My brothers have told me how embarrassed they felt when, on a day like today, they were called to come forward at the morning assembly. For the Edison Institute it was a great honor to have among its students three grandsons of the Commander of the Liberation Army, Miguel Coyula. Today, November 23, the anniversary of his death, was designated the Day of Citizen Integrity, a celebration which, like so many others, was forgotten after 1959.

My father, a militant communist all his life, sadly and quietly accepted that people had forgotten my grandfather, whose teachings and example made my father the wonderful man that he was. For his descendents, however, including those who were not even born before he died, it has been a great honor to have this legacy.

Not long ago a friend of mine asked me if our family had been rich, assuming the answer would be yes. She was surprised when I told her we were not, that the family fortune was this unmistakable butnow much devaluedlast name. Citizen integrity in today’s Cuba is quite rare and considered utterly worthless. If mothers used to think of a doctor, a teacher or a lawyer as “a good catch,” their hearts now skip a beat at the prospect of a bartender or taxi driver, and they can burst into tears over an Italian, even if he is just a construction worker.

There is an Comptroller’s Office, but it cannot guard against the constant outflow from what is considered to be the public domain.

As you might imagine, citizen integrity has fallen on hard times, though there is no harm if I choose to remember it, considering it is a family affair.

November 23 2012

With regards to the cause of Oswaldo Payá’s death, I give his family the complete benefit of the doubt. And all the details that have been happening day to day after such an unfortunate event, reinforce this.

I highlight the total lack of communication between the survivors and the family [enforced by government officials]; communication that would have been the most natural thing in the world if it had actually been an accident. Not to mention the events that happened earlier, over decades, with regards to Oswaldo’s life; because no one can deny the benefit of the doubt in a case where there have been so many threats and attempts to liquidate such an important life. This was done with so many others, including poor Camilo Cienfuegos, whose fate this event has one again called to mind for an already incredulous people as one of the most macabre precedents.

Payá himself had been clearly warned, “It is a final combat between the power of the lie and the terror on one hand and the spirit of liberation on the other.” The regime, for a long time, simply undertook a simple cost-benefit analysis of his death and brought it about with innumerable stratagems.

Payá’s warning in recent times with respect to those called the new oligarchy, those who bet on power smelling the un-postponable change and the style of some of the Eastern European experiences are taking steps to take for themselves the best slices of the cake; these must be the worst and most pragmatic enemies of the present time and as time passes they will become more dangerous still.

Not to mention those who desire revenge, remembering that this is just an extension of the Black Sprint that began in 2003, and in particular considering that that this peaceful enemy of Fidel Castro could have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

All this without mentioning that in any country where there is rule of law, if it really had been an accident, as the person responsible for the bad state of the road and the lack of warning signs would have been guilty without discussion, and that would have been just. So considering all the possible variations, the finger points to the same suspect over and over again just as a compass always points north.

November 16 2012

About two weeks Antonio Rodiles was arrested by State Security. First he was charged with resisting arrest, then they concocted a charge of undermining the authority when nearly a dozen witnesses deny the police accusation. It is not anything unusual, because in Cuba long arbitrary detentions are part of the repressive praxis. This time it’s someone with undeniable charisma and whose authenticity is demonstrated with concrete events: In a short time Rodiles has converted Estado de Sats — against all flags and with modest resources — into an important space when it comes to probing the Cuban reality.

Several factors contribute to our atmosphere today of alternative aromas. In this regard, the extensive possibilities of the Internet, which open a digital breach to the world for the restless gaze of the island’s bloggers and twitterers, to which are added the lack of ethics in the official press to denounce the shamelessness of the corrupt, the ineptitude of the leaders and the constant violation of our civil rights. In this context we have inserted alternatives like VocesCubanas.com and Estado de Sats.

Bit this latter space is not only a virtual peculiarity: in Rodiles’ home, during the presentation of the programs, there is a frequent assiduous and physical convergence of around a hundred irreverents, and we know what that means to the powers-that-be in Cuba.

This modest but clear capacity to call people together, ended up worrying the general staff, and so Rodiles presented himself in front of State Security’s Section 21 on the afternoon of November 7, and the leadership saw the awaited opportunity to book him and decapitate his project. But those who reason this way underestimate a civil society that is not disposed to cede an inch of space conquered at great risk.

We are a people saturated with promises that sound like mockery, words belied by the demagoguery of a bourgeois elite that demands austerity from us, while their table overflows; we are a people forced to face unjustifiable hardship and shortages that generate a deep social immorality, which have turned theft, simulation and lies into “trifles,” and what is worse, sincerity and civility into a crime.

We are looking at a youth that is definitely different, and wants to open itself to a world it suspects is out there, a youth that knows it is imprisoned, but that now knows the name and the password of its jailer and is increasingly less afraid. And the jailer knows this and represses every birth, tries to mutilate each new shoot, stuffing the cracks so that the cell never receives the dangerous rays of the sun.

Rodiles is accused of assault, and yet, in Estado de Sats, Rodiles’ home, I never saw anywhere a club or the tip of a trigger, never heard plotting of attacks of sabotage, never heard a threat or a call to violence. I heard nothing more there than ideas and arguments, reasonable or not, but launched from the perspective of tolerance, respect for the opinions of others.

As far as I know, no Cuban opponent ever stopped a delegate of the National Assembly of Popular Power in the entrance of Parliament, or any member of the Communist party to prevent him from participating in the last Congress of the Party, nor conducted any “operation” to boycott their last National Conference.

However, from the other side, it’s a different matter: the raids and arbitrary detentions perpetrated by state security against any dissident when, how and where they want, without due process and even without charges — including many who went to Estado de Sats — is their daily practice, reported thousands of times by bloggers, twitterers and by the same project now want to shut down.

If despite the deafness strongly imprinted during the last decades by the dissidence against the all-embracing State power, this has been no more than a few turns of the screw, one can only imagine the scene of these gentlemen didn’t know they were installed by the select share of Cubans who dare to speak while the rest remain silent.

Alternative spaces like the monthly Voices Magazine and projects like Omni Zona Franca, and Estado de Sats itself, are at this time so necessary for this people like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and must not disappear simply because some gorillas consider this country remains the same jungle as in the ’60s and ’70s.

But they had to take Rodilies because every brave person is one less slave, because each front raised is an act of vindication, because every mask that falls away is a triumph of human dignity, one of those miracles that are the work only of able-bodied men.

For all this, by reality and necessity, spaces like Estado de Sats must be preserved. The barbarians must understand once and for all, that it is useless to incarcerate a many when his dreams fly free.

Rodiles conceived this project, now ours, and dedicated his efforts, assumed all the risks and put into it the same hope and the same faith that is put into a child. For this we must care for Estado de Sats — we owe it to him and to ourselves — because whatever problems appear on the horizon we will never abandon the child of a friend!

November 19 2012

To visit the famous city of Holguin is a truly unique experience for those who enjoy excursions beyond the area where they live. Images can be captured by the unique lens of any national or foreign tourist.

Holguín is one of the country’s eastern cities waiting to be discovered by restless walkers. Walking through its broad streets and numerous squares — which earned it the nickname “City of Parks” — we can see the different architectural styles that recreate the work of renowned architects.

On one of my walks I constantly heard the word … Bike … a word that is recognized or a request for service that becomes the main form of transport in the largest provincial capital cities of the country.

Prices for access to this transport vary according distances traveled but I assure you that no one wants to leave this earth without riding in one. The Bike Taxis are maneuvered by elderly retirees and young people who have found them a source of income for their homes. Any of these pedicabs may surprise visitors with their characteristic comfort and the originality of their owners. Trying to attract customers, some place beach umbrellas to protect people from the sun, others add audio equipment and decorate them like beautiful cars.

One of those I ride assures me there were 4000 bicycle-taxi drivers working in the city. All are recognized by the State. This work is one of the allowed forms of self-employment.

The Holguin bicycle-taxies adopt the model intended by their creator, the best known and demanded is the single seat, which is a bike with a sidecar added. These, according to their builders, are faster and very light for transporting passengers. There are other bike models but they are copies of those in other provinces.

If you ever have the pleasure of visiting this city please join and be one of many that request transportation service by shouting … Bike …

November 19 2012

The search for a cure is one of the central themes of this years meeting. In the course of the symposium, the renewed efforts to find a cure were reviewed, as well as the attitudes of people with HIV toward the perspective of finding one.

During the symposium “Towards an HIV Cure” was presented, a declaration that establishes the steps necessary to achieve a cure for infection by the virus.

At the meeting was scientists know about a cure was explained, how it can be achieved and the difficulties and challenges presented by this enterprise.

The renewed interest in finding a cure for HIV was inspired by the case of the “Berlin Patient.” This person was cured of his infection after a difficult chemotherapy treatment, immune-suppressive treatment and a bone marrow transplant, from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that gives a natural resistance to the infection of this virus.

It is not an attractive treatment — nor a realistic one — that could be applied to cure other people, but it raised the possibility of achieving a cure. In interest in finding a cure is also raised by the increasing cost of treatment and the attention of people with HIV.

November 12 2012

It’s calculated that there are some 65,000 people living with HIV in Guatemala. There are 20 new cases daily, 7,500 new cases a year. The HIV epidemic in the country is concentrated in population groups at major risk, like sex workers and their clients, and men who have sexual relations with men. There is great discrimination against these groups in the county which makes access to services for HIV more difficult.

According to the first national report on human rights, between 2009 and 2012 more than 313 complaints were presented to the Attorney General’s office and to civil society organizations. Of these 46% were associated with violations of healthcare rights and 13% with the right to life and bodily integrity. These violations were about the scarcity of anti-retrovirus medications and the lack of adequate personal sanitary facilities and diligence.

The transgender organization OTRANS stressed in the report that transgender people have limited access to employment because of stigma and discrimination. OTRANS also reported cases of physical assault, disappearances and deaths due to gender identity. The organization said 13 deaths were reported and three disappearances from 2007 to 2011.

“From the beginning of the epidemic, stigma and discrimination were identified as the main obstacles to effective HIV response,” said Cesar Nunez, UNAIDS Regional Director for Latin America. “The HIV-related discrimination is itself a violation of human rights which, in turn, implies the violation of other rights such as the right to health, education, dignity and equality before the law,” he said.

November 12 2012

In recent days we have been bombarded with news of the Gaza Strip. Given our physical and cultural distance from these matters it is very difficult to have an independent opinion when all we hear, through the official media, is biased information that dismisses Israel and victimizes the Palestinians, or rather Hamas.

We all wonder how it is that the rockets that the commentator Cristina Escobar (no relation of mine) calls “artisanal” — which are falling on Israel — are so sophisticated that they only kill soldiers and never reach the elderly, women and children, and how the Israeli artillery can be so ineffective and so cruel that it never manages to hit military targets but only kills defenseless civilians.

Yesterday the editors of the news images missed the screen-crawl of a foreign news agency, which scrolls across the bottom of the screen while the images flash. The screen-crawl claimed that Tehran supplied the technology for the Palestinian rockets. Suddenly the entire official truth with its undeniable claims of “real truth” was called into question.

I don’t know who to blame for that conflict. I just know that innocents die.

23 November 2012

One could write a history of Cuba in recent year from its dogs, those animals who populate our streets and homes. And not only from the care or mistreatment they have received, but also from the breeds of dog with whom people have chosen to share their daily lives. I remember some years ago when Dalmatians were in style — sparked by Disney with its 101 puppies — and later there was a predilection for Chow Chows which you practically never see any more. I confess I’m mad for mutts, mongrels, those with no lineage. Perhaps because my own lack of pedigree and lineage make me sympathetic to pets who also fall outside genealogy. Nevertheless, I carefully follow how social classes are also expressed in these four-legged creatures, with their sharp sense of smell and their barks.

Behind the high gates of Miramar’s mansions Rottweilers growl. To have a dog there is a sign of power and excellent economic status. To feed them, take them for walks and train them to shred the thief who scales the wall, make up part of the pastimes of their wealthy owners. They are, for these times, what German Shepherds represented in the eighties, an energetic breed for the sector that wants to show it’s on the rise. Just behind come the Labradors, with owners who have a garden or a pool and who buy them canned food. Dogs that have a stylist and someone to take them for runs in the morning–regulars along Fifth Avenue–and for swims in the sea. Lucky dogs.

But I don’t think that every area of the city, or every social class, corresponds to one or another breed of pet. In the most deteriorated tenement in Centro Habana a gorgeous champagne-colored Cocker Spaniel or a slender menacing Doberman can emerge. Examples abound of enormous Afghan Hounds living in apartments without balconies, and I have even seen Great Danes peeking through the pieces of tin of a makeshift home in a Havana “llega y pon.”* The dogs we choose say a lot about what we want to become, our desire for greatness… or our acceptance of our insignificance. One tiny breed is all the rage on the Island these days, the Pekingese with their flattened noses and short tails. The most valued are the albinos, which sell for three months’ wages: about $50 U.S. for each puppy.

Yesterday I came across one of these “cotton balls” at the entrance to a rooming house in Cayo Hueso. I had to laugh at the contrast of his snow-white fur next to a broken sewer pipe. I left there reflecting on the story that could be told through dogs, of the national progress that can be told contemplating their muzzles and feet. A reality of contrasts that runs from the strong chest of the Boxer in Vedado, to the visible ribcage of the mongrel abandoned on some street.

*Improvised neighborhoods with precarious homes made from scrap materials. [Translator’s note: “Llega y pon” literally means “arrive and put.”]

23 November 2012

I got up a dawn to go to America Arias Hospital, more commonly known as Maternidad de Linea. I was there to accompany a friend who had gone to terminate a pregnancy. Just like everyone else, she had been given an appointment for 7:30 in the morning.

This beautiful Art Deco hospital, designed by the architects Govantes and Cabarroca with some Romanesque-inspired influences, still retains a few of its original light fixtures which denote the year of its construction, 1930. Notable also are the beautiful granite floors with their motifs of contrasting colors. The wonderful stained glassskylight, in danger of being lost, still bathes the walls with soft pastel light, while the allegorical sculpture depicting motherhood on the first floor stands in front the main entrance to the building.

In the large waiting room, whose entrance faces H Street, we found ourselves among a large group of patients and those accompanying them, who had been there since early in the morning. The murmur of voices was growing, filling up the space. Suddenly, a deafening noiselike the roar of an enginewas heard coming from the adjoining the room. This caused those present to raise their voices in order to be heard to the point that the noise became unbearable. Then, the scrawny woman in a custodian’s uniform, who was supposedly keeping order in the place, shouted, “Quiet in the room!”

I had to keep from laughing. I went up to her and quietly asked, “How is it you are asking people to be quiet when in the other room there is a noise that sounds like it is coming from an airplane?” She smiled and said, “They are doing some construction and what you are hearing is equipment removing the debris.”

I looked through the glass door to the other room and was astonished to see an artifact that looked like a small tractor sliding with great effort over those wonderful floors and almost grazing the central columns of the main entrance.

At that moment a young woman dressed in a denim mini-skirt, that covered her only just above the legs, and a short tank top, that left her ample midsection and an odd tattoo right above her tailbone exposed,made an appearance to ask the ultrasound patients for their referral papers. “An odd look for a hospital,” I thought.

Motivated by the delay and the wait, I decided to go the the hospital’s management to complain about the noise and rude treatment, and to offer some suggestions regarding the inappropriate attire of some of the hospital’s workers. Judging by the look on the face of the director’s secretary, my complaint was not well received. As a justification she told me they were doing as best as they could considering that there was reconstruction taking place so that they could continue providing services not only to their patients, but also to other hospitals in the area, which were experiencing similar problems. She told me to file a written complaint with my name, address and ID card number, to which I responded that she could count on it.

Finally, at 11 AM a nurse popped into the waiting room to inform everyone that she was sorry, but that the exams would be further delayed because there was only one anesthesiologist in the entire hospital, and at that moment he was in surgery. After an hour they began to let in the restless and nervous patients based on their order they had arrived.

The uniformed woman blocked the door so that those accompanying the patients could not enter the exam area. Then began the skirmish to offer small gifts such as packages of cigarettes and little “empanadas de enfrente” in hopes they would be the key to get through the barricaded door.

Armed with empanadas and other treats, I managed to get to the second floor, where the procedures are carried out, in order to lend moral support to the patient like the other friends and family members who were doing the same, offering moral support to our patient. There I observed that approximately a third of the beautiful facility was closed off with signs saying “closed due to danger of collapse.” It also pained me to see how the construction workers mistreated the floors, carelessly dropping their heavy tools.

Nervously, I watched the coming and going of the only wheelchair, that was missing the foot supports and the rubber rims on the wheels, being used to bring out the patients who were coming out of the anesthesia. Finally, the creaking rhythm of that chair revealed my friend, who, happily, was responding well and recovering quickly from that painful mishap. The complete of our beautiful architectural heritage, which we left behind and whose abuse I witnessed for many hours.

November 19 2012

About six months ago I started to make travel arrangements for the minor son of a friend who lives abroad, and for that purpose she awarded my power of attorney to represent her first-born. I would like to note that on “our beloved planet,” for some things they are minors — for example to buy or sell, or to make a will — but for others, being imprisoned or executed for having committed an offense against national security, they only have to be 16.

The first thing I had to do was to go to the civil registry to get a documents proving birth, single status, lack of a criminal record, etc. This meant, of course, interminable lines, expenses to have them stamped, little gifts (i.e. bribes), and above all lots and lots of patience.

Once I acquired the national documents, I had to stand in more interminable lines, to legalize them (all paid for in convertible currency), at the State agency dedicated to this. Afterwards I presented them to the embassy that was going to receive him, in this case Spain, where the lines are amazing and the treatment offered is not the best. I had to go there several times because the information received was inaccurate and the documents asked for were difficult to get.

Once all the paperwork with the embassy in question in finished, then comes, in the case of males, the worst nightmare: release from military service.

Having already completed these steps, we just had to go through the crushing machine at the Immigration Office. I have to admit that the treatment there is friendly. But it’s also good to note that despite this nice treatment, the efficiency isn’t the best, because almost all the personnel is new and is not well-trained.

You must come armed with patience and optimism, because you’re going to have to stand in those infernal lines many times: sometimes because you don’t have a document they didn’t tell you about, others because every time you go they ask for something new. In short, you have to go to the place many times, instead of the two times you thought: once to deliver the request and once to get the answer.

Thus, lurching along bad-humoredly from line to line, time passes and you become exhausted, and are paying sums you hadn’t counted on. None of them ask your pardon for the procedural blunders they commit, and they all act as if they’re doing you a favor and not violating your most sacred rights: to be able to freely enter and leave your own country as many times as necessary, without their preventing it.

Finally, today after so many months, so many mistakes, and so much physical and mental exhaustion, they have awarded to the boy I am representing his longed-for exit permit, to be able to be reunited with his mother, who lives abroad. This has been just like the case of another Elian, but in reverse.

November 21 2012