Cubans Need Help Recovering From Hurricane Sandy / Yoani Sanchez

Cell phone photo from a civic activist

How You Can Help

Hurricane Sandy has devastated the city of Santiago de Cuba and caused severe damage in several towns in the east of the country. The images of destruction speak for themselves, but the cameras barely manage to capture a share of the drams. The great tragedy runs on a plane difficult to photograph, or to describe with words. It’s impossible to narrate the worst of it. It is a mixture of feelings that shift from sadness to impotence, pain to desperation, dismay to fear. Thousands of people who have seen the wind take a good part of their lives, who woke up one morning in destroyed towns of collapsed streets and missing roofs, and who know that recovering from something like that could take the rest of their existence.

Sandy took five hours to cross eastern Cuba , but destroyed homes, infrastructure and objects that will take decades to reestablish. The loss of human lives has been the most tragic outcome, but nature has also suffered a lot. The intense gusts of wind hit housing stock with decades of accumulated deterioration, the force of the hurricane fell on a population without food reserves to face the days of collapse that have followed. As if the havoc had been small, the floods caused in the center of the country have intensified the agricultural disaster, worsening the nation’s ability to recover. Cuba today is in a calamitous situation, although the triumphalism of media officials wants to substitute slogans for laments, and illusions for objective evaluation.

If we recognize the seriousness of the situation, we can find real solutions. The government has the ultimate responsibility to manage this emergency situation with transparency and humility. This is a time to put pride aside and to ask for help from international agencies trained in these types of tragedies. We Cubans hope that our authorities will facilitate the entry of the international Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations to evaluate the infected zones and contribute resources and solidarity to those who lost almost everything. The threats of an outbreak of cholera and of the possible propagation of dengue fever are elements that contribute to the urgency of these decisions. It can wait any longer.

Nor is it advisable to continue with the centralized and political structures for the distribution of aid. The examples above show that when the state wants to take care of everything, including distribution of nails or the delivery of a little sugar, these mechanisms are quickly permeated by the lack of control, corruption, and the diversion of resources that affect every sphere in the country. There is already evidence that the government is blocking activists and independent journalist from going to the affected zones, because the government does not want reports with all the details about the seriousness of what happened, nor do they want parallel paths established for the flow of aid. We must remind them that no party can have a monopoly on solidarity and that the misery of so many is not a time for politics or proselytizing.

In recent days various initiatives have arisen from the citizenry, the exile, the church, other civil society groups, to help alleviate the tragedy caused by Hurricane Sandy in the east of the country.  Steeped in solidarity, several citizens have established collection points for basic supplies in the capital and other regions of the country. None of these places is under the auspices of a political party or a specific group, but are based on a humanistic sense and the horizontality of aid. At the end of this week the resources collected will be transported to Santiago de Cuba and distributed through Father Jose Conrado — priest of Santa Teresita Church in Santiago de Cuba — and civil society activists. Priority will be given to the most affected and to the areas most devastated. Below are contact details for those living within or outside the country.

Goods that are being collected:

  • Canned foods, dried foods and powdered milk.
  • Personal hygiene items (soap, detergent, deodorant).
  • Candles and batteries. Bed linen, towels, personal clothing.
  • Medications (analgesics, cold medicine, rehydration salts, vitamins, anti-diarrhea pills, muscle pain creams, etc.).
  • Pills or drops to chlorinate the water.
  • Disposable diapers and sanitary pads.

The addresses where they can be taken:

  • Municipio Habana del Este: Barriada de Alamar: Edificio B-17 apto. 21 Zona 5. Alina Guzmán or Nilo Julián, tel: +5353862111
  • Municipio Plaza: Factor no. 821, apto 14B entre Conill y Santa Ana. Yoani Sánchez and Reinaldo Escobar Tel: +5352708611 y +5352896812
  • Municipio La Víbora: Saco no. 457 apto 6 entre Carmen y Patrocinio. Esperanza Rodríguez and Wilfredo Vallín, tel: +5353149664
  • Centro Habana: Headquarters of the Ladies in White, Calle Neptuno no. 963 entre Aramburu y Soledad. Berta Soler Tel: +5352906820
  • Municipio Playa: Avenida 1ra no. 4606 entre 46 y 60, Miramar. Ailer González +5353233726

For those who do not reside in the country and want to get help, we suggest buying food online at the following websites:

http://supermarket.treew.com

http://www.carlostercero.ca

http://envioalimentosacuba.com

http://www.lapuntilla.ca/

We recommend buying foods that do not require refrigeration and that can be eaten without cooking. Shipping may be to any of the people listed above at the addresses listed, or to any friend or acquaintance you might have on the island. Many thanks in advance!

30 October 2012

Solidarity Bureaucratized / Reinaldo Escobar

Sandy’s passing across the eastern provinces and the catastrophic consequences have left me with the following questions:

Why must all solidarity by necessity pass through government channels?

Why don’t the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) ask their members to bring support to the offices of each Zone?

Why doesn’t the Federation of Cuban Woman (FMC) ask the women affiliated with it to bring something to the organization’s Blocks?

Why don’t the Pioneer organizations invite the children to donate some school uniforms?

Why doesn’t the Association of the Combatants of the Revolution ask its members to offer to help the victims?

Are they waiting to receive orders from higher authorities or will their own hearts dictate their supportive conduct?

29 October 2012

Your Beer Here! / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado

It seems like a silent cry, a clandestine invitation to beer drinking amid signs of drunkenness, not of admiration. The thirsty passer-by—child or adult—cannot easily sample a soft drink or a little bottle of mineral water in Havana when he wants, since in many public businesses that sell cold drinks in convertible currency, they tend to pack their refrigeration equipment mainly with beer. They hardly leaves room for anything else to drink, and it tells everyone that the alcoholic beverages are the only ones they care to refrigerate. The employees on every crew put a few waters and sodas in the coolers to “cover their backs” or keep up appearances.

It is often that, upon going to one of these businesses a little after the beginning of one or another shift, you’ll get responses like, “They’re hot” or “There aren’t any,” and you must move on. The so-called “Quickies” are the places where I most observe this problem. They remind me of those bars that were around in the capital a few decades ago that they called pilots because, just like them, the tables are often full of happy people with a significant number of empty bottles or cans of the amber liquid atop them. Likewise, in other places not suited for drinking, like some shops, kiosks and other businesses, there is again the same lack of refrigeration which endangers customers.

I ask myself why and I conclude that it appears that they get their rewards in the form of the frothy drink. The bonus is that for years the state expropriated these people and denied them a decent wage. Around here everyone “struggles” to make a decent salary that can provide enough money so that they can have a half-way decent lifestyle and can satisfy their basic needs and those of their families. The state has forced most citizens to resort to daily acts of illegality in order to be able to survive. In their long and disastrous exercise of power we have been the victims of their arbitrary decisions, which have turned virtually all of us into a prison population.

I do not fall into the trap set by officials when they uncover these kinds of things—the rustic private stills installed in homes or inadequate, dirty, illegal locations. I don’t believe it. The clandestine breweries are in state factories and use government vehicles to transport the merchandise. They are controlled by the military’s own men, who divide the output between the exploitative, multi-millionaire State and the impoverished workers.

A self-adjusted salary from which many benefit and no one sees, because the alcoholics of corruption look the other way, so as not to harm this balanced and equitable Robin Hood business, with beer belly and Party card. So as we walk around we must go along to quench our thirst and the tropical heat with some hot soft drink, while others “fill their plates and pockets” with the cold beer “fruits of their sins.”

In our country the most massive drunken binge historically has been that of the strong-man rule. The leader and his group are entrenched, at the cost of appropriating the country, they led us to this crisis of values and the socioeconomic and political ruin that oppresses us. Reasons abound for us to worry about Cuba, because when it appears to be falling, because mutated by inefficiency and immorality it wobbles, which doesn’t mean it’s drunk, but rather rotten.

Translated by Boston College Cuban-American Student Association
First paragraph by russell conner, New Orleans, LA

October 22 2012

He was Born Masculine and Strong / Ignacio Estrada

DSCN0238Foto0354Havana Cuba – For my months my whole family has been waiting the birth of my little sister, Inés María’s, first son.

When they did a sonogram, they had first said that the baby was a boy. A few months later they said that the baby was a girl. This last diagnosis of the baby was held until birth. The family was ecstatic about the birth of the baby. They had congregated in the waiting room with all the gifts they had bought for the baby including gowns, blankets and towels.

My wife and I having gotten an early start, and guided by emotional impulses, from the first ultrasound had bought clothes for a baby boy. After having bought them we were frustrated because the doctors had changed their opinion about the sex.

The little girl that was already so real, was a joy for some and a disappointment for a disabled niece who thought at some point she would usurp the role of having been the first granddaughter and first niece.

The pregnancy of my sister from the beginning, with nutritional problems, according to the doctors she would gain weight but she didn’t, so she was put in the hospital on more than one occasion. Later they thought it might be diabetes, which idea was later discarded. Then in the last three months of gestation the stomach grew in size and as it grew so did my sister’s desire to eat.

The delivery was expected between the 12, 13, 14 and 15 of October 2012. The waiting family traveled form Havana to await our new niece named Victoria.

My sister started her pains on the morning of Sunday the 14th, a date in Cuba that commemorates the first anniversary of the death of Laura Pollan. The fact that we wanted to call her Victoria became a double recognition of two women. One of them was the mother of the husband of my sister who has already died, and the other we wanted to pay tribute to was their great woman, mother, wife and Cuban of such great stature, Laura P.

We didn’t think of honoring Laura by giving her name to a newly born girl, we were just excited about the name Victoria. As this is the name she takes forever, and will take in the footsteps of a woman who left teaching to become the leader of a number of women whose sole mission is to rescue a nation and the Cuban family.

In the early hours of Sunday the 14th they took my sister to the community polyclinic in Santo Domingo, and later took her in an ambulance to the city of Santa Clara. There she was admitted the Mariana Grajales Maternal Hospital and the delivery occurred on the second day after he admission. The baby, according to the doctors, was delayed in crying, and against all predictions was a boy.

Instead of a vagina, he came with manly testicles. Everyone was amazed, there was no shortage of skeptics who asked to see to believe. The baby weighed ten pounds and today by the honor of God is in perfect health as is my sister.

I want to thank every friend who helped us find a name, I want to thank those who from different latitudes sent Tweets, text messages and emails, the name of our nephew is one that we received.

I can tell you today that we are still thinking about what to do with the clothes for my nephew, born so heavy and not expected to be so large for such a newborn baby. His health, according to the doctors, is excellent.

Happiness has come to our house and we receive the one who comes to us today in all his innocence.

October 22 2012

Upgrade of Cuban Migration Policy? / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

It is already a fact: the awaited “migration reforms”, announced by Raul Castro a month and a half ago, arrive with a lot of noise — much ado about nothing. Published “casually” five days before the elections for delegates to the Municipal Assemblies of Popular Power, the modification to Law No. 1312 “Law of Migration” of September 20, 1976, was again the plastic carrot hung in front of the herd. Some simpleton might believe his opportunity in life has arrived, but the disillusionment — I really wish I were wrong on this point — sooner or later will reveal the true intention behind a decree where they repeat the verb “to authorize”too much which has ruled the destinies of a people confined to their borders for more than half a century.

According to my understanding of Decree-Law No. 302, issued by President Raul Castro October 11, 2012, and published in the Official Gazette last October 16, nothing changes for the professional Cubans — including thosefrom the Public Health, needless to say — we continue dragging that cross that the government became by havingdevoted ourselves to the cultivation of knowledge. Once again it pays us so: leaving us at aclear disadvantage, violating our right to travel, depriving us ofany opportunity to meet the world. Articles 24 and 25, subsections f, make it very clear when they exclude from leaving the country all those who lack “the established authorization, pursuant to the strict rules of preserving the qualified work force…” which with one blow leaves millions of Cubans out of the game.

One does not have to be really smart to notice that articles 23, 24 and 25, added entirely to the former Law of September 1976, give fullpower to the authorities to refuse passport, to refuseentry and equally to refuse exit from the country, respectively and according to subjective criteria, to any person inside or outside of Cuba, all of which serves to leave bare the true, hypocritical and deceptive nature of this law. Too much ambiguity leaves open Article 32, subparagraph h — and by extension the same subparagraph of Article 25 — when they establish that some clerk can refuse the award of the passport and/or exit from the countryto anyone, “When for other reasons of public interest the empowered authorities determine…”, ambiguity which will serve to continue detaining millions of Cubans under this blue sky every time the Cuban Government feels like it. These articles and subparagraphs will be hanging, like the sword of Damocles, over all Cubans.

The other invidious facet of the matter: Article 24, by means of its subparagraphs c, d and e, establishes as “. . . inadmissible. . .” for entry into the country — because they put them into the same category as terrorists, human and arms traffickers, drug dealers and international money launderers — those accused by the Cuban Government of “…Organizing, encouraging, managing or participating in hostile actions against the political, economic, and social fundamentals of the Cuban State…“, “…When reasons of Defense and National Security so suggest…” and also — this is the little jewel in the crown — all those whom the Cuban Government considers must “…Be prohibited from entering the country for being declared undesirable or expelled.” If one wants it clearer, pour water on it: it is a given that those Cubans with politicalstandards divergent from the Government lines will continue being deprived of travel, and in case they do manage to leave the country, they assume a high risk of not being permitted to return, and this includes, of course, the millions of Cubans and their descendants who live outside of their country.

Something remains clear: as long as one authority might prohibit those of us living in Cuba from leaving freely, and also prohibitthat anyone of the millions that live outside return unconditionally to the embrace of their homeland, no one will be able to speak of realfreedom of travel; this is an individual’s exclusive decision and will never be a clerk’s because, right to the end, it is inalienable. As long as they make us leave our families here as hostages as a prerequisite to travel abroad, freedom of thought is abridged with an exit blackmail, if even one Cuban is denied his right to freely come or go as his birthright, nothing will have changed in Cuba. Time will have the last word, but for now everything seems pure illusion; for the moment, on the balcony of Havana, this little room is just the same.

Translated by mlk.

October 25 2012

 

Virgilisms / Regina Coyula

I’ve been reading Virgelio Piñera a lot in this, his centenary year, and I’ve even written a couple of works about him. But Virgilio “might have given himself a banquet” with national absurdity. We have signs of this through tall tales and gossip, and also through Granma, which despite cherry-picking his works and the letters they receive, they have regaled us with this Virgilian story that adorns the Letters to the Editor section of this past Friday.

Unknown registrations continue in my house

Before I start, my sincere thanks for having published my letter this past August 3, 2012. In that letter, I denounced my situation about having two people registered in my house who’ve never lived in it, at the same time they appear as “transients” in their mother’s house, with whom they’ve lived since birth.

Following the publication of my letter, inspectors from MININT [Ministry of the Interior] investigated the truth of my claim, but nothing has come of it. The prosecutor’s office, after declaring that I’m in a “legal limbo”, has left me submerged in it.

The order that has the CIRP — the ID card — only under willing and express request of the person involved, is the equivalent in my view, of arguing that the thieves will only be caught if they willing present themselves to a unit of the National Revolutionary Police. When a person acts in bad faith, as in the case of those enrolled in my house, of course they will not give themselves up spontaneously.

It’s really inconceivable that such a simple and obvious case hasn’t found a solution after two years of all levels of effort.

A. Marín Rodríguez

After things like that, and as a tribute, we could rephrase that to say, If Kafka had been Cuban, he would have written of local customs to say:If Kafka had been Cuban, he would have written Virgilisms.

Translated by: JT

October 17 2012

To Leave and Return is a Right / Reinaldo Escobar

Although the fever to comment on the new travel and immigration legislation has already passed, I don’t want to let it pass me by. To those who ask me in circumstances where there’s little time to respond, I tell them the following:

The Cuban government has eliminated the humiliating Permission to Leave and established in its place the Permission to Possess a Passport, which is somehow worse because it denies the citizen the right to possess identification before the rest of the world.

If we have a little more time, then I say that I would have wished the first article of the new law would say more or less the following:

All Cuban citizens, by the mere fact of having been born in this archipelago, have the right to possess a passport and, once granted a visa by another country, to leave Cuba with it for as long as he deems appropriate and to return, as many times as his resources allow. This right can only be violated by court judgement, where the citizen has all procedural guarantees of defense and appeal.

The absence of the word “right” is the most important omission in the new law.

22 October 2012

Cuban Baseball: Open the Gate / Ivan Garcia

As a result of the next baseball season, the State press and fans have unleashed a debate, looking to raise the level of ball played on the island. There were more than 170 proposals to design a new competitive structure.

In a meeting with the national press, the Cuban Federation let it be known how the next tournament will be structured. The league will open on 25 November in José Ramón Cepero Stadium with a matchup between the present champions, Ciego de Ávila and the runner-up Industriales. Sixteen sides will participate, one for each province plus the special municipality Isla de la Juventud. The Metropolitanos team is eliminated, with their 38 years of history in the local classic.

The schedule will consist of two stages. In the first, 45 games will be played in a round-robin to find the best 8 teams. The sides that go on to the next round will be able to draft up to five players from the teams that didn’t qualify. This phase will be of 42 games. In two playoffs of the best of seven, the four winners will play for the national championship.

It might be that the old structure of 4 divisions and two zones, East and West, was already inadequate. In the last twelve years, the level of baseball has declined a lot. The problem isn’t about a team. Many remain. The keys to elevating the quality of play happens to have a new structure. But the worst evil isn’t that of structure.

The design of the Cuban baseball system used to work. It was a pyramid of skills that included little league, Pony leagues, Youths, and provincial series, culminating in the national classic.

Sports schools perfected and trained the best talent nominated by coaches. Afterwards the harvest was brought in. Until 2006, Cuba won most of the International Baseball Federation’s organized tournaments in every one of its categories.

Now we barely win championships. And that worries fans and specialists. In world tournaments of Pony or Youth Leagues, it’s understandable. The best talents of Asia and the United States take part. But at the highest level, except for the Classics, those authentic discards with skills of little caliber enroll for their respective countries.

In my opinion, there’s a glaring error on the Federation’s part. And it is to implement changes thinking only about the national team. The series on the island cannot be a satellite that circulates outside that orbit. It must be independent. When the season has more quality, the higher the level that will be achieved by the Cuban team.

What we’re talking about is how to really raise the level of ball played. The options are many. But all will happen by opening the gate and allowing the best ball players to compete in foreign leagues. The ideal would be to arrive at an agreement with the Major Leagues such that Cuban players can sign contracts without having to abandon their country.

But current laws complicate the proceedings. As such, other destinations would have to be chosen. Japan and South Korea, due to the high level of their leagues, would be the best.

Another step that can’t be overlooked is pay and material conditions for the players. It’s a failed subject. Local idols who were sometimes Olympic champions got 300 convertible pesos — about 340 dollars — a ridiculous amount for a first-rank sportsman; although in the difficult economic conditions this country lives in, it’s a ’fortune’.

An effort should be made so that players in the national series can earn salaries greater than 3000 pesos ($130). The solution might be to raise the price of tickets to stadiums from one peso to five, with part of the proceeds distributed between players. Not equally. The regulars would earn more. The extra class, much more. Local and foreign companies based in Cuba, with its productions, could be sponsors.

It should not be possible that a national champion, as in the case of the Industriales in 2010, should motivate its players through gifts of cement shingles to repair the roofs of their houses, or microwave ovens, defective on top of it.

The majority of Cuban ball players live in precarious conditions. Only a handful of stars live in good houses or have cars. When they look at their colleagues who’ve left the country, they know that playing in a mediocre league they will earn enough to help their own and live decently.

Then they decide to leave. It’s true that few reach the Big Leagues. But they try to integrate themselves in whatever Caribbean, European, or Asian league. Another big problem is the little attention paid by the Federation to the farm systems that feed the national series.

Provincial tournaments of the big leagues are very short. Many games are suspended for lack of balls, bats, and transportation. Ball players are playing out of uniform and don’t even have a snack. You have to love baseball a lot to play in 92 (Fahrenheit) degree heat under these conditions. To this, add that the official press barely covers them — they’re almost clandestine.

In the lower categories, the evil is worse. The fields are true potato fields. The quality of the balls and equipment is terrible. In the stands we’ll find parents, loaded down with lunches and snacks for their kids. When a boy decides to play baseball, his parents have to buy his equipment in hard currency. Cash must also be paid for the making of uniforms.

On a radio sports show called Sports Tribune, on the capital’s COCO station, every night official honest journalists such as Yasser Porto, Daniel Demala or Ivan Alonso go at it bare-knuckled, attacking the evils that afflict Cuban baseball. And they offer solutions.

It’s obvious that their claims have fallen on deaf ears. The COCO journalists weren’t invited to the last meeting where the announcement was made about the structure of the next season.

The Federation is walking a tightrope. It doesn’t wish, want or cannot, address the theme with all of its artists. The solution offered is pure makeup. Cuban baseball’s difficulties won’t be resolved in this manner, nor will the ceiling of competence be raised, because it’s not only a problem of structure. There are many others.

Photo: Taken from The Cuban History. René Arocha, first ball player to desert, 18 July 1991. Since then, more than 150 baseball players have left Cuba and with major or minor success have managed to compete (or still compete) in professional leagues in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Caribbean countries, Europe and Asia, such as Rey Ordóñez, Liván Hernández, José Ariel Contreras, Rolando Arrojo, Orlando “El Duque” Hernández, Kendry Morales, Aroldis Chapman, Osvaldo Fernández, Ariel Prieto, Alex Sánchez, Vladimir Núñez, Danny Báez, Michael Tejera, Yuniesky Betancourt and Yoenis Céspedes, among others.

Translated by: JT

October 7 2012

The October Missile Crisis 50 Years Later / Yoani Sanchez

Reconnaissance photos of missiles in Cuba. From spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

My mother was just a girl of five living in a tenement in central Havana and I was barely one egg of the many dozing in her womb. Amid the daily grind and the first signs of shortages — already noticeable in Cuban society — not even my grandmother realized how close we were to the holocaust that October of 1962.

The family could feel the tension, the triumphalism and the collective nervousness of something delicate happening, but never imagined the gravity of the situation. Those who lived through that cruel month all behaved the same, whether they were unaware or accomplices, uninformed or ready to bring sacrifices, enthused or neutral.

The so-called Missile Crisis, known in Cuba as The October Crisis, touched several generations of Cubans in different ways. If some recall the terror of the moment, it left others of us with the constant tension of the trenches. The gas mask, the shock of the alarm that might sound in the night, the island sinking into the sea, offered metaphors for speeches and songs. Nothing returned to normal after that October. Those who didn’t live through it first hand still inherited its sense of unease, the fragility of standing right on the edge that could end in the abyss.

The days are long gone when what is said or what happens in Havana can disrupt world peace. Now we are marking the 50th anniversary of those events; studies are conducted of the declassified documents, the surviving players are interviewed and come to new conclusions.

But as happens with many songs that are all the rage one day, or with the speeches of many leaders, the passing of time makes us see these events with less passion but with a greater degree of uncertainty and confusion. Particularly when those who are looking back do so from the distance usually assumed by people who did not suffer the consequences.

Perhaps what most draws our attention now is the enormous capacity to make decisions that was taken by some individuals on matters of such great importance. In 1962 the Cuban leader was Fidel Castro, although the position of president was nominally held by Osvaldo Dorticos. If, in a moment of weakness, the Soviets had given into the temptation to leave the red button near the finger of the Maximum Leader in olive-green, as he would have liked, probably no one would be reading this article. What’s more, this article would not even exist.

Luckily, to arm a missile with a nuclear charge and to launch it is a lot more complex than some doomsday movies would have us believe. And it was especially so in 1962, when the electronic controls required huge labyrinthine metal cabinets arranged in hermetically sealed rooms. Nor were the Soviets willing to provide the technology, while the Cubans lacked the ability to implement it. That saved us. Their own laws prohibited the Soviet Union from selling or giving such weapons to any other country in the socialist camp.

Today the danger of clandestine distribution of nuclear devices is much greater than it was half a century ago, and the fear that certain military technologies will fall into the unscrupulous hands of international terrorists in not unfounded. The surveillance capacity from satellites is also much greater. In most nations with atomic potential the ability of leaders to make a personal decisions has been lessened, and there is an awareness on a planetary scale of the unacceptability of a nuclear conflict.

The dispute about the Iranian nuclear program, and the tensions unleashed against the possible use of these weapons by North Korea or Israel, do not seem to share the imminence with which intercontinental missiles appeared ready to cross the skies in that autumn of fifty years ago.

The slogans that were shouted in Cuban plazas in those days would be frowned upon today, by the common sense that is beginning to take hold in the early days of the twenty-first century. It would sound too irrational, absurdly excessive, contrary to life. Because when European mothers put their children to bed with the fear that the sun wouldn’t rise, on Havana’s Malecon people were chanting the strident “If you come you stay”; and while the entire world was calculating with pessimistic exactitude what would be lost and what would be left standing, on this Island they repeated to the point of exhaustion that we were ready to disappear “before agreeing to be the slaves of anyone.” When the USSR decided to remove the missiles, irresponsible people in the streets hummed, “Nikita, faggot, what you give you can’t take back.”

Recently Fidel Castro himself returned to some of that puerile — almost childish — arrogance when he stated that, “We will never apologize to anyone for what we did.” His words were an attempt to surround with glory the intransigent attitude of the Cuban government during those days that shook the world.

Now, at least, we enjoy the relief of knowing that this stubborn old man of 86 is ever further from that red button that would have unleashed disaster. Every day the impossibility of his influencing the global road map becomes greater.

In the era of globalization, the authorities in Havana insist on political insularity, although the vocation of the new generations is to spread themselves everywhere. In the light of half a century we perceive that those slogans were metaphors that threatened to sweep away our reality. The political delirium that we suffered then would not survive today before the sanity and pragmatism imposed by daily survival. Obviously we have matured. The missile crisis will not be repeated on the Island, no matter how many Octobers lie ahead of us.

 

Idle Human Capital / Fernando Damaso

Photo by Rebeca

In Cuba there are a ton of professionals and technicians who have graduated from universities and who are not directly linked to profitable enterprises, but to political, administrative and bureaucratic tasks. In addition, due to recent drastic cuts in state employment, there are thousands of them who are not working in their professions. Since professional private practice is prohibited, in order to survive, they have taken jobs as artisans, taxi drivers, cooks, peddlers, vegetable vendors, lighting repairmen, etcetera. The government’s low salaries and poor working conditions are a disincentive. That is how many well-educated and experienced citizens have been lost, falling through the cracks, as though they were expendable.

We can, without any doubt, assert that there is a large amount of human capital that is being underutilized and that has no chance of professional or self-realization in this country. Add to this the new graduates who every year try to enter the labor force but cannot find a job commensurate with their education, making the situation even more tense and difficult.

For this reason, the travel restrictions in the new immigration law that apply to this section of the population, and that according to the government are necessary in order to combat brain drain, are not at all understood. It would be as if a potato farmer, having had a good harvest, did not consume his potatoes or let others buy them, leaving them in the open to spoil.

Our authorities have a dog-in-the-manger attitude. Only in this case we are not talking about potatoes or dogs, but people, whose lives are now curtailed due to the enforcement of a feudal state mentality. Instead of providing a solution to the emigration problem, the newly approved measures add fuel to the fire through the accumulation of idle human capital that will escape, one way or another, in an attempt to achieve self-realization.

Since those who will have less of a hard time leaving or travelling are retired people and the less educated – citizens who are the least attractive to host countries – Cuban authorities will be able to say that, while they issue thousands of passports, the ones who do not issue visas are other countries, making it seem as if the they are not the ones obstructing emigration, but others. Another manipulative twist, one of many to which we have become accustomed. Give it time!

Translated by Eduardo Alemán

October 26 2012

An Injurious Trial / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado

Downloaded from elnuevoherald.com

Cuba’s partisan newspaper, Granma, announced that at nine in the morning on October 5 in the city of Bayamo, Granma province, a public trial would be held of a Spanish citizen, Ángel Francisco Carromero Barrios,accused of homicide while driving a car on a public road. Ángel Francisco, 27 years of age and director of the youth organization of the Spanish People’s Party, New Generations,drove a rented vehicle that on July 22 crashed into a tree in Bayamo. Also travelling in the car were Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante, both of whom died. It was not a coincidence but a strategy that they chose a Friday for the court hearing because press agencies logically would be closed on the weekend and that would lessen the repercussion and impact of the news. Also—fundamentally—because two days later, Sunday the 7th, the Venezuelan elections would be held, and events before, during and after those elections would detract from the political relevance of the event, which incites great interest and is under the global magnifying glass the same day as the accident.

But it seems that the Cuban laws have their concept or definition of when a legal proceeding is “public.” If we stick to the letter—not the spirit, of course—of the announcement, it is presumed that the relatives of those killed in the accident and other people interested in the case could be present in the room where Carromero Barrios would be judged, but this was not to be. Yoani Sanchez and her husband, Reinaldo Escobar, left for the event to report on it, but were intercepted and detained upon their arrival in Bayamo.

Dictatorships only know how to behave as such. That is why they also stopped the children of the late Payá Sardiñas when they were a few meters from the city’s provincial courthouse. Why did they impede the grieving offspring from attending if they had announced that the trial would be public? Some news agencies noted that the big police presence around the courthouse suggested that the person being tried was a criminal confined to a maximum security prison.

The abused and musty pretext of Cuban authorities and their spokesmen seems to me stale—as old as the vulgar Stalinist insult used through the years against opponents and independent journalists—that Reinaldo and Yoani had been instructed by the United States Interest Section in order to influence the legal proceedings against the Spanish politician and create a provocative show.

That is something as hackneyed and worn out as it is speculative,and if it did not concern our liberty, or maybe even our own lives, it would be laughable. Governmental propaganda always publicly mistreats its political adversaries within and outside of Cuba and accuses us of being amoral, traitorous or even terrorists.

The objective is to hang on us a placard of misdeeds in order to discredit us. It is a villainy so recurrent that only their naive followers, their poorly paid militants—those with stable jobs, material possessions and trips around the world—and their overseas supporters who perform “gestures of solidarity” whenever there is some setback, hoping for their gratitude, are the ones who still believe it.

The Cuban authorities have taken great care in this process, because of the fatal human injuries that the crash caused and the damages that on top of the participation and responsibility of another unidentified car, exist. The final judgement should confirm if they will use the Spanish citizen as political detergent to wash away suspicions about the government, and try to leave our image of it untainted. Surely they will take advantage of this opportunity to send the message—nothing subliminal—that revolutionary ethics and justice make no distinctions in the application of the law.They want no doubts to remain about governmental innocence and that it was the high speed, the highway disasters and misfortune that sabotaged the pedals and the steering wheel of the car driven by Angel Carromero on that fateful day.

Translated by mlk and unstated

October 16 2012

Public Opinion? / Fernando Damaso

Photo: Rebeca

Public opinion is a term that often appears in the print, radio and television reports whenever the authorities approve some measure to benefit, or not, the population. Our agile reporters, microphones and cameras in hand, go about the task of interviewing citizens—preferably in schools or workplaces, and at sites where people congregate, such as bus stops, checkout lines, etc.—by being where the double standard comes into play and few people dare to say what they really think. If an incorrect opinion happens to be expressed, however, it gets suppressed in the editing.

This means that all opinions that get reported, one way or another, are unanimous in their support for or rejection of—depending on the desires of the authorities—the approved measure. This bit of theater serves to promote the idea that all citizens are in full agreement with the authorities, that these same authorities are capable of addressing our concerns, and that we live in the best of all democracies—one that lately has been described as “indigenous.” This is somewhat of a replacement for the former term “socialist,” which has perhaps lost a bit of its luster.

Now, with emigration reform and the elections underway, something else has occurred. Certain politically chosen opinions—they range from the infantile to the ridiculous, and include the usual gripes and criticisms of “the Empire,”the source of all our past, present and future problems—are now brandished as “the opinion of the people.”

Translated by mlk and unstated

October 23 2012

Comandante Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo Dies / Yoani Sanchez

Fidel Castro and Gutierrez Monoyo in 1959.  From: vaterland.li

During the early hours of last Friday in Havana, Comandante Eloy Gutierrez Monoyo passed away at age 77. His wife Flor Ester Torres Sanabria reported his death to several new agencies, family and friends. So far the news has not been reported by Cuba’s official media, a common practice when a dissident on the island dies.

Gutierrez Menoyo was born in Madrid on 8 December 1934, and participated in the struggle that brought Fidel Castro to power. He moved to Cuba with his family in 1945 after losing one of his brothers in the Spanish Civil War’s Battle of Majadohonda, while fighting with the Republican forces. His other brother, Carlos, died in the largest of the Antilles, falling in the 1957 attack on the Presidential Palace. In that action, intended to execute Fulgencio Batista at the seat of the government, Eloy Gutierrez Monoyo also participated.

In old age. From vaterland.li

A member of the Revolutionary Directorate, at age 22 he became the chief of action for that organization in the City of Havana.  During the guerrilla struggle he founded and directed the Second Front located in the Escambrey Mountains in central Cuba. When the Revolution triumphed in January 1959, he joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces but quickly sharpened his disagreements with the government of Fidel Castro. In 1961 he left the island, to return in 1964 leading an armed attempt to overthrow the regime in Havana. He was captured and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

He spent 22 years in prison under harsh conditions and during that time his health deteriorated, he lost his sight in one eye and part of his hearing. He was released in 1983, after intense lobbying from the Spanish government of Felipe Gonzalez. Gutierrez Menoyo then lived in Spain for short time, before finally settling into exile in Miami. There he founded the organization “Cambio Cubana” – Cuban Change – which was harshly criticized by several sectors of exiles for promoting a dialog with the Cuban authorities.

In this new stage of his life he was able to make several visits to the Island, even meeting with Fidel Castro himself. In 2003, during a visit to Cuba, he announced he would stay to reside permanently in Cuban territory. Although his decision was contrary to emigration laws, the authorities allowed him to stay although they never regularized his legal situation.

In his first statements after deciding to stay on the island, Gutierrez Menoyo opposition confirmed that he wanted to be in the opposition. However the deterioration of his physical condition sharply limited his actions as a dissident. In his will, published by El País newspaper, he confirmed that he had not been “given an identity card,” nor had be been “awarded the political space that had been discussed at the time.”

“It’s true that my presence has been tolerated, but this has happened under the eye of the Orwellian State that has been worried by observing our militancy.”

Patricia Gutierrez Menoyo, daughter of the comandante, told several media outlets on Friday that he “had died where he wanted.” “My father was one of the bravest people, the sweetest warrior I have known (…)” emphasized the publisher based in Puerto Rico.

Gutierrez Menoyo’s farewell letter opens the door to optimism, assuring that the future of Cuba “is based in the telluric force of this Island; in the infinite tenderness of the Cuban woman; in the power of innovation of its most simple people. The legacy of durability of the Cuban nation will resist all the cyclones of History and all dictators.”

In his political testament he repeatedly refers to the current situation in Cuba and declares that he didn’t believe he had been “one of those who allowed the reversal of the dream that ended up becoming the worst nightmare.” “The year 1959 saw an even that seemed marked by poetry: The Cuban Revolution. Of that Revolution, scattered around the island and the world, lie the remains of a painful shipwreck,” he says in words he left in writing to his daughter Patricia. In these he also launches harsh critiques of Fidel Castro, for his “will to perpetuate himself in power (…) has been in this case greater than the faith in the possible renewal of the best Cuban projects from time immemorial.”

During the afternoon of this Friday there will be a wake for the body of Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo at the central mortuary in the capital and Saturday he will be cremated. For new generations of Cubans his name is lost in the mists of time and history, because for those who knew him there is the feeling of having lost a good man, concerned for this adoptive country that was his.

26 October 2012

Tempering News, Absorbing Shocks / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado

Downloaded from Cubadebate.cu

The case of Angel Carromero Barrios rapidly lost relevance because of the “atmospheric pressure” of the State. Like a tropical meteorological event, its great intensity dissipated in the mediating and officializing Cuban waters. Many know that in Cuba the State is the owner, the editorialist, journalist, reporter, photographer, and censor of all daily newspapers and journals that exist in the country, which pretty much means that we only have one newspaper in the whole archipelago.

The news of the sentence against Carromero Barrios, whose judgement became conclusive on October 5, was published on the night of October 15 in the news, and at dawn the next day (October 16th), the people were surprised with the flexibilization of the law on immigration and travel. For a dictatorship that had stepped on immigration, emigration and travel rights–among other rights–of its citizenry, it was only logical that the latter news trumped the first in the consciousness of the Cuban people and the world.

Just like the date of the oral and public trial of Carromero–which was programmed for a weekend (Friday), two days before the elections in Venezuela–the master manipulators of this country’s information, without freedom of press, didn’t wait even 24 hours to dictate a law-decree which took about two years to come up with. Why didn’t they wait a few days? Let’s remember that they similarly took advantage of the beginning of the war with Iraq to begin the wave of arrests in March of 2003; despite this, the world saw, repudiated and denounced this abominable official strategy. Even if this results in speculation, there is a chance that the new immigration/travel law was devised with this purpose in mind–in the period understood between accident and sanction–but for others, it was much more important to wait.

Anyway, they spend so many years in power repeating the same — or similar — course of action, that most of the world guesses the move before it is made. It is true that they are astute and have several master’s degree in the selection of time, place and the opportune moment — it is a 50-year-old specialization — but they are not good poker players. The feeble and recently debuted migratory modification does not vindicate the Cuban diaspora as part of our people, their rights violated for decades.

Nevertheless, once more they stimulate the rich foreign investors to obtain real estate here, encourage investors generally and tourist visitors from the United States particularly, to focus their binoculars and bring part of their capital to our soil. It is very likely that the fateful economic situation of Cuban totalitarianism, and the claims of continuity on the dynastic throne will make them hurry and commit errors. In their economic hardships and customary refusals to “call a spade a spade” in order to really resolve the country’s problems, they expose the effort to show anew image of the Cuban government in the face of the closeness of the elections in the United States, probably to lobby for a possible redesign of the politics of that government towards ours. With the pretext they are trying to break the blockade, they take years blocking the legitimate exercise of the rights of their citizens, which is the same as flogging us because others hit them and they also punish us for the same reason.

The “political tricks” propaganda, of making anorexic changes to draconian laws, will have no credit or real impact on most of the population,as long as they do not restore the rights that they have violated and postponed, respecting the fundamental liberties of all Cubans — from within and without Cuba — and democratize this society. Such dirty tricks are bluffs that trick no one, and give less light. Until now the proposed reforms are condemned to failure because of the abusive and prolonged rigor of their own laws. They will have no success, because many think that it has to do with the classic maneuver of stalling for time.

It seems that they have bet on the United States’ economic serum to resolve the national disasters in which they have sunk us, like the obligatory transfusion in the veins of the ruling class and its prosperous family and stalwarts; not in those of the whole nation. I do not know if the highest Cuban authorities really want to reestablish relations with the US.; rather it seems that they want to normalize the efforts to protect their interests and above all to guarantee their continuity. Once more “they uncorked” an oblique tactical move– a crab move — to fool the people of their own backyard and “enchant” the hungry fish of other latitudes. But they don’t catch big fish with small hooks, much less, with worthless and petty baits.

Translated by: Boston College Cuban-American Student Association (BC CASA)

October 18 2012

The Blue Card / Rebeca Monzo

There is not much that is new in the new immigration law. Nonetheless, it has raised expectations among a wide swath of the population: retirees, homemakers, students who have not gotten past the ninth grade, the unemployed and the elderly, to cite a few.

In one paragraph, the much-publicized law mentions that medical technicians are also subject to the burden of having to wait three years from the date of a passport request or the extension of an existing passport without regard for the time they have been out of the workforce. This measure not only discourages the prospects for travel, but—and to me this is the greater danger—it also discourages the desire of people to continue with their studies. Once they have completed the ninth grade, many abandon the classroom for good.

This has been going on for many years with respect to university careers. Many quit before graduating, or simply never begin their studies in the hope of being able to travel someday. The same thing is happening is less specialized fields of study. This is leading and will continue to lead to an even greater lowering of the country’s educational and technical standards, which have already been significantly eroded.

Logically speaking, it remains to be seen whether or not those fortunate enough to be granted a long-awaited passport will be approved for a visa by the countries they hope to visit. In this way the Cuban government, like Pontius Pilate, can wash its hands of the matter, placing the blame on others as usual.

Ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake. This new emigration law seems more like a new, more-sophisticated Mariel, but one that is organized and controlled by the state.

Translated by BW and Unstated

October 25 2012