MEXICO DF, OF FIDEL / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

FUCKED FASCISM

The only time I left Cuba I went to the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Jalisco, in November-December 2002. There Mexico gave me a disheartening lesson. In Cuba, as we all knew already, we were heading towards a police state capitalism. But in Mexico I had a surprise that my restless imagination had never imagined: in Mexico, the Cuban Revolution was given daily laurels, was a living legacy, tangible theory, rhetoric of redemption.

Like a totalitarian time machine, I saw the leftist hysteria of crowds of teenagers with the most outdated songs of Silvio Rodriguez (even he wouldn’t dare to hum them in Cuba). Even the hotel’s porters tossed praised for Fidel my way. Families received me with admiration in their home (they gave me money to buy my bad books out of pity: I was always a mercenary). In restaurants they tended not charge me for the best dishes for the privilege of being a Cuban in Cuba and not a little shit in Miami. Not being one, I felt like an ambassador: or at least mayor in a city where I had gone out without much work.

I even experienced an act of repudiation lived 2002 book fair when at the presentation of the magazine Letras Libres — Free Words — there was an invasion of shit-eating choirs and, thus, a little university troop paid from Havana (perhaps by the local Reds) fratricidal boycotting the event of the Reds of universal range who would be its presenter.

Of course, there are many more examples, including assassinations, that my poor biography recalls firsthand. Now, the rapid spy brigades when and crucified a mafia threat at the door of a Cuban family who lived between Mexico City — known as the Federal District, Distrito Federal in Spanish or “DF” — and Havana (the DF, as indicated by its initials, is also “De Fidel”… of Fidel). Nailing posters: in this we are profitable in the midst of our material misery. They’ve made so very many on the Island, and now it was the terrible turn of a family of beautiful and loyal people, whose cardinal sin is to think aloud in their own words. A family whose original sin is perhaps to prefer the dark poets before the socialist sun of this nation of coercion. A free family whose beauty has vilely attracted death.

Our agents are specialists in intimidation and swindling. In undermining the body from inside (with panic or carcinogens, they don’t care): perhaps that’s why it is essential to spend millions and millions on a Ministry of the Interior. We kicked out the truth. Bricked off future desires lock stock and barrel. Hence the obscene hatred that removes the unnamed generals when a foreign publisher like Cal y Arena launches book of stories such as Tailwind, by Eliseo Alberto — whom we called “Lichi” — (1951-2011).

They never forgave Lichi, his uncomfortable report of the end of another century and millennium (the last of the Revolution, except in Mexico). His spiral of betrayal continues today post-mortem, despite giving up those little entry permits to his own country, despite tolerating sacred ashes on a bridge about to collapse, despite reluctantly seeking a kidney by way of MINSAP, despite the pats on the mane of the former Culture Minister Abel Prieto (now civil presidential candidate of the military junta in this atrocious self-transition). This we all know.

They filmed a movie that unfortunately forecast to be bad, after editing that novel to make it palatable to power. Lichi everywhere. And at the same time they massacre the mental health of their descendents. Letting them know that the Cuban chains are perpetual far beyond death. The eye at the tip of the pyramid of Plazatl has ever more criminals in the pay of the utopia. To live for one’s country is to die. May the heart eaten by the bearded ones now beardless on the sacrificial stone of stone of barbarism, whether you like it or not.

I read the news with tears. Of mercy. I’m a madman. In Mexico they had put a bullet in my ass and in the dick of the faggot blogger. That is globalized jargon coming your way very soon. And it will sell. They will take revenge on the nonconformists, the very few still don’t wear uniforms. On Lichi, on me and on everyone.

I reread this column with tears. With no mercy.

September 16 2012

The Face of Real Elections / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado

Taken from “Wikipedia Kiwix”

The quadrennial U.S. elections were held on Tuesday, November 6 with the victory of Barack Obama, the first black president in the history of the United States, who was re-elected for another presidential term. I do not like to talk about race or to note differences between people, but like some international media, it’s worth nothing that “Obama defeated for the second time a white candidate” in a system that leftist propaganda usually noted as markedly racist.

Also in this election, it is notable that the triumph was against a billionaire opponent, destroying the thesis of the Cuban leaders and their acolytes in the world, holding that only the very rich — multimillionaires — can aspire to the presidency of that country. I remember in a reflection of Fidel Castro in 2008, he highlighted doubts that the lawyer and former senator from the state of Illinois would be elected, because he had a personal fortune of just over a million dollars.

The attachment to democratic values and practices is not exactly a virtue nor endorsed by the despotic and dictatorial regimes like Cuba. Here there are no elections. Our society is denied the excitement and pluralistic rivalry inherent in the fair struggle for obtaining public office, from which the problems of their constituents can be solved in “real, not nominal” ways.

The equality of electoral opportunities in Cuba election is a fallacy, because only one-party adherents and/or their members, can aspire to be candidates. There is also a ’Nominations Committee’ — State controlled, of course — which by law, provides 50% of the delegates from the base. Where is the equal treatment between persons advocating equality, regardless of social class, gender, race or other circumstances? All this is but demagoguery.

They spend time openly criticizing the American system on the one hand, and on the other, asking them to invest in the ruined Cuban economy and send tourists to our country. They try to mask their inadequacies diverting the news focus and information toward U.S. affairs.

But the most objectionable, is systematically using evils already overcome in that country as if they were happening in the present, which is equivalent to lying.

Why don’t we worry about and take care of our problems? They also criticizes the media in that country, but there both political aspirants as well as ordinary citizens have full access to the mass media organs, in contrast to the security of “closed doors” under ours.

The United States is the best example that democracy is perfectible, as they have journeyed — as the undisputed model of freedom –from segregationist situations and practices in the past, to elect an African American for president, and four years later, to ratify him.

The attitudes and actions speak better and louder than the spokesmen of the Cuban dictatorship and its dwindling number of fans worldwide.

November 15 2012

For the Freedom of Antonio Rodiles / Miriam Celaya

Since the evening of Wednesday, November 7th, independent civil society activist Antonio Rodiles has been detained at the police station on Acosta Avenue, in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre. It was reported that he was beaten in the face and other parts of the body, and has been without food or water demanding his freedom. One of the henchmen threatened him by raking his gun against Rodiles’s head… not surprising, given the rich Latin American dictatorial tradition of the impeccable military uniforms. Of thirty-some arrests that took place last week, only Rodiles is still locked up. It is said that the authorities are accusing him of contempt, resisting arrest, and, more recently, it is presumed that they seek to prosecute him for a more serious crime: assault. The intention is clear: we must imprison the leader of the idea that is causing the generalship to lose sleep.

Those of us who know Antonio Rodiles and are committed to his civic cause know that so much official cynicism is the effect of the Cuban government’s fears of the claims of peaceful opponents. The campaign Por Otra Cuba — For Another Cuba — which collects signatures of hundreds of Cubans demanding the ratification of the Covenants for Rights signed by the authorities February 2008, is a threat to the immunity of a totalitarianism that has dominated Cuba for more than five decades. The moral force of dissent and the experiences of hundreds of decent Cuban over the years, seem to filter down to the spirit of resistance that has hatched among broad sectors of society and is taking shape in the consolidation of citizen projects such as the Estado de SATS, the Cuban Juridical Association, the bloggers’ platform Voces Cubanas, the Razones Ciudadanas project, the group OMNI Zona Franca and many others of different tendencies but with a common goal: a democratic Cuba.

The oppressors’ fear is so great that the police station where Rodiles continues to be confined is protected by a strong operation to prevent the development of groups to demand the prisoner’s release. They know that he is not alone; dozens of his traveling companions are waiting for him and keep a constant demand for his release. It should also be noted that it is not necessary that we plant ourselves before a den of thugs to continue our peaceful struggle. The Demand is being signed, reluctantly, by other Cubans who are becoming more aware. The people’s yearning for freedom cannot be contained, that is why repression is achieving the opposite effect when it attempts to quell the rebellion by means of terror.

We should strongly oppose the conspiracy. Freedom for Antonio Rodiles. The Covenants of Rights must be ratified.

Translated by Norma Whiting

November 12 2012

DEATH TOLL / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

THE ODOR OF DEATH

As part of the un-secular Cuban Holocaust, the un-inhabitants of this city continue to kick life to the curb, abandoning newborn beings in a corner of the city, separating children from mothers with gratuitous violence, out of sheer malice or revenge perhaps for half a century an absolute State which violated us in turn.

I’m talking, of course, and for the nineteenththousandthninehundredandninetyninth time of newborn kittens that we starve to death in Havana. That is our revenge against the Revolution. Exile or death. In the end, most of these mewling creatures I kill, collecting them without exception and trying to give them good diluted milk, to cure their infected eyes, to give them a warm can or at least a warm look, and to wash the pee they urinate and the poop they make (in imitation of their mother’s tongue).

Of course here in Cuba death is not accidental. It is death of the Maximum Leader we somehow exorcise by killing thousands of innocent creatures (not counting the hundreds of murders that we happily cause in every concert or assault). Cuba as a morgue.

This time it’s true. The official comments no longer manage, nor will any denial or official photo of Fidel alive counteract the avalanche. Mausoleums are repaired and the military personnel removed. The ordinary people not even aware (I’m no ordinary Cuban, I am a Cuban prick).

The pixels of the Commander culminated in the best way possible, receiving the apostate blessing last March of Benedict XVI, who came to the island to incarcerate for days (and weeks, and months) countless Cubans, including me, and to initial, along with Jaime Ortega, the death always promised and long delayed for Oswaldo Paya.

The phrases of the former president, however, had better luck than his biology. He continued writing until mid-2012, and the demagogic realism ad usum became a grammarian surrealism of exception, with short circuits of meaning worthy of the avant-garde author he never was.

Now a cosmic cycle ends and with him the Castrozoical era of our small and perverse country. We kill animals at close range. At the same time we prepare the Great Collection of Theatrical Effects Transition. We take the measure of the mercy of the people and Counterintelligence specialists find that the level of piety is zero. Less than zero. From the Mourner in Chief we can move smoothly to the Holocaust of the Opposition. The ALBA of our new multinational country does not deserve to be born with spots on its uncivil citizenry.

I end up watching the last kittens die, the two I had collected from an area of embassies. Two little females. Black. Beautiful. Impoverished. Their eyes finally opened, always containing the stony pus of infection. Their bellies inflated by the lack of intestinal movement. Trembling with hypothermia despite the light bulbs and rags. In a drawer with the paper treasures of my unpublished work that never will be, like loving donations of the counterrevolution.

They weren’t given time to survive. They wouldn’t give it to us.

October 12 2012

 

HIV, Social Stigma, and Men Who Have Sex with Other Men / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada

The prejudice and discrimination that affect men who have sex with other men (MSM) in many places around the world and how this contributes to the propagation of HIV among this population is another key topic of this year’s conference.

The legislative reform around MSM in Africa and the Caribbean was the central theme of the The Global Forum on MSM & HIV, which took place the day before the conference.

A recent study published in the journal The Lancet showed that 26% of MSM surveyed in the Caribbean had HIV, with 18% and 15% respectively in Africa and South East Asia.

In the event, it was noted that, in order to create a more secure legal environment for this population, it was essential, as a first step, to decriminalize sex between men.

Translated by: Eduardo Alemán

November 12 2012

My Brother Antonio Rodiles / Gladys Rodiles-Haney

Antonio Rodiles speaking at Estado de Sats

By Gladys Rodiles-Haney

My brother Antonio Enrique González-Rodiles Fernández was born in Havana on July 21, 1972.
He attended primary and secondary school in Havana, and graduated from the “Marcelo Salado” National School of Swimming where he belonged to the National Team.

From when he was little, arbitrariness bothered him. When he was a boy at “December 2nd” school a second grade teacher wanted him to do something he didn’t want to do. He asked the teacher why he was obliged to do it and she told him because she said so, and now. My brother laid on floor and said he wouldn’t get up until they called my parents and he began to sing a song from a children’s cartoon with the refrain: “What? Me worry?”

In his childhood he represented Cuba in various international swimming competitions, including the Central American and Caribbean Games, where he earned multiple gold, silver and bronze medals. My father was a fundamental part of his training and often my brother swam in open water behind our house and also trained in deep water wearing a life jacket to exercise his legs, wearing shoes with several pounds of weights.

On multiple occasions speedboats approached him and asked him why he was so far from shore, because this was the time when many Cubans were throwing themselves into the sea to reach the United States. But they realized they were making fools of themselves when he showed them the weights on his legs.

When he finished junior high school, despite the refusal of many of his teachers, my brother presented himself to take the entrance exams for the “Martyrs of Humboldt 7” High School of Exact Sciences where he wanted to study physics. Despite the poor academic preparation offered in “Marcelo Salado,” my brother studied extra and was one of three selected from Playa municipality to enroll in this school for elite students.

In that school were Angel Castro and Mirtha Castro (son and granddaughter of Fidel Castro, respectively). My brother once told “Angelito” that his father was corrupt and this triggered a movement to not let him graduate from high school.

He received great support from the majority of students in his class despite the immense pressure exerted on them to deny my brother the chance to graduate, and they didn’t fold.

However he was expelled from Humboldt high school and graduated from “Pablo de la Torriente Brau” in 1990.

He began career in Physics at the University of Havana in 1991, yet also struggled again with “political” problems, so in 1992 he went to Mexico to live for a while, with the Permit to Reside Abroad (PRE).

He returned to Cuba in 1994 and graduated with degree in Physics in 1998.

Then he decided to return to Mexico where he received the title of PhD candidate in physics at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2002.

In 2003 he emigrated to America and settled in Tallahassee, Florida. He earned a Master’s degree in Mathematics in 2005 from Florida State University (FSU).

He worked as a professor at FSU and Tallahassee Community College before returning to Cuba.

In 2010 he founded Estado de Sats with the aim of creating “a plural space for participation and debate” between various members of Cuban society. The initiative soon began to be targeted by propaganda orchestrated by State Security, which threatened to withdraw his Permit to Reside Abroad and so prevent him from leaving Cuba again.

In 2011 they took away his PRE and he continued his activism. His first arrest came during the funeral Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, on July 24. On November 8, he was arrested again when he went to inquire about the fate of the lawyer Yaremis Flores, arrested the previous day.

My brother is an honest, intelligent man, respectful of the rights and opinions of others. He likes to converse and to look for logical solutions through objective analysis of the things that are happening.

He has always had a vision of a better Cuba for all Cubans and the right of Cubans to be heard and the responsibility to take the reins with regards to which direction our country should follow.

He is a man of integrity, he knows how to present his ideas clearly at all levels to be understood both by the Doctor of Science and by the high school student. He knows how to pay attention without discriminating against anyone’s opinion, because everyone has different experiences in life and all are valid and enrich the perspective from which we see the problem.

Translated from Cafe Fuerte

14 November 2012

 

To My Cuban Brothers and Sisters in Exile / Padre Jose Conrado Rodriguez Alegre

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

In Santiago de Cuba it is just dawning. Today, Friday October 26, 2012, just 48 hours after the horrible devastation left behind Hurricane Sandy, I got up early to pray and write. Amid the sadness for so many families left destitute, as Eliseo Diego said of the man with the bundle on his back, in his “Book of the Wonders of Bologna”: “Pilgrim you go with the dusk and your poor belongings: fears, sorrows.”

So I see my people, wandering among the ruins of what little we have of which nothing is left to us. And yet, I say this with the utmost pride in my poor people, who think kindly of each other and offer their hand, and with the strength of the poor they say in the vortex of misfortune, “It doesn’t matter what we lost, we are still alive.”

Yes, I have seen many signs of solidarity, like my parishioner Tito, a young medical student, who has come to clear the debris from the houses of his neighbors and relatives, and yesterday he spent the afternoon with Pavel, his brother-in-law, saving the zinc roofing sheets lying in the patio, which we returned to the rectory roof.

My sister and her 15-year-old stepdaughter who have cleaned the first floor of the rectory, while the second is being roofed. Manolo and Mario, who despite the dangerous winds, placed the tiles to protect my books, computers and printers from the weather.

Gladis and her grandson Pedro, who were the first to arrive to lend a hand, although they still had a great deal of debris to sweep up in their own house. And Eliecer Avila, who came from Puerto Padre to help, because he could not sit there, knowing how badly things were for us here.

Yoani Sánchez and Reinaldo Escobar, who from Havana let me know they were collecting food and medicine for the victims. My brother Roberto Betancourt, who from his parish of Caridad sent me the warmth of his flock, as did Ophelia Lamadrid, with her ninety years, and Teresita de la Paz, the widow of Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, who pray for me and for my people. They have told me about the mobilization you have already started to send aid “so much more urgent now that our need is so great.”

My beloved brothers and sisters: from this distance and immersed in supreme suffering after the inevitable and disarming misfortune, I say from my heart, that I have felt, in all this time of uncertainty and bitterness, when the roof blow off my parish and my home, running to save the books and what I could from the rain and afterwards, when I could go out and see the desolation of my people, I felt your presence, your prayers and the solidarity of all of you.

I knew that we were not alone and that we could count on the the love and support of all of you, of all our friends, Cubans and otherwise, who from far away accompanied us with your prayers and your love.

In particular, when I went to pray for an elderly woman who died of a heart attack in the midst of the storm, sheltered in a small bathroom, with her daughter, granddaughter and her two little great-grandchildren in a house flying to pieces through the air, her heart could not resist so much anguish and exploded. Mine bleeds for all the misfortune of my people.

The city lies in ruins. My old parish of San Antonio María Claret, in the neighborhood of Sueño, collapsed. Only the Christ that I one day put on the wall of the chancel, stood as a silent witness along with the granite altar that stood there for 30 years.

So did my old church of San Pedrito, whose repair almost cost me prison. Just as my beloved town of San Luis, where I was born to the faith and then began my pastoral work as a priest, and whose new marble altar was consecrated in solemn ceremony less than a month ago. And this has happened with almost all churches, rectories and convents throughout the diocese … They lie in ruins, they are homeless or have been seriously damaged.

But what is it, I wonder, before the suffering of so many people who have lost everything: the effort of entire lives and even generations, transformed into offal dripping mud and dust. So too the books, televisions, and other household appliances, furniture… and the house!

It is calculated that 150,000 houses are destroyed or seriously damaged. And this in the midst of such a difficult economic situation, virtually of survival! We felt that we were so badly off… and now we are much worse!

But back to my memory, the first sentence I said, and that I have heard from so many mouths: But we are alive!  Thanks be to God for the life that He gives us and for keeping us, because it is amazing that in the midst of so much devastation the dead have been so few. What does God want to say to us with all this?

Father José Conrado Rodríguez Alegre
Santiago de Cuba

Translated from Cubanet on 5 November 2012

TANGIBLE WAYS TO HELP — CLICK HERE.

Father Conrado’s earlier letter to Raul Castro.

Repression at Paya’s Funeral / Mario Lleonart

Regrettably, I did not have the honor of being part of the repression that was not lacking this time, either.  I long suspected that the time to depart for the cemetery would be the most propitious for the flock of buzzards to throw themselves over the innumerable prisoners.  And it was precisely this that saved me this time: the enormous quantity of potential victims. I was surprised that before arriving at Necropolis I was already receiving on my cell phone reports about detentions of individuals who minutes before had been very near me. The Reverend Ricardo Santiago Medina Salabarria, for example, was barely a few people away from me trying to board the same bus as I, but he could not and remained available to the violence.

During the burial, and even during the return trip on the highway to Santa Clara, among tweets that I sent and received with names of dozens of people that had been subject to detention and that included friends like Antonio Rodiles of Estado de Sats and his wife Ailer.  They even dared to attack the Sakharov 2011 Prize winner, Guillermo Farinas, without taking into account or maybe precisely because of having done so, that in October they had cast off Laura Pollan and that now they were considering getting rid of Paya, the other two prizes awarded by the European Parliament.

Knowing that I left behind so many detained people, and being home now and knowing that including around forty people found themselves asking for the liberation of Rodiles at the police station of Infanta and Manglar, they provided me the sensation that it has stayed very low of the duties that in those moments Cuba demanded, but like always, we are prisoners of time and space, as the absent sense reminds us now forever of a man in our human trial should still be here, as happened to us already in the past with famous citizens like Cespedes, Marti or Chivas.

November 13 2012

Free Antonio Rodiles / Images

Antonio prior to these events.
Police Station where a group of people, including Antonio and others who were arrested at that time, went to check on Yaremis Flores who had been arrested earlier.
The sign at the police station: State Security, Territorial Unit of Criminal Investigation and Operations
Inside the station.
Antonio’s father, Manuel Rodiles, and his partner, Ailer Gonzalez Mena, on a bench outside the station. Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan
Ailer and Manuel waiting for the prosecutor, inside the station.
Prosecutor Madelein Parras, who informed Ailer Gonzalez and Manuel Rodiles that Antonio’s case would go to the Provincial Prosecutor
Manuel and Ailer in the station
Yoani Sanchez minutes before her arrest in the same sweep that Antonio was caught up in. She was released the same day.
Angel Santiesteban minutes before his arrest and severe beating.
Angel’s shirt after it was returned to his wife, after he was beaten.
The State Security agent who identifies himself as “Camilo” who beat those arrested and put a gun to Angel’s head and threatened to shoot him.
Ailer and Antonio, prior to these events.
Antonio’s father, Manuel Rodiles, in his 80s and in poor health, showing the photographer a cookie someone brought to the house.
For Another Cuba — the signature gathering campaign to demand the Cuban government ratify the UN Human Rights covenants it signed in New York City — that is so terrifying the regime it is arresting everyone associated with it.

The Fourth Plebiscite / Fernando Damaso

A few months ago, in a post about Puerto Rico, I wrote that in November, in a plebiscite to be held, we would know what Puerto Ricans now think about their political status. The results of the constitutional inquiry show that most citizens were in favor of changing the current status of the Commonwealth and becoming the 51st state of the Union.

According to data released by the Election Commission, the 53.99% voted to end the current status and 46.01% voted to keep it. In addition, 61.15% voted for statehood in the United States, 33.31% for continuing as the Commonwealth and 5.53% for independence.

For the first time in history annexation to the U.S. received the highest number of votes. In previous consultations, 1967, 1993 and 1998 the Commonwealth option had won. It seems that now, more than ever, the independence option is not of interest to Puerto Ricans. Indeed, in the recent elections, the independence won only 2.6% of the votes.

It now rests with the Congress of the United States, in line with the provisions of Article IV of the Constitution, to determine their acceptance as the 51st state, as Congress decides which areas are incorporated into the Union.

I think that the Cuban authorities as well as those other ALBA countries, looking at this demonstration of the democratic will of the majority of Puerto Ricans will stop interfering in the internal affairs of the island and withdraw their absurd demands for its independence, raised in international bodies, and will cease to call it a colony.

It seems that Puerto Ricans, intelligently, without losing their Latin American identify, prefer to be full U.S. citizens. In short, since 1917, they have enjoyed this citizenship and have not suffered coups, fratricidal conflicts, revolutions and dictatorships, common in other countries in Latin America.

November 10 2012

The Embargo: Both Sides Are Still Living Out the Cold War / Yoani Sanchez

Despite the embargo our stores are full of U.S. products.

Year after year the issue of the U.S. embargo against Cuba is presented in the United Nations. Year after year, the majority of countries votes against this fossil of the Cold War. But even though the existence of such economic sanctions has been condemned 21 times, they remain in force. On both sides of the Florida Straits there are too many interests who want to perpetuate the situation, even though the political discourse says otherwise.

On one side are the many who believe that financially strangling the Cuban government will produce democratic change in Cuba. These are the people who hold the view of the “pressure cooker” on which they just have to put greater and greater pressure until it explodes. For these defenders of the embargo, if daily life on the island becomes ever more miserable due to lack of material goods, Cubans will finally throw themselves into the streets to overthrow the current system. This theory has demonstrated its failure over five decades. What has actually happened is that when the economy hits bottom, people prefer to escape from the Island, legally or illegally – in some cases to literally throw themselves into the sea – rather than confront the powers-that-be.

The others who dream of continuing the embargo are all those ideologues of the Cuban government who have run out of arguments to explain the dysfunction of this system. They are those who need, as in a child’s fairy tale, a big bad wolf to blame for everything. They say it is because of the “blockade” that we can’t enjoy the internet, that we can’t freely associate with others who share our ideas, that we can’t even travel freely. They try to justify everything based on the existence of this mistaken policy of Washington. Trapped in the middle of these two positions are eleven million Cubans, caught between the absurd restrictions of some and the implausible justifications of others.

14 November 2012

The Small Illusion / Regina Coyula

Not having his brother’s instinct for taking advantage of any circumstance and for letting the docile press pamper him, President Raul Castro is a cabinet man, not given to stealing the show. But apparently, no one hinted to him that in the case of Sandy , he ought to go as fast as he can to Eastern Cuba, and should only mourn in private, since the priority is the living, helpless in the midst of desolation. A great number of Cubans have learned through the television news that more screen time is given to a visit from General-President to the cemetery of Santa Iphigenia and the Second Front, than to his trips through the neighborhoods of San Pedrito or Parque Céspedes in Santiago de Cuba. Accustomed half a century of ubiquitous fidelity, the comments about the presidential delay, and the comparisons between the ruling brothers, were heard in the street without having to fine tune the ears too closely.

Also without fine tuning the ears, it is perceived that the U.S. elections aroused greater interest than our own. The Venezuelan election was followed almost like a Madrid-Barco football final, some out of fear of returning to power outages, others from curiosity that Chavez will leave an opponent who suffocated him, others, dreaming that Capriles that would wear the presidential sash; many, by noting that democracy in Venezuela is different that “the democracy we defend.” Not that the U.S. elections generate extraordinary interest, but that the Cuban ones wold have been a total yawn, but for the inclement Hurricane Sandy.

Back to the Obama-Romney race; infected by streetcorner analysts, I think the Democrat, now in his second term, could pull a zugzguang — a chess term which means to force your opponent to move — on our government by the lifting of the embargo and the Cuban Adjustment Act, and proposing the normalization of relations.

But in any case, Cuba will not be a priority, and we must not expect others to solve our problems if we are not capable of solving them ourselves.

And apropos of nothing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX) complaint against interference in Cuban internal affairs by the U.S. Interests Section, could be a cord to increase tension in the “relations” of both governments, lest Obama softens his heart and decides to lift the embargo, which has served so well to justify both the inefficiency and the bad administration.

I don’t like the American electoral system, I don’t like that it comes down to two parties, nor do I like the complicated electoral college system, but the illusion of voting for the president, in our case it is literally an illusion, because who can vote for candidates when they are unknown to the citizens. You only need to see the press release after the elections to see the small heads of those designated by virtue of a closed election and a presidency known beforehand. Perhaps to know if someone was elected by what percent… perhaps.

I defer the illusion that my vote counts, because I’m sure that in the future, to elect my president, it will count.

Translated by WF

November 7 2012