist. The clear objective was to demoralize the opposition and to generate divisions and murmurs — as happened in some cases — but the majority was not fooled and did not fall into the trap.

While the prisoners took up residence in punishment cells hundreds of miles from their homes, the regime published one of its typical libels, this time called “The Dissidents”, in which it’s possible to find Paya in the injurious mouth of each one of those interviewed, while perniciously selected documents try to distort his image, or feed the unfounded divisions.

One of the most grotesque attacks in that publication was to maliciously display Payá family photos showing him in good health enjoying the beach with his family as if it were a sin he should not allow himself.

Two pages with this sequence of photos were aimed like a dagger to direct relatives of victims of the Black Spring that had very fresh wounds from the imprisonment of their loved ones, the message was clear: Payá is enjoying on the beach while your family members languish in prisons.

Thus was fulfilled with the sinister objective of generating jealousy and mistrust and provoking questions in a population that was beginning to doubt the Paya name. Family members as well as prisoners today testify how much agony the arrest of his friends caused Oswaldo, his constant travel throughout the island visiting their families, his calls and letters.

Regardless of all the rumors and smear campaigns articulated by the regime he could say categorically that if it had been in his hands as the leader he would have changed places with any of them, and still would have given his life for the condemned. The sentence to remain in “freedom” while the rest were imprisoned was the worst torture someone could infringe on a person with the human qualities of Paya.

During the funeral of Oswaldo, Librado Linares, a former prisoner of the group of seventy-five told me that if thinking aloud and this was the conclusion I reached after a deep meditation: – “Look for when they saved Paya.”

And the words of the direct victim of that Black Spring, one of those who had collected signatures for the Varela Project, even my signature, made me think hard. The suspicious deaths that preceded Paya’s, and the fact that they were already thinking about the modus operandi and launched targeted assassinations and killings, of which I am fully convinced, made me reflect on the macabre of the procedures of this regime that do not hesitate to qualify as horror, but the way they acted against Paya, not only for his death and the dark days that have happened, but throughout his political activism, are a powerful symbol of the excesses to which a beast like that which seized Cuba more than fifty years ago has come to, the confluence of the most murky and gangster of the whole Republican era.

October 31 2012

About Our Justice / Cubal Law Association, Wilfredo Vallin Almeida #Cuba

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

One of the fundamental elements required for a credible trial is PUBLIC.

While not synonymous with total transparency, a public trial allows us to be informed about it, as the events take place before our eyes and actions of the court are exposed to the severe scrutiny of those who are watching. Especially when it comes to judicial proceedings that, no doubt, feature in the nation’s history and in the personal history of its players.

When the trial is public and allows any interested party to attend, it’s difficult for things to happen that are not observed and so, to undermine justice.

Thus the importance for participants on both sides.

The trial for the event that cost the life of the winner of the Sakharov Human Rights Prize, Oswaldo Paya Sardinas — promoter and executor of the already historical Varela Project — which was held against the Spaniard Ángel Francisco Carromero Barrios, the person who was driving the vehicle in which Payá was traveling with his collaborator. Harold Cepero and a Swedish citizen, was held in secret.

This event sparked, from the beginning, a series of controversial opinions because the Cuban authorities always considered it an accident and a great many of the government’s opponents did not share this opinion.

They should have acted, then, in ways that would not allow any doubt about this troublesome issue, where it was clear that we were in the presence of an unfortunate accident. Such a practice could only be achieved by strict adherence to the provisions of these cases.

Thus, in the Criminal Procedure Act (LPP), Article 305, we read:

The trial is public unless reasons of state security, morality, public order or the respect due to the person aggrieved by the offense or their relatives suggest it should be held behind closed doors.

The trial was held behind closed doors with a large police presence around the court. If indeed the authorities did not consider what happened as a mere traffic accident, why did not declare their privacy for reasons of state security which is much closer to the real facts and why did they publish that the trial would be public?

Later in the same article 305 mentioned above, we read:

The only people who will attend the sessions of closed door trails are the parties, their representatives, advocates, support staff and people that the President or the Court authorize.

But, inconceivably, they did not allow the children of the deceased, Payá Sardinas, access to the courtroom of the Tribunal in clear contrast to what we just read in Art. 305 of the LPP. Would these two young people have been able to cause public disorder in the courtroom? I doubt it.

Finally, the article we are discussing closes:

The Court can make this decision before the trial, or any state thereof, or upon its own motion, stating on the record the reasons to support that decision.

We already have experienced how simple administrative processes trials are held in secret and with a police deployment without any explanation for it.

In any event, I would like to read in the minutes of the Court the reasons for acting the way they did in this case. But I doubt that’s possible with everything we’re seeing … and despite what is reported at international events about our justice system.

October 12 2012

CONCEPTS: Criminal Code / Cuban Law Association, Wilfredo Vallin Almeida #Cuba

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

As our readers know, the legal education of the national population constitutes one of the founding purposes of the Cuban Legal Association.

Given the importance of the topic and its need, we intend to continue working in this direction in this space, to assist with the preparation so necessary for everyone given current conditions.

So, we begin with a question and an answer: What is the Criminal Code?

Usually a Criminal Code is a compilation of those human behaviors deemed detrimental to social harmony and therefore  punishable because of theirs damage to the established order and organized peaceful relations that should exist in any civilized human community.

When the dangerousness of a human act (or even a failure to act) or conduct for the rest of the people in society is defined by the state as seriously harmful, it is considered and then defined as a “crime” and comes to occupy a place in the conduct to which we referred in the previous paragraph.

Each and every one of those human behaviors designed and offenses are listed, then retained and reflected in articles written consisting of the Criminal Code in question, so that individual behavior can be collated as described in the article prohibiting it, and which is understood that if it occurs, the subject’s behavior is criminal.

If the behavior of the subject in question does not match closely to the provisions of the letter of the law, then there is no crime.

So, in short, a criminal code is not simply the compilation of state-forbidden behavior, but also cover other aspects relating to the adequacy and enforcement of criminal justice.

Non-observance of its precepts will entail the suffering of a punishment (sentence) imposed by the state apparatus established for this purpose (the judicial system).

The Cuban criminal code, opens with some Preliminary Provisions which describe the objectives of the code in force in our country and which, in my opinion, it would be interesting to analyze in detail in future editions.

October 17 2012

VOICES MAGAZINE 17, TOMORROW 7pm FROM HAVANA / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo #Cuba

Brothers and Sisters,

Our (yours, mine and everyone’s) freelance magazine VOICES 17 will be launched this Friday the 30th at 7pm in Havana.

Everyone is VERY welcome to attend!

In its two years of life, VOICES depends on you as readers and authors to live. To keep from dying of loneliness in the midst of this deconcentration camp that Cuba is now. To breathe an imaginary gap of the future that may never come, but that was not less real in hears with free and beautiful people.

In the sidebar of this blog you will see all the previous issues with a link to read and download the PDFs for free.

Thank you for millions and more!

Call me on my cell phone still inside this little Isla to tell you the secrets of VOICES 17…
…at +53-53340187

Translator’s note: Orlando speaks excellent English (perhaps even better than yours or mine!)… go ahead… call him!

November 29 2012