7DaysinParadise
Cuba => Cuba => Topic started by: Jammyisme on July 04, 2008, 02:47:52 PM
-
:thumbsup:
She is making cds of her blog and spreading them around Cuba! lol
What started as an personal impulse is becoming a meeting place for discussion and debate. Generación Y has managed to involve a great number of people all over the world who help me with updating, translations, and the diffusion of texts. The principal collaboration has been in publishing the posts since, as of the last week in March, I have not been able to access the site in either public cibercafés or hotels. So I send the texts by email, some friends publish them and send me –also by email– the comments left by the readers. I am a blind blogger, a cibernaut with a leaking raft that manages to keep afloat with the help of a spontaneous citizens network.
All of the portal http://www.desdecuba.com continues to be blocked on the local public servers. I have made a copy of the message that the browsers show when I attempt access and I leave you an example here. I also know that it is not a total blackout. Friends who have internet access at their workplaces are able to visit the site, but that’s not much help to me since in those places, it is I who cannot enter.
In spite of this, I have the same desire to write in this blog that I had in the beginning. I am now even more persistent, since what they prevent me from doing becomes more attractive to me. In order to overcome the connectivity problems and reach readers on the island, other friends have created a minidisk with the contents of the blog and they are distributing it free. I want to thank everyone for the support, the oars and the wind that allow me to stay on course.
Da tu opinión »
The “Y” to power
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Junio,28,2008
I am doing an onomastic and simple study: How many members of Generation Y are part of Cuba’s power mechanisms today? I am under the impression that if I lift a stone the Yunieskys, Yordankas, and Yusimís would appear everywhere. On the street I turn my head every other head when someone calls to someone with a similar name to mine, but I don’t see a profusion of “y griegas” in positions that decide the country’s course. The National Assembly–which will convene in a few weeks–has a roster that barely shows this crazy letter that proceeds “z.” Also, one doesn’t find the capricious “y” among the managers, administrators or company leaders. Why if the penultimate space in the alphabet, this extravagant letter that is so rarely used in our Spanish, lets out a cry that will reach the imposing vowels and constants in the top ranks. The Y’s moment has arrived! It’s high time for the alphabet to begin at the end!
Da tu opinión »
“Adidas’ Kingdom”
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Junio,24,2008
In your sneakers with the Nike logo on the tongue you sneer at my synthetic leather sandals, while I calculate that your Italian sunglasses cost you a month’s salary. You pull a pack of Marlboro cigarettes that you bought in Vía Uno out of your purse and offer me one, even though you know that I don’t smoke. We are going together to your house in Cerro–a small room in a crumbling mansion occupied by seven families. I enter the living room and your impeccable shoes seem out of place alongside a wicker chair without a back, a shapeless mattress covered by a gray sheet and walls that haven’t been painted since the grandfather died. She poured a cup of coffee for me into a cup without a handle, but I could only stare at the gold ring on her index finger. “Yadira,” I say to reprimand her, “you’ve got such opulent clothing but you don’t even have your own bathroom!” She smiles and I catch sight of a small ruby encrusted in her canine tooth. Leaving her house, I notice the strange combination of ostentation and misery that “decorates” our streets. I see pairs of Adidas, Kelme, and Wilson sneakers going in and out of the front doors of crumbling buildings on Reina Avenue, and my nose picks up a stench wafting from a nearby broken sewer along with the unmistakable scent of Christian Dior perfume. The lines that form outside of the boutiques attest to the quantity of money that arrives through remittances, illegal activity or diverting resources which sustains these conceited “peacocks.” Nobody wants to go without designer clothing, whether it is genuine or fake. I’ve been told that before the Adidas store moved to the corner of 1st Street and Avenue D in Vedado (hoping to double their profit), it sold more merchandise per square meter than any other Latin American subsidiary. Some of their products will be bought by people who don’t have their own home or who must struggle to eat everyday. These individuals prefer keeping their most “valuable” possessions on their own bodies. When she looks out from behind the lenses of UV sunglasses, the Point Zero cotton clothing, or the L’Oreal scent in her hair, Yadira doesn’t notice the missing tiles in her kitchen or the springs sticking out of her mattress. Those who meet her believe that she is a splendid young woman who wears designer clothing rather than the resident of a squalid solar, where every morning she must carry water to a small collective bathroom.
Da tu opinión »
-
A diploma and lot of confusion
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Julio,7,2008
The school year ended and already I see a danger to my bread ration. My son will be out of school for over two months and, in the excitement of the holiday, could eat the hinges off the doors. He cannot be satisfied with the floury specimen of 80 grams that he receives from the ration and is sure to attack my quota or that of his dad’s.
Meanwhile, I am preparing myself for the typical questions, “Mommy, aren’t we going to visit our family in Camagüey?” I try to explain to him that the line for the interprovincial bus is three days long and they are already selling tickets for the second half of July. Neither will it appease him to know that the price of taking one of the new Chinese Yutong articulated buses to the center of the Island is half the average worker’s salary.
But I will try to please him and will cede my bread, sleep three days in the line for a ticket to Camagüey and until then I will even rent a couple hours of Play Station time from a neighbor. All this because he has finished seventh grade with good marks and deserves to be honored. Last Saturday, the end of the school year, he returned to the house with his diploma and launched his war cry from the doorway, “I am on vacation!”
The only thing is, I don’t know if my son has graduated from the seventh grade or from the Communist Party School “Ñico Lopez”. The confusion began when I saw the diploma, which you can look at – here – so you can see where my uncertainty comes from. What do you think?
-
At the end of my pre-university schooling I had the whim to be a journalist. Between three girlfriends, we contracted with a particular professor who helped us study for the tests to enter the university. This woman insisted – to the point where I found it annoying – that I would never make a good reporter, but that everything in me pointed to another profession: philology. Her curse came to pass because I ended up with words, phonics and literary concepts instead of running after the news.
It wasn’t just the prophecy of this Teresias* from Havana that led me away from reporting, but the conviction that in a society marked by censorship, opportunism and double standards, life as a journalist would be the source of a thousand and one frustrations. I had met Reinaldo, expelled from Rebel Youth* because, “his line of thought was not in line with the newspaper’s.” Seeing his desire to write squandered on a tough day as an elevator mechanic was the final blow to my adolescent dreams.
Glasnost had passed us by and in Cuba a sense of lost opportunity spread among reporters and their frustrated readers. Television told us over and over that production was increasing, the country would resist, and the “invincible leader” would carry us to victory, but our lives gave the lie to every triumphal phrase and each inflated figure. Time and again I breathed a sigh of relief at not having become a journalist. I thought myself safe in the world of metaphor.
There was not, however, that much distance between the two professions, as the better part of journalism in the official Cuban media encompasses much that is literature. In fact, I discovered that while trying to escape through fiction, fantasy and the theater, I found the same things the Cuban news bulletins were full of: characters whom nobody believed in, futuristic stories that never materialized, and a few smiling faces selected from among the thousands of anguished visages.
With her prediction, one illicit professor wanted to warn me of something I would discover for myself years later: between the fiction of our press and that of our novelists, the second was going to provide me more certainty.
*Translator’s notes:
UPEC = Association of Cuban Journalists (Unión de Periodistas de Cuba)
Teresia = From Greek mythology, the blind prophet of Thebes who was transformed into a woman for seven years.
Rebel Youth (Juventud Rebelde) = “The newspaper for Cuban youth,” according to its website. A daily paper with news of interest to younger people, that is teens and young adults; it is not children’s paper.
Photo caption: Police and “black wasps” control the gay corner of Prado and Teniente Rey
-
this one is called something to escape. Powerful stuff.
She can withstand a double workday, one as a secretary and the other as a mother and a homemaker, thanks to a few diazepam [Valium] pills that she keeps hidden in her handbag. No doctor prescribed the drug; instead she herself found the path to peace by trying different medicines. Only under the small pills’ influence—every time at a greater dosage—can she tolerate the Party meetings, the food lines and the difficulties of feeding her family.
At first she bought them from a neighbor who took various products from a pharmaceutical warehouse. She experimented with chlorodiazepoxide and amitriptyline, and taking them she was able to sleep at night and to smile when the bus came half an hour late. During a raid on the black market for medicines, her supplier was sent to jail, and she didn’t have the sedatives that she needed. Soon after, a new seller appeared, and this one had much higher prices.
Nobody in the family wants to admit that their mother lives in the clouds, with a strangely satisfied face, even when dealing with the problems and shortages. Her evasion is quieter than her husband’s drunken shuffle as he returns—almost falling–to the house at night. Both of them have chosen their escape, each of them using what they have at hand; he, with alcohol distilled at the hospital by a skilled hand, and she, with a pill that makes her forget about her own life.
The children can’t adapt themselves to this reality either. They’d rather nurture dreams of escape, although in a more real and more definitive manner than their parents. They keep a half-assembled motor underneath the bed, and this August they’ll purr across the Straits of Florida. The mother won’t worry about them. Double the diazepam dosage, and she’ll avoid torturing herself with thoughts of sharks, isolation, and the separation from her children that awaits her.
-
Good stuff Jammy :thumbsup:
-
More....
Free of charge and other fantasies
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Julio,19,2008
I go in search of eye drops for my right eye which I irritated a couple of days ago. The two hour wait at the family doctor gives me time to hear all the gossip of the neighborhood from the mouths of my neighbors who are going to “stop by” the doctor’s office. The doctor, complaining that her workload is too heavy because some of her colleagues are on a mission to Venezuela, writes me a referral while eating a six-peso pizza.
In the polyclinic the scene is similar, but my worry about my eye makes me behave myself and I wait until they can see me. One man with antediluvian glasses warns me that he has been waiting in line since six in the morning, so I calculate that I will be able to finish reading the novel I brought, while I wait. An old woman tells me, sarcastically, without my having opened my mouth, “This is because it’s free. If people had to pay for it, another rooster would crow.”*
I am not surprised by the expression she uses because phrases like this are popping up more frequently everywhere, but I am thinking about the peculiar idea of “free” she expresses. When she tells me this, I imagine that Aladdin’s lamp, rubbed by eleven million Cubans, has succeeded in providing these hospitals, schools and other publicized “subsidies.” But the image of the genie with his three wishes doesn’t last long, and I start thinking about the high price we pay every day.
The money does not come, as she believes, from the kindhearted pocket of those who govern us, but from the high taxes they charge us for everything we buy in the convertible peso stores, the excessive payments that compel us to take steps to emigrate, the humiliating burden that the foreign currency puts on this island, and the undervalued wages in which all workers are mired. We are the ones who pay for these services about which, ironically, we cannot complain.
Moreover, we also pay for the gigantic military infrastructure which, because of their warrior delusions, consumes a large share of the national budget. From our leaking pockets come the political campaigns, the solidarity marches, and the excesses of leadership our government treats itself to around the world. We are the ones who finance our own gags, the microphones that listen to us, the informers who stalk us, and the quiet parsimony of our parliamentarians.
Nothing is free. Every day we pay a high price for all these things. Not only in money, time and energy, but also in freedom. We ourselves are the ones who defray the cost of the cage, the birdseed, and the scissors with which they clip our wings.
Translator’s note:
Another rooster would crow or, in Spanish, “otro gallo cantaría” = Things would turn out differently.
Photo caption: Creativity or necessity?
-
:notworthy: more!
For Cubans, all the issues of citizenship represented in the development of our own internet projects, are too big for us to handle. Never having become citizens in the real world, it is hard for us to behave as citizens on the web. In this case, it won’t work to simply skip over stages, as we did with videocassettes (which were never sold in Cuban stores), tape recorders, and 5 ¼” floppy disks. Rather we will have to get our degrees in civics before we are, in reality, citizens.
Let’s see if I can understand the twisted logic of our virtual space: “A Cuban citizen cannot buy his own web domain and house it on a local server, but is in violation of the law when he lodges his site in another country.” “The official bloggers reflect reality but we, the alternative bloggers, are puppets of a foreign power…” “The internet is the battleground of ideas, where no one can enumerate at least one principle that won’t be intolerance.” In short, in addition to the mutilation of our society, we have entered the internet with several pieces missing.
At this rate, what will happen with the web is the same thing we see on our streets: people whose first reaction, when in front of the microphones and the cameras, is to exhibit an enthusiasm and ideological fidelity that is pure “froth.” That’s why on the internet we call ourselves folklorists and environmentalists; we have the employment agencies, the classified ads, or free music, but watch out when handing out opinions. On the World Wide Web we must wear the same masks that we hide behind in our lives. Having cyber-rights will have to wait, to see if one day we can at least make a start at becoming citizens.
Photo caption: Computer store “only for businesses”
-
This coming Saturday, July 26, Raúl Castro will speak in Santiago de Cuba. Broadcasting live on TV, he will address a people who still remember last year’s speech in which he mentioned “structural changes,” “a glass of milk for everyone,” and “the fight against the invasive marabu weed.” More than just listening to the announcement of new measures, we Cubans are preparing ourselves to confirm how little has been accomplished in the past twelve months.
The time for promises, and for magical solutions to overcome our underdevelopment, is definitely behind us. The political discourse, without a doubt, has begun its descent. But this doesn’t mean that some day it will touch down. A man with maximum powers continues to pilot the plane, while nobody tells us, over the loudspeakers, if we are maintaining our altitude or heading into a nosedive, if we have the wind at our backs or if the engines are about the explode. Only silence, interspersed with calls for discipline and sacrifice, comes from the speakers of this Soviet-era IL-14 airplane.
We don’t expect pirouettes in the air, nor caramels under our tongues to help us withstand the turbulent ride. What we do want is for the pilot to show his face, to tell us our itinerary, and for us to decide the course. We don’t need this speech on Saturday to turn into an exaltation about floating on air; we would prefer a clear report on how and when we can board a different flight.
2 opiniones
-
Well todays the blog is not available in English yet. So I tried a quick online translation. I get the jist of it. Heres the Spanish with the English after. Any Cuban spanish scholars here?
El malecón habanero se prepara para los carnavales. En la Piragua varios carpas se anuncian como restaurantes de comida internacional y coloridos kioscos surgen por toda la zona costera. Ya pueden verse -en las aceras y los portales- las estructuras metálicas que se usarán para los palcos, mientras las comparsas ajustan las coreografías que mostrarán a partir del viernes.
Producto de los sucesivos cambios de fecha que han sufrido nuestras fiestas populares, somos un pueblo que no sabe muy bien cuándo comienzan sus carnavales. Nos toma por sorpresa el anuncio de que van a iniciarse y ni siquiera nos frustramos demasiado cuando nos dicen que están suspendidos. Recuerdo que en el verano del 2006 nos quedamos con las carrozas pintadas, ya que las congas habaneras no encajaban en el sombrío escenario de la enfermedad de Fidel Castro.
Por suerte, este año las comparsas arrollaran. Seguiremos viviendo un carnaval esquizofrénico: la mayor parte de los productos en moneda convertible y una porción pequeña de placeres para los que solo tienen pesos cubanos. Nuestro jolgorio ha dejado de ser, debido a la violencia y la marginalidad, una cita para toda la familia. Pero aún así, es el momento para sacudirse las consignas, las escaseces y las expectativas frustradas. Bailar es una magnífica forma de olvidar.
Así que habrá festejo, en ese mismo perímetro de costa donde -hace catorce años- los habaneros mostraron su inconformidad en un estallido social. Beberemos alrededor del muro que ha sentido el peso de las balsas improvisadas con rumbo al norte. Habrá salsa y reggaetón, en la misma avenida marítima que hace meses no ve pasar una manifestación coreando slogans y agitando banderitas. En ese malecón que nos ha visto gritar, partir y fingir, vamos –por estos días- a divertirnos
The Havanan levee is prepared for the carnivals. In the Canoe several carps announce as restaurants of international food and colorful kioscos arise by all the coastal zone. The sidewalks and the vestibules already can be seen - in the metallic structures that will be used for the theater boxes, while comparsas fits the choreographies that will show as of Friday. Product of the successive changes of date that have undergone our popular celebrations, we are a town that does not know very well when their carnivals begin. It takes us by surprise the announcement of which is going to begin and not even we were frustrated too much when they say to us that they are suspended. Memory that in the summer of the 2006 we remained with the floats guinea fowl, since congas Havanan did not fit in the shady scene of the disease of Fidel Castro. Luckily, this year comparsas would coil. We will continue living a schizophrenic carnival: most of the products in convertible currency and a small portion of pleasures for which they only have Cubano Pesos. Ours jolgorio has stopped being, due to the violence and the marginality, an appointment for all the family. But even so, it is the moment to shake the frustrated slogans, shortages and expectations. To dance is a magnificent form to forget. So there will be celebration, in that same perimeter of coast where - fourteen years ago the Havanans showed their nonconformity in a social outbreak. We will drink around the wall that has felt the weight of the rafts improvised in the direction of the north. There will be sauce and reggaetón, in the same marine avenue that for months has not been seeing pass a manifestation coreando slogans and shaking little flags. In that levee that has seen shout, start off us and pretend, we are going - by these days to amuse itself
-
Thanks Jammy, it's a very interesting read :icon_thumright:
-
:salute:
After the squeeze of these last months, I manage to extract some events that could be called “innovative.” One of the most advertised has been the handing over of idle land to those who want to make it productive. Under the concept of usufruct, that is the right to freely use and profit from someone else’s property as long as it is not damaged, what is being offered today, for a period of ten years, are large, and until recently underutilized, state-owned estates. Given the law and studying the “pros and cons,” the biggest problem now is to convince the potential lucky winners that their contracts won’t be canceled prematurely.
Caught up in this new practice of making the underutilized productive, I perused my city looking for everything that is useless. I have managed to inventory a staggering number of services, factories, and work places competing for the prize for inefficiency. So, were we to apply the same logic to these enterprises as to land, they could be offered to citizens to manage privately. The rest of our centralized economy demands the same treatment as those marabou weed infested hectares, today granted in usufruct to the independent farmer.
My catalog of the “infertile” abounds with restaurants full of flies but lacking in menu offerings, rambling Vedado* houses moldering in the hands of some institution no one needs, and hotels, like the Capri, the New York or the Isle of Cuba, destroyed by negligence and government apathy. To impose some common sense, these examples of inactivity could be placed in the hands of citizens, families, or groups, ready to make them productive.
Better that I don’t continue this survey of inefficiency. It could come to proposing that the seats in parliament, the political offices, the ministries and their dependents, all be surrendered for the benefit of those who could actually make them effective.
Cartoon speech balloons:
“We are going to give you this idle land in usufruct.”
“Idle? Me, I see it ‘murdered’.”
Translator’s note:
Vedado = A neighborhood in Havana.
-
:binkybaby:
concluded – I make a mess of the pronunciation of the word “proletaritos.” How will the little kids inside articulate the name of their kindergarten? Wouldn’t they prefer a more tender concept such as “Little Butterflies,” “Little Rays of Sun” or “Snow Whites” to this classist and old-fashioned definition?
The biggest shock may come later when they know how to read and search in a dictionary for the significance of this rare word that hangs from the entrance. The first meaning of “proletariats” that they will discover is people who are “dispossessed, who have no assets,” and they will be annoyed by those who tangled their tongues and, on top of that, condemned them to not having any property.
Caption: Preschool “Little Proletariats”
-
:notworthy:
It’s a long time until I will be ready to retire, however I have read very carefully the proposed Social Security Law that is going to be discussed by parliament. Like many Cubans, I decided to work without a net and support myself through freelancing because, to me, the guarantee of a future pension was remote compared with the economic pressures of the present.
Looking at the new proposal for higher pensions, I notice the token numbers that are meant to make up for the increase of five years in the age of retirement. Astonishingly, Leo, a preschool teacher who will retire after the new legislation goes into effect, will receive only thirty-five pesos more a month than someone who retires this morning. Not only is she looking at a postponement of the date of her deserved rest, she will receive the laughable equivalent of 1.40 CUCs.
To put it as crudely as it deserves, this woman will now work five years longer and in return, when she finally leaves the workforce, she will get enough extra money to drink one beer a month. Perhaps the retired educator does not like alcohol or her doctor has forbidden it, in which case she could use this “notable” raise to buy herself a tube of toothpaste or a deodorant. It would be nice and dramatic if this hypothetical woman took to the streets chanting the question, “All this for just one beer?”
Translator’s note:
1.40 CUCs is approximately 1.40 Canadian or American dollar, 0.75 British pounds, or 0.95 Euros.
-
Let others blow out the candles
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Agosto,13,2008 (http://[img][img])[/img][/img]
On the morning of August 13, 2001, I turned on the radio very early. In a pompous voice an announcer intoned, “Today is the Fatherland’s birthday,” and then proceeded to read an interminable panegyric on the Maximum Leader. Lying in bed I had the impulse to catapult myself to another galaxy, to escape from this Island where the anniversary of a birth has become the founding date. That day I made the decision to emigrate from my country and eleven months later I boarded a plane destined for Europe.
It has been seven years since that outburst. I have left and returned but I continue to hear phrases similar to what was said on that day. I notice the same attempts to associate the questionable actions of a man with something more enduring: the Nation. What has changed is that this ridiculous cult of personality no longer makes me want to escape, instead I want to stay; it doesn’t confuse me, it makes me see more clearly what we must not tolerate. In the future, no person should be confused with the Fatherland. No birthday candles on any cake should be blown out in the name of us all.
Photo caption: Everything comes to its end
-
:binkybaby: Strong stuff
He’s 28 and works at a hotel pool because his stepfather bought him a job in the tourism industry. His command of English is awful but with the two thousand pesos he paid to the administrator, he didn’t have to prove he could speak it. More than half the bottles of rum and coca cola he sells at the snack bar he bought himself at the retail price. His colleagues taught him how to sell his own “merchandise” first, over that which the State sells to tourists. Thanks to this trick, on every shift he pockets what a neurosurgeon would earn in a month.
His rhythm of spending is tied to his illegal profits, so he tries to comply rather than clash on the plane of “ideological unconditionality.” He’s one of the first to arrive when called to a march or to the May-Day parade. In his wardrobe for when needed, he has a pullover with the Five Heroes, another with Che’s face, and a dark red one that says “Battle of Ideas.” If his boss tries to catch him diverting resources, he wears one of those shirts and the pressure eases.
At his young age, he already understands that it doesn’t matter how many times you cross the line of illegality as long as you keep applauding. Some slogans shouted at a political event, or that time he spoke out against a counterrevolutionary group, have helped him keep his lucrative employment. His hands, that today steal, cheat customers, and divert goods from the state, six years ago these same hands signed a constitutional amendment to make the system “irreversible.” For him, if they let him continue to line his pockets, socialism could well be eternal.
Translator’s note:
Five Heroes = Five Cuban men convicted of spying in the United States. More detail about this ongoing case can easily be found by searching on the phrase + “Cuba.”
1 opinión »
-
:binkybaby:
They took him because nothing destabilizes the intransigents more than a man in his most free state. At the Fifth Police Station, 3rd and 62nd in Playa, where the criminals take turns and a toilet is a painful illusion, Gorki rips the strings of his rebelliousness. He is a weird guy, everyone notices it, even more weird in a society where the model of the “New Man” is the coloring book version of the idiot in the classroom.
Gorki concentrates the attraction that his critics do not have; he sings, sways, and shouts in his bloody rock lyrics what others mutter with fear. He has a room lined with egg cartons somebody gave him, because if we added up all the eggs he’s entitled to from the rationed market he would not have been able to wallpaper even a closet. He is accused of a crime from the script of the film “Minority Report,” charged under the euphemism of “pre-delinquent dangerousness.” Translated into the language of reality, it means they put you behind bars so you don’t commit the mischief that others see coming.
In the case of Gorki, the charge has been led by a delegate of the constituency with delusions of James Bond, a neighbor woman they “advised” to make the accusation, and by a community that avoids interceding for the “uncomfortable.” On Thursday he will have his preliminary hearing and only some clothes and toiletries brought by his father have managed to make it to him where they have him “guarded.” There is little chance of the defense lawyer convincing the strict prosecutor that Gorki’s long hair, his rock songs, and the noise of his guitar, are not more dangerous than the inertia, conformity and double standard in which everything is wrapped.
More details about the detention are at the site Porno Para Ricardo
-
LOL! Hes a punk rocker from Cuba.
:headbang:
-
:binkybaby:
]
They warn me that on the table in some office rests “my case.” A file full of evidence of infractions committed, a bulky dossier of illegalities I have accumulated on these years. The neighbors hint to me to disguise myself with sunglasses and disconnect the phone when I would like to talk about something private.
Soon, very soon – they warn me – I could hear a knock at my door very early one morning.
In anticipation of this, I would like to point out that I do not keep weapons under the bed. However, I have committed an unfailing and heinous offence: I have believed myself to be free. Nor do I have a firm plan to change things, but for me the complaint has replaced triumphalism and this – definitely – is punishable.
I never slapped anyone, nevertheless, I refused to accept the systematic swatting at my “rights as a citizen.” This last is reprehensible in the highest degree. On top of that, and in spite of having stolen nothing that belongs to others, they have wanted “to rob” – again and again – that which I believed belonged to me: an island, her dreams, her legacy.
But don’t fool yourself; I’m not entirely innocent. I carry with me a mountain of misdeeds; I have routinely bought on the black market, I have commented in a low voice – and in critical terms – about those who govern us, I have nicknamed politicians and agreed with pessimism. To top it off, I have committed the abominable office of believing in a future without “them” and in a version of history different from that which they have taught me. I repeated the slogans without conviction, washed the dirty laundry in full view and – the greatest transgression – I have joined words and phrases together without permission.
I confess – and accept the punishment for it – that I have not been able to survive and comply with all the laws at the same time.
Words on painting: I am hunting you
-
:salute: She writes with such passion. *I wonder if anyone is reading this stuff?*
have a lot to tell about the events of these last days. I know that you are waiting for the details about what happened at the concert on Thursday, the poster, the beatings, the arrests, the incredible police operation and all the stand-by activities in front of the Playa Municipal Tribunal that ended with the liberation of Gorki. The trial alone – in which I was present to check the inconsistencies in all the accusations made against the rocker – would give enough material for several posts. Unfortunately, because of Gustav the weather situation in Havana doesn’t allow me to leave the house to connect to the internet in a public place. On my balcony, fourteen floors up, we already have strong winds, and have started to close the windows and protect the plants. Today I am called on to face another cyclone.
What I do not want to fail to say is that never before, as in these last days, have I seen international public opinion, the media, and Cuban civil society come together and cooperate. Yesterday we demonstrated that we can push the wall if we do it together. We have forced them to retract, to undo the injustice, and this is a very good precedent for us and extremely dangerous for “them.” The internet proved that it can act, in the Cuban case, as a virtual environment for joint efforts. I hope that these centimeters we have managed to push the boundaries are followed by meters and meters of reclaimed freedoms.
*I have dictated this post by telephone to some friends who will post it. With the collaboration of some of them I was able to report yesterday from outside the court. I want to especially thank Ernesto Hernández Busto through whom much of this information saw the light of day in the pages of “Penúltimos días.”
Da tu opinión »
-
The fear has reached you by contagion, because in truth you never suffered an interrogation, nor looked over the walls; you were never the victim of a purge nor did they throw an egg at your face. Maybe they never even called to tell you about it. Your sense of unease came to you from what you hear, by transference, through others who have reason for intimidation.
One day you packed your bags and crossed to the other side of the Atlantic, packing also the piece of fear that you wear. Your children were born far from this Island, but still you serve them their corresponding tablespoon of apprehension. They may not be able to speak Spanish, they may not be able to find the country where their father came from on a map, but they know how to find fear. The devastating epidemic of fear that is not cured has come to them.
6 opiniones »
-
thanks Jammy, keep them coming :icon_thumright:
-
WOW!
I just starting reading this thread....
fascinating!
thank you, Jammy!
Karen
-
It is interesting isn't it? I'm happy someone has been reading :thumbsup: :happy3:
-
I've been reading it too. I'm more of a reader these days than a poster.
-
:thumbsup: good to know
-
I'm reading too! :icon_thumright: Keep 'em coming! *clap*
-
A cry for help :
:sad10:Calm in the Atlantic
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Septiembre,11,2008
The principal Cuban television meteorologist, Jose Rubiera, announced that no new tropical storm or hurricane has formed in the Atlantic ocean. The relief spread across the one hundred and eleven thousand square kilometers of this island. At least for a few days, the cyclone corridor that we have become will take a break. This climatological news has not dispelled the sorrow and unease that we have for the immediate future. Despite the air of triumph they present to us on the TV news, talking about “hurricane recovery,” Cubans are very worried.
On the one hand, all the illusions of those expecting an economic recovery in the coming months have been dashed. We have already said goodbye to certain products including bananas, mangoes, avocados, the foods and citrus fruits that will take years to return to their already high current prices. After four days without electricity and without any water supply we, and all of the neighbors in the 144 apartments in my building, are waiting for a free supply of drinkable water and the distribution of prepared food. Some have been shouting their disapproval from the balconies, to which I responded with a provocative “Viva Raúl!” which nearly cost me a lynching.
Nor can the market where they take only convertible pesos, with its fat prices, cope with the demands of desperate habaneros. Hurricane Ike has made the profound social differences between those who can keep a reserve supply of food, boards, and battery-powered radios, and those who depend exclusively on the official administration, all the more obvious. The past history of how State aid to victims of natural disasters fades over the months causes people not to want promises, but rather immediate solutions. The voracity with which we take now what might no longer be available tomorrow had the inhabitants of one town in Pinar del Río laying into a truck with machetes to reach its 100 sheets of asbestos cement roofing.
There is a lack of humility in those who should do everything possible to allow humanitarian aid to enter Cuba. One measure that would be very well received would be if the National Customs waived the taxes on the kilograms of medicines, clothing and food emigrant family members want to bring to the island. Instead, however, we Cubans woke up in the middle of a cyclone to an increase in prices for fuel and other staples. They turn down aid without asking what the people think and allow some outsiders to conduct inspections while refusing to let others do likewise. The image of the Venezuelan military arriving in Cuba to “inspect the damage” – that’s word-for-word – contrasts with their fastidiousness about accepting something similar from the European Union countries (with the exception of Spain and Belgium) or the United States.
The questions of the moment are: What is the priority of the Cuban government? Political principals or the welfare of those who have lost everything? What is the preference of the North American government? That the formal inspection requirements are met, or that the aid reaches the victims? Citizens are not going to wait until both governments come to agreement. The people’s diplomacy can surprise them by acting faster and more efficiently.
Da tu opinión »
How can I help?
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Septiembre,11,2008
Those who have plans to travel to Cuba in the coming months and would like to show their solidarity by helping, I recommend bringing in your luggage a few kilograms of supplies to deliver directly to the victims. While anything can help those families that have lost their possessions, there are certain things and resources that are a priority.
Water purifying tablets.
Vitamins, every kind of painkiller, thermometers, band-aids, oral hydration salts, disposable syringes, cotton, medicinal sprays for asthmatics, aspirin, paracetamol and suture thread.
Clothing of all kinds, including underwear and shoes.
School supplies, especially notebooks and pencils.
Rechargeable batteries, flashlights and portable radios.
Toiletries: soap, toothpaste, shampoo and toothbrushes.
Baby clothes and things for babies. Remember that babies have been left without even a bottle.
A recommendation to take into consideration: It is always preferable, whenever possible, to deliver the aid directly to those in need. Personal delivery or sending things through friends is the most secure.
-
A character with a fat neck and briefcase in hand appears every Wednesday in the humorous “Wait let me tell you,” in same space where Professor Chicken Mind, already described in this Blog, releases his platitudes of dilettante wisdom. Incompetent Lindoro is the director of an inefficient company and has a car registered to the State that he never uses for the benefit of the workers. Impeccably dressed, he sidles up to his subordinates and warns them ironically, “As for me, it pleases me to please.” His extra pounds and his elegant dark blue suit contrast with his slovenly demeanor and the unproductivity of everything in the “Bartolete Pérez” workshop.
This prototypical boss flaunts a phrase that has managed to insert itself into the popular vocabulary, precisely the epithet with which he refers to the inefficient, apathetic and poorly paid group of household appliance repairers that he directs. With his Colgate smile he asks, while announcing some urgent task or a new bureaucratic absurdity, the question, “How is this valiant collective?” Incompetent Lindoro is not a caricature of a boss, but rather the sum of many of them, the portrait in humorous tones of those who have a little power.
These days he frequently evokes the chubby company director and his triumphalist language. In the midst of a flu caused by rain pouring in through the windows of my house, I listened on my little dynamo radio to many Incompetent Lindoros. They spoke precisely of a “valiant collective,” where I only see desperate faces. They called for calm and resistance, from their fat necks, from their dry cars. Some, the most powerful, without personally going to the disaster sites, attempted through a telephone line to make promises as hollow and empty as those of this satirical character.
Our Incompetent Lindoros don’t want to recognize that the emergency situation created by Gustav and Ike is not only the fault of the strong winds and rains, but rather of the disaster of production and housing that had already dragged this Island down. Today, in the morning, after two hours in line I was able buy four pounds of sweet potatoes and a piece of fruta bomba* without seeing in the line a single specimen of a director. For pork, we must take turns in the early morning. In the stores that take convertible pesos* the empty refrigerators stink of chicken and meat that was ruined. The food situation could not be worse and although my house endured the winds and in my area there is no great devastation, the only thing people ask about is food. Rising fuel prices already caused the private taxi drivers to double their fares; for a trip that used to cost ten pesos we now pay twenty. But the TV doesn’t see that side of the crisis, but rather a people strong and “valiant” declaring their votes of confidence and expressing hope in front of the cameras.
What will Incompetent Lindor do when the slogans shouted today in front of journalists turn into expressions of discontent and protest? Will they hide themselves then–with a stash of food–inside their briefcases?
Translator’s notes:
Fruta bomba is the Cuban word for papaya. In Cuba ‘papaya’ is an exceedingly rude word relating to female body parts. If you are in Cuba and would like a papaya, you are advised to ask for “fruta bomba.”
Convertible pesos: See the entry, “From the same pocket,” 7 February 2008, and the footnote for “Cyber-mutilated,” 21 July 2008, for more information about the Cuban dual monetary system.
Da tu opinión »
-
Excellent posts Jammy, thankyou so much for sharing.
I've seen the 1st blog about Ike on a number of forums, and a Facebook group. Reading it makes it really hit home just how desparate the situation is in Cuba right now.
Those that hold the purse strings for International Aid need to pay attention and step up to the plate and help!
-
Im glad you like it. It is profound what this woman writes. My heart goes out to her. It reminds me of what I need to do.
-
Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that begin with or contain a "Y." Born in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite especially Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who drag their "Y's" to read my Blog and to write to me.
Her fridge is empty
The original sin
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Septiembre,17,2008
August and September have been a tough test for the long-awaited economic reforms, which appear to have been shipwrecked even before weighing anchor. “You have to have confidence in the management of Raúl Castro” exhorted my friend on seeing my persistent distrust. “Soon they are going to implement new measures,” the same lady assured me, almost three months ago. She belongs to the group who hope the rulers can solve our current problems—a good part of which they created themselves with their absurd prohibitions. Me, I’m on the picket line with the skeptics.
My doubt stems from “the original sin” of Raúl’s government: It was not elected by the people, rather it is the fruit of a dynastic, inherited succession. He was not chosen instead of—at least—one opponent and, for me, designation without an alternative is not an election.
The current President did not propose a program, he did not commit himself before his voters, and that means he is not accountable to us. The much needed measures can take one year or five years because he will not lose his post He caught, without competitors, the tempting apple of power. Now he can eat it without haste, because our votes have not been the path that led him to obtain it.
-
:salute:
Uterus on strike
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Septiembre,18,2008
She was going to be called Gea and she would come to relieve Teo of the burden of being the only child in the house. With her I might once again have prepared pureed malanga, boiled bottles in the night and washed loads of diapers. But thinking better of it, Gea remained the desire of another child that I did not have. I looked ahead twenty years, with the same housing problems of today and with two married children who would bring their spouses to live in our apartment. At first, with the three marriages, we would try to maintain harmony, but the fights would inevitably come.
Our house would be like so many, where several generations live and a suppressed battle takes place every day. The refrigerator would be divided into three zones and the couples would make love quietly, faced with the proximity of the other beds. The grandchildren would come to share the bedroom with the grandparents—in this case my husband and me—and make them feel like they were already a nuisance to the young people. The children would spend a good part of the time in the corridor or in the street, because of the little space available at home. They would become teenagers and look for partners, new potential occupants for the house already bursting at the seams.
If, before the hurricanes Gustav and Ike, my generation and that of Teo had to wait forty years or more to have a house, now the period has surpassed the span of a human life. Together with the roofing tiles and the windows that the winds took, they also sent flying our dreams of having our own roof. Where there are no resources to replace what the victims had and lost, how long will the wait be for those who had nothing.
Without sentimentality Gea has vanished totally from my life, now I know that we will have no space for her.
-
Sad! Today's entry sounds so hopeless. I like the title!
-
:binkybaby: It is truly amazing to read, I know. Humbling .
-
Who’s afraid of books?
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Septiembre,22,2008
Saturday night I’m yawning in front of a boring cops-and-robbers thriller on TV. The phone rings and it’s Adolfo,* who is still behind bars since a tantrum of power condemned him in the Black Spring* of 2003. He sounds upset. Some quasi-literate jailers are preventing him from receiving the books and magazines brought by his wife on her last visit. The list of the “dangerous” texts withheld includes the Catholic publications New Word, Secular Space, and the spiritual reflections of Saint Augustine. His co-defendants and fellow inmates, Pedro Argüelles Morán and Antonio Ramón Díaz Sánchez, have been united in exerting pressure in the only way they can: Rejecting the meager sustenance put on their trays. As long as they refuse to pass on the sustenance of words, they will refuse the tasteless ration that keeps them alive.
The distrust among the Canaleta* prison guards provoked by the books reminds me of the Columbian Jorge Zalamea and his poem-novel, “The Great Burundan Burundi has died.” A dictator, fearful of articulate language, condemns his subjects to a world without communication and without literature. To enforce his mandate of silence, he recruits all those offended by words. He summons, to train his armies of censors, “those incapable of fervor, those lacking in imagination, those who never talk to themselves, (…) those who hit animals and children when they don’t understand their glances…”
The pawns who today withhold Adolfo’s books form a part of these same phalanxes of illiterate censors. Jailers of expression, they understand—as the Great Burundan might understand—that the human condition and “the rebellion that follows it, have their foundation in the articulated word.” They suspect that when Adolfo, Pedro and Antonio are engrossed in an essay or a story the bars disappear, the jail fades away, and they manage to shake off their lengthy sentences. The “instruction” received by the guards in Cuban prisons ensures that they know that a book is something extremely dangerous.
Translator’s notes:
Adolfo Fernández Saínz: Previous entries that provide background include, An empty chair, and The stubborn empty chair.
Black Spring: In March 2003, coinciding with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Cuba arrested about 75-90 people including about 25-35 journalists (reports vary). The majority of these people remain in prison.
Canaleta: A high security prison located in Ciego de Ávila, about 460 km (285 miles) east of Havana.
-
I collect “denials”
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Septiembre,24,2008
There are those who have a wall full of diplomas, or a shirt straining under the weight of medals. Heroes who accumulate scars, and we citizens who stockpile frustrations. Not to be left behind in this widespread mania for collecting, I attempt to have my own collection of something. I collect denials of travel, slips of paper that repeat that I may not leave “for the moment” and airplane tickets postponed. All this with the same compulsion that others amass soft drink labels or ceramic figurines.
Stubborn, like a can of condensed milk, I have resubmitted my papers to visit Europe. Not acquiescent with the “no” they already gave me in May, I returned to the Plaza municipality’s Bureau of Emigration and Immigration. I waited several days, while the breaking of the machine that prints the stickers delayed an answer that I already intuited. In the end, someone in olivegreen confirmed to me that the penalty still stands. The corrective, being made to kneel on rice, is in my case a prohibition on leaving this Island. Won’t the Daddy-State learn how irritating children become when they rarely leave the house?
* Here is a link to the second document, in less than a year, that tells of my condition: Captive Blogger.
Da tu opinión »
-
This is the captive blogger entry
As if that were not enough, yesterday they have given me a new award. The award I have received leads to a film titled on Saturday, “The Captive Blogger,” and involves not letting me travel to Madrid for the award ceremony for the Ortega y Gasset prize. Those who have not given me what I wanted, have not given their names, but in this blog we call them, “them.” They are those who, wearing a military uniform, control our rights as citizens and give orders but not explanations.
I did not think I deserved so much attention but, if the officials insist, I accept this new honor. They forget that in cyberspace my voice can travel without limits, coming and going without asking permission. It doesn’t matter if they keep my passport. Since a year ago I have had another nationality in the space on my passport, the short word: “Blogger.”
-
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Septiembre,26,2008
The accounting of the disaster is over and our news programs seem to have entered a rosy period where there is only room for reports of recovery and optimism. Neither regret nor doubt have a place among so many calls to confidence. The opinions and faces shown on TV are carefully selected; they only show those who have something hopeful to say. The phrase “back to normal” is repeated by Party general secretaries, by drivers of trucks loaded with roofing and even by the victims themselves. They try to erase at all costs the “now” to return to the “before” of the two hurricanes.
The truth is that I do not believe that a month ago we had anything resembling “normal.” Furthermore, in the three decades that I have under my belt I do not think I have lived in anything other than what is anomalous. To those who trumpet the word, I would like to ask them if they believe the Special Period* is “normal,” the fear of the zero option,* the endless speeches, the Battle of Ideas, the rallies of repudiation, my friends arming a raft to take to the sea, the “it exists but it doesn’t touch you, or it touches you but it doesn’t exist,” the perennial lines, the promises of change that is not specified, the idle land, the idea of the public square where dissent is treason, speaking in a whisper, the paranoia that everyone could be part of the Apparatus,* travel restrictions, the privileges of a few, the dual currency, the indoctrination in schools, lack of expectations, billboards with slogans that nobody believes and the hope, the expectation, the dreams that sometime everything will arrive at a point close to “normal.”
Translator’s notes:
Special Period: The period following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its support for Cuba.
Zero Option: A contingency plan from the post-Soviet period that envisioned Cuba surviving “alone” in the world, with its economy cut off from almost all other countries.
Apparatus: State security.
-
Wait
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Septiembre,29,2008
I recover from a cold humming a tune by the Habanero singer-songwriter Erick Sánchez that he dedicated to me at his last concert and that today I want to share with you. It’s a catchy tune about those who only know how to wait, with their arms crossed, white others do something. The song has already been around for a while but Erick added a final improvisation about these times of supposed reforms and expectations.
With this video, filmed by me in the small theater at the Museum of Fine Arts, I want to add a multimedia component to this blog for the first time. We have only had to “wait” seventeen months to post some music, so it hasn’t been too…
This Saturday I went back to Pinar del Rio and in the next post will include some images and anecdotes about what I saw over there. Meanwhile, here are the lyrics of the improvisation by Erick Sánchez :
In Spanish:
Esperar, esperar, esperar
A sin permiso viajar afuera
Esperar, esperar, esperar
Que pongan una sola moneda
Esperar, esperar, esperar
Y que lo hagan sin que te duela
Esperar, esperar, esperar
Y sin tanta preguntadera
In English:
Wait, wait, wait
For freedom to travel abroad
Wait, wait, wait
For a single currency
Wait, wait, wait
And that they do it without causing you pain
Wait, wait, wait
And without so many questions
I dedicate this song to Adolfo Fernandez Saenz, who ended his hunger strike last week, in the Canaleta prison. With your determination and the help of many who supported your complaint, you succeeded in getting the prison guards to return your books.
Adolfo, brother, this song is for you and hopefully you will not have to wait much longer.
ESPERAR.
-
The ghost of Pravda
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Septiembre,29,2008
The most important news in the Cuban press does not come with titles that give away its contents. Under the titles “Informing the population,” “Letter from the Ministry of the Interior,” or “Declaration of the State Council,” we learned of the most significant events. This Monday it was the newspaper Granma which trumpeted in huge letters, “Information for our people.” The elderly quickly bought all the newspapers from the kiosks and raised, to two pesos, the resale price for a copy of the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party.
“Granma is authorized to report,” the newspaper announced, just as they used to do, in their time, in the pages of the Soviet newspaper Pravda. The expression made me think about how much news they have been ordered not to report in our largest circulation daily paper, and with what discipline they have complied with this direction to shut up. I shook off the Stalinist reminders of the front page and continued reading. After a few paragraphs it was already clear to me that not only did the design recall the worst of the Russian press before Glasnost, but that the tone and threats did as well. With the warning that “any attempt to violate the law or the rules of social coexistence will be met with a swift and forceful response,” the editorial warns speculators, profiteers, or sellers in the informal market that punishment awaits them.
I was especially confused by a small paragraph in the center of a very “Pravda-like” composition that pointed out: “Thus it invariably will be enforced in the face of such actions and against all signs of privilege, corruption or theft…” How could the General Prosecutor of the Republic cope with so many privileges, granted to the ideologically loyal, that proliferate on this Island. Will the excesses that are going to be penalized include the beach house where the lieutenant colonel vacations with his family, the shopping bag with chicken and detergent given to the censor for filtering web pages, the access to preferential prices enjoyed by the whistleblowers and the “vultures” of State Security. These are the privileges I see around me, but I don’t think that Granma has launched a crusade against them. That would be an act of self-cannibalism.
The title of this article should be “It threatens our people,” because we are all included in the harsh words that seem to be directed only at criminals. I read it like this because who is this country doesn’t cross the line of illegality to buy something; what citizen doesn’t depend on the black market; how many families don’t survive through the diversion of resources against the indignity of their salaries; which are the mechanisms of distribution that aren’t plagued by corruption, so despicable but tolerated by the State itself because it is one of the safety valves that prevents a social explosion. The ghost of Pravda is not the only ghost I have perceived through reading this article, but also that of radicalization, the strong hand, and the State of Emergency. That situation of a constant battle against something within which our leaders seem to feel so comfortable.
-
On Saturday, we took advantage of a friend heading for Pinar del Rio and traveled in his car with some donations for the victims. Clothes and food given by people who have little, but with a desire to help those who have less. That solidarity between citizens that, although it may seem insignificant compared to what governments and NGOs can give, mustn’t be left undone. The final destination for the things we collected was the town of Consolación del Norte and the small adjoining villages, some of which still don’t have electricity.
On the highway we were surprised to see how quickly they had repaired all the political billboards. These signs would be more practical as roofs for houses than in their current use as political propaganda. One of these gigantic metal posters would be enough to cover some of the houses whose residents are still sleeping under the stars. Can you imagine having a ceiling that reads, “Only by our work can we create resources”? Living under such a platitude might not be very pleasant but at least it would protect you from the rain.
I returned and confirmed that the recovery will take years, that hope is scarce and that the worst may be yet to come when the enthusiasm for helping fades. The police have tightened the checkpoints along the highway to prevent the movement of goods in the informal market. Bad news for all of us who depend, in large measure, on the sellers who knock on our doors. An intense campaign against the diversion of resources, against high prices in the farmers markets, and against all those who spread negative rumors, warns us of what’s to come. We already know that these offensives start by attacking what’s illegal and evolve until they restrict the few spaces for opinion and continue even to the peanut sellers. The condition of “public plaza under siege” is heightened, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see some examples of legal processes in order “to conserve socialism.”
These two hurricanes have left us trapped in a pattern we already know. That of a State that tries to resolve through centralization, control, legal threats and a strong hand what should be solved with openness, space for private initiatives, freedoms and reforms.
-
Eliécer’s motives
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Octubre,6,2008
With a muffled struggle, the animal spoke,
mouth foaming and eye terrible,
“Brother Francis, don’t come too close…”
Rubén Darío*
The interviews given by Eliécer Ávila, a UCI [University of Information Sciences] student, to Cubaencuentro and Kaos en la Red [Chaos on the Web] were sent to me by email. Reading both of them, I knew that they would not be published in any of the mainstream media on the Island because they express opinions—shared by the majority—that our newspapers prefer to ignore. The young man from Las Tunas has been relegated to the Internet, with the video of his run-in with the President of the National Assembly circulated only through alternative means. However, we Cubans rely on a kind of Web 4.0 that doesn’t need cables, nor modems and can even dispense with the computer. Hence, this week all of Havana already knows about Eliécer ‘s conversation with an independent journalist. Information, every day, is finer and finer sand slipping through the censors’ fingers.
Some see this Las Tunas boy of precise speech as the tip of a conspiracy to “abduct” the most critical young people. I confess that I am tired of these manias to see in each action a perfectly calculated plot. I don’t believe that our leaders can organize everything, nor play that political chess they are believed capable of. Much less in these times when the squares on the board have been erased and at least three of the table legs are lame. I refuse to see, in every event, the strings inevitably being pulled by the hands of State Security. To believe this would be to think that they are omnipresent, that they know everything and, fortunately, this is a quality held only by God.
I prefer to speculate that yes, Eliécer is sincere in his approach. That he is a young man, like many, dissatisfied with the dual currency, with the abuses of power, with the gerontocracy that governs us. One who with a peasant’s straightforwardness calls things by their names and believes in the power to change, from within, the system that will end up devouring it. What is not healthy, candid or honest is the reality surrounding this computer science student. A society where the boys of Porno para Ricardo can’t appear in concert, where several blogs and web pages are blocked and where someone with a different opinion is accused of being an agent of the CIA; it has the design of a long thought-out conspiracy—and it’s here, yes, that I show my paranoia—to deprive us of the right to dissent.
The anxious young man presented himself, before Ricardo Alarcón, as part of “Operation Truth” which monitors the Internet and counters opinions antagonistic to the Cuban way. Which makes him both a victim and an executioner of the lack of space for plurality and debate. Forgive me Eliécer Ávila, but to enter the Web from an institutional PC with the direction to neutralize divergent ideas, is to act—using your own metaphor—like those “who drive a large truck believing they own the road, without respect for the rights of others, because they know that if you mix it up with them, you’ll come out of it very badly.”
Translator’s notes:
Early this year a video started circulating on the internet of Eliécer Ávila, a student at the University of Information Sciences in Havana, standing at a microphone at a student assembly and respectfully questioning Ricardo Alarcon, President of Cuba’s National Assembly. Readers can find a wealth of information, and the video, through a google search. The questions Eliécer asked ranged from why access to Google is restricted when there is no Cuban equivalent, to why a toothbrush costs three days’ pay. Last week, an interview with Eliécer, published on the Web, covered events since the video was released.
Rubén Darío: Nicaraguan poet, 1867-1916. This quote is a fragment from the poem “Los motivos del lobo” [The wolf’s motives]. “Brother Francis” is Saint Francis of Assisi.
-
To Gandhi on the 139th anniversary of his birth
He prepared. He polished his explanations. All the proposals he had been accumulating over years of looking at his reality and wanting to change things, he honed for a verbal contest. He had calculated that his debate opponent would remind him of the benefits and would warn him against certain “spots on the sun,” those small imperfections that only the hard-to-please notice. He was especially equipped to avoid comparisons with other countries—a common tactic of those who want to silence criticism. He was ready to refute the insult that his words were favorable to the North, or that his shoes didn’t appear to have been bought with the salary of a worker.
A baseball fanatic, he warmed the arm of his debate, like the fourth batter who hopes to hit a home run before an adversary incapable of pitching new arguments. He had spent years waiting for the debate and finally the opportunity to talk back was upon him. Except that he came to the platform thinking they wanted to listen to him. Big mistake. In reality, his opponent intended only to muzzle him. So, the strong edifice of explanations he had constructed did not stand up against his opponent’s shouts and aggression. Every opinion met swollen veins, closed fists and a torrent of insults. He tried to explain that he was only thinking about the good of his country, but the insult of “mercenary” didn’t allow him to finish his sentence.
Because he didn’t know how to respond to the punches, he preferred to shut up and his rival thought he had crushed him. But there he was, a man armed for debate, reduced to protecting himself from stones. He went home and one by one ruled out the analyses, rejected the explanations about the economic unviability of the system and condemned, to the worst possible place, his extensive diatribe against a Revolution where changes never happen. He went to the kitchen and looked for the thick iron bar that he used to protect against thieves. His opponent had achieved his purpose: he had been transformed into someone who needs violence in order to be heard.
-
The longest war
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Octubre,11,2008
On Thursday, a movie about the Cuban war in Angola was released across the island. Outside the movie theaters couples chose to change course and head to someplace dark because the Cuban campaign in Africa holds little interest for them. The film suffers from a couple decades delay and tackles a story, parts of which still have not been declassified. Kangamba would have generated long lines and impassioned comments at the end of the ‘80s but at this point very few want to remember what happened.
The Cuban contest in Angolan territory had been the longest war in Cuban history. Fifteen long years of fighting in another land, killing or being killed by people who barely knew where this Island was. Those were the times when the Kremlin was casting its shadow over Cuba and so strongly did we depend on them that our leaders did not hesitate to join in their campaign against UNITA. Geopolitics devises these difficult tests for the small countries that orbit great empires.
I notice that during the decade and a half conflict, no Cuban mothers staged protests in any public plaza against sending their sons to the front. No one launched, in the media, the question that we all whispered, “What are we doing in Angola?” or much less a peace movement filled with white doves in front of each recruiting station. We were more docile as citizens than we are today and they took us to perish and to kill without knowing what we did.
Today, we are informed about every loss suffered by the American army in Iraq but I remember the secrecy about the number of Cuban soldiers who fell during the Angolan War. We were told that a neighbor had lost a son, or that a colleague had returned without a leg, but the press only trumpeted the horn of victory. The dead were mourned in the privacy of their families, who did not understand very well what their children were doing on the other side of the Atlantic. The niches in the cemetery remained, the framed photos in the family rooms, the full vases of flowers on every anniversary and the long speeches of those who had seen the war from afar, but nobody knew how to respond with clarity to the question, “What were Cubans doing in Angola?”
-
Which came first?
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Octubre,13,2008
The informal market is experiencing sharply rising prices these days. An egg now costs the high price of four Cuban pesos, one-third the average wage for a day’s labor. But the pockets of the buyers have not been the hardest hit; for those who illegally sell this product, conviction can lead to two years in prison. This measure seeks to eliminate the swindles of these sellers, after the carnage in the poultry farms caused by hurricanes Gustav and Ike. Reckless traders in the black market are processed in summary trials as a lesson to those who illegally market food, construction materials or medicines.
Our police—long-trained in detecting beef, cheese, shrimp and powdered milk—now also track down eggs. The most immediate effect of these new raids is the disappearance of certain products that used to come to us only through vendors knocking on our doors. These days, chanting “Eeee-eeeggs” may be more dangerous than chanting anti-government slogans. OK, let’s not exaggerate, opinion has always been punished more.
The new wave against the informal market has helped us to resolve the riddle, “Which came first?” We now know that the egg was first, then they arrested those who sold home-made sweets, later they prosecuted those who were protesting the price increase for fuel, and finally they punished those who reported the scarcity of products in the agricultural markets. When it’s the turn of those who traffic in chicken, the prison term will exceed the length of a human life.
Da tu opinión »
-
Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that begin with or contain a "Y." Born in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite especially Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who drag their "Y's" to read my Blog and to write to me.
The cat’s hairy tail
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Octubre,17,2008
Although a crack down has been announced against the diversion of resources, price speculation and stealing food, lately the official market has also collapsed. In a brief tour of state-run cafeterias in my neighborhood, I could see a reduction in what is available. A convertible peso restaurant* specializing in fish doesn’t sell shrimp pizzas or rice with seafood. Why? Because now on this Island no supplies can escape to informal dealing, to the arms in the shadow of illegality which supported them, until it seemed one hundred percent State.
To maintain sales in the cafeterias and restaurants, obviously supplies from the black market were needed. Much of what was sold, under the guise of “official products,” in fact had been purchased by the employees themselves from informal sellers.* With the resources received from the food distribution companies, the public facilities could not have maintained a constant supply. The waiters and managers of these places worked there primarily for the extra money they made, beyond their wages, by selling these illegal products. No longer able to obtain these dividends, they have lost interest in serving a full menu and the customers notice.
With its obsession for hunting the mouse, the cat has caught its own tail in the trap. That hairy prolongation of lawlessness and corruption that, when it is cut off, bleeds dry in a short time.
Translator’s notes:
For an earlier Blog entry that gives more background on how employees of State enterprises increase their income, see The Corruption of Survival.
Convertible peso restaurant: A restaurant that sets prices in CUCs, the money used by tourists and for many products sold to Cubans. See the footnote to this entry for more information.
Da tu opinión »
-
Me: They have so little food its sad . :crybaby2:
Bouillon cubes
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Octubre,19,2008
I argued with a lady in line for malanga root. She wanted to let her two friends cut in and I figured that if they did I wouldn’t get the ten pounds of food, rationed since the hurricanes. In the end I let the two old ladies cut the line and didn’t even insult them when the clerk announced, “It’s closed, there’s no more!” It depresses me to get into a fight over food which is probably why I’m so skinny. In the pre-university where I studied, I never had the claws to grab for a better share and it always went to the strongest. When I see myself reduced to fighting for food I feel badly and prefer to come home with an empty shopping bag. Of course my family offers no thanks for my excessive pacifism.
To console them, I bought a few boxes of bouillon cubes, which has come to be the most common food for the vast majority of the people in this city. When some confused tourist asks me what a typical Cuban dish is, I answer that I don’t remember, but I know the most common everyday recipes. And I list them: “Rice with a beef bouillon cube,” “rice with hot dog,” “rice with a bacon bouillon cube,” or the delicacy of “rice with a chicken and tomato bouillon cube.” This last one has a color between pink and orange that is most amusing.
If we’re constantly fed pre-digested news on the television, canned speeches past their expiration date, little cubes of patience and waiting to get by day-to-day, why shouldn’t our plates reflect these same bitter flavors.
So I resign myself and buy the happy placebo that will make me believe my rice contains a tasty rib or a piece of chicken. After the most “complicated” preparation, I put the steaming dish on the table. My son, smelling the odor, asks me reproachfully, “Why didn’t you fight harder in the line for malanga?”
-
The troubles of Lía
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Octubre,21,2008
You can be 23 years old and see with the clarity of someone who has lived a great deal. It’s possible to have a raggedy old laptop fossilized by the heat and to write a blog without breaking any keys in the effort. She manages to say the hardest things—things the majority of people only mumble at home—publicly, brazenly, and even sensually. The one managing this unusual feat is Lía Villares, living in Luyanó, playing the guitar and wanting to change things.
One day she joined the name of her city to the chronic loss of red blood cells and began her blog, Habanemia. In her case, the absence of hemoglobin was caused by the scarity of dreams for a generation that has been able to fantasize very little. Lía was one of those who started school at the time when the Special Period was coming into our lives. Children who don’t remember the ration book for manufactured products, with the unfavorable letter “E”, which my mother guarded as if it were the most valuable thing in the house. Those for whom it wasn’t common to drink milk with breakfast, who didn’t receive gifts on birthdays, and who listened, bewildered, to stories of former delicacies, related by the very old.
Lía’s large eyes speak of calm, and questions, thousands of questions at once. In her blog she lets her hair down and is transformed. She shouts, sings, shows the pan with oil, the only food obtainable in these days of scarcity. Her angustiada fe de vida* [anguished faith of life] is shared with friends who gather at night in G Street, with books that distract from the ceiling falling in: “Me in my little house in Luyanó, falling to pieces like all of Havana, spending hours without the Internet and trying to sleep and to finish The Idiot.”
“It’s twenty times better to be a foreigner on this terrible Island than to be a Cuban who does things by the book” she tells us in one of her entries. However, since Lía is not a “Cuban who does things by the book,” Habanemia has let her shake off this widespread maxim which she describes as, “inaction and silence. The collective inertia of a people lost in thought. ”
* From the poem “El ausente” [The Absent] by Eugenio Florit. Here is a music version by Ray Fernandez.
Da tu opinión
-
The impunity of the insane
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Octubre,25,2008
A large madman kicks the cars in the middle of Ayestarán Street. His clothes are ragged and on his arms you can see the “answering” scars received from some vehicles. Another lunatic walks around Central Havana offending the president and his brother, while a nutcase spits her dissatisfaction against three impassive police officers.
They make you want to enjoy the same impunity as the mad. You want to stand on the corner and shout, “The emperor has no clothes,” like a little boy would. But adulthood and sanity carry the burden of punishment.
Then we will behave like one demented or a child.
Da tu opinión »
Labels and lists
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Octubre,23,2008
Putting things in drawers and sorting and labeling them is not a task only for officials and bureaucrats. There are some who take a special pleasure in hanging tags on citizens. The art of listing us by categories has been a common practice in recent decades in Cuba. One day you’re in the directory of the “obnoxious” or on the tame list of “collaborators.” Denunciations can move us from the file drawer marked “followers” over to the difficult one marked “enemies.” There are those on the list with the initials “CR”, which represents the adjective most commonly applied to those who think differently: Counterrevolutionary.
It trips up the archivists when they don’t know how to inventory someone. It bothers them when the old categories don’t work for newly emerging phenomena. These “opinion labelers” could use some new categories because almost nobody blinks any more when they’re labeled with “employee of the Empire.” The bookshelf schematic where they have been arranging Cubans is full of termites but, sadly, we ourselves use the same epithets “they” invented.
I have refused to be on any list but even so I am on many! I would prefer, however, the single file of those who want to end this ridiculous categorizing of citizens. I’m confident that one day it will be enough for the people of this earth to know on which list we are all counted together.
That’s me. And you, what list are you on?
2 opiniones »
-
Her views on the vote in the United Nations lol she thinks its a bunch of :blau: :blau:
The green button
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Octubre,30,2008
Hands emerging from well-cut suits at the UN pressed the red, green or yellow button today to rule on the blockade/embargo *. Over the last few weeks, television has thrown at us the entire collection of statistics, testimonies and analysis on the ravages of the trade restrictions affecting Cuba. The issue has been so manipulated by politicians that, from down here, many have chosen to “press the off button… to make it shut up.”
Anticipating the outcome of the vote, I would like to refer to another siege in effect every day. This one prevents me from entering or leaving my country freely, from associating with a political group or creating a small family business. An internal blockade, constructed on a base of limitations, control and censorship, has cost Cubans countless material and spiritual losses. I decide to go out for the newspaper Granma—which requires a huge effort—and try to find the outcome of today’s debate in the United Nations. I go out into the street and what is most glaring are the continuing restrictions imposed on us by our leaders; the wall that no one in the UN will vote against today.
What if they let us press the button! What if we could vote to rid ourselves of the fence that blockades us within the Island! I would leave my finger on the green button for many days.
* I refuse to call it either of the coined terms; they already know how bad-mannered we linguists are about these things. In my daily conversations I simply say, “the pretext,” the clumsy “justification” that makes those who block us in here feel so good.
1 opinión »
-
Identified and exhibitionists
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,3,2008
Contrary to secrecy and false identity, some of us alternative bloggers have put our identify cards next to the texts we write. In the midst of so much self imposed disguise, showing my ID reminds me of the exhibitionist who opens his coat even though everyone knows what’s inside.
My fingerprint, my two last names and even the names of my parents appear on the little blue card that proves my existence. To save the police wearing themselves out saying to me, “Identify yourself, citizen,” I show in advance the particulars of my life. Claudia has also done this on her eclectic blog Octavo Cerco, and so has Lia, in her harangues on Habanemia, as well as some others who reveal their identities to scare away the fear.
Who knows if we manage to infect the trolls who, shielded by anonymity, try to crash our sites with their insults. It’s unlikely, however, that the fever of self identification reaches those whose trade does not show its face. By opening my coat I want to show these “anonymous guys” that I am more than 75090424120, a document laminated in plastic and an ink-stained thumb copied on paper.
Da tu opinión »
Terminations
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,1,2008
“Twenty-three years and four abortions,” she’s telling everyone who wants to hear. On her slim figure, maternity would wreck havoc, she tells me, while adjusting her short skirt around her hips. For many years the termination of a pregnancy was the most common method of birth control for thousands of Cuban women. In the eighties, condoms were an illusion and by the time they were available at all the pharmacies, men refused to use them.
I met this slender young woman from Villa Clara on a Yutong* bus bound for that province. In the first hour of conversation she told me all the details of her truncated pregnancies. “It doesn’t hurt much,” she told me, while winking at the driver who was looking at her legs in the rearview mirror. In an almost forty minute tirade she wanted to explain her reasons, although I already knew them from others. That she lives with her parents and shares a room with her sister; that of the men she’s been intimate with, some are married or don’t want to have children; that she wants to leave the country and it’s harder with a baby… She ended by making it clear, “I have a friend in the gynecological hospital and she always fixes it for me.”
I was rattled by her illusion of leaving all her problems—housing, love or immigration—in the operating room, and pointed out that they are no longer doing abortions in hospitals. The press hasn’t published it, just as no one has talked about the high number of dilation and curettages practiced until very recently, but for the last few months an internal directive has limited the number of terminations of pregnancy. The reason is that the birth rate is falling and they want to try to increase it, even if it means forcing women to give birth. She bit her lip in disbelief and declared with some cheek, “Don’t worry yourself, I took a nice gift to the doctor and left with a brand-new womb.”
The bus hit a rut and I noticed that the driver was still entranced with her thighs. I was afraid we were going to crash and we‘d end up like another short trip, truncated between her legs.
Translator’s note:
-
*Her thoughts on the American Election*
The street is not the same, nor are the neighbors who usually gossip in the lines at the markets; today they speak of universal themes. They raise their eyebrows and point towards the north, while they make predictions about who will be elected at the polls in the U.S. I don’t remember having lived through such a commotion during the Cuban presidential elections last February.
The cobbler in my building took a stand for one candidate and the old woman who sells flowers has been wearing a shirt with the Obama logo. Our boring trajectory of two presidents in fifty years has exacerbated the curiosity over foreign elections. We also know that the decision of U.S. voters will reverberate here and not so metaphorically as the flutter of a butterfly in the Amazon. The remittances that allow thousands of Cuban families to get to the end of the month come primarily from the other shore, where a portion of this Island lives, and where the insults—“worms,” traitors” and “mafiosos”—have not managed to sever our emotional and family ties. The political discourse of our own leaders would lose effectiveness without the United States in the role of the enemy. Never, as today, has the destiny of Cuba been so clearly separated, and yet so dependent, on what happens ninety miles away.
So we are all waiting to see who will win this Tuesday, November 4th. Those who have children who can come to visit them only every three years are confident that the Democratic candidate will be more flexible in allowing visits to the Island. Others are betting that the heavy hand of the Republicans will manage to force the openings we have expected for decades. In the face of the “uncertain prognosis” we show inside our country, there are those who assert that today’s results will either launch or derail, definitively, the cart of reforms in Cuba.
I would prefer that we drive ourselves, but very few want to exchange the work of the forecaster for the hard task of making things happen. So when I write this post, the capricious vehicle of change seems to be stuck in a rut at the side of the road. I have my doubts about whether what happens this Tuesday will get it moving.
-
Short-cycle crops
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,6,2008
The illusory solutions that were once called, the “Ten Million Ton Harvest,” the “Havana Cordon,” or the “Food Plan,” have been transformed today into other utopias such as the Energy Revolution, Managerial Development, Oil in the Gulf Waters, or Exporting Human Capital. They all encompass the same infantile delusion of wanting to cure the crumbling health of the Cuban economy with a single medicine.
I remember a lot of these failed chimeras, but it was the elimination of famine through the cultivation of microjet bananas that I experienced with special intensity. I was in pre-university at a camp called the People’s Republic of Romania, even though by 1991 Ceausescu and Elena had already been executed. I was working in the surrounding banana fields, which also served us as a love motel, as well as a cleaner alternative to the toilets in the dorm. In the furrows, thousands of small hoses—these were the microjets—sprayed water all the time. The plants yielded a few enormous and tasteless fruits which split their skins because of the disproportionate growth of the interior. On our plates, these watery delicacies could not satisfy our hunger, any more than they could lift the country out of its crisis.
After the hurricanes, a new mirage has appeared in the style of the wet bananas of my adolescence. They call it by the euphemism of “short-cycle crops” and propose to prioritize the planting of chives, garlic and Swiss chard over other crops that need more time and care. With this agricultural strategy they intend to quickly fill the barren food stalls in the markets and calm the irritated Cuban people. All the mouths that would prefer to bite down upon a yucca rather than an oregano leaf will have to make do with these fruits of immediacy.
I fear that this temporary measure will become permanent and the capricious pineapple, which needs months between planting and eating, will be replaced with three cycles of Chinese cabbage. Forgive my lack of confidence but, given the ample record of agricultural and economic disasters, I cannot trust that this time they’ll hit the nail on the head.
Translator’s notes:
Ten Million Ton Harvest: In 1970 Cuban focused the resources of the entire country on harvesting a record 10 million tons of sugar cane, a goal which was not met.
Havana Cordon: A plan begun in the late 1960s to plant coffee trees in a cordon around Havana and to grow coffee as an export crop. Coffee did not grow well in the Havana environment.
Food Plan: A plan to achieve self-sufficiency in food production launched during the “Special Period” in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its support for Cuba. The plan was not achieved.
Googling these terms will yield much more detailed information
-
:sunny: I look forward to each new installment- thanks for posting these Jammyisme.
-
I appreciate youre reading these. Its my pleasure :salute:
-
Her thoughts on Hurricane Paloma
Vulture
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,8,2008
In the book of names that reveal little or nothing about the soul of things, is written the hurricane Paloma [dove]. Its dreaded flight—Category 4—has more of the carrion-eater in pursuit of prey than of white wings flapping. Cyclones are given tender epithets that are later added to the vocabulary of destruction. They go and we are left with names like Ivan, Charlie, Denis or Gustav with which we associate things that seem equally destructive. This is why our politicians and their economic plans have been so-called tropical storms or Category 5 hurricanes that took as many houses.
But today the sarcasm of the name is more cruel. Paloma will flutter down over a wounded Island, sinking its beak into places that still show the wounds left by hurricanes in August and September. It has the bare neck of the vultures, as common as they are absurd, and the blackness of its feathers does not bode well.
As for nature, it is better not to try to understand her. She has both chaos and logic. At the moment she has touched us with her confusion and madness. Paloma will pass, leaving the Island in the same place, the destruction a little deeper and the dreams much farther off.
-
That last sentence in the latest installment, says it all...and it breaks my heart. :sad10:
-
Hospitals. You bring everything?
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,11,2008
A bucket in one hand, a pillow under my arm, and a fan balanced on my hip. I enter the door of the oncology hospital and the backpack over my shoulder blocks the custodian from seeing my face. It’s of little importance because the man is used to the fact that the patients’ families must bring everything, so my complicated structure of fans, bucket and pillowcase doesn’t surprise him. He doesn’t know yet but, in a bag hanging off me somewhere, I’ve brought him bread and an omelet so he’ll let me stay after visiting hours.
I come into the room and Mónica is holding the hand of her mother, whose face is increasingly haggard. She has cancer of the esophagus and there is little that can be done, although the woman still doesn’t know it. I’ve never understood doctors’ refusals to inform one, directly, how little time is left before the end; but I respect the decision of the family, although I don’t join in the lie that she will soon be well.
The room has a thin light and in the air smells of pain. I begin to unpack what I’ve brought. I take out the little sack of detergent and the aromatic with which I’ll clean the bath; its aroma floods everything. With the bucket we can bathe the lady, using the cup to pour, because the water faucet doesn’t work. For the great scrubbing I brought a pair of yellow gloves, afraid of the germs that spread in a hospital. Mónica tells me to continue unpacking and I extract the package of food and a puree especially for the sick. The pillow has been a wonder and the set of clean sheets manages to cover the mattress, stained with successive effluvia.
The most welcome is the fan, which I connect to two peeled wires hanging from the wall. I continue to unpack and come to the little bag of medical supplies. I have obtained some needles appropriate for the IV, because the one in her arm is very thick and causes pain. I also bought some gauze and cotton on the black market. The most difficult thing—which cost me days and incredible swaps—is the suture thread for the surgery they are going to do tomorrow. I also brought a box of disposable syringes since she yells to high heaven when she sees the nurse with a glass one.
To distract her, I’ve come loaded with a radio, and a nearby patient has brought a television. My friend and her mom can watch the soap opera, while I look for the doctor and give him a gift sent by the sick woman’s husband. When bedtime comes a cockroach crosses the wall near the bed and I remember that I also brought some insect spray. In the backpack I still have some medicines and a little gift for the girl in the lab. I have money in my pocket, because ambulances are for the most critical cases and when they send her home, evicted, we will need to take a Panataxi.
In front of our bed there’s an old woman who eats the watery soup she’s been given by the hospital staff. Around her bed there’s no bag brought by her family and she doesn’t have a pillow for her head. I position the fan so that she will also get the cool air and talk about the arrival of another hurricane. Without her realizing it I touch the wood of the door frame, whether to expel the fear of disease or in horror at the conditions in the hospital, I don’t really know. A woman passes by shouting that she has bread and ham for sale for the visitors and I lock myself in the bathroom which smells like jasmine after my cleaning
-
To save the ants
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,13,2008
My mother would take the bundle of clothes to the cement laundry room, where with a brush and soap she would bleach the shirts and clean the trousers. My sister and I would be alarmed to see the danger faced by the naïve ants, crossing under the still dry sink. We’d then start a race to save part of the imprudent anthill, unaware of the extermination that my mother would cause with her water and suds. Those girls are a little crazy, the neighbors would say, seeing us collect the minuscule insects that they didn’t even notice against the grey cement.
Given the time and the thousands of ants I couldn’t save from the debacle, I understood that the insignificant thing is always in danger of being swept away. The revolutions and the wars sweep away the small, everything that doesn’t appear in the statistics or in the great history books. The tiny things that give body and life to a society die when the faucet of violent changes and warlike conflicts is turned on.
The taste of a fruit lost to memory, an afternoon talking in the neighborhood with the mask removed, a calf trotting in the countryside without fear of being illegally sacrificed, a cold lemonade that doesn’t cost you an hour standing in line. All of this is also part of the anthill, even these “cleaners” who want to clean up and shake up a country create what are the ills of tiny bugs.
I’m still that girl, frightened of those who want to change everything, distrustful of those who propose to sweep away traditional structures. I trust the most the smallness of the ants, their constant walking and their slow possession of spaces. They, who are still swept away by the streams of water, one day will turn off the faucets themselves.
Da tu opinión »
-
Hospitals. You bring everything?
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,11,2008
It's situations just like this, that the Dubois Foundation hopes to help with... I can't count the nember of boxes of soap, detergent amd cleaning products that I've helped load into the containers! :icon_thumright:
-
Without legs with trophy
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,16,2008
Days ago, when I found out that Generation Y was a finalist in the Bitacoras.com awards, I wrote a letter to the organizers of the event. I learned today of the prize awarded by the jury and the lines written that Tuesday are appropriate to celebrate the triumph:
Make it or don’t make it, win or don’t win, I feel like the disabled runner that manages to reach the finish line, even if he does it after everyone has passed the flag. In my case, the key is not in my coming out ahead, but rather in overcoming my own demons who have told me many times, “Leave the race,” “It’s not worth the pain,” “You can’t do anything.”
Well yes friends, we have moved the line. I crawling, you giving encouragement and some offering insults as incentives. It’s too bad that the stadium is half empty, missing those who cannot access the site from within Cuba. To them, so that they will undertake their own marathons, this prize is dedicated.
* Clearly I do not mean the disabled who are competing in the Paralympic Games, but others who have all their limbs available to them.
2 opiniones »
The boats
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,13,2008
To relax a little bit, because I see that the blog is sliding down the slippery slope of drama, I am posting a video clip made by Orlando Luis Pardo. This is a song by the Polish singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky. A member of Porno para Ricardo, Ciro Garcia, made a version that, coupled with the photographs of Orlando, makes you want to slit your wrists. Please do not bleed all over the blog.
A hug to all and enjoy the theme, “The boats.” If you want to know more about Ciro’s project, visit the site of La Babosa Azul [The Blue Fool].
1 opinión »
-
Numantia
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,16,2008
A little pioneer shouts slogans at school in the morning. Her face reddens and a vein bulges in her forehead, reinforcing her shrieks. Among the phrases she repeats is a dreadful metaphor: “We will see the island will sink into the sea first, rather than give up the glory we have lived.” On a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) mural, a few words take up the entire top: “If I advance follow me, if I pause push me, if I retreat kill me.” The newspaper this Saturday demonstrated the same thing, when the Maximum Leader published one of his Reflections: “Following lives laid down and so much sacrifice defending sovereignty and justice, one cannot offer Cuba the other shore of capitalism.”
Numantia returns to my memory and I refuse the scaremongering it implies. I thought of this story once, when a girl ran to the shelter as the sirens announced an invasion that never came. The insular shelf will not collapse—I regret to give the heralds of the debacle this news—because we have one or another government, a system of this kind or that. The trees will not turn pale, the stones that saw the indigenous people die out will not change places, and probably the sea itself will not notice. So please, do not frighten me with cataclysms and apocalypses. I’m much too old for that now.
Everything that will happen is already happening. Numantia will only happen in the minds of some, and in those of others the future will be much longer than what is left behind.
Translator’s note:
Numantia, a town in what is now Spain, was conquered and destroyed by the Romans in 133 BC.
1 opinión »
-
It’s not me
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,18,2008
A boy approaches me to ask if I am “Yoani.” He extends a sweaty and cold hand to me. I’m afraid that he’s coming to give me the first slap, but he only points, “Hopefully you are real. Because now we’ve seen everything!” He makes me want to follow him and show him my navel. There is no bigger proof that one exists, that one is “real,” than a navel knotted in the abdomen. He’s leaving and with the full weight his doubt and of his faith in me—this last is what frightens me the most. He didn’t give me time to warn him that I don’t intend to found any creed, certainly his uncertainties left me more relieved than his possible convictions.
If the boy with the cold hand and the short sentences reads this post, I want to tell you that I can’t save you. It’s not me whom he should burden with the responsibility that we should take together. I too have seen everything… people who applaud and then betray; hands that slap on the back and in the end push away; cries of “Viva” that are transformed into whispers of hate… However, I don’t have to know who he is to be sure that we share doubts, dreams and guilt.
Da tu opinión »
-
Havana winter
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,19,2008
The sky is not always that precious blue of the tourist postcards. Thank goodness, because I can not imagine a year with scorching sun without the pause of these weeks that bring cold fronts. Since Monday a cloud has come, bringing London to Havana and severe flooding in the east of the country. The streets are remarkably empty at night because the cold scares away the usual denizens of the parks and sidewalks. Boarding a crowded bus is no longer the fastest way to acquire pests in one’s armpits, rather the entrance to a warm and friendly space. With the low temperatures, humor and tolerance improve; for the old, their bones ache and hot chocolate becomes a recurring hallucination. December is so close that it’s not worth starting anything, say those who have postponed projects throughout the year. The time to spend more is coming, presaging that pockets will be especially empty this Christmas. However, the most sensitive topic is that of coats and blankets, the little protection from the damp cold that enters through the gaps in the windows.
I see people on the street with sweaters and thick, padded synthetic coats, but none of these garments could be purchased with the wages they earn from their work. One has a leather coat sent to him by a sister who lives in New York and the striped one was given to the girl as a gift from a tourist passing through the city. A young boy has a waterproof raincoat inherited from his brother, who in turn got it from an uncle who confiscates luggage at customs. The old woman crossing the street is careful of her half-wool coat, which she got from a neighbor in exchange for a blender. Only the guard at the hotel boasts a denim jacket, with shiny new buttons.
I like the winter and the affability it awakens in people, but I know that for many it’s the season of certain worries and shame. Of not being able to sleep on the park bench, where the rest of the year one gentleman with raggedy clothes has his only home. Of children mocked in school for wearing a coat purchased during the rationing of the 1980s. The cold emphasizes the differences between those who can close the door and those who don’t have a house with windows that shut. It highlights the contrast between those with a long-sleeved garment and those who wear two sweaters because they don’t have a coat. Everything depends on the thermometer and its not dropping another ten degrees, because the housing and clothes of the poor will not withstand a single snowflake.
Until the 27th of this month, each new post will carry a reminder of the online voting for the Bobs awards. Remember that Generation Y is competing in three categories: Best Weblog, Reporters Without Borders Special Award and Best Blog in Spanish. Here is the link:
The BOBs: CLICK HERE TO VOTE!!
Da tu opinión »
-
Matrimony without patrimony
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Noviembre,20,2008
Two of my friends were married in the nineties so that they could buy the cake and beer that the ration market allowed for weddings. They were not a couple and had never exchanged more than a hug, but reselling the drinks and the sugary desert produced enough money to live for several months, each in his own place. Like them, a lot of people signed the marriage record in hopes of the desired products and the three honeymoon nights in a hotel, listed at great price on the black market.
With these examples around me, I took seriously the signing of the marriage contract. I lived for a lot of years under a consensual union without a trace of paper. Likewise, many of my acquaintances cohabit with a partner with whom they have never stepped foot in a notary’s office or gotten a certificate of their union. It’s not just a postmodern or irreverent trend, but a loss of the sense of the sanctity of marriage. Among the reasons for this fading sense is the absence of a family patrimony to be preserved with the signing of a contract. What difference would it make to a child to have legally married parents if they lack any assets for him to inherit, or any property that needs the oversight of laws.
Those of us under forty today, come to romantic relationships with the property that can be contained within our own epidermis. Because when the idyll comes to an end, the belongings—frequently—fit in a suitcase. With the love nest located in the parents’ house and with a salary that’s not enough to buy any durable or transferable goods, the signed paper and legal stamp that attest to the marriage are of little importance.
Until the 27th of this month, each new post will carry a reminder of the online voting for the Bobs awards. Remember that Generation Y is competing in three categories: Best Weblog, Reporters Without Borders Special Award and Best Blog in Spanish. Here is the link:
The BOBs: CLICK HERE TO VOTE!!
Translator’s note: You can leave a comment on the BOBs Awards website, which strengthens your vote. The final choices will be made by the judges, not by votes alone. So tell them WHY Yoani’s blog is the best!!!! Thank you! (Yes, sorry, how to leave a comment is not obvious. Go to any of the category pages and go to Yoani’s blog and click on ‘details’. Then you will see in the middle of the page, under the blog picture and above the ratings, in light blue type, “Rate this”. Click on that and the comment screen will appear. Your comment will show up in every category she’s competing in, so you only need to leave it once.)
3 opiniones »
-
Last week we were talking about ants, people and the small traditions that sustain us day to day. Well, a few meters from my house I found this billboard with the same metaphor of the insects. Unlike the anthill imagined by me—where everyone has a place—here there is a creature apart. It frightens me to think that the lonely little ant represents the intellectual, or people—like me—who are informal workers because we have no licenses to be Spanish teachers or other worthy occupations. The tiny segregated one could refer to those who receive remittances and see no sense in working for a salary more symbolic than useful. On the left, below this billboard, you could see a woman who sells coffee at the corner of my house, who gets up at five to brew it and plays hide-and-seek with the police. The young man who left his studies and sews shoes at the workshop of his cousin, though the Sector Head considers him an habitual vagrant, a derelict, who refuses a job commensurate with his qualifications because he’s not politically correct. Many could be the tiny ant who carries no leaves in his hands… because the others are not only the workers, but also the authorities, the group of those who never get out of line.
-
not a lot of celebrating goin on there . geeze
Nov
24
2008
Against forgetting
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Noon Saturday found us on the highway heading to Pinar del Río. The grass at the side of the road had already grown, but the leafless palms recalled the disaster that happened just two months ago. Life is slower, as if Ike and Gustav had reimposed the nineteenth century image these fields once had. If not for an old tractor here or an electrical tower there, you would think you had traveled two centuries back in time. Some houses had new roofs of asbestos cement, which will be food for the winds of the next hurricane.
The two backpacks of medicine and clothes we’d gathered among friends turn out to be very limited for all the needs facing us. Food is scarce, especially, and ironically, that which comes from the furrows. Even the children, who normally pick out the pieces of cucumber from their plates, miss the peculiar flavor of this vegetable. The land delays its healing. The small independent farmer has seen increased pressure to sell his crop to the State rather than in the free markets, where he could reap greater profits. This generates disinterest in production, and empty stalls at the points of sale. Again, as in those years of adversity in the nineties, it’s necessary to leave the city to buy yucca, onions or a piece of pork.
Between Havana and Pinar del Río there are two police checkpoints choosing cars at random to verify no one is trafficking in milk, cheese or food. Like the sophisticated medical devices that look inside the human body, people have baptized these checkpoints “CAT scans.” In the stretches of highway without patrols, illegal vendors show their merchandise and hide themselves whenever a vehicle with official plates passes.
Although for the media the news of disaster is fading from view, in the lives of the victims it’s the lead story of every day. We have to avoid letting our tendency to forget cover up the situation, letting the triumphalism make us believe that everything’s already over, letting the avalanche of positive reports deceive us about the depths of the catastrophe. I remind everyone that we have to go to the affected areas, deliver aid directly, and record the testimonies there. The hurricane-force winds are still blowing in the lives of these people and will not diminish because we cover our ears.
-
Nov
25
2008
I’d love to choose
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
For weeks, there are words like “ballot box,” “votes,” and “candidates” that persecute us everywhere. First there were the elections in the United States and now the issue has been revived with what happened on Sunday in Venezuela. It’s as if at the end of the year everything conspires to remind us of our condition as non-electors, our limited experience in deciding who leads us.
You become accustomed to not being able to choose what to put in your mouth, under which creed they will educate your children, or to whom to open the door, but that resignation shatters when you see someone else vote. Because of this it has risen up, these days, the desire to fold the ballot, to push it into the slot and to know that with it goes my stentorian shout that demands: “to choose.”
-
Finally the excitement around the BOBs awards comes to an end. We know that Generation Y came in first in the public vote in the Reporters Without Borders category, but we still have to wait for what the jury says. Whatever happens we are going to celebrate it, because we don’t need much of a reason to open a bottle of rum and sprinkle a little over the area for commenting on this blog. It will be a good time to call a truce between the trolls and the frequent readers, between the Cyber Response Brigades and those who actually come to join in the discussion.
Pull up your chairs in front of the screen, from where we will broadcast the ceremony right here. Grab a handful of peanuts and some caramel corn, and don’t miss even a second when they announce the awards. Those of you who’ve already bitten your nails to the quick, try not to chew on your fingers; we’re going to need them for a lot of typing in the days to come.
Before the merriment begins, I want to congratulate all those who win, people—like myself—who have used their blogs to narrate their lives and pose questions. Without the support of the global blogosphere and without the protection belonging to it has afforded me, I’d have had to hang out a “Blog Closed” sign some time ago. With what has already happened in the BOBs voting, there is no one who can stop this penultimate letter of the alphabet.
Thanks to everyone who voted!
-
*clap* She won
Page 1 2 »The 2008 BOBs Winners Have Been Decided!
2008-11-28
Generación Y Wins Best Blog of 2008
The jury for the Deutsche Welle International Weblog Awards -- The BOBs -- has announced the winners in all 16 of the competition's categories.
Of the 11 finalists in the Best Blog category, Generación Y, a Cuban blog written by Yoani Sanchez, claimed the Jury Prize for Best Blog.
The jury said that Sanchez gives voice to an entire generation of Cubans and provides the world with a window into Cuba through her clear and poetic writing.
In addition to a slew of other obstacles in her way, Sanchez can't even post her own entries to the blog. Instead she is forced to e-mail them to friends outside of Cuba in order for her words to go online. Despite the challenges she has to overcome, she's managed to keep in contact with her readers and create a huge international community around her work.
For the Reporters Without Borders award, the jury decided to honor two blogs. One went to Zeng Jinyan, the wife of an imprisoned Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia, and 4equality, a Persian blog that fights for women's rights in Iran.
Placed under house arrest, Zeng Jinyan's blog describes life under constant surveillance by the Chinese authorities. The Persian blog 4equality is working to gather one million signatures on a petition for increased women's rights in Iran.
Here are all the Jury Prize winners for the BOBs 2008.
Congratulations to the winners and to all the blogs who were nominated. And thanks also to all of you who participated in the online voting, making this year's BOBs the most successful ever!
Cheers,
The BOBs Team
-
In reference to the jury prize for Best Weblog and the award for Reporters Without Borders in The BOBs contest.
Well yes, but there is still much that I lack. Not exactly prizes, but rights long neglected, like the ability to be read within my own country. I must be able to say all this in reality and not just in the virtual world of a blog. To transform this civic plaza that is Generation Y into a concrete existence where trolls also abound and the consequences are much stronger than a simple hack. I need something more than kilobytes, I need realities.
We still lack that which is the most coveted prize: the right to dialogue, dissent and to dye ourselves in the political colors of our choosing within our Island. We must not let this phenomenon be limited only to the blogosphere, we have to go in search of the jackpot: free opinion.
-
Goodbye to the tutu
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Diplomacy is one of those arts that makes me itch, one of those dances where watching the performance makes me seasick. However much I try to understand the ambassadors, foreign ministers and that whole stripe of cunning characters, their actions only manage to confuse me more. They embrace and smile, exchange promises and take pictures holding hands. They speak in my name, even though it’s been some time since they rode the bus, they don’t have to stand in line, nor do they know the high price of an egg in the black market.
In the past year, the ballet presented by “our” diplomacy has had much of the dance of seduction. They’ve gone dancing with the Red Stockings and their promises of openings have dazzled a few. However, from the third balcony where we citizens sit, each fouetté seems earthbound and the new turns, so predictable, elicit only yawns.
Bored and disappointed by these choreographers of appearances, I choose to dance to the popular diplomacy. With so much buffet and champagne wasted, I think it’s better to skip the black tie envoys. There must be more civic ways for the people to meet, connect and help themselves. Let’s leave the farce of protocols of intention and the signed agreements that are not met to the foreign ministers. We, meanwhile, let’s get together and come to an agreement.
No Hay Comentarios »
-
<>
There is a glaring absence in our daily landscape. Those calls to march, so frequent two years ago, have become rarer, leaving behind the impression of a city permanently on edge. It used to be a rare month that Habaneros were not called to a demonstration to shout slogans and applaud passionate speeches. They regularly administered the spoonful of necessary hysteria to keep us feeling that we were in a permanent state of siege.
On those days of successive marches, public services were closed and the entire city’s transport system was put to work moving people from other provinces who came to swell the number of participants. Days in which the streets were filled with trampled paper banners and water bottles to calm the thirst. The city collapsed and for those of us who were waiting for the parade to pass, we had the sensation of living through a never ending mobilization. They were days when it was best to stay home and hope that the shouts, the edginess and the loudspeakers were easing off.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t entirely like what the cameras and the press reports showed. Political rallies—organized by the government itself—also had an enjoyable side. The high school students were delighted that classes were suspended and they could play in the middle of the crowd. In the workplace, many preferred the confusion of the demonstration—which allowed them to sneak home—over a day of working under the control of a boss. Even those who were brought in by bus found the crush of the demonstration offered an magnificent place for the lewd excesses. The informal vendors waited for the mob to shout “Vivas” and sold them untold amounts of peanuts, pastries and soda
It’s not that we miss the marches, but my city looks different without these euphoric outbursts, without the leader shouting from the podium, without the thousands of genuine and false enthusiasts who were waving the flags.
2 Comentarios »
-
At nine in the morning an official looks, with boredom, at the citation we have presented at the door of the 21st and C station. We are left waiting on one of the benches for about 40 minutes, while Reinaldo and I take the opportunity to discuss all those things the dizziness of daily life always keeps us from talking about. At 9:45 they take my husband, asking first if he has a cell phone. Ten minutes later they return and take me to the second floor.
The meeting is brief and the tone energetic. There are three of us in the office and the one who raises his voice in song has been introduced as Agent Roque. To my side another, younger one, watches me and says his name is Camilo. Both tell me they are from the Interior Ministry. They are not interested in listening, there is a written script on the table, and nothing I do will distract them. They are intimidation professionals.
The topic was as I expected: We are close to the date for the blogger meeting that, with neither secrecy nor publicity, we have been organizing for half a year; they announce we must cancel it. Half an hour later, now far from the uniforms and the photos of leaders on the walls, we reconstructed an appoximation of their words:
We want to warn you that you have transgressed all the limits of tolerance with your rapprochement and contacts with counter-revolutionary elements. This totally disqualifies you for dialog with Cuban authorities.
The activities planned for the coming days cannot carried out.
We, for our part, will take all measures, make the relevant denuciations and take the necessary actions. This activity, in this moment in the life of the Nation, recuperating from two hurricanes, will not be allowed.
Roque stopped talking–nearly shouting–and I asked if he would give me all this in writing. Being a blogger who displays her name and her face has made me believe that everyone is willing to attach their identity to what they say. The man lost the rhythm of the script–he didn’t expect my librarian’s mania to keep papers. He stopped reading what had been written and shouted at me even louder that, “They are not obliged to give me anything.”
Before they send me off with a “get out of here, citizen” I manage to tell him that he won’t sign what he told me because he doesn’t have the courage to do it. The word “Cowards” comes out almost in a guffaw. At the bottom of the stairs I hear the noise of the chairs pushed back into place. Wednesday has ended early.
1 Comentario »
Dic
02
2008
First round
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
I swear I haven’t run a green light, nor have I bought cheese on the black market for more than two months, and I have not walked out of any store without paying. I don’t recall having violated the laws–too much–these last days, not even by passing myself off as a foreigner to use the Internet in some hotel.
I have, however, a citation, along with Reinaldo, for tomorrow at the police station at 21st and C in Vedado. I wonder if I should bring a toothbrush or if I will get only a brief box on the ears.
Below is the official document I received from a sweaty official who ascended the fourteen flights of stairs, since I haven’t had an elevator for a month.
At nine in the morning I’ll know what it’s about; wait for my news after two.
-
In the ‘90s, a poem satirized the disappearance from Cuban tables of several agricultural products.* Its author never signed the friendly verses, but the caustic style pointed directly to a well-known writer. Those were the years when CAME [Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, or Comecon] was going to hell in a handbasket along with the socialist camp, and our navels were painfully close to our spines. Food seemed to have gone into exile, leaving us a poignant reminder of its sweetness.
The sweet potato, banana and yucca returned later, when the social explosion of 1994 forced the government to open the demonized free markets. At their stalls we found varieties of tubers that had regularly graced the plates of our grandparents, but at a price that didn’t match the symbolic salaries we received. Still, they were there. By “squeezing our nickels” we could have a smooth puree of malanga to introduce a baby to solid food.
While these indigenous products were returning, some foreign ones arrived to replace the domestic. The hotels began to buy oranges and mangoes from the Dominican Republic, flowers from Cancun, and pineapples from other islands in the Caribbean. In the kitchens, it was common to find imported lemon extract replacing the lost citrus used in sauces and marinades. Sugar was brought from Brazil and a package of frozen carrots was easier to find than the lanky ones that grew in our own dirt. Only the guava found no competition among the misguided imports and stood—with dignity—as a replacement for all the other lost fruits.
For me, the ultimate was when, a couple of weeks ago, I received my quota of rationed salt and noticed it comes from Chile. I can’t manage to reconcile our 5,746 kilometers of coastline with this white and blue packet transported from the South. If our sea is just as salty, what happened to its minuscule crystals that no longer come to my salt shaker. It was not mother nature—we can’t put the blame on her again—but rather this dysfunctional economic system, this production inertia, and the tremendous underestimation of everything native and domestic that is embargoed to us. Neither has it been the blockade.
Now, we would have to rewrite the sarcastic poem about the extinct products, and add a brief and missing monosyllable: salt.
*
The yucca, that came from Lithuania
the mango, sweet fruit of Krakow
the yam, originally from Warsaw
and the coffee that is planted in Germany.
The yellow malanga of Romania
the honeyed Moldovan sweet potato
from Liberia the fine-textured mamey fruit
and green bananas grown in the Ukraine.
All this is lacking and through no fault of ours
for to fulfill the food plan
one wages a fierce intense battle.
And now we have the first sign
that the necessary effort is being made:
There is food on television and in the newspapers.
Translator’s notes:
CAME/Comecon: Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. Founded by Stalin in 1949 with the Soviet Union and five Eastern European countries, it was eventually expanded to ten full member countries, including Cuba, which joined in 1972.
Social Explosion in 1994: The “Maleconazo” which was a protest/riot on August 5, 1994, along Havana’s waterfront seawall, which is called the Malecón.
No Hay Comentarios »
-
Fine sand
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Finally we are beginning the planned journey of the bloggers. The shouts delivered at the police station, the constant agent we’ve had with us since last Thursday, and the prohibition on travel to Pinar del Río weren’t much use. We ended up finding the cracks between the fingers of the censors, between which the fine sand of information and knowledge has managed to slip through.
The start of this encounter, which none of the participants wanted to call an event, has happened quietly, without any fuss in the media or clandestine pretensions. In no way has it been similar to those congresses, conferences and symposia where a table is placed before a presidential backdrop. We haven’t stooped to creating one of those cardboard signs that lists the rules to be followed, nor do we wear credentials or special pins.
We managed to take the first step because “they” just waited for the challenge or the cancellation, but did not anticipate that in the blogger phenomenon there are a thousand ways to camouflage oneself. They used their old methods of coercion without realizing that nobody can put real reins on virtual creatures. By prohibiting the inaugural session, they’ve only managed to unveil how many possibilities there are to blur the itinerary without the need of moving from one province to another.
In a few days a website will be inaugurated to host the discussions that have been happening and to launch a blog contest for 2009. These tiny particles of cyberspace that are our blogs have already opened channels in the hands of the intransigents; particles so small that they haven’t even seen them pass.
Here is the press release drafted jointly by all the participants.
2 Comentarios »
-
Press Release
Press Release
December 6, 2008
Between December 5 and 6 the first exchanges of a knowledge workshop have begun to take place between people who maintain Internet blogs from the Island and others interested in exploring this medium.
Conceived from its beginnings as a journey of study with several stages, the encounter was deprived of its inaugural session because agents from the Interior Ministry cited and officially announced to some participants that they would be prohibited from attending the inauguration in the city of Pinar del Río. It is not possible to provide documented evidence of this prohibition because said agents refused to confirm it in writing.
But freedom discovers roads that suppression cannot find. That’s why the workshop participants, faithful to their choice of dialog and the search for viable alternatives, turned to other methods to begin the journey, without having to physically travel from one territory to another.
There have been several initial topics: General notes about a blog, conducted by Yoani Sánchez, which addresses technical questions related to the software appropriate for a blog; The writing of a blog, proposed by Reinaldo Escobar, with a debate on the application of journalistic norms in drafting the new language of cyberspace; and finally, The Ethical Blogger, where Eugenio Leal introduces concepts relative to ethical conduct in this novel way of transmitting ideas and information. The texts of these discussions and others will be posted on a website.
The exchange of experiences took place in an informal atmosphere of respect for different opinions and purposeful debate. Promoting this experience were the collaborators from the digital magazine Convivencia [http://www.convivenciacuba.es/] and from the Desde Cuba portal [http://desdecuba.com], among others.
These first steps constitute an authentic management of knowledge. Among the suggested initiatives is a call for participants in a competition for Cuban blogs, to be launched in 2009. These new variants to the plan of study about Cuban blogs remain open to all interested parties.
-
December has started with the rare spectacle of Christmas trees adorning shops, hotels and other public sites. After several years in which they were erected only in the living rooms of some houses, they have returned and their dusted snow contrasts with all the sun outside. It seems that the ban on putting them in windows, lobbies and cafeterias has expired or that the audacity of Christmas has made us ignore it. We have already lived—several times—through this sprouting that later trips over the edge of a hatchet when someone “up there” signs a circular banning them.
The first time I saw one of those decorated trees, when I was seventeen, the Soviet Union had collapsed and being an atheist was already out of fashion. Stopping in the doorway of a church in Reina Street, I had decided not to get closer to the crèche and the crystal balls that hung from the branches. The stories of what happened to those who had been rejected for believing in religion stopped me at the door. Mouth agape at the size of that fir, I overcame my fear and approached the warm manger.
With the opening of foreign currency stores and the rise of tourism, decorated trees sprouted everywhere and the Habana Libre hotel came to have the largest in the entire city. Parents took their children to walk near the illuminated greenery under the crowning star. But certain stubborn ones—with power—considered each tree as a defeat that had to be reversed. So, they tried to make us return to those boring December landscapes of the seventies and eighties, but a few had already acquired the taste for hanging garlands.
After several years without seeing the blinking of their lights in public places, this end of the year surprises us with the pleasant sprouting of a well-known forest. Under their branches a woman sleeps with her baby who knows nothing of prohibitions, banned trees, or crosses hidden under a shirt.
1 Comentario »
-
Brief encounter with Mariela
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
For Miguel, who still dreams of being a Social-Democratic woman
Yesterday I went to a conference on sexuality held at the Museum of Fine Arts. For two weeks, there has been a series on erotic art accompanied by films and talks. Just this Tuesday there was a chance to hear about the incorporation of transsexuals into society and the prejudices that still exist against them. So on the way to Alamar–where the Festival of Poetry Without End is going on–I dropped into the amphiteater in the old Asturian Center.
After the conference I had the chance to ask Mariela Castro a question that torments me every time I hear about tolerance for sexual preference. I still don’t understand that we accept the right of another to choose with whom they make love, however we continue in this ideological monogamy they have imposed on us. If concepts such as “sick” have now been banished from the study of homosexuality, why does the adjective “counterrevolutionary” continue to be used for those who think differently. For me, it’s as serious to call someone who doesn’t conform a “faggot” as it is to call them a “worm.”
As today is the day that those rights should be at the center of everyone’s attention, I want to show a short video of my brief encounter with Mariela. The audio is poor and so I have transcribed the dialog for those who are unable to hear everything.
Mariela: Including treatment for transgender people is something that’s called for in the law. We don’t ask for more.
Yoani: I’d like to ask if this entire campaign being undertaken, in some way, for society to accept sexual preference could, at some point, move to other roles and will also fight for tolerance of other aspects which could be points of view and political and ideological preferences. Will we also come out of these closets?
Mariela: I don’t know because I don’t work in that area. The ideological and political field is outside my responsibility. I think I am doing the best I can given my ability.
Translator’s note
Mariela Castro Espin is the daughter of Raul Castro and his late wife Vilma Espin, and she is the niece of Fidel Castro. She is the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education and an advocate for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights.
1 Comentario »
-
Birthday or anniversary?
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
While preparing extensive reports on the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, few ask themselves if the celebration is the birthday of a living creature, or simply the anniversary of something that happened. Revolutions don’t last half a century I advise those who ask me. They end up devouring and excreting themselves in authoritarianism, control and immobility. They always expire, trying to make themselves eternal. They die because they want to remain unchanged.
What began on that first of January has been, according to many, under the earth for many years. The debate seems to be around the date of the funeral. For Reinaldo, it died that August of 1968 when our bearded leader hailed the entry of tanks into Prague. My mother saw the death throes of the Revolution when they imposed the death sentence on General Arnoldo Ochoa. And the Black Spring of March of 2003, with its arrests and summary trials, was the final death rattle heard by some stubborn believers who had believed it was still alive.
I met her corpse, they say. In 1975, the year I was born, Sovietization had erased all spontaneity and nothing remained of the rebellion that the older people remembered. We had neither long hair nor euphoria, but rather purges, double standards and denunciations. The devotional artifacts to those who had fallen in the mountains were already banned and those soldiers of the Sierra Maestra had become addicted to power.
The rest has been a protracted wake to what could have been, the lit candles of an illusion that dragged so many down. This January the deceased has a new anniversary; there will be flowers, ‘Vivas!” and songs, but nothing will manage to raise it from the tomb and bring it back to life. Let it rest in peace and we will soon begin a new cycle: shorter, less pretentious, more free.
Translator’s notes
General Arnold Ochoa: In 1980 Fidel Castro awarded Ochoa the title “Hero of the Revolution” for his long and popular service; in 1989 he, along with others, was convicted of treason for drug trafficking and executed. The trial and execution were videotaped and the trial shown on Cuban television.
March 2003, Black Spring: While the world’s attention was turned to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, approximately 75 Cuban journalists and others were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms; most remain in prison today.
-
Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that begin with or contain a "Y." Born in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite especially Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who drag their "Y's" to read my Blog and to write to me.
Dic
16
2008
CDR
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
In one of those confusions so common in children, I thought for years that the logo of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution was an enormous eye carrying a machete. As I was unaware of the origin of this aggressive iconography, I saw it as an indiscreet pupil, watching me on every block. Some time later, a friend clarified that what I saw as a cornea and an iris was just a sombrero seen from above. Despite his kind remark, I continued to feel the weight of that look every time I passed in front of a sign with the acronym CDR.
The seventh congress of this organization is now being held, with its more than seven million members, of whom good number have not been consulted about joining its ranks. You are enrolled in the Committee completely automatically, the same way we women are included in the Federation of Cuban Women and the children are entered into the ranks of the Pioneers. Rarely does anyone publically refuse to be part of these groups which, in Cuba today, are more formal and bureaucratic than effective.
My confusion between an eye and a hat showed a touch of childish delirium, but also a strong nose for danger. I learned that within the doors bearing the alarming slogan, “with combat readiness,” lived the most adroit editors of reports to denounce other neighbors. I also knew those who, because of a false report—a stroke of the pen from the committee president—lost a promotion, a trip, or the chance to have a new home. I even knew someone who wore the title, “Vice President of the CDR,” who was also the biggest criminal in the neighborhood.
In the Palace of Conventions, the pupil with the machete is holding a new conference. I sense that what was once a many-eyed Argus is today a Cyclops with cataracts, a vigilant body that can barely see all the mischief we get up to.
Translator’s note:
Cuba’s network of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution was formed in 1960. Out of a total population of about 11 million, its more than 7 million members represent the vast majority of Cuba’s adult population. The CDRs keep files on each resident of their respective blocks.
No Hay Comentarios »
-
Gallita / “Cocky hen”
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
A curious end of the year in which the surprises accumulate, Christmas trees return and sexologists start to use the language of the machistas [macho women]. Mariela Castro has called me gallita [female cock] and, in her language as a specialist in gender and sexuality, the word has homophobic connotations. Perhaps because I am ignorant about the terms of her specialty, I fail to understand what she wanted to tell me by saddling me with a masculine role in a feminine noun; yes, in the case of grammar I can boast about knowing something. Does she believe that I do the work of a man because I demand rights and claim respect for political preferences? I don’t see the feathers on my tail but, if to be a very delicate hen I must accept that a group of septuagenarians—all men—decide every aspect of my life, then I’m inclined to transvestism and will cock-a-doodle-doo like the rooster with the most hormones in the barnyard.
In his flowery apron, Reinaldo laughs and confirms that yes, I’m a “cocky hen” with sharpened spurs. I agree with the prestigious specialist that I am “insignificant,” an anonymous hen who, with her cheep cheep, has managed to inconvenience the fine fighting cocks. The ones with so little experience in debate that at the slightest disagreement they jump up and let feathers fly, wounding all around. They become upset and end up sticking out their tongues and we see—inside—the ugly entrails of intolerance, which they work so hard these days to hide.
-
The price of fuel at gas stations was lowered and on Thursday, December 11, the daily newspaper Granma announced that we would need only half as much money to open a cell phone account. It’s not often that there is news of prices falling so we are still of two minds about whether this is just a Christmas gift or the beginning of an extensive readjustment of prices. I had a premonitory and naïve dream that perhaps this wave of price cuts would be extended even to basic products such as milk which, in the convertible peso market, costs the abusive price of 2.40 CUCs for one liter.
My son is already thirteen and from the age of six has not qualified for the quota of rationed milk, and the illegal merchants, with their powdered milk, haven’t knocked on my door once since the hurricanes. To buy the ‘tetra pack’ in the foreign exchange shops is a sacrifice that only a few can afford and it has the taste of official corruption. Thus, I would like to recommend to the Ministry of Prices and Finance that they extend these reductions to all commodities with prohibitive prices. How much would they like to give us a real Christmas surprise so that before December 31, on the wage of a worker, we could pay for a glass of precious milk every morning.
Translator’s note
Cuba has a dual monetary system; wages are paid in Cuban pesos while tourists use convertible pesos (CUCs). But the systems overlap because many products are available—even to Cubans—only in CUCs. One CUC equals roughly 20-25 Cuban pesos, or $1.10 US, $1.30 Canadian, or 0.80 euros (plus exchange fees). The average monthly wage is about 400-500 Cuban pesos, or $15-$20 U.S. Thus, at 2.40 CUCs, the price of a liter of milk is about 2-3 days’ wages.
9 Comentarios »
Dic
19
2008
Blog Contest: A Virtual Island
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
With the objective of encouraging the Cuban blogosphere and motivating those who use the Internet for expressing ideas, information and testimonies, the team of the magazine Convivencia and the editorial board of the site Desdecuba.com, announce the contest titled A Virtual Island.
The contest rules will be sent by email to all bloggers who write from Cuba. In they message they will be asked to confirm if they will to participate in the contest. Only those who respond affirmatively to our call will be considered nominees for one of the prizes described here.
Rules
Cuban bloggers currently living in the country are eligible to participate.
The blogs submitted can participate in other contests at the same time.
Blogs can be submitted regardless of the date they were begun.
Blogs on diverse themes will be considered, including personal, informative, news, computers, tourism, etc.
Each contestant can enter the number of blogs they desire.
The blogs in the competition must be signed with one’s own name.
This call is in effect from today, December 19, 2008, until August 30 2009, when the final deliberations of the jury will begin.
The results of this contest will be announced on September 9, 2009, through the digital media involved in the event.
The decision of the jury is final. Any category included in the competition can be canceled if the jury decides to do so.
Honorable mentions may be awarded if the jury decides to do so.
The members of the jury are excluded from participating in the contest.
Participation in the contest requires conformity with these rules.
Prize categories
Best blog, Jury Award
Best Blog, by public vote
Best Blog Design
Best Blog, Informative and Newsworthy
Prize awarded by on-line voting to best commentator who vists Cuban blogs
Special Prize Awarded by the site 233 grados (http://233grados.com)
During the course of this contest different news institutions related to Internet journalist may offer a special prize under the criteria of their choice.
The jury is composed of:
Enrique Del Risco, blogger de enrisco
(http://enrisco.blogspot.com/)
Reinaldo Escobar, blogger de Desde aquí
(http://www.desdecuba.com /reinaldoescobar)
Ernesto Hernández Busto, blogger de Penúltimos Días
(http://www.penultimosdias.com)
Yoani Sánchez, blogger de Generación Y
(http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony)
Virgilio Toledo, diseñador de la revista Convivencia
(http://www.convivenciacuba.es)
Dagoberto Valdés, director de la revista Convivencia
(http://www.convivenciacuba.es)
The Jury Prize will be a Laptop that will facilitate the work of the blogger. The prizes for the other categories will be announced on March 1, 2009, along with the final list of contestants. Starting on that day, on-line voting will begin for readers to select which they consider to be the best blogs.
3 Comentarios »
Dic
19
2008
Blogger Journey
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
On Wednesday we took a new step on the long journey that began earlier this month. Eleven participants, including seven authors of blogs, met in what we playfully call, “Café Blogger.” We began with the article from Andrew Sullivan, “Why I Blog?” and the questions outnumbered the certainties learned from our brief experience on the Internet.
We discussed the call for the contest, A Virtual Island, whose grand prize will be the laptop I won in the Bitacoras.com contest. Someone suggested that idea of inviting all the bloggers of the world who would like to drop by the weekly meeting we’ll be holding throughout the year. We invite them, also, to collaborate with manuals, books and programs for this exchange of information.
The presentations made so far and the related articles can be read here* temporarily, until we have the new website ready where everything relating to the Blogger Journey will be posted. Those who want to submit their own articles can send them to my email—use the one through the portal Desdecuba.com—or to the email address of the journal Convivencia (Coexistence).
Translator’s note:
The articles for this project will be translated as time and resources allow (resources being volunteer translators… if you want to help… speak up! There’s an email address in the sidebar.). In the meantime, the links will be to the Spanish language articles.
-
Dic
23
2008
Solutions
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
If you don’t offer solutions, nor dare to use the weapon of criticism, please clarify for me why you don’t offer a single remedy. Your tone reminds me of the boring Pioneer assemblies I had to attend during all my years of school. When it came my turn to speak and my observations boiled over from personal things to criticisms of systemic things, someone would stop me and brusquely point out that a true revolutionary would offer solutions: Don’t complain. Exercising judgment must be done in a constructive way, they would warn me, and with time I understood that it wasn’t a call to a worthwhile discussion but rather to conformity.
These interrupted critiques involved those problems for which not even proponents of the “useful critique” have a solution. My slight knowledge of economic issues doesn’t allow me, for example, to venture an amendment to the unjust economic duality in which we have lived for fifteen years. Nor do I have the scientific background to know how to resolve the wretched issue of the marabu weed growing everywhere. Lack of experience in politics keeps me from being able to predict how effective the words of John Paul II would be: “Let Cuba open up to the world, and the world will open up to Cuba.”
My citizen’s sense of smell, however, has led me intuitively to to discover the SOLUTION. Only freedom of opinion will allow those who can advance remedies to dare to do so. The economist who keeps a plan to restructure the Cuban economy in his drawer needs guaranties that he will not be punished for expressing his ideas. All the political, social and foreign projects that are hidden because of the possible reprisals that their creators could suffer, demand a space for respect.
Let everyone speak, no matter whether in complaint or in support of a proposal designed to address the problems. Announce publically that every Cuban can say what he thinks and propose solutions from whichever political stripe and ideological orientation he believes in. Then they will see how the balsams appear, as complaint gives way to proposal, and how bad the chronic squashers of criticism will feel.
-
Nativity?
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Today could be the 3rd of June or the 9th of September, because there are hardly any signs that it is Christmas. Few, very few, offer holiday greetings in the street. Compared to December 25th of last year, this is a lifeless day with fewer expectations for the future. More than twelve months have passed since we predicted–in the privacy of family and friends–anticipated reforms that have turned out to be a mobile phone or a room in a hotel that we can’t afford.
Today the rooster will crow for a people whose actions are reduced to the deliberately complacent verb: to wait. Meanwhile, my address book fills with the phone numbers of friends who have emigrated and our president jumps like a caged cat when they speak to him of imprisoned dissidents. What little progress we’ve made in 2008! What a ridiculous marching in place we’ve managed, right up to December.
Translator’s note
Cuba, like other Spanish-speaking countries, traditionally celebrates Christmas on December 24, Noche Buena [Good Night], which ends at midnight with La Misa del Gallo [The Mass of the Rooster ]. Tradition holds that the only time the rooster crowed at midnight was to announce the birth of Jesus.
No Hay Comentarios »
-
A prayer for the cable
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
A vague completion date, and the question of whether it will bring information for all, surrounds the submarine cable linking Cuba and Venezuela. To all of us who complain about the poor connectivity found on the Island, they have an argument to shut us up: “We have to wait until the cable is ready.” With so much riding on it, I’m going to list what this projected umbilical cord should bring us:
Internet access for all, not based on privilege, with the opportunity for anyone to contract for a home connection.
In primary and secondary schools and in universities, broadband for the students and time to access the network that is less limited than today.
A reduction in costs at the cybercafés and internet-connected computers in the hotels, which today cost one-third of a monthly salary for one hour.
The opportunity to use social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Hi5 and more.
Finally, that we can get our hands on services such as Skype, videoconferencing, sending large packets of information and even watching television on the internet.
If the blessed cable is not going to bring all that, please explain to me the reasons why we have to wait until 2011 for it. I hope that at least a small fiber of its content reaches my freelance blogger hands; or will it be that the kilobytes that circulate in its interior will have, like a watermark: “Only for the trusted.”
Translator’s note:
The cost of the printer, 689.00 CUC [convertible pesos], is the equivalent of more than 3 years’ wages.
2 Comentarios »
-
Dic
30
2008
The end of the subsidies
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
The tedium of this end of year drove me to go see the dreary spectacle of our parliamentarians in their final meeting of 2008. The formula of posing problems without mentioning their true causes returned to the hall of the Palace of Conventions this December. The whole style of speaking starts with an initial reference more or less as follows: “Our Revolution has done much to improve retail trade, although problems remain…” Without this indispensable genuflection, one could fall into an unpermitted audaciousness, or seem to be hypercritical and ungrateful.
The final speech by Raúl Castro reaffirmed the idea of ending subsidies. Hearing that phrase, we tend to think only of the end of the quota of rationed food we Cubans receive. But the call to do away with symbolic prices and unnecessary “free” services is a double-edge sword which could end up hurting whomever wields it. If we were to be consistent in eliminating paternalism, we’d need to start by reducing the burden of maintaining this obese state infrastructure that we feed from our own pockets. Workers who produce steel, nickel, rum or tobacco, or who are employed in the bar of a hotel, receive a minuscule portion of the sale of their production or of the real cost of their services. The rest goes directly to subsidize an insatiable State.
Between the symbolic price of a pound of rationed rice, and the enormous “slice” of our salaries taken by those who govern us, we are more the givers than the receivers of subsidies. Eradicating them should be our slogan, not theirs.
-
The other Pablo
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Pablo Milanes and I share an unforgettable evening at the Tribuna Antiimperialista [Anti-Imperialist Grandstand]. He was on stage, singing his extensive repertoire, while I was hoisting a fabric sign with the name of Gorki. His concert lasted nearly three hours, but the fabric raised by some of us impertinents took only seconds to be destroyed. Despite being so close to the singer-songwriter of “Yolanda,” I thought, that August 28th, that thousands of kilometers separated my nonconformity from his apologetic leanings. I was wrong.
I’ve read the interview Pablo gave to the magazine El Público and any one of his answers would lead to a beating if he expressed it in a central square in Havana. His opinions seem to be those that led me to start this blog; some of his phrases I might well sign as my own. When he says, “We are paralyzed in every sense, we make plans for a future that never even comes nearer,” it touches me more than all of his songs put together. This future he speaks of was painted for us as an abundance of light with a musical score that included his voice crooning, “Cuba will.” For the sake of reaching such an enormous mirage every sacrifice seemed small, even shutting up about our differences, stifling every vestige of criticism.
The colors ran over the aging face of Utopia and the Victory symphony was rearranged into a reggaeton of survival. The songs of Pablo Milanés came to be like the hymns of old when we were more innocent and more gullible. “Many people are afraid to speak,” he tells us now and with trembling knees I confirm that yes, the cost of an opinion is still too high. Beyond the chords and taut strings of his guitar he modulated his best tune yesterday, the one that raises dissent and the finger of the citizen pointed at power. It’s the same tune hummed by thousands of Cubans, but one that he has the capacity to modulate with his warm voice that once made us believe the opposite
-
(note: she had a video of the sunrise from her place in Havana. *sighs , looks lovely*
Men succeed each other, ideologies collapse, leaders die and speeches get shorter, everything is under the repetitive cycle of the sun that sets and rises again. When I look from my balcony towards the rising sun, I realize how small we are, how laughable are some peoples’ pretensions of great significance.
Here is the first sun of 2009, the golden circle of light that lets us all survive. I wish you a Happy New Year and may the rays of this dawn warm everyone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAnwbs4NfQ8
-
Question
ARe you guys still reading this stuff? hope so :)
-
Abused
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
We watch out for anyone approaching our children lecherously, but few take into account the groping that is focused on minds and not on bodies. The ideological slant of Cuban education has reached an alarming point, even for those of us who were taught under the same methods. Simply looking at a textbook or reviewing the system for assessing students, one can see doctrine gaining ground at the expense of knowledge. In my son’s classroom, six photos of “Olive Green Leader” adorn the walls, while the report cards include grades for participation in political and patriotic activities.
It calls to mind my time as a Little Pioneer, reading a communique or shouting slogans, and I can’t get past feeling myself abused. But the feeling is much stronger when I see that Teo—at thirteen—has learned which opinions should not be expressed at school to avoid problems. To discover my own mask, extended now to the face of my son, is more painful than the abuse that was targeted at me.
No Hay Comentarios »
-
When the eighth leak appeared in the dining room ceiling, you accepted the mission to go to Venezuela as a doctor. You knew that with each month’s salary you’d never have been able to tear out the paneling and replace the worn out columns. Also, the resale of some appliances you bought there would help pay for the cost of cement and rebar. In Havana, your bank account would grow with the fifty convertible pesos you’d receive each month for your stay in Caracas. Your wife ordered a laptop and your youngest son asked for more Play Station.
The first months you slept badly with the sounds of gunfire coming into the small room shared with five other colleagues. To chase away the nostalgia, you thought about your relatives’ faces when they’d learn about all the nice clothes you had gotten at a discount. Meanwhile, the small bank account grew in Cuba, under the condition that you could only enjoy it at the end of your mission.
Someone in the group confessed one night that he was going to cross the border and take off for Miami. You listened to him with the trembling of one who can fix the leak, put on a new roof, and supply the requested laptop, to use your savings to start a new life. Suddenly you remembered the nurse who escaped and has never been able to get her family off the Island. Deserters are punished with separation, marked by the impossibility of being reunited with their families.
So you spent your two years curing people and saving lives, suffering the separation, the fear and the shared housing. With relief, you got news that your wife had started to buy the bags of cement to repair the roof. When it was almost time for you to return, someone announced that an agreement to stay another six months could be made by signing a paper. “No problem,” you thought, “with the extra money I’ll earn in that time, maybe I’ll have enough to repair the walls of the house.”
No Hay Comentarios
-
I had not yet been born in April 1961, when the socialist character of the Cuban process was declared. “This is the socialist revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble…” Fidel Castro announced near the foreboding gates of the Colon Cemetery. Many who listened to him, jubilant and optimistic, assumed that the first revolutionary objective would be to stop having humble people. With this illusion, they went out to champion a future without poverty.
Observing the present audience for what was announced nearly fifty years ago, I wonder when prosperity will stop being seen as counterrevolutionary. Will wanting to live in a house where the wind doesn’t tear the roof off stop being, some day, a petty bourgeois weakness? All the material shortages that I observe beg the question of the common sense of this colossal upheaval in the history of the country, only to stop having the rich, at the expense of having so many poor.
If, at the very least, we were more free. If all these materials needs were not also expressed in a long chain that makes every citizen a servant of the State. If the condition of the humble was a choice, voluntarily assumed and practiced, in particular, by those who govern us. But no. The renewed exaltation of humility launched by Raúl Castro this January first confirms for us what we learned in decades of economic crisis: poverty is the road that leads to obedience.
1 Comentario »
-
The portal Desde Cuba, where this blog and others are housed, has come out with its statistics. Even though I don’t put too much stock in the numbers, the fact is that the data are too good to hide. I still believe that most of the people I meet in the street who tell me they read this site didn’t get here through an internet connection, but rather though copies on CDs, flash memories, and emails sent by family and friends abroad.
Those who have blocked the site from inside Cuba can take much of the responsibility for the increase in the number of hits. With their clumsy actions, they don’t seem to notice that nothing is as attractive as that which is forbidden.
Enjoy the numbers, but don’t get caught up in the statistics… the best thing that has happened to us is not reflected in this curve that goes up and up.
1 Comentario »
-
Absence of color
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
In this impressionistic picture I make of my reality, often I don’t give the precise color for each event. The wide palette that makes the doubts, the disillusion and a certain haggard optimism, doesn’t have a shade that manages to represent the vacuum. How do I draw the “nothing” that is lived for months on this Island, the parenthesis of events in which we are stuck. The environment also has lost many shades, like the incandescent yellow of the rumors that haven’t been seen, since no one speculates on the next measures that Raúl Castro will approve.
The brown tone of the awaited and collapsing agrarian reform has not turned into the intense green of fruits and vegetables at more affordable prices. Why mention the eradication of the “white card” that, not becoming a reality, maintains the dark dyes of the absurd Cuban migration. Instead of winning nuances, on the official easel there is a canvas with the monochromatic spectacle of a single permitted speech. With these elements, one could well paint a picture of gray on gray and would still be being triumphalistic.
Some think the visits of several foreign presidents add a golden color to the canvas, but these strokes fall on the painting of the chancellery and the government palace, not on the canvas of real life. They are brushstrokes made outwards, by the skillful hand of the forger who with some retouches here and others there wants to authenticate the supposed changes. Meanwhile, I still don’t find the color that expresses inertia, that captures the faded reality of a country stuck in time.
11 Comentarios »
Ene
09
2009
More than the flu
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Hacker attacks are like those of the flu that hit us hard a couple times a year. I thought that two weeks ago, when they attacked Generation Y and had it out of circulation for more than 24 hours. It seems, however, that the colds are frequent and cause more than a simple fever.
Penúltimos Días, the blog of Ernesto Hernandez Busto is now under the influence of one of these infections. The best vaccine is solidarity, so we’re going to stay on top of it and keep posting on the web, to get the bacilli of censorship under control.
What is a DDoS?
5 Comentarios »
-
Ene
16
2009
Lady, I love you
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
I am waiting on a bench in Parque Central for some friends who are already half an hour late. It’s been a hard day and I have little desire to speak with anyone. A boy, he can’t be more than 20, sits down next to me. He speaks English badly but uses it to ask me where I’m from and if I understand Spanish. My first impulse is to tell him to beat it, I’m not looking for jineteros hunting for tourists, but I let him advance his failed strategy of seduction.
I don’t know if it’s my pale skin that I inherited from two Spanish grandparents, but my passport is just as blue and Cuban as the one he has. If not for his false impression that I’m a foreigner, he’d never come close to me. I not a good match—obviously he can see that—but he calculates that even if I look like a poor stranger, at least I could get him a visa to emigrate. Encouraged by my silence, he says in English, “Lady I love you,” and after such a declaration of love I can’t contain my laughter. I tell him in my worst Central Havana slang, “Don’t waste your bullets on me, I’m cubiche*.” He jumps up like he’s been stung by red ants and starts insulting me. I can hear him shouting, “This skinny thing looks like a foreigner but she’s from here and worth less than the national money.” My day has suddenly changed and I begin to laugh, alone on the bench, a few meters from the marble Martí that adorns the park.
The rematch comes quickly for the frustrated Casanova. A Nordic woman in shorts walks by and he repeats to her the same refrain he let loose on me. She smiles and seems dazzled by his youth and his braids ending in colored beads. I watch them leave together, while the lively youth declares his love, in a language in which he barely knows a dozen words.
Translator’s notes
The original title of this post is in English.
Jinetero/jinetera: prostitute or hustler.
Cubiche: Derogatory slang for a Cuban.
1 Comentario »
Ene
15
2009
Psychotherapy
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
For almost a day the Comment Zone in the Spanish (i.e. the original) version of Generation Y has not been working. This public square has accumulated such a huge number of opinions from its readers—more than three hundred thousand—that the database finally collapsed. We should be happy for all the debate that occurs in these pages and not worry about what was only a temporary break.
Thanks for being patient and remember that in my condition of “blind blogger” I can’t solve the technical difficulties as quickly as I would like. Also, I repeat, that my opinions are published only in this blog and in sites that have gained the credibility of their readers. I am not responsible for chain emails, alleged texts that circulate on the web, or other types of messages that don’t appear under the banner of the red drawer. The apocryphal under my name are only this: falsehoods.
As the cracks of the shaky technology heal themselves, other bloggers offered their space in solidarity to continue the debate. One commentator in particular, named Tseo, offered his blog to prolong the discussion at the URL http://generaciony.posterous.com
This virtual raft has taken on a little water, but nothing that points to a shipwreck.
1 Comentario »
Ene
13
2009
Celebration and mincemeat
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
To mark the half century since the first of January 1959, we Cubans could buy, through the ration system, half a pound of ground beef. The sense of humor that frequently saves us from neurosis did not spare the unexpected delicacy which was baptized as “the picadillo sent by Chavez,” an allusion to the obvious economic shoring-up that comes from Venezuela.
A political process of the magnitude of a socialist revolution should aspire, for its fiftieth anniversary, to more ambitious results and more pompous parties, but there is not much to give. Although it seems a frivolity, for many Cubans the sale of that beef was the most significant event that happened lately. Its flavor will be the memory we will keep of a gray December and a January equally haggard, where there were not even promises of possible improvements and reforms.
64 Comentarios »
-
Come and live it
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Inspired by one of the many tourist advertisements, an idea occurred to me to attract visitors to the Island. It is not an ecological tour to appreciate nature or an historic tour of the country’s plazas and monuments. Stay “a lo cubano,” as a Cuban, could be the slogan of this tourist campaign, condemned in advance to lack interest for its possible target audience. Come and live it, it would say on the cover of a ration book, which would be given to each of those who embark on this adventure.
Accommodations would not look like the luxurious rooms displayed by the hotels in Varadero or Cayo Coco, since our tour operators would suggest dingy rooms in Central Havana, tenements in Buena Vista and a crowded shelter for hurricane victims. The tourists who buy this package wouldn’t use convertible currency, but for their expenses for a two week stay would have half the average monthly wage, three hundred Cuban pesos. Thus, they could not ride in foreign currency taxis, or drive a rental car on the country’s roads. The use of public transport would be obligatory for those interested in this new method of travel.
Restaurants would be forbidden to those who opt for this excursion and they would receive eighty grams of bread each day. Maybe they’d even have the good fortune to enjoy half a pound of fish before they leave on their return flight. To travel to other provinces they wouldn’t have the option of Viazul, but instead of spending three days in line for a ticket, they could be given the advantage of being able to buy a seat after only one day of waiting. They would be prohibited from sailing on a yacht or renting a surfboard, so they wouldn’t be ending their stay ninety miles away rather than on our Caribbean “paradise.”
At the end of their stay, these risk-taking excursionists would get a diploma of “Connoisseurs of the Cuban Reality,” but they will have to come several more times to be declared “adapted” to our everyday absurdity. They will leave thinner, sadder, and with an obsession with food, which they will satisfy in the supermarkets of their countries, and above all with a tremendous allergy to tourism ads. The golden advertisements that show a Cuba of mulattas, rum, music and dancing will not be able to hide the panorama of collapsing buildings, frustration and inertia that they have already known and lived.
Translator’s note
300 Cuban pesos is about $12 U.S.
1 Comentario »
Ene
17
2009
A possible world, is better
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Faced with the promises of a future that never takes shape, I lean toward the prospects that begin today, toward the dreams that materialize on this day. I already had my eyes focused on tomorrow, breathed in mouthfuls of possibilities and believed the illusion of what would come. At this point, I’m betting only on the viable.
I got out of bed reversing one of those chimerical slogans–the kind we hear so much on TV–in order to make it more real. A possible world is better, I said to myself, and began to feel that we are going to achieve it. That the planet, my island and my city will find realizable solutions, not another barrage of utopias.
22 Comentarios »
-
:binkybaby: Wow tuff stuff. Anyone reading this still?
-
I am :icon_thumright:
-
Me too :sad1:
-
Me too. The tourism post...really got to me.
thanks for keeping this up and running Jammy
-
Its powerful stuff. I agree.
-
I pop in for a read every now and then.
-
Ene
20
2009
We the People
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
I’m post-modern and disbelieving: speeches put me to sleep and a leader standing at a podium is, for me, the height of tedium. I associate microphones with calls to intransigence, and the praised oratory of some has always seemed to me like nothing but screams to deafen the “enemy.” At public events I usually manage to slip away and I prefer the buzzing of a fly over listening to the promises of a politician. I have had to hear so many harangues—many of them seemingly endless—that I’m not the best person to endure a new lecture.
For me, the voice that emerges from the podium brings more intolerance than concord, a greater helping of exasperation than of calls to harmony. From the podiums I have seen predictions of invasions that never came, economic plans that were never met, and even expressions as discriminatory as, “Let the scum that leaves, leave!” Which is why I was so confused with the serene statement delivered today by Barack Obama, with his manner of carefully constructed arguments and invocations to harmony.
It seemed to me when reading it—I don’t have an illegal satellite dish to watch it on TV—that he condemned all the rhetoric to be left in the twentieth century. We have started to say goodbye to that convulsed eloquence which no longer moves us. I only hope that it will be, “We, the People” who will write the speeches from now on.
1 Comentario »
-
In mid-2007, Julito assured me that before August pork would be sold at ten pesos a pound, the daily salary of the average worker. Not seeing his prediction come true, he was shouting last January about the exact date of the meat discount. With his permanent smile, he assured me that we could acquire the precious meat—at a fairer price—by the summer months. Then came the hurricanes and my neighbor’s prediction turned into a bitter prophecy or, even worse, a harmful naiveté. I didn’t run into him for several weeks and couldn’t throw back in his face his excessive triumphalism.
Yesterday, Julito came up to my floor to talk about another topic. His youngest daughter has just taken the path already charted by the previous one, after deserting in the midst of an artistic trip abroad. The two have been reunited in one of the large U.S. cities and her father is not so much sad about the separation as happy about the future of his daughters. Sitting in my living room he declared that he and his wife plan to reunite with the exiled part of the family. “There we will be more useful,” he tells me in the tone of someone who’s already made a decision.
I had the urge to ask him if he wouldn’t wait for the meat discount, and afterwards fly to the family reunion. But I know that as parents we don’t usually care for jokes about our children, so I preferred to ignore his past optimism. I forgave him the fatigue his prediction caused me and even the appraisal of “pessimist” with which he’d greeted my suspicion. Julito is one of those who even on the gangway of the airplane will continue to swallow his criticisms. Later, in Boston, maybe he’ll read this blog and he’ll probably send me an email to confess that he never believed in anything, that he was just as skeptical as I am.
No Hay Comentarios »
-
thanks Jammy,
I probably wouldn't be reading any of this if I had to follow a link to a blog.
thanks for posting :icon_thumright:
-
:binkybaby: wow. I just read this .
-
she is so brave.
Victim no, responsible
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
I could spend the day scared, hiding from the men stationed below. I might fill pages with the personal cost this blog has brought me and with the testimonies of those who have been “warned” that I am a dangerous person. It would be enough for me to decide that every one of my articles would be a long complaint or the accusing finger of one who always looks outside to find fault. But it happens that I don’t feel myself a victim, but responsible.
I am conscious that I have been silent, that I have allowed a few to govern my island as if they were running a hacienda. I pretended, and accepted that others will make the decisions that touch us all, while I shielded myself behind the fact of being too young, too fragile. I am responsible for having donned my mask, for having used my son and my family as a reason not to dare. I applauded—like almost everyone—and left my country when I was fed up, telling myself that it was much easier to forget than to try to change something. I am also burdened with the debt of having let myself carry—sometimes—the rancor and suspicion with which they marked my life. I tolerated their inoculating me with paranoia and, in my teens, a raft in the middle of the sea was a frequently nurtured desire.
However, as I do not feel myself a victim, I raise my skirt a little and show my legs to the two men who follow me everywhere. There is nothing more paralyzing than a woman’s calf flashing in the sun in the middle of the street. Nor am I wooden like a martyr, I try not to forget to smile, because giggles are hard stones in the teeth of the authoritarian. So I continue my life, without letting them turn me into a whiner, with only one regret. Ultimately, everything that I live today has also been the product of my silence, the direct fruit of my former passivity.
Esta entrada fue escrita el Lunes, 26 de Enero de 2009 a las 08:42 y archivada en Generation Y. Puedes seguir cualquier respuesta a esta entrada a través del feed RSS 2.0. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o trackback desde tu propio sitio web.
2 Respuestas a “Victim no, responsible”
Andy dice:
26 Enero 2009 a las 09:44
I really don’t get it at all. Cuba is a country that needs EVERYTHING… and they have the resources to waste two people’s time just following Yoani around day and night? Don’t those folks have any REAL work to do? I suppose we should be grateful. If these totalitarian types weren’t so stupid and inefficient they might actually take over the planet. You’d think though, that they could be put to better use… go drive some buses, or cut some sugarcane or something.
But meanwhile, what guts that flaquita has. It boggles the mind! (And I hope she’s just walking them to death… up town, down town, every which way. Wear those suckers out Yoani!)
-
Locomotive
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
He started with a pick and shovel, planting the heavy crossbeams that support the train lines. His father had also been a railroad worker, and an uncle even managed to drive the freight cars, loaded with cane, up to the plant. I was very young and already his life was connected to the journey of a locomotive, with its file of loud, packed cars. Some years passed, he managed to have, finally, the controls between his hands and to drive the metal serpent through the Cuban countryside. My father became an engineer, fulfilling a long family lineage, which had been joined to the railroad for decades.
More than once, I myself drove one of those machines along a quiet stretch, while he supervised my movements and taught me to sound the horn. “We had trains before Spain,” my paternal grandfather said, whenever anyone asked about his work. So I grew up, smelling the metal of the brakes that screeched at every stop and pulling the rope of my toy train, surrounded by plastic trees and miniature cows.
The collapse of socialism in Europe derailed the family profession. Many engines stopped for lack of parts, the trips became more widely spaced and the delays habitual. Leaving Havana headed to Santiago could be delayed twenty hours or three days. In some small towns the cars were attacked by needy peasants who would steal some of the goods being transported. The loudspeakers in the central station repeated endlessly, “The departure of the train to… has been cancelled.” My father was left without a job and his colleagues began to make a living through a variety of illegal work.
The railroad in Cuba hasn’t recovered from this crash. Aging rail lines, long lines to buy a ticket and the fall from grace of an entire profession, has given this mode of transport the worst reputation. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll stop having railroads before the Peninsula…” my father says sarcastically. His gaze is not fixed on the wheel that he begins to dismount—in his new profession as bicycle repairman—but at a point further away, to the mass of iron that he guided along this long and narrow Island.
-
Among the many ways of extinguishing light, there are very peculiar ones such as “shining in its absence.” An unmistakable gleam has remained reflected in a photo that appeared yesterday on Granma’s front page, where the Cuban flag lacks the five white points in the middle of the triangle. The commotion has been such that the newspaper was sold out in the early hours of the morning and today, on the street, everyone was talking about it. Obviously it’s not a question of a printing error, since a star does not escape so easily.
I prefer to think that, capricious and proud, the bright star that represents our sovereignty decided to go away, on the eve of the birthday of the Teacher [José Martí]. Because the independence that he radiates is not only that of being autonomous of a foreign power, but that which allows every citizen to be sovereign of the powerful State. In light of the fact that it’s so dark, in the field of civil liberties, that we can’t even see our hands, the solitary star deserted its red field leaving the official organ of the Party with its marked absence on the front page.
There are errors that have much greater symbolic weight than hundreds of successes. Evasive stars and readers who interpret their escape; Islands that live dependent on prophesies and superstitions; days to remember the national hero and flags that dare to show what so many people keep silent about.
* Line from Jose Martí, which originally read: “The star that illuminates and kills.”
5 Comentarios »
-
Ene
30
2009
School snack
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Who doesn’t remember the sweets and the accompanying soft drink we received, during the years of the Soviet subsidy, as a school snack. Like everything that is free, we ended up diminishing its important and during recess many of us played at spraying the fizzy drink and tossing the pastries. In our hands, the guava pastries and the sugar cookies flew from the balcony of my little school on Salud Street at the corner of Soledad. In spite of the fact that we undervalued it, without this snack in the middle of classes we would have been hungry and exhausted by midday.
At the beginning of the economic crises of the nineties, one of the first subsidies to disappear was the snack for elementary school students. The children stopped hearing the sound of the bottles being opened, or of the truck with the tins of cookies that would come early in the morning. Those tossed sweets became a memory that we tortured ourselves with, for so much wastefulness. The parents had to take on the task of preparing a snack for school and no one explained in the press why, precisely, they’d decided to eliminate that much needed sustenance.
3 Comentarios »
-
Feb
02
2009
Ortega y Gasset meet Cachita
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Since Friday we’ve been in Santiago de Cuba. My mother asked me to bring stones from the Sanctuary of Cobre, and my sister, as in the refrain of a traditional song, is hoping for a “little Virgin of Charity.” However, we have come for something more: to spread the virus called “Blogger Journey” to this province, where there is less access to the internet than in Havana but the same need to express opinions.
The trip has left me with a mix of impressions which will require several posts to be told. I came with the idea of finding a dancing and outgoing people, but I will go without having seen a smile. The plaza where Raúl Castro spoke of continuity, just a month ago today, is full of people on the hunt for tourists and beggars who ask me for some money for food. I walked not only through streets filled with shops that trade in convertible pesos, but also along steep streets with houses on the verge of collapse. “Save water, we can only fill the tank once every two weeks,” was the welcoming phrase from a kind family where we slept for four nights.
Today, Sunday morning, we had the most interesting meeting. Young people filled with discontent and with desires to make things change, received us to hear about the Cuban blogosphere. Shy at first, but, after a few minutes, with many questions about the multifaceted and flexible tool that is a blog. Now we’ll see if they join the Voces Cubanas [Cuban Voices] project.
I was in the sanctuary of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, an island within the Island. Where, in the same glass case, offerings for the freedom of political prisoners and the insignias of the Rebel Army coexist. There, I left my Ortega y Gasset prize for journalism, the best place it could possibly be. Fortunately, the long arm of the censor does not enter her temple. Around Cachita stretches, still, one of the few strongholds of plurality that you can see in this green alligator of a country.
Translator’s notes
El Cobre, a copper mining town near Santiago de Cuba, is the site of the Sanctuary of Cobre dedicated to Cuba’s patron saint, the Virgin of Charity, nicknamed “Cachita.” The church houses a small statue of the Virgin Mary which was found floating in the sea off the Cuban coast in the early 1600s. Visitors to Cachita’s shrine leave gifts, which range from Olympic medals to everyday objects. These gifts are not censored or removed by the State. Visitors also take away with them copper stones from the mines. Readers who want to know more can find a great deal of information on the web.
Voces Cubanas (Cuban Voices) is a new home for bloggers on the Island.
5 Comentarios »
-
getting up to date :thumbsup:
Feb
10
2009
Nostalgia for pizza
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
It arrived in force in the seventies to break the grayness of the rationed market. Amid the daily rice with beans, pizza invaded us with its novelty and its colors. Each province built a pizzeria and created its own recipe, a source of dismay for any Mediterranean chef, but how captivating to the islanders. Thick, with a lot of tomato and crispy edges, thus it was recorded in the minds of several generations of Cubans.
Then came the crisis of the nineties and the local Italian food places sold only an infusion of orange peel and cigars. We were filled with nostalgia for the lasagna and spaghetti tasted in the “golden” decades of the Soviet subsidy. The topic of food was inevitable when friends got together and, on that theme, pizza aroused the greatest longing. When the pressure of hunger and discontent exploded in what was called the Rafter Crisis in August 1994, the government authorized self-employment. From the hands of those enterprising purveyors the lost products returned, made with flour.
Many Cuban workers today depend on “street” pizza, sold by private hands. They substitute pizza for the deplorable lunch served in their workplace. However, for several months, supplies have been scarce in the family enterprises. The prolonged raids against the informal market, a result of the crisis in the wake of the hurricanes, has strangled the food sellers. Without the diversion of state resources, few could make it in self-employment where they can’t count on a wholesale market. There are fears that “street” food will end up being sold only in convertible pesos and thus become inaccessible. And so we have the joke going around: some people claim that, tired of so much adulteration, the pizza finally packed up and went home to Italy.
42 Comentarios »
Feb
08
2009
José Conrado
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
An unusual Sunday, with barely twenty-three degrees centigrade in Santiago de Cuba, I listened to him speak from the altar. Over two hundred people attended his sermon in the wooden church in a poor neighborhood with the mountains as a backdrop. To me, bored by the liturgies, I was surprised to see him celebrate from reality and to take Jesus as reference to deal with today. José Conrado is a difficult man for those who are accustomed to speaking—only them—to a multitude. A Santiaguan, hearty and cheerful, able to give a piece of his mind to someone who dares to upset his congregation. Annoying evidence for those who keep quiet and a hard nut for those accustomed to placing gags.
So it didn’t surprise me to see him pick up on the feeling of many people and address an open letter to Raúl Castro.* I see he’s not waiting for an answer to his missive: he already has it. It is that silent prayer that goes out from each of his parishioners, the way they cry out for changes, without raising their voices. In his small Church of Santa Teresita everything has been said and—I who was there—say to them that it has the tone of the petition, which cannot, nor should, wait any longer.
*This letter was translated into English by the Generation Y team and posted as a page on this site. The original letter, in Spanish, can be read here.
94 Comentarios »
Feb
05
2009
Two agendas
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
The duality, in which we are caught between the official version and the on-the-street reality, also characterizes the demands emerging from this Island. The list of what we hope for is divided into two different agendas, as dissimilar as they are conflicting. The first, the government’s list, includes strong declarations calling for the release of the five Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States and has, among its major points, the extradition of Posada Carriles, who is accused of having blown up a plane in 1976. The official line is that it’s not enough for Obama to close the prison at the Guantánamo base, but he must also return the territory to Cuba and, obviously, there is a section, highlighted in red, about ending the U.S. blockade.
You can read something else if you look at the list of the people’s wishes. On the first lines there’s the question of what have been called “structural reforms” about which they talked so much two years ago. One repeated request, to remove the straitjacket on economic initiatives of the people, also would be among the most visible. With the chipped pencil of waiting we have written, on several pages of this virtual agenda, the need to eliminate the restrictions on entering and leaving the country, the desire for free association, the choice of what creed we raise our children in, and the need to earn salaries in the same money in which most products are sold. All this and more would be on the frayed list of citizens’ aspirations, if someone would like to browse through it.
The same applies to the official document on human rights which is being presented today at the Human Rights Council. A fictional summary of what we have—read through rose-tinted glasses and the triumphalist glossary—that is so far, light years away, from what we live. The work of skilled writers, and so it must be read, like the fictional text of certain authors who avoid writing the log—the real one—of the shipwreck.
Translator’s note: The sign in the empty window reads, “Promotions”
127 Comentarios »
-
Fr. José Conrado to Raúl Castro Ruz
Open Letter to General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz,
President of the Republic of Cuba
Written by: Fr. José Conrado
5 February 2009
Dear Mr. President:
Fifteen years ago I dared to write to the then head of the Cuban State, Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, who was then President of our country. The gravity of that hour drove me to do it for the good of the fatherland. The seriousness of this time compels me to write to you to share my current concerns. Must I describe the situation of our country? The economic crisis affects every household and makes people live agonizingly, asking themselves: what am I going to eat or what am I going to wear? How to get the most elemental things for my family? The difficulties of everyday life become so overwhelming that they keep us mired in sadness and hopelessness. Insecurity and widespread feelings of helplessness lead to amorality, hypocrisy and two-facedness. Everything is worth it because nothing has value, except survival at all cost, which we later discover is “at any cost.” Hence the dream of Cubans, especially the young, to abandon the country.
It would seem that our country is at an impasse. As a man of faith, however, I believe that God never puts us in absolutely desperate situations. I firmly believe that our journey as a nation and a people, will not end in an inevitable precipice, in a reality of irreversible misfortune. There is always a solution, but it takes courage to seek and to find it. In your recent appeals and urgent calls to work with tireless tenacity, I believe I recognize a peculiar and accurate perception of the gravity of the moment, but also, that you think that the solution depends on us. But as the slogan-turned-into-a-joke said… “It’s not enough to say let’s go, we need to know where.”
We have lived our reality by blaming the enemy, or even our friends: the fall of the communist bloc countries in Eastern Europe, together with the United States trade embargo, have become our scapegoat. And that is a convenient but misleading way out of the problem. As Miguel de Unamuno said, “We tend to entertain ourselves in counting hairs in the Sphinx’s tail because we are afraid to look in his eyes.”
It is not enough, General, to solve the problems, certainly serious and urgent, of food, or of shelter, which in recent hurricanes so many compatriots have just lost “with their poor chattels: fear, grief.” We are at such a critical time that we must consider a profound review of our criteria and practices, our aspirations and our goals. And here we might, with all due respect, remember those words that our national apostle José Martí wrote to Generalissimo Gómez in a somewhat similar situation: “One cannot establish a people, general, as one commands an encampment.”
The world is changing. The recent election of a black citizen to hold the presidency of a country formerly known as racist and a violator of the civil rights of blacks, says that something is changing in this world. The laudable and fraternal concern of our brothers in exile before the weather phenomena that have recently beaten our people, and their generous assistance, selfless and immediate, are signs that something is changing here. The Cuban government that you lead today must have the courage to face these changes with new approaches and new attitudes.
Our country has responded with courage when a foreign government has sought to meddle in our national problems. However, when it comes to the violation of human rights, not only governments, but even individuals, ordinary citizens, within or outside the country, have something to say. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” We have to have enormous courage to recognize that in our homeland there is a constant and not justifiable violation of human rights, which is reflected in the existence of dozens of prisoners of conscience and the battered exercise of the most basic freedoms: speech, information, press and opinion, and serious restrictions on freedom of religion and politics. Failure to recognize these realities does no favors for our national life and makes us lose self-respect, in our eyes and in the eyes of others, friends or foes.
The cause of peace, both domestic and foreign, and the prosperity of the nation itself, are grounded in the unconditional respect for these rights that express the supreme dignity of the human being as a child of God. And to keep quiet about this, weighs so heavily on my conscience that I am not able to bear it. And for me, this is my way of serving the truth and of being consistent with the love I feel for my people.
I confess, general, the disgust and sadness it has caused me to know that our government has rejected, apparently for ideological reasons or political differences, the help that the U.S. and several European nations wanted to send for the victims of the hurricanes that hit our land. When one falls into misfortune, (and that can happen to anyone, including the powerful), it’s time to accept the help that is offered, because this aid reveals a depth of goodwill in the face of pain, of human solidarity, even in those we considered our enemies. Giving the opponent the opportunity to be good and to do what is just can bring out the best in ourselves and in others, making us change old attitudes and heal damaging resentments. Nothing contributes more to peace and reconciliation among peoples than this giving and receiving. The phrase of St. Francis de Sales is valid in interpersonal relationships as well as between countries, “More flies are caught with a drop of honey than a barrel of vinegar.” As stated by His Holiness John Paul II during his visit to our country, “Let Cuba open to the world and let the world open to Cuba.” But if we continue with closed doors, no one will be able to enter, no matter how much they want to. A sign of hope for me is the participation and the greater space which has been given to CARITAS to help our people. That deserves a special recognition and is a positive and hopeful change.
Believe me, Mr. President, I do not write to submit a list of complaints and grievances about the national situation, but if I were to do so the list could be very, very long. In truth, I have wanted to talk to you Cuban to Cuban, heart to heart. A priest who was a great friend of mine, now deceased, used to say: “A man’s worth is the worth of his heart.” At your wife’s funeral, seeing you surrounded by your children and grandchildren, moved to tears, I noticed that you are a sensitive man. And I think there is more wisdom in the heart of a good man than in all the books and libraries in this world, as the song goes: “that which sense can accomplish, knowledge has not been able to do, nor the highest conduct, nor the broadest thought.…” Therefore I appeal to your sense of responsibility, to your kindness, to tell you not to be afraid, be bold in taking a new and different path in the world that is showing so many signs of change for the better. As I said to your brother 15 years ago, all Cubans are responsible for the future of the fatherland, but because of the office you occupy, because of the power you now have, that responsibility falls on you in a special way.
If you decide to embark on this journey of hope, count on me, general. I will be in the first row, to give to Cuba, once again, the only thing I have: my heart; and to you, my honest hand and my unselfish collaboration. So we can make Martí’s dream a reality, to have a fatherland, “with all and for the good of all.”
I want to end with the words said by our current Pope, Benedict XVI in 1968: “Even above the Pope as an expression of binding ecclesiastic authority, is one’s own conscience which must be obeyed first, if it were necessary, even against what ecclesiastical authority says.” If that applies to ecclesiastical authority whose origin I consider divine, it applies to all other human authority, however powerful it may be.
With my best wishes,
José Conrado Rodríguez Alegre, Fr.
Pastor of Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús
-
Request list
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
My friend Yuslemi’s pocket hasn’t recovered from the last meeting at her son’s primary school. A portion of the meeting between the parents and the teacher was dedicated to the needs of the classroom, and in particular a discussion of the share each family needed to come up with to buy a much needed fan. The issue of cleaning occupied about twenty minutes and each parent made a note of various products such as detergent, a floor mop, and a broom, they needed to bring in the coming days. With five pesos a month for each student, they could pay a lady to clean the room once a week.
The school lacks cleaning staff because the low wages don’t attract anyone. The person they illegally contract with will probably be a retiree who will have no labor protection when performing the work, no vacations, nor any sick pay. This is similar to what in Europe is called “the black economy,” which in Cuba we know as a job “on the left.”
When it seemed that the meeting was over, it was time for another kind of request list. They asked if there was a father who could repair the chairs which had been broken and a gentleman raised his hand to take on that task. Another offered to supply a padlock for the door, and a mom committed to print the math tests which would be given in late January. The school lacks a copier or printer, so the reproduction of the tests falls on some parent who works in a State enterprise where these resources are available. Everything was agreed to in an atmosphere of business-as-usual and the teacher, after finishing her reading of the list of requests, declared that the meeting had been a success.
-
Feb
15
2009
Gratitude and request
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
I don’t want to let the days go by and continue the ingratitude of not speaking of the “selfless companions” who monitor the entrance to my building. They, with their disproportionate sacrifice in the last weeks, have managed to limit the acts of vandalism which are so common on these fourteen floors. No one has stolen the clothes from the clothesline; we haven’t found any human excrescence adorning the stairs; no exhibitionist has shown his member to some startled teenager; the dominoes table that generates so many shouts has been suspended until further notice and even the vagabond dogs have avoided doing their thing down there. All this is thanks to the rotating shifts that two disciplined members of the Ministry of the Interior maintain—to keep an eye on me—in the lobby of my concrete block.
I just wanted, along with my infinite gratitude, to ask them, please, for a little blind eye for the illegal vendors. We live through the same number of days without anyone—not even a distributor of cockroach poison—shouting their wares in our hallways. I feel I’m to blame for the commercial strangulation in which the other 143 apartments are plunged, and I have to do something to relieve them. So, I ask them, these soldiers of MINIT lying in wait for their prey—look the other way when it comes to food. This doesn’t have to become the siege of Lisbon!
2 Comentarios »
Feb
14
2009
Boring home
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
I know of books that have stigmatized their authors and of writers who project a dark shadow over their works. Cases where the writer is as difficult as his texts seem to raise the question, which is hurt more by the other. Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo has been the direct cause of the fact that the stories collected under the title Boring Home were not presented at the Havana International Book Fair of 2009. He and his mania for complicating things, of finding linguistic games in a reality that understands slogans and shouts better. To make matters worse, he’s dedicated to stealing, with his camera lens, certain imprudent images that contradict the official iconography. They don’t show the apple, or even Adam, just the snake.
The radioactivity Orlando gives off stopped the presses, scared off the editors and keeps some acquaintances from greeting him in the street. His name disappeared from the list of writers promoted by the official institutions and was removed from the catalog of this Fair. However, the nutcase Lawton managed to print his book and now wants to release it. We, his friends—other excluded people—have decided to join him in the alternative launch of his writings on Monday, February 16th at three in the afternoon, outside the fortress of La Cabaña.
Except for the threats, all this could have taken place with a little group sitting on the grass, talking about a published book. Since yesterday, an email* is circulating on the intranet of the Ministry of Culture, warning us of various reprisals for the alternative release of the stories. Intimidating calls, accusations of being employees of the Empire—how unoriginal they are!—and even veiled warnings about being beaten up. All this has raised the profile of the release of Boring Home beyond anything we were looking for, giving the greatest prominence to the presentation of a banned writer.
We will be there, we will see if they let us leave.
*Email text: Errors in spelling, writing and people’s names are from the original.
I’ve heard a there’s a message circulating, by email, promoting the presentation on this coming Monday, the 16th, outside La Cabaña, of a book by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and that it will be presented by the infamous and counterrevolutionary blogger, Yoanni Sánchez, who is well compensated by the empire.
A few months ago a photo of Pardo Lazo also circulated, masturbating over a Cuban flag, an act that outrages all the sons of this country and of other latitudes because this is an insult to a symbol of the country. His literary work is little known, however this fact was disclosed as part of the propaganda against Cuba.
Pardo Lazo has become a puppet at the service of Yoanni and her clique.
I don’t think they would carry out this stupid activity, to do so will give them a fright like that I’ve read in the “summons,” and I’ve also had news of some disagreeable surprises they are going to find there.
-
Between the two walls
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Today at 3 in the afternoon we managed to present Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo’s book. After sneaking through the alleys of Cerro to lose the two “securities” who were following us, we ended up at the Capitol and took a bus through the tunnel under the bay. Tension, fear and doubt joined us on our brief journey to the fortress of La Cabaña. Orlando was thinking of his mother, with her high blood pressure, frightened by the threatening phone calls. My mind was on Teo at his school, unaware of the fact that maybe nobody would be there when he returned home. Fortunately, they were only ghosts.
The police operation had—we understood it a posteriori—an intention to intimidate, but there was little they could do in front of the cameras of the foreign press and of the writers who were invited. We began, sitting on the grass, speaking with a group of fifteen people, and ended with the closing applause of more than forty. We were surprised by the presence and solidarity of several young writers and poets with books published by the official publishing house. Also by the attendance of some Latin American novelists who supported us with words and hugs. There were Gorki and Ciro of the group Porno Para Ricardo, Claudia Cadelo of the blog Octavo Cerco, Lía Villares, author of the blog Habanemia, Reinaldo Escobar, blogger of Desde Aqui, Claudio Madan and others whose names I won’t mention, so as not to cause them harm.
From the other side of the street a group of persecutors was filming, with a telephoto lens, everything that happened in the green esplanade. Several primary schools had been invited to fly kites in the same place and a raucous reggaetón started just at three in the afternoon. However, we managed to isolate ourselves from all that and enter the door of Boring Home; to raise ourselves a few centimeters above the dusty reality of the watched and the watchers. From where I was sitting, the wall of La Cabaña looked to me more deteriorated, full of small porosities that opened in the stone.
* To download Luís Orlando’s book, please click here
-
Take me sailing on the wide sea*
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
In a land surrounded by water, the sailor is the link to the other side, the bearer of images that the islander cannot leave to see. In the case of Cuba, someone who works on a ship can also buy abroad many products unavailable in local markets. A kind of Ulysses who, after months at sea, brings home a suitcase full of trinkets for the family. The sailor who brings household appliances destined for the black market in the hold of the ship, makes fashions arrive earlier than the bureaucrats of domestic commerce had planned.
For several decades, to be a “merchant sailor” was to belong to a select fraternity who could go beyond the horizon and bring things never seen in these latitudes. The first jeans, tape recorders, and gum that I ever saw in my life were transported by these lucky crew members. The same thing happened with digital clocks, color televisions and some cars that bore no resemblance to the unattractive Russian Ladas and Moskoviches.
For the relatives of a sailor, the long months of absence are softened by the economic balm from ports-of-call with cheaper prices and better quality than in Cuban shops. When they reach the age to retire and drop anchor, then they can live on what they’ve been able to transport, and the images that remain in memory.
I am telling this whole story of boats, masts and the informal market because of Oscar, the husband of the blogger of Sin Evasion, whom they are threatening to expel from his job as a sailor. The motive: Miriam Celaya’s decision to drop her mask and to continue writing her opinions with her face uncovered. The punishment: leaving the family without the support it relies on. For her to navigate freely on the web, he may lose his chance to sail the waters.
*From the children’s song: Little Paper Boat
12 Comentarios »
-
Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that begin with or contain a "Y." Born in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite especially Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who drag their "Y's" to read my Blog and to write to me.
Svenska
Feb
23
2009
Cuba Performance
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Some days ago, at home, we watched the documentary Cuba Performance dedicated to the artistic work of the group Omni Zona Franca. The room was filled with long-hairs, and even some foreign authors, guests of the Book Fair, climbed the fourteen flights of stairs. Amaury, the protagonist of the film, wasn’t present because a few days earlier his son had been born and he was drowning in diapers and sleepless nights. It was Friday the thirteenth with a full moon, but the superstition didn’t stop us from enjoying a few hours of creation, freedom and relaxing.
The director of the documentary, Elvira Rodríguez Puerto, lived for weeks with Eligio, David and the other artists of Alamar. Thanks to this close interaction, she manages to show us the mix of poetry, painting, zen and graffiti with which these talented autodidacts have filled the streets of the planned city of the “New Man.” Dysfunctional and stigmatized, this unique eastern town is now a place where few want to live, filled with repetitive, identical concrete blocks. Amaury lives and makes his art there, a large black man, he strolls with his miner’s hat and flowing tunic. He manages to involve the neighbors in his performance art, making them forget the empty bags they bring back from the market and helping them loosen the rictus of incredulity with which they observe everything.
Our life is full of performance, and of performance art, loaded with symbolism, even though we seem totally linear and mundane. That is the sensation I get listening to the philosophy of this smiling poet who walks with the support of his wooden staff. To wait for the bus, to stand in line for a single bread ration, to trade goods on the black market, to build a small raft to go to sea and even to pretend that we agree, are part of a script we have performed for decades. Yet we yearn for the fluency and ease, the happening and spontaneity with which Amaury moves, so far from fear, conventions and controls.
-
I skirt the edge of my building, avoiding walking under the balconies, because the kids throw condoms filled with urine to kill the boredom. A man with his daughter is carrying a bag that’s dripping a mix of grease, water and blood. They’re coming from the butcher’s, where the line announces that some rationed product came in this morning. The two climb the stairs happily carrying their trophy meat. The wife is probably already cutting the onions, while breathing a sigh of relief that the protein is back, after several days’ absence.
I’m behind them and I manage to hear the little girl ask, “Papi, how many chickens have you eaten in your life?” I see the bewildered face of the father, who’s made it to the sixth floor, sweating from every pore. His answer is a little brusque. “How would I know that? I don’t keep a count of the food.” But the young girl insists. Evidently she’s learning to multiply and divide, so she wants to take apart the world and explain it—completely—with pure numbers. “Papi, if you’re 53 and every month you get one pound of chicken at the butcher’s, you just have to know how many months you’ve lived. When you have that number you divide it by four pounds, which is more or less what a chicken usually weighs.”
I follow the mathematical formula she’s developed and I figure I’ve eaten 99 chickens in my 33 years. The man interrupts my calculations, telling her, “Sweetie, when I was born chickens weren’t rationed.” I start thinking about how I grew up with the shackles of rationing attached to both ankles but, thanks to the black market, the diversion of resources from State enterprises, the shops that sell only in convertible pesos, the trading of clothes for food, and a ton of parallel tracks, I don’t know the exact amount I’ve digested. As I hurry past and hear the doubting phrase from the little Pythagoras: “Oh, Papi, do you expect me to believe that before, in the butcher shops, they sold you all the chicken you wanted…”
-
Mar
01
2009
A macho discourse
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
I still remember the odor of the gas masks we wore, running to the shelter in military practice during primary school. My classmates and I came to fear that one day we’d take shelter in the basement of some building, while outside the bombs fell. Today, the city shows the traces of a constant attack, but it has only been the projectiles of mismanagement and the bullets of a centralized economy that have shaped this landscape. In all that time, preparing for a battle that never came, we overlooked that the main confrontation occurred among ourselves. A prolonged battle between those of us fed up with bellicose language, and, the other side, those who need “a place under siege, where dissent is treason.”
Surrounded by fences that warn us of a possible invasion from the north, several generations of Cubans have come of age. Vigorous calls to resist, though nobody really knows exactly whom or what, make up the background chorus. Like a soldier who sleeps with one eye open, ready to jump up at the trumpet’s call, so should we be always on edge. In contrast, indifference won the key battle, and most of my childhood pals ended up going into exile rather than into the trenches.
After decades of hearing the same thing, I’m tired of macho wrapped in its olive green uniform; of the adjective “virile” associated with bravery; of hairs on the chest determining more than hands in the sink. All my progesterone waits, because of this rugged paraphernalia, to switch to words like: prosperity, reconciliation, harmony, coexistence.
-
:thumbsup: I like it
-
Mar
03
2009
Ready for Everest
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
We’ve already been four months without an elevator. Fourteen stories down, fourteen stories up, and there’s no clear date for when the contraption will be ready. The installation goes at a Cuban pace, which seems like that of one of those Galapagos tortoises that needs hours and hours to advance a few meters. Something always happens to extend the date for inaugurating the new Russian elevator, and meanwhile my legs are like those of an alpine mountain climber.
If you see that at times the blog has the rhythm of the eight steps that form each flight of my stairs, no need to worry; Generation Y will survive this too.
1 Comentario »
-
Mar
03
2009
Fidgeting on Mount Olympus
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Yesterday, with my lunch half eaten, a friend called to ask if I had seen the 1:00 pm news. No, I never chew while watching this type of program, it’s fatal to the digestion. Mixing red beans with the announcement of the changes in the Council of State and Ministers, would have resulted in a mortar of incalculable consequences. Even so, it bothered me to have missed the news and to find out—in bits and pieces—the changes that happened up there.
The “official notice,” published in the newspaper Granma, is long and full of language that puts me to sleep. In short, various ministers and members of the Council of State have been replaced; this fall from grace has been rumored, even in the streets, for some months. It didn’t even surprise me that one of the replacements, Carlos Valenciaga, was not mentioned, or that the military uniforms ended up with a greater presence at the highest level of the administration.
People are trying to find, in these changes, the depth and wisdom of a game of chess, but to me it seems like a game of “blind man’s bluff.” I don’t believe the wished-for and necessary reforms that people were waiting for, were to have new ministers installed. If the intention was to stimulate progressive measures, no functionary in charge of a ministry could have slowed them down. The intention, however, has been to delay the changes, to dull them, to buy time in the game of politics, while we lose months and months of time in our lives.
Who will convince Marcos, who already has GPS for crossing the Straits of Florida, that the new ministers will pave the way to enable him to fulfill his dreams in his own country? The announcement yesterday did not shorten the long lines to get a new nationality in front of the Spanish Embassy, nor the number of young girls who offer their bodies in exchange for a way out of here. Calling the new chancellor Bruno instead of Felipe has little influence on the degree of hopelessness. Changing the instruments doesn’t mean much, if the symphony being performed, and the director of the orchestra, are the same as before.
17 Comentarios »
-
Just this once I am going to adopt the vocabulary of the dais and the worker meetings, to say to you that, “marking the second anniversary of Generation Y” I will try to implement some important improvements in the blog. The start of this work resulted in a technical accident. As I can’t promise that the maintenance work will be fast or efficient, I can only announce a forced vacation for the commentators. So that no one will panic, let me say that something wasn’t working, but nothing has been lost.
I intend to create a participatory forum, where those who want to discuss issues that don’t relate to the posts can do so. I will also try to connect this blog to the social networks that have become indispensable in recent months. For this I rely on a slow and censored internet connection from the hotels in this country, and the invaluable assistance of colleagues around the world.
Once the blog is accessible again, comments will be temporarily closed, to be able to optimize the data bases without losing anything. For now, I invite you to continue the debates at:
http://vocescubanas.com/generaciony/ or
http://generaciony.posterous.com/.
I appreciate advice about possible improvements, suggestions for software and utilities for the forum and, especially, the call to use this time to renew ideas, sharpen arguments and to renounce—once and for all—verbal violence.
20 Comentarios »
-
Quick note from Yoani:
Estimados Amigos,
Updating of the administration of the site desdecuba.com and the blog “Generation Y” has been more difficult than expected.
It’s almost pointless to say that restrictions on the communication network from the Island are most of these difficulties.
We could turn over to friends the responsibility of doing this work for us, but that is not our intention.
We do not limit ourselves simply to being blog authors. We want to be a part of the entire global network with all of it attributes. The scarcity of points of communication, the high cost of communication and the filters are no more than greater incentives to our imagination.
-
shessss back!
Hobbit Hole
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
I left high school in the countryside feeling that nothing belonged to me, not even my body. Living in shelters creates the sensation that your whole life, your privacy, your personal possessions and even your nakedness has become public property. “Sharing” is the obligatory word and it comes to seem normal not to be able—ever—to be alone. After years of mobilizations, agricultural camps, and a sad school in Alquízar, I needed an overdose of privacy.
I’d read, for the first time, the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, and the warm home of Bilbo Baggins was my ideal of a refuge where I could hide myself. I missed having a place to put my books, hang my clothes, decide which photo to tack to the wall, and being able to paint a sign on the door saying, “Stop.” I was exhausted by having to bathe in showers without curtains, eat off aluminum trays, and share the lice and funguses of my dorm mates. The illusory world of The Hobbit offered me this warm and quiet home that reality had never allowed me to enjoy. It was to this fictitious hole in a tree that I escaped, when the indiscriminate cohabitation became unbearable.
The beleaguered individual that I carried inside understood, in these years, that it was not only the camps and the boarding schools that disrespected the privacy of the individual. My Island is, at times, like a sequence of bunks where everyone knows what you eat, who you spend time with, how you think. The grim glance of my high school director was replaced by the vigilance of the CDR.* I’m asked to iron my uniform, shine my shoes, and expected to maintain a certain ideological posture.
The impression of being a “public good” or a “socially useful object” has not disappeared, rather the years have confirmed that I live in an enormous shelter controlled by the State. In it, one hears the bell calling you to come and eat—now disrupted by the shout of a neighbor announcing a new product is available in the ration market. Faced with that call, however, I don’t jump immediately from my bed, but take the time to hide something under the mattress. It’s a strange and dangerous book, where a dwarf with tufted feet smokes his pipe and enjoys a warm and intimate haven in a tree.
Translator’s note:
CDR = Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the ubiquitous block watch groups that keep tabs on every Cuban.
1 Comentario »
Mar
18
2009
Back
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
“The first holiday in two years,” I told myself—almost ten days ago—when I announced the repairs on this blog. However, the last thing I’ve done is rest. Generation Y has generated successive headaches among many technicians who have wanted to help me remodel it. After several attempts, we have not been able—yet—to implement the discussion forum that is so needed. In any event, the time dedicated to the redesign has served to confirm how necessary this space is for me. Without the personal exorcism of writing my posts, reality would overwhelm me in a crushing and paralyzing way. Nothing looks the same if I can’t tell you about it in these brief virtual texts.
I still need to overcome some technical challenges and certain disasters in the design, but I will continue to publish even if the blog looks like Havana after the Special Period.* So, watch out for the holes, the leaking sewers, the buildings about to fall down and the power lines looming from the corners. Generation Y will take less time to recover than this dilapidated town, I promise you.
Translator’s Note:
Special Period = The 1990s in Cuba, a very difficult time after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its support
-
They took Adolfo one morning six years ago, after raiding his home as if it were that of a dangerous terrorist. There were neither weapons, nor chemical substances in his poor home in Central Havana, but his papers bore witness to many opinions, written without permission. They indicted him with the same urgency that—in those same days—they shot three young men for hijacking a boat to emigrate to Florida. It was near the equinox but to all of us it seemed so dark that we could only call it one thing: The Black Spring of 2003. Not even the war in Iraq managed to obscure the news for the families and friends of the seventy-five prisoners. The old trick, so often and successfully repeated, of taking advantage of everyone looking the other way, didn’t work.
From his prison in Ciego de Ávila, he called this week to tell us that his daughter Joana is going to have a baby. He probably won’t be able to see this baby get its first tooth, due to the stubbornness of those who condemned him to fifteen years. His release has been converted into a bargaining chip, saved for a political game that no one knows how or when it will be played. Only one man, dying and therefore stubborn, seems to have the ability to decide his release from prison. For that fading old man, the future of Adolfo—free and living in a plural Cuba—must hurt more than the needles of the serums and injections. Despite the enormous power of this octogenarian patient, he cannot prevent the grandchild of this humble English professor from seeing him only as one more name in the history books, as the capricious caudillo who put his grandfather behind bars.
March has not turned out to be the month in which the days last as long as the nights, because a persistent eclipse of freedoms has settled itself on all of us. I look and look but it continues to seem that we are in the midst of the solstice and the penumbra. Far ahead, I manage to see my children and those of Joana under a persistent light, calling to us.
-
Mar
20
2009
The shredder
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
When you read this post I will be sitting in the waiting room of the Plaza Municipality Office of Immigration and Emigration. Among military uniforms, my passport waiting for a permit to travel that has been denied me on two occasions. During the last year, the obedient soldiers dedicated to limiting our freedom of movement have not permitted me to accept international invitations. In their databases next to my name there must be a mark condemning me to island confinement. The possessive logic of this Daddy-State sees it as normal that I, as a punishment for writing a blog, like a box on the ears for having believed myself to be a free person, will not receive the “white card.”
The least I desire on this Friday of bureaucracy and expectation, is that it ends with someone putting their hand on my shoulder to tell me, “We were wrong about you, you can leave.” I do not think they will amend “the error” of blocking my travel, nor do I nurture the slightest hope of boarding the airplane on March 29. I will sit in the crowded lobby of the mansion at 17th and K for only two reasons: to inconvenience them with my pigheadedness and to claim my rights. To show them the visa document that authorizes my entry to many parts of the world, while “they” curb my travel. I will be there, confident that one day all this machinery to extract profits and generate ideological loyalties—which the exit permit has become—will cease to exist.
I confess that I do not want them to allow me to travel as if it were a gift, rather I fantasize that—this very day—while I am waiting for the third “no”, someone will come out and announce that this regulation that is such a violation was just repealed. I have a feeling that I will leave Cuba when everyone can do it freely, but in the meantime, I will continue besieging them with my demands, my posts and my questions.
Here are links to the two forms I had to fill out to request permission to leave: Form 1 and Form 2.
-
Myopia and astigmatism
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
I put on the glasses of optimism and glance out over the collapsing city where I live. With these shimmering crystals of hope, my heart beats more peacefully, without turning somersaults. Thanks to them, I understand that I’m not climbing fourteen floors thanks to an inefficient state—incapable of installing an elevator after five months—but rather I am a fervent ecologist, determined to consume only my human fuel. With this new glass through which I see everything, I see that my plate lacks meat not because of the super high prices in the market, but rather because I love animals and avoid the suffering of slaughter.
I don’t have an Internet connection at home, but the rosy lenses reveal to me that this service is only for officials and resident foreigners. Perhaps they want to protect me from the “perversions” of the web, I tell myself, as would Voltaire’s ridiculous Candide. So I’ve tried, for the briefest moment, to see palaces instead of ruins, leaders who carry us to victory when in reality they lead us to the precipice, and men who are hypnotized by my hair, even though I know they continue to watch me.
The problem starts when I take off the glasses of innocence and look around me, at the real colors of the crisis. The pain in my calves returns in response to the long flights of stairs; I start dreaming of steak; and a blinking modem becomes an almost erotic desire. I toss the glasses of optimism from my balcony, maybe there’s someone down there who still prefers to use them, who would even like to distort the truth with them.
4 Comentarios »
Mar
21
2009
Third time is not a charm
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
This time they’ve been more direct: “You are not authorized to travel,” the woman told me quietly, almost nicely, dressed in her olive-green. My attempt to get permission to leave ended without much delay and with the same negative response. I demanded an explanation from the officer, but she was only a wall of contention between my demands and her hidden bosses.
While they were telling me “no,” I recalled the declarations made by Miguel Barnet* a couple of months ago. The president of the Writers and Artists Union of Cuba (UNEAC) affirmed that all Cubans can travel, except those who have a debt to the justice system. I spent the day looking for some legal reason hanging over me, but nothing came to mind. Even the rice cooker that I bought on credit at the ration store I paid for in full, even though it only worked for two months before completely breaking down.
I have never been charged in court yet I am condemned not to leave this Island. This restriction has not been dictated by a judge, nor could I have appealed it to jury, rather it comes from the great prosecutor—with full rights—in which he’s set himself up as the Cuban State. That severe magistrate determined that the old woman sitting next to me in the office at 17th and K would not receive the ‘white card’ because her son ‘deserted’ from a medical mission. The boy who waited in the corner couldn’t travel either, because his athlete father plays now under another flag. The list of the punished is so long and the reasons so varied, that we could establish a huge group of forced islander “stay-at-homes.” It’s too bad that the vast majority are silent, in the hopes that one day they’ll be allowed to leave, as one who receives compensation for good behavior.
One of the first places of pilgrimage for those who don’t get the exit permit should be the office of the naive president of UNEAC. Maybe he can explain to us the crime for which we’ve been condemned.
To augment the papers in my collection of negatives, here is the latest document received from SIE (Immigration and Emigration Section). I am also posting my visas, to record the fact that my problems are not about entering another country, only about leaving mine.
Translator’s note:
The opening paragraphs of the article about Miguel Barnet read, in English translation:
The writer Miguel Barnet criticized, today, those who believe his countrymen cannot freely leave the island as he, who has traveled widely, does and says the only ones who can’t travel are those in prison. “People believe that we Cubans can’t travel and I’ve been to more than 47 countries,” Barnet said during a meeting with the press in a bookstore in Panama City. “Cubans are traveling,” he stressed, “the only ones who don’t travel are those in prison,” affirmed Barnet, considered one of the Cuban writers most published abroad.
-
Many of us have come to believe that if we aren’t under the umbrella of a state entity, we don’t exist. At the door of a ministry, or face-to-face with the secretary of some official, we are always asked the same question, “And you, where are you from?” It’s not curiosity about our regional origin, but rather a sharp inquiry regarding what institution validates us. When you don’t have a badge with the logo of a state enterprise, little can be done for you in these official departments. Those of us who are “independent citizens” or “self employed individuals,” are accustomed to long waits and negative answers.
In this peculiar condition of free electron, remote from the nucleus of any privilege, power or important position, I’m an expert in setbacks, a specialist in procedures that are never resolved. I’ve been asked, a thousand and one times, the same question about the state umbrella that protects me, and I prefer to burn under the sun of my autonomy, to shelter under my own prerogative. Of course this philosophy of “not belonging” can’t be explained to the guardian so that I may enter to resolve some forbidden matter.
It turns out that I don’t exist, because no state entity has me inventoried, because I don’t pay a fee to a union or appear on the list of some workplace cafeteria. Although I walk, sleep, love and even complain, I lack a certificate-of-existence that would give me affiliation to a small—and boring—number of neogovernmental organizations. In practice, I’m a civic ghost, a non-being, someone unable to show the sharp eye of the doorkeeper even the slightest proof of being in the official mechanisms.
-
*clap*
\
And they gave us the microphones…
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
An unforgettable night yesterday at the Wilfredo Lam Center, thanks to the performance artist Tania Bruguera. A podium with microphones, in front of an enormous red curtain, formed part of the interactive installation in the central courtyard. Everyone who wanted to could use the podium to deliver—in just one minute—any rousing speech they pleased.
As microphones are rare, certainly I never met up with any in my time is a Little Pioneer reciting patriotic verses, I took the opportunity of the occasion. Advised ahead of time by friends in the know, I prepared a speech on freedom of expression, censorship, blogs, and that elusive tool that is the Internet. In front of the lenses of national television and protected by the foreign guests at the X Havana Biennial, I was followed by shouts of “Freedom,” “Democracy,” and even open challenges to the Cuban authorities. I remember one boy of twenty who confessed that he had never felt more free.
Tania gave us the microphones, we who have never been able to deliver our own speeches, rather we have had to suffer under the hot sun the speechifying of the others. It was an artistic action, but there was no game in the declarations we made. Everyone was very serious. A dove rested on our shoulders, probably equally well-trained as that other one fifty years ago. However, none of us who spoke considered ourselves chosen, none wanted to stay—for fifty years—shouting into the microphones.
* The video—very amateur—that was made yesterday.
-
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban authorities accused blogger Yoani Sanchez on Wednesday of staging a "provocation against the Cuban Revolution" after she and others spoke publicly about censorship during an arts performance in Havana.
Sanchez, whose "Generacion Y" blog is critical of Cuba's government and widely read abroad, took the microphone during an event on Sunday in the Havana Biennial arts festival and read a manifesto saying the Internet was opening a "crack" in government control.
"The time has come to jump over the wall of control," she said.
In response, the Biennial organizing committee posted a statement on the Internet saying it "considers this to be an anti-cultural event of shameful opportunism that offends Cuban artists and foreigners who came to offer their work and solidarity."
The statement described Sanchez, without using her name, as a "professional dissident" and one of a number of "individuals in the service of the anti-Cuban propagandistic machinery that repeated the worn-out claims for 'freedom' and 'democracy' demanded by their sponsors."
Cuban authorities consider dissidents to be mercenaries working for the United States, which has openly supported opposition to Cuba's communist-run government.
The event was part of a performance by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, who put up a microphone at an arts centre in Old Havana and told people in attendance they could say whatever they wanted for one minute.
Participants were flanked by two actors dressed in olive green fatigues. A white dove was placed on the shoulder of each speaker in an apparent parody of a famous speech by Fidel Castro.
In January 1959, as Castro spoke to the masses in Havana declaring victory over dictator Fulgenico Batista, a white dove landed on his shoulder in what was said to be a moment of serendipitous symbolism.
Sanchez was selected by Time Magazine as one of the world's most influential people in 2008, but her Cuban readership is limited because Internet access is restricted on the island.
"Since microphones are not abundant, I just took the opportunity," Sanchez wrote in her blog to explain her participation in Sunday's event.
(Reporting by Esteban Israel; editing by Jeff Franks and Jackie Frank)
http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKTRE5306OQ20090401?sp=true
-
:Iagree: Nice to know that we are up to date on whats going on. She is so brave sometimes she amazes me. :salute:
-
Abr
01
2009
The silent press
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Surrounded by commemorations and dates to celebrate, we didn’t pay much attention to Cuban Press Day, which was March 14. The news featured long reports about the selfless efforts of journalists and their loyalty to the Revolution. Some reporters received certificates for their outstanding work and impeccable ideological posture, while the newspaper Granma devoted a ton of space to the self-congratulation.
In the same days as these parties, the North American president, Barack Obama, eased the limitations on travel to the Island for Cuban Americans. The restrictions he abolished had prevented these immigrants from visiting their families more than once every three years. There had also been a strict limit on sending remittances to relatives on the Island. For the precarious domestic economy, the money sent from the United States is indispensable oxygen for survival. In a country where so many citizens live on the other shore, the notice of this relaxation should have been front page news in all the papers. It’s what one learns in the journalism schools as the obligatory lead of an entire week.
The Cuban press, however, barely mentioned this positive step taken by the occupant of the White House. An official silence was the only response to this long-awaited and welcome measure. In the street no one talked about anything else, and mothers prepared to welcome their children living in the North, but the official media treated it warily. The journalists have been caught up in other issues: the potato harvest, the World Baseball Classic, the Bolivarian Revolution and, of course, the celebrations for Cuban Press Day.
-
Hey gambit! This what she really said. wow.
Abr
02
2009
Completed performance
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Without the statement made by the Tenth Havana Biennial Organizing Committee about what happened Sunday at the Wilfredo Lam Center, the performance of Tania Bruguera wouldn’t have been complete. For the minute of freedom at the microphone it was the fitting punishment. Absent the rebuke, the performance event would have seemed like a signal that the intolerance has yielded, that it is possible to mount the podium and express oneself without fear. So we should be grateful to those who wrote the insulting tirade published in La Jirabilla. Without it, everything would have been on the plane of the permitted, it would have seemed like something fabricated to give the appearance of openness.
With those five paragraphs they closed—in the best possible way—the performance. They reminded us, the rash ones who took advantage of the brief moment of freedom, that here the penalty and rebuke remain in place in response to free opinion. The Organizing Committee has confirmed, in its text full of insults, why so many cries of freedom came from the podium. With its accusations they have exposed the reason why so many didn’t dare—that night—to take the microphone.
*I’d like to let you know that we are working on the full video of the event, which will have subtitles to compensate for the gaps in the audio. We will publish it as soon as it is ready.
*Here is the text I read that night;
If they gave me the microphone… I would say:
Cuba is an island surrounded by the sea and it is also an island surrounded by censorship. Some cracks are opening in the wall of control: of information, the internet, and especially blogs. The phenomenon of the alternative blogosphere is already known by a good part of the Cuban people. We are still only a few bloggers, our sites highlight the awakening of public opinion.
The authorities consider the technology as a “wild colt” that must be tamed, but we independent bloggers want the wild colt to run freely. The difficulties of disseminating our sites are many. From hand to hand thanks to flash drives, CDs, and obsolete diskettes, the content of blogs travels the Island.
The Internet is becoming a public square for discussion where we Cubans write our opinions. The real Island has started to be a virtual Island. More democratic and more pluralistic.
Sadly, these winds of free expression that travel the net with difficulty have been looking out from our monitored reality. Let’s not wait for them to allow us to enter the Internet, have a blog, or write an opinion. Now is the time for us to jump the wall of control.
Translator’s note: A link to an English translation of the statement will be posted as soon as it is available.
-
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
Among my son’s friends is one who is particularly apathetic who is about to finish basic secondary school. He cares little for his books and it’s been a headache for his parents to manage to get him as far as the ninth grade. A week ago I learned that he was heading for a teaching career. I thought they were talking about another boy because, at least the one I knew well, lacks any vocation or skill for standing in front of a classroom. When I wanted to know his reasons, he clarified my doubts by explaining, “I’m going to study to be a teacher because they study in the city and I don’t want a scholarship in the country.”
A very high percentage of those who choose a teaching specialty—I would venture a guess that it’s nearly all of them—do so because they have no other option. They are those students who, because of bad grades, can’t aspire to a computer specialty or pre-university hard sciences. In fewer than three years of training, they will be standing next to a chalkboard with students nearly their own age. Without these “instant teachers” the classrooms would be empty of instructors because the miserable salaries have led to an exodus to better paying occupations.
It scares me to think of the young people studying under the marked disinterest and poor training of this boy I know. I live in terror of hearing my grandchildren tell me, “The star in the Cuban flag has five points because it represents the five Cuban agents in U.S. prisons,” or that, “Madagascar is an island in South America.” I’m not exaggerating; we hear a ton of anecdotes like this from the parents of children taught by emerging teachers. If such a noble profession continues to be filled by the least qualified, the education level of the generations to come will be very poor. Already, a teacher confessed to my son and his classmates, when they started the 7th grade, “Study hard so you won’t end up like me. I had to become a teacher because of my bad grades.”
-
The seven passing by Thebes
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
The visit of seven members of the United States Congress to our country has intensified expectations about an avalanche of American tourists. The owners of rooms for rent calculate the potential earnings and the taxi drivers dream of those chewing gum who leave generous tips. At Terminal Two in José Martí Airport some have already arrived, confident of the early relaxation of travel restrictions to Cuba. People have nicknamed these early visitors “the brave ones”; I don’t know if it’s for the risk they’ve assumed in the face of the laws of their country or because of their audacity in coming to an Island where, according to the official version, they’re “the enemy.”
The expected “normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States” must occur mainly between the two administrations. At the level of the people, we’ve been in agreement for some time, it’s only our leaders who fail to realize it. Our Nation is bi-territorial, given the large number of compatriots living in the United States. Hence, the Cuban side is more interested in the relationships flowing on both sides of the Straits of Florida. However, it seems that Obama will take the first step, not Raúl.
I have difficulty calling to mind a single day in these last fifty years without the warning that the powerful neighbor was thinking of invading us. What will happen with the slogan, “Cuba Si! Yankees No!”, with the imported shout of “Gringos” when we are all greeting them here cordially, the “yumas”? Most of the political speeches of the last fifty years would become anachronistic and there wouldn’t be any “boogeyman” with which to frighten schoolchildren. What will the party militants think if they’re ordered to accept those whom, until recently, they hated. How can David look good in the photos if, instead of the stone and the slingshot, he sits down to talk to Goliath.
Curiously, I don’t see anyone on the streets upset in anticipation of these changes. The nervousness is only among those who have used the confrontation to stay in power. Rather, I observe the joy, the hope, the slight impression that the distance between Miami and Havana might become smaller and more familiar.
-
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y
The ball is in Cuba’s court after Obama threw it yesterday, as he announced new flexibility in his policies toward Cuba. The players on this side seem a bit confused, hesitating between grabbing the ball, criticizing it, or simply ignoring it. The context couldn’t be better: loyalty to the government has never seemed more perverse and ideological fervor has never been as feeble as it is now. On top of that, few still believe the story that the powerful neighbor will attack us and the majority feel that this confrontation has gone on too long.
The next move is up to Raúl Castro’s government but we sense we will be left waiting. He should “decriminalize political dissent” which would immediately annul the long prison sentences of those who have been punished for differences of opinion. The ball we would like him to throw is the one that would open up spaces for citizens’ initiatives, permit free association and, in a gesture of the utmost political honesty, put himself to the test of truly free elections. In a bold leap on the field “the permanent second” would have to dare to offer something more than an olive branch. We are hoping they eliminate the travel restrictions, which would put an end to that extortionary business of permission to come and go from the Island.
The game would become more dynamic if they let the Cuban people take hold of the erratic ball of change. Many would kick it to end censorship, State control over information, ideological selection in certain professions, indoctrination in education and the punishment of those who think differently. We would kick it to be able to surf the Internet without blocked web sites, to be able to say the word “freedom” into an open microphone wihout being accused of “a counter-revolutionary provocation.”
Many of us have climbed down from the bleachers from where we were watching the game. If the Cuban government doesn’t grab the ball, there are thousands of hands ready to take our turn to launch it.
-
Today in Italy the publisher Rizzoli is presenting a compilation of my posts entitled “Cuba Libre.” I hope to be able to announce soon an edition in my own language. The book leads off with the beginning of Generation Y, which just now has passed its second anniversary, with 300 posts published between then and now:
It’s April and there’s not much to do, only to watch from the balcony and confirm that everything continues as in March and February. The Plaza de la Revolucion—a truncated lollipop that would frighten any child—dominates the concrete blocks in my neighborhood. Facing me, eighteen cement stories bear the sign of the Ministry of Agriculture. Its size is inversely proportional to the productivity of the land, so I look through my telescope at their empty offices and broken windows. Living in this “ministerial” zone allows me to interrogate the high buildings from which emerge the directives and resolutions for the whole country. I have a habit of aiming my lens and thinking, “They’re watching me and so I, too, am watching them.” From these inspections with my blue telescope, in truth I’ve taken very little, but an impression of inertia pierces the glass and slips through the concrete of my Yugoslav model building.
I look at those who go to the market with their empty shopping bags and many times return with them in the same state. I also have a plastic bag, but mine is always folded into a pocket so as not to advertise that I’ve been devoured by the machine of the line, the search for food, the chatting about whether the chicken came to the ration market… In the end, I have the same obsession to acquire something but I try not to be too obvious about it.
In my delusions of storytelling the vultures fly over the truncated lollipop and, while I ask myself how I will fill the bag, I arrive at the most dangerous idea I’ve had in my thirty-two years. My fit seems to be influenced by the madness of April, evident fruit of the unhealthy spring malaise. On the keyboard of my old laptop, sold to me six months ago by a rafter needing a Chevrolet engine, I begin to write. The journey of that apprentice Magellan was aborted, but the computer was already mine so there was no turning back. I start with something that’s halfway between a shout and question, I don’t even know this will be my first post, the first piece of a blog. The scene is simple, a weak woman without dreams has stopped watching, to begin to tell what she doesn’t see reflected in the boring TV or in the ridiculous national newspapers.
Before starting my disillusioned vignettes of reality, the voice of apathy warns me that my writing would change nothing. The whisper of fear brings up my twelve-year-old son and the harm that the maternal catharsis may lead to in his future. I hear the voice of my mother who shouts at me, “Sweetheart, what’s got into you?” And I anticipate the accusations of being infiltrated by the CIA or by State Security which will also come. The watchman behind my eyebrows rarely makes mistakes, but the madman who shares his space won’t let me listen to him. So I begin to round out the first post and, with it in the bag, the unproductive high ministry and the raft floating in the Gulf come to the forefront.
(…)
Months after that first text, I will be faced with nearly three hundred thousand opinions left by readers, and will review the two hundred posts and the thousands of anecdotes to try to compress them into the pages of a book. Choderlos de Laclos would laugh at me, while I try to find the evolution of a commentator based on their own interventions, to report the wrath of some and show the zigzagging path I’ve followed myself. Epistolary novels have already given everything of themselves, but the web, its hypertext, hotspots, and interactivity have barely touched the literature. It’s so difficult to cover all of this virtual world in the linearity of paper that I finally gave up trying. I only manage that in the log of the blog—which will be published some day—everyone will have their turn to say something: Generation Y, the blogger and the readers.
17 Comentarios »
-
To the outside world
The Summit of the Americas ended yesterday and it doesn’t appear that an urgent meeting of parliament, or a special plenary session of the Party Central Committee, is being convened to discuss the proposals made by Obama. “A fresh start with Cuba,” the American president said in Trinidad and Tobago, but today Fidel Castro’s Reflections referred only to Daniel Ortega’s long speech. The journalists from the National News haven’t taken to the streets to collect people’s impressions and my neighbor has been enlisted in Operation Caguairan, in case of a possible invasion from the North.
Given the importance of what’s happening, the “accountability meeting” being held in my building today should be devoted to the new relations between Cuba and the United States. But the delegate prefers to talk about the unruly neighbors who throw their trash outside the bins, rather than ask what we think about the end of the dispute. In my son’s school some teacher repeats that “Obama is like Bush, but painted black,” and the billboards in the street still call for continuing the struggle against imperialism.
I don’t know what to think, given the difference between what is said to the outside world and the tiresome sermon we get every day. Even Raul Castro himself seems ready to talk to Obama about things he’s never wanted to discuss with us. I can’t help asking myself, then, if all this “olive branch” and the willingness to touch on broad themes, is not just words said to the outside world, phrases pronounced far from our ears.
Abril 21st, 2009
-
The old pots and pans for feeding the family can be transformed, in the event, into the ballot we can’t leave in the box and into the hand we dare not raise in the assembly. Any object can serve, if given the space required: a piece of fabric hung from the balcony, a newspaper waved in public, a pot banged along with others. The great metallic choir made up of spoons and pans could be—on May first at 8:30 in the evening—our voice, to say what we have stuck in our throats.
Restrictions on coming and going from Cuba have lasted too long. So I will ring my pot for my parents, who have never been able to cross the sea that separates us from the world. I will join the symphony of pans also for myself, forced to travel only in the virtual world in the last two years. I will pound out the rhythm of the spoon while thinking of Teo, condemned to permanent exile if he happens to board a plane before the age of eighteen. I will beat the drum for Edgar, who is on a hunger strike after seven denials of his request for permission to leave. At the end of the metallic concert I will dedicate a couple notes to Marta, who didn’t get the white card to meet her granddaughter who was born in Florida.
After so much beating on the bottom of the pan, it probably won’t serve me for frying even one more egg. For the necessary “food” to travel, move about freely, leave home without permission, it’s well worth it to break all the equipment in my kitchen.
-
In the same days that the dismissal of Carlos Lage and Felipe Perez Roque was catching the attention of the foreign press and the local rumor mill, Xiomara was worrying about something closer to home. For the past four months, in her town of Pinar del Rio the sanitary pads that women use to mitigate the cycles of the moon haven’t come. She and her daughters cut up a couple of sheets and managed to make some towels, which they washed after using. If the ration market lacks feminine hygiene products, the already small number of towels and pillowcases remaining in Cuban houses would diminish even further. Mother nature does not understand the mechanisms of distribution, and so every twenty-eight days we have damp evidence to put them to the test.
Xiomara recounted, with the shame of having to speak publically about something she would prefer to keep private, that the employees at her company had the same problem. “Because of this we might refuse to go to work,” she told me, and I imagined a “Strike of the Period,” a massive protest marked by the ovulation cycle. However, nothing stops in the province of Pinar del Rio for this “triviality.” The officials continue to speak of “recovering from the hurricanes” and the newspapers—which unfortunately cannot be used as sanitary pads—mention exceeding the goals of the potato harvest. The drama was hidden in the bathrooms and manifested itself in two new wrinkles on the foreheads of some females.
There are those who think that the dismissal of several officials, or the merger of two ministries, are the real steps on the road to change. I feel, however, that the triggering spark of the transformations could be, simply, a group of women tired of washing out, every month, the cloths used during their menstrual cycles.
Abril 26th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | Leave a comment
The short night of the long knives
People waiting, with a stick or a knife under the bed for a day they can use them. Entrenched hatred against those who betrayed them, denied them a better job, or made sure their youngest child couldn’t study at the university. There are so many waiting for possible chaos to give them the time necessary for revenge, that one would wish not to have been born in this age, when one can only be a victim or victimizer, when so many yearn for the night of the long knives.
-
This morning, some of us who are friends of Edgar accompanied him to deliver his appeal to his denial of permission to leave the country. A few steps from the office of Legal Counsel is the site of the national Immigration and Emigration office. I already know the place, having been there just a year ago with a similar claim, which ended with the confirmation that I could not, “travel for the moment.” Uniformed officers and quiet people hoping to have their cases revisited set the stage at this branch of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT).
The signatures collected among Cubans here and outside were handed over to the duty officer, who confirmed that they now had sixty days to reply to his request. On Friday, two Section 21 officers had “suggested” to Edgar that he should desist from presenting himself at the place where we went today. The insinuation was that if he was quiet, they would allow him to travel by August. After this young man’s hunger strike, the immigration authorities couldn’t—according to the anxious boys—“act under pressure,” because it would seem that they had been forced to let him get on the plane.
As if it were the most common thing that we citizens would bring pressure to bear and in response the politicians would amend their actions. As if it is precisely for this that they occupy their positions, to yield—again and again—before the demands of society. Hasn’t it been said already—by enough voices—that the requirement for permission to leave and enter Cuba has to be repealed? What more has to happen to stop them from hijacking this right from us?
-
who carry their "Y's" to read me and to write to me.
Parade and epidemic
Photo taken from Yahoo News Mexico.
The two news reports followed one after another, so contradictory that the announcer himself had to make an effort to hide his discomfort. In the first they talked about the crowds of people this coming May First, while the second announced an alert regarding a possible epidemic of swine flu. As of Tuesday afternoon a number of timely preventative measures are being taking throughout the country. However, the intention of bringing together nearly a million people in the parade this coming Friday, stands.
My experience with colds and flu-like illnesses tells me that a huge mass of people is the scenario most conducive to their spread. The announced measures should include, for the minimum protection, the postponement or cancellation of the festivities for Labor Day. I don’t want to create unnecessary alarm. I don’t know anyone who is infected and an official statement has been released saying that there are no recorded cases of this disease, but remember they told us the same thing for a long time about AIDS, before finally confessing that it had entered Cuba, not to mention keeping secret the number of dengue fever cases each year.
With all humility, I ask the Cuban government to re-think the idea of bringing together thousands of people at this time. Please, show less concern about the spectacle and more protection for the citizenry.
Abril 29th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 7 comments
-
Yesterday was an intense day. There was a parade in the morning, a heavy rain shower in the afternoon, and some impertinents banging on our pots at eight-thirty in the evening. The concentration in the Plaza of the Revolution looked the same as every year, the rain was just as humid, and the kitchen chorus banging on pots and pans sounded like the peculiar symphony of a few. I’m posting here a few samples of sound and images, so you can live the first of May as I felt it… with all its intensity and craziness.
From my terrace one heard little reaction to the first bangs on the pot, but we have the joy of knowing they heard us a long way off. Through a quick phone survey I knew that in the city of Pinar del Rio they also noticed the sound of metal, while several neighborhoods in Havana remained silent. The limited drumming arose from the smallness of the individual who dared, and not from the massive automatism of those who paraded in the morning. Such is the difference between a spontaneous tweet-tweet and directed crowing.
Every spark is small, I told someone who asked me about the magnitude of what happened last night and, at its debut, a tool of expression is used timidly. On hearing about the call that was circulating on the internet, I met with several friends who thought the simple gesture of turning off the light would be more feasible. The kitchen chorus involves exposing oneself too much and there are many people who are still afraid of reprisals. Making the house dark is something that can be done without leaving evidence and is the kind of gesture that our citizens are ready to make, not more.
In spite of the few notes heard, I think it changed something in the routine of International Workers’ Day. It was just a slight banging of spoons on tin, that came after the first downpour of May.
-
Skeptical grandchildren
I go wandering with my smallest grandson through the streets of a Havana that is both different and at the same time familiar. I don’t have a blog and my seventy years show in every wrinkle of my face and in my long white braid. Even though this could be a dark futuristic fantasy, I prefer to believe that we are walking through a city reborn and prosperous. We come to the park to take the sun and I try—like all old people—to tell him about my times, those years when I was thin and displayed the energy he now exhibits.
Spanish continues to be the mother tongue of my offspring but the boy looks at me as if he doesn’t understand anything I say. He casts a doubtful grimace my way when I refer to the “Special Period,” “the ration book” and “rationed products” or “ideological loyalty.” His problems are so different, how could he understand those I once had? He displays without embarrassment some historical confusion and calls a dead leader by the name of a salsa singer. He’s incapable of differentiating between the speech decreeing the socialist character of the Revolution and that announcing the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Out of respect he doesn’t tell me to be quiet, but I can see in his eyes that all my chatter bores him. “Grandma is stuck in the past,” he’ll say when I leave, but in front of me he pretends to listen to antiquated anecdotes about a remote Cuba. This boy doesn’t know that the premonition of his existence allowed me to maintain my sanity forty years ago. Anticipating him—with his expression of disbelief sitting on a park bench in the Havana of the future—kept me from taking the way of the sea, of pretending, of silence. I’ve made it here thanks to him and instead of telling him that, I confuse him with my anecdotes about what happened, about things that will never happen again.
Mayo 6th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 5 comments
My Kingdom for a Banana
They say that when the wall fell and the two Germanys united, people coming from the east had never eaten a banana. They looked ecstatically at the long fruit that the disrupted markets of East Germany hadn’t sold in all the years of the centrally planned economy. I imagine that trying the sweet mass of a banana had to be like tasting the end of a system that lasted fifty years. Between these two “flavors” I would prefer experiencing the second because the other has been on my table since I was little.
The banana was—next to the orange—one of the basic fruits in our house, long before the Germans knew of its existence. We Cubans don’t have a wall to knock down by biting its upright consistency, but we owe it to the banana that our nourishment in the nineties wasn’t more frugal. “Fufu,” made with plantains mashed with pork rinds, was for weeks the only food for my adolescent body. As a beneficiary of its virtues I’d like to erect a monument, although to do so we’d have to import an example from Costa Rica to use as model for the much-deserved statue.
I haven’t seen a banana since last September when hurricanes ravaged the plantations. I refuse to believe that after having survived the disastrous agricultural plans and the unfortunate genetic crossings, we are going to lose it now. This fruit, which managed to overcome the experiments of the Great Farmer in Chief, can’t be allowed to die at the hands of a couple of cyclones. I fear that we—like the people of Berlin in 1989—are on the verge of running anxiously after the taste of banana.
-
At a school in Cerro, several foreign visitors were coming to donate notebooks and pencils. Two days beforehand the teacher sat the hardest working students in the front row and asked them to ask their parents for ornamental plants. The director explained in the morning assembly that while the distinguished guests were with them they couldn’t run during recess nor would they allow the sale of candy near the main entrance.
That Wednesday when the delegation arrived at the educational institution, they served chicken for lunch and the classroom televisions didn’t show the usual Mexican soap operas, only tele-classes. The fifth grade teacher avoided the red lycra she prefers and came dressed in a warm jacket she’d normally wear to weddings or funerals. Even the young student teacher was different in that she didn’t demand that the children, like every other day, give her a share of the snacks they brought from home.
The visit seemed to be going well; the school supplies had been delivered and the modern cars parked outside would soon carry off the smiling group of outsiders. But something unexpected happened: one of the guests broke the predetermined protocol and asked to use the bathroom. The seams of the hasty “cosmetic surgery” that had been applied to the school were evident in that unhealthy space of a few square meters. The months it had gone without cleaning, the clogged sinks, the absence of doors between one stall and another, showed up the farce of normality they’d tried to hard to present.
The spontaneous guest left the bathroom with his face flushed and went without speaking to the exit. After seeing the machinery behind the stage he understood that instead of paper and colored pencils, the next time they should bring disinfectants, cleaning cloths and pay for the services of a plumber.
Mayo 13th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | Leave a comment
At the Meliá Cohiba
To see the English translation, put your mouse in the box in the middle of the screen.
Yesterday, May 9, I went to the Meliá Cohiba hotel to check if the Internet access limitations for Cubans continue. Several friends had told me that the measure had been rescinded… but I wanted to check for myself. So Reinaldo and I went and made this little video.
The “tourist” who appears to be reading the newspaper Granma is me.
Translator’s Note: The English version of the video is now posted, but I’ve decided to leave the transcript below as people seem to be finding it useful.
Video Transcript
Reinaldo – Buenes tardes joven. Para comprar una hora de internet.
Good afternoon, Miss. I’d like to buy an hour of internet.
Mujer (Raquel) – Me permite tu pasaporte? Por favor.
May I see your passport please.
R – No, yo… carta de identidad es lo que yo tengo.
No, what I have is an identity card.
M – No, no le puedo vender una hora de Internet, porque la conexión aquí es solamente para extranjeros.
No, I can’t sell you an hour of Internet, because the connection here is only for foreigners.
R – Discuple, es que yo no oigo bien.
Excuse me, I don’t think I heard you clearly.
M – Que la conexión aquí es solamente para los extranjeros.
The connection here is only for foreigners.
R – Desde cuando es eso?
Since when is this?
M – Hace un mes.
Since one month.
R – Yo vine la semana pasada y me conecte.
I came last week and connected.
M – Y quien la vendía el ticket?
And who sold you the ticket?
R – No sé el nombre. Como mismo no la he preguntado el nombre a usted, tampoco se lo pregunte a la…
I don’t know the name. Just as I didn’t ask your name, neither did I ask…
M – Mi nombre es Raquel.
My name is Raquel.
R – Si, pero usted no es la unica persona que trabaja aquí. Aquí hay una muchacha rubia…
Yes, but you aren’t the only person who works here. There’s a red-headed girl…
R – Hace ocho dias.
It was eight days ago.
M – Ya….
Now…
M – Hay una resolución que dice que solamente es para extranjeros. Mire aquí…
There’s a resolution that says it’s only for foreigners. Look here…
R – Si.
Yes
R – Esta es la…
This is the…
M – Venga acá…y…a…ver.
Come here… and… see.
R – Pero esto es solamente en este hotel?
But is this only in this hotel?
R – Esto se está haciendo en todos los hoteles?
Is this being done in all the hotels?
R – Si, porque yo me conecto frequentamente en el Nacional y en el Presidente.
Because I frequently connect in the National and the President.
M – Creo que en el Presidente, todavía no se ha establecido este sistema.
I think in the President they still haven’t established this system.
R – Pero, eso es una cosa que viene… una resolución. Usted me disculpa que le haga tantas preguntas.
But this is something that comes… a resolution. Forgive me for asking so many questions.
R – Es una resolución para este hotel, para la agencia Melia, para…?
Is this a resolution of this hotel, of the Melia company, of…?
M – No, eso es una resolución del MINTUR.
No, it’s a resolution from MINTUR.
R – Del Ministerior de Turismo?
From the Tourism Ministry?
M – Si.
Yes.
R — … no será del Ministerio de Comunicaciones?
It’s not from the Communications Ministry?
M – Tengo entendido que tiene que ver con el MINTUR y con ETECSA.
I’ve been given to understand that it comes from MINTUR and ETESCA.
M – Porque de hecho, este nuevo tipo de conexion es de ETESCA.
Because of the fact that this new type of connection is from ETESCA.
R – Bueno y eso, como uno puedo discutir eso? Verlo con alguien?
OK, and this, how can one dispute this? See someone about it?
R – Vaya, no es con usted con quien lo voy a discutir, porque desde luego usted es una persona que está cumpliendo con su trabajo.
Look, I don’t have an argument with you, because after all you are a person who is just doing your job.
M – Si dirije allí, a la Conserjería y allí usted refleja cualquier queja que usted quiera.
Yes, you can go to Reception and lodge any complaints you like.
R – Porque usted sabe que eso viola mis derechos constitucionales.
Because you know this violates my constitutional rights.
R – Porque está escrito en la constitución de nuestra Republica que esta prohibida la discriminacion por origen nacional.
Because it’s written in the constitution of our Republic that discrimination based on national origin is prohibited.
R – Y entonces yo me siento discriminado porque tengo como origen nacional el de Cuba.
And I feel discriminated against because my national origin is Cuban.
R – Es como se dijeron aqui: “Esta Internet es para todo el mundo, menos para los mexicanos.”
It’s as if they said here: “This Internet is for the whole world except Mexicans.”
R – Es lo mismo, no?
It’s the same, no?
R – Me están discriminando por mi origen nacional.
I’m being discriminated against for my national origin
R – No hay una sola ley o reglamento interno que puede ir por encima de los derechos constitucionales de los ciudadanos.
There’s not a single law or internal regulation that can supersede the constitutional rights of citizens.
R – Diga yo, No?
Aren’t I right?
M – Yo lo único que tengo que… Bueno, pues cumplir con mi deber.
I’m just that one who has to… I’m just doing my duty.
R – Si claro, yo conozco eso.
Yes, of course, I know that.
R – Bueno Raquel, pues muchas gracias y esperamos a ver la próxima vez que venga aquí, ya seguro que derogado eso.
OK Raquel, and many thanks and I hope to see you the next time I come here, I’m sure this will be repealed.
M – A bueno… ojala… a ver.
OK… hopefully… we’ll see…
-
Regarding my absence from the fair in Turin.
I lost Madrid in May, New York with its university campus, and now Turin during the book fair. If the situation continues, I will have to start telling my life in the improbable tense: “I could have been there except,” “I would have presented the book if not for…” or “I would manage to travel if I shut up.”
Today I’ve been to the launch of Cuba Libre, in the virtual way that only a blogger can. I spoke by phone with those present, answered some questions, and the connection failed before I could say “Goodbye.”
I returned to live what I already know: all were there save me.
Mayo 17th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 15 comments
The next Frankenstein
He exchanged a brand name watch to get the microprocessor; his brother left the motherboard behind when he left the country. All he lacks is the RAM memory to build the next Frankenstein, with which he’ll connect to the intranet set up by several young people in his building. Almost thirty, he’s been building his own computers for a decade, thanks to the black market in computer parts. At first they were real monstrosities, full of innovations, but over time his computers have become more presentable and competitive.
Now he’s building a new “creature” to start his own business copying DVDs so he can leave his boring job at a state agency. A complex video editing program allows him to advertise himself as a “specialist in filming weddings and quinceaneras,” a very well-paid informal occupation. Among the dreams he cherishes is getting on the Internet and finding a girlfriend in the chat rooms one who can get him out of here. He fantasizes her gift to him on their wedding day, a computer he doesn’t need to add a single screw to.
When it was announced that Raúl Castro would allow the sale of computers to Cubans, this alternative techie was happy he wouldn’t have to wait so long. But with the price of a laptop sold today in the stores in convertible pesos, he could acquire, informally, the parts to build at least three PCs. However his Frankenstein is missing the most important thing; the possibility of walking out of there and taking his first steps on the web. To make a being from a simple collection of circuits, you need the lightening of connectivity, the current of energy that will awaken him to life.
-
A simple look
I read the exchange between Silvio Rodriguez and Adrian Leiva about the constraints on entering and leaving the country. In recent months, this has been one of the themes most discussed in Generation Y. I’ve come to be, to my regret, a specialist in every nuance of the restrictions on traveling outside the island. After checking around and verifying that these migratory restrictions don’t enjoy any popularity and that even an ex-parliamentarian has declared himself unhappy with them, the question I ask myself is why are they still in place?
The answer that occurs to me comes from a simple question: What will my neighbor—a communist party militant who’s never been sent on an official trip—think if I succeed in accepting one of my invitations from abroad? What will happen to his ideological “loyalty” if he finds it’s not a prerequisite to step foot outside of Cuba? It will be a hard blow to him to see all those now on the black list of those who may not enter Cuba, arriving loaded down with gifts.
If applauding no longer wins you the privilege of buying a new refrigerator, spending a couple weeks at the beach, or receiving an incentive trip to the countries of Eastern Europe, what then is the advantage of maintaining the mask? I can only conclude that permission to exit or enter the country is one of the last dikes of containment, so that the waters of free behavior do not wipe out everything. The fear of not being granted the “white card” has remained one of the few reasons to keep faking it.
In Silvio Rodríguez’ blog: the letter from Adrián Leiva and Silvio’s answer are here.
-
coming to believe that the influence of the Internet on our reality is bigger than I thought. After several days of not being able to connect to the Internet in hotels such as the Meliá Cohiba, the Panorama and the emblematic Hotel Nacional, the ban seems to have been lifted. Today I spoke with the same employees who two weeks ago showed me the resolution excluding Cubans from using such services at tourist facilities. They told me I can once again buy the blessed card that opens the door to the virtual world.
I may sound a bit boastful, but I think that if we had not raised a ruckus in recent days—denouncing such apartheid—we would have been deprived of the ability to connect. Yes, they cede when you push back, they have to amend the plan when we citizens raise our voices and the international media hears the echo. We understood this with Gorki’s case, and this correction confirms that our keeping quiet only allows them to snatch away more spaces from us. We need to make the most of the situation, now they are saying “Cubans can connect”, and take it as a public commitment. We must hold them to it and, if not, there will be Twitter, Facebook and text messages for protesting, when they try to shut us out again.
* On Monday, a dozen bloggers conducted an investigation into more than forty hotels. With the exception of the Occidental Miramar, they all said they were ignoring the regulation that prohibited Cubans from accessing the internet.
-
One day my father came home pale and trembling. He had just seen a video—shown only to Communist Party militants—where they announced the cuts the Special Period would bring. Sitting at the dining table we heard him tell us that the hardship could reach the dreaded Zero Option, a single collective pot would have to feed all the neighbors on the block. The film my dad saw that night was intended only for people of “proven” ideology. Hence my sister, my mother and I had to be content with the terrifying narration he shared with us.
Only a “revolutionary elite” seems to have the right to learn about these issues that concern all citizens. I thought so selective a practice had gone by the wayside, together with others that were so common in the seventies and eighties. However, for a couple of weeks another video has formed part of the movie listing of the secret and hidden. The topic of this new movie is the downfall of Carlos Lage and Philip Perez Roque, the most recent of the youngest sons devoured by power. They are not the heroes of the plot, rather the victims, the scapegoats for something more like a Greek tragedy than an action thriller.
Everyone’s whispering about the scenes in which both ex-civil servants talk rubbish about the generation in power, but so far a copy of the guarded video has not been leaked. It hasn’t happened this time as it did with the filming between Eliécer Ávila and Ricardo Alarcón, or with the images of Tania Bruguera’s performance. Cubans are waiting for a generous hand to steal the film and circulate it on the alternative information networks. These are no longer the days when something like this can be maintained in the closed circuit of the faithful, because technology understands nothing about classified material or news only for the select few.
My father called me yesterday to find out if I’ve seen the hidden recordings made by those who threw out the foreign minister and the secretary of the Council of Ministers. “Don’t despair,” I told him, “as soon as I have them I’ll bring them to you,” and I immediately remembered when he broke Party discretion to warn us of what was to come.
Mayo 25th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 2 comments
Bucket and pitcher
Under the sink rests the plastic bucket with which the entire family bathes. It’s been more than twenty years since the pipes collapsed and to use the bathroom they have to carry water from a tank in the patio. When winter comes they prepare a lukewarm bath thanks to an electrical heater made from two cans of condensed milk. None of the children in the house knows the sensation of a jet of water falling on their shoulders. Since the water comes only once a week, no one can waste it in a shower.
To the rhythm of a pitcher rising and falling, the majority of people I know groom themselves. The decline of the hydraulic networks and the excessive prices of plumbing parts contribute to the calamitous state of the toilets. The act of washing the body, which should be an intimate and pleasant time, turns into a sequence of inconveniences for the better part of my compatriots. To the poor state of the infrastructure we must add that to buy shampoo and soap we need a different currency than that in which they pay our wages.
Juan Carlos and his wife know well dry spells and nights monitoring the pipes. At their house the precious liquid comes every seven days and the only water pressure comes from a pipe stuck in the ground. For this couple, the bucket and pitcher are essential tools without which they couldn’t cook, wash or clean the house. So many years without being able to open the tap and rinse their hands has forced them to develop a method that they explained to us today through these images. It’s a brief demonstration—in the words of my thin friend—“that will make them laugh, but it’s pathetic and tragic what’s happening in this country.”
-
Inscribed on the hypothalamus
After five attempts to leave illegally, Carlos has found a path without the danger of sharks and sunstroke. One leaves Cuba through one of the few countries that still don’t demand a visa from my compatriots. By this same route, thousands of young have left in these last months, after coming to understand that the announced process of “changes” has been another instance of the powers that be pulling our legs. The recidivist rafter is over thirty and has spent at least a third of his life with his eyes focused on the far shore. If everything goes well, he will be looking at the Island from a distance within a couple of months.
Every year I find myself in the sad situation of remaking my group of friends because, as Wendy Guerra says, “Everyone’s left.” Even those who planned to grow old in this land or who had some economic advantage that allowed them to live comfortably. Even a friend who seemed—like me—to intend to light up El Morro once everyone had left and let it go out, has told us he’s leaving. He came to the house yesterday and in a whisper, as if he were afraid the apartment was full of microphones, told us, “I can’t take it any more.” The phrase I’ve heard so much it’s become commonplace in our conversations.
He is another who leaves despite a good apartment, a job that pays well, an intense public life. He made the decision to emigrate for reasons very different from those of Carlos, but both agree they don’t want their children to be born in Cuba. Meanwhile, one lives in the falling down house of his grandmother, the other sleeps each night with the air conditioner set to 20 degrees Celsius. Their conditions of life are so different and their aspirations so similar that I can only think the imperative to emigrate comes from the hypothalamus. It’s like a pull that comes from within, a call to the instinct for self-preservation that tells us, “Save yourselves, get out of here.”
-
How to Help
Every week I receive hundreds of emails, which I can hardly respond due to my limited ability to connect to the Internet. So I am taking the opportunity of this post to answer the question: How can I help the alternative blogosphere in Cuba?
I will detail the resources or the type of collaboration that can help bloggers in creating and updating their blogs. This list is not in any priority order and should be interpreted simply as suggestions. It’s a request to citizens of the whole world and rests on the solidarity among people that has nothing to do with political stripes or ideological preferences. So here goes:
Link to the blogs and place them on the search engines or platforms where they can have greater visibility. Each person who reads us, protects us, so we need to strengthen the shield formed by readers and commentators.
Spread the contents of the blogs, especially to the interior of Cuba. This can be done by sending our posts to friends and relatives on the Island, to share with them the opinions that come from right here, but which are not disclosed in the official media.
Invite alternative bloggers to participate in events, whether virtual or real. This can be done through voice recordings, home made videos or telephone calls that help spread their opinions.
Lend a hand in the administration of blogs, especially to those bloggers who have very limited access to the Internet. For this you only need the will to collaborate, a minimal understanding of Wordpress or Blogger.com and the honesty to not add or change any content that has been authorized by the author of the site.
Avoid the cult of personality of a single emblematic blogger and take the alternative blogosphere as a phenomenon in which a growing number of Cubans are participating. Don’t repeat in the virtual world the adoration of individuals that does so much damage in the real world.
Buy cards for accessing the internet in public places. Remember that many of us are obligated to play the high prices in the cybercafés or the hotels to access the net. So if you’re a tourist visiting the island, collaborate with us to acquire a few hours of connection in these places.
Every kind of information media is helpful to us, from the tiny flash drives to the most sophisticated external hard drives. A great number of the bloggers I know distribute their texts to the interior of the Island on these storage devices.
Mobile phones and economic aid to open and maintain accounts. I have been in the position where I frequently post by sending text messages to people outside Cuba who later put my texts on the net. So providing a blogger a cell phone is a way to open a parallel path to the traditional Internet access.
Laptops or any kind of accessory to build a PC. My experience tells me that an old laptop brought to the island and given to a possible blogger can be the spark for the emergence of a new opinion. Look in your office or your house for everything that’s been scrapped but that might be useful for assembling a computer, and add it to your suitcase when you are vacationing in Cuba. And please, don’t even think of sending it by mail.
Software both free and licensed. Especially those programs that are used to process images, audio, and video and that optimize internet connection time. I want to remind you that we cannot buy these programs in any store or purchase them through online transactions.
Digital cameras and video recorders, especially the little Flip camcorder that lets us discretely film situations in our everyday lives.
Digital recorders for interviews and telephone recorders to capture the voices of those who call from the provinces to dictate their texts. An example of this is the blog of the political prisoner Pablo Pacheco, whose texts are read over the telephone.
Books about citizen journalism, manuals and programs and every kind of documentation that can help us to better understand the blogger phenomenon.
The path for channeling this aid is directly to each blogger. Write an email message that appears in the blogs from within Cuba—see the list of links in my sidebar—and organize, without intermediaries, this type of solidarity. The slogan of this help movement could well be: “Oxygen for the Cuban blogosphere!”
-
When the KGB fights the CIA, the police always win in the end.
Joaquin Sabina
This is not the first time I’ve heard that MSN Messenger is blocked for Cuban users. Almost three years ago a friend furtively sneaked me into a state office where she worked so I could connect to the Internet. I wanted to write an article and I was missing some data, so I asked for a few minutes in front of an obsolete computer at her company. Those were the days when I pretended to be a tourist to connect to the network at hotels, and that week I didn’t have the convertible pesos to pay for an hour of access.
My friend read me the list of what was prohibited on that institutional connection and added that MSN wasn’t working because it had been blocked for months. “You can’t use any email or chat services that aren’t local,” and “don’t even think about going to El Nuevo Herald,” she said, eyes open wide. When I asked about the limitations on chatting with Microsoft software she explained that I should not use any interface that the network administrators couldn’t control. Hotmail was banned because it was almost impenetrable to the recording software that kept a record of all the employees’ correspondence. A little bit later Yahoo and GMail would also be banned at work and educational connections for the same reason.
Now the prohibition comes from the other side, precisely on the part of those who built a program that helps us escape government control. “Windows Live Messenger IM has been disabled for users in countries embargoed by the United States,” reads the note that Microsoft published announcing the cut off. I feel with that once again we citizens lose out, because our government has its own channels for communicating with the rest of the world. This, clearly, is a blow to internet users, we outlaws of the web, which includes nearly everyone who accesses the Internet from Cuba. Surely at the company where my friend works the censor who monitors the connections must be delighted: Microsoft has just done his work for him.
-
For alternative bloggers—within Cuba—the only common thing that unites us is the use of the Internet to hang our opinions, chronicles and questions. We are tired of people trying to capture us in a neat package and expecting us to behave as “one people, one party, one idea.” When we come together we do it with the assumption that we don’t have group discipline, nor are we obligated to adopt common positions. If there is one thing that characterizes us it’s the polyphony, the diversity of dreams and desires, the urge to stress the plurality that in the real Cuba is hidden under the mask of unanimity.
So when I read the call for a cybermobilization that claimed “to have been called by several Cuban blogs and websites,” I was surprised that this news was unknown among those located in the national territory. An idea should be—at the least—discussed among or agreed to by that varied and fragile part of us who write from the Island. Maybe the call would have been enriched, then, with other demands or with a different order of priorities.
Nevertheless, I share the need to achieve the three requests suggested by those who issued the call. As every practice has its beginning, I trust that the next cybermobilization will be better organized, that prospective participants will have been consulted and, above all, that it will contain that margin of freedom and creativity that is inherent in the blogger spirit.
-
A stage divided by the Berlin Wall on one side—seeming so much like Cuba today—a group of people who fight to buy, love and subsist. Through the language of contemporary dance, we Habaneros could review the history of the two Germanys united “like Siamese twins but separated.” The company Sasha Waltz & Guests performed last Friday in the Garcia Lorca room of the Gran Teatro and deployed a daring choreography around the concrete structure that separated, for nearly forty years, a single nation.
The dancers’ use of phrases from our everyday life contributed to the intense communication established with the audience. Nevertheless, I think that the frayed and tense atmosphere was more than enough to make us identify with what was happening on stage. The stubbornness of people continuing the course of their lives despite the iron curtain separating them was familiar to me. The tendency to forget the threatening shadow and to take refuge in intimacy, dedicating oneself almost entirely to survival. Twenty years after the fall of that arbitrary frontier, Cubans keep on desiring the elimination of the impalpable boundaries that surround us.
If at least our wall were like that one: of stone, concrete and barbed wire, we could take a hammer or pick to demolish it. If we could touch it and say, “Here it starts, here it ends,” I am sure we would have already torn it down. In our case, however, this barrier that separates us from so many things is intangible and reinforced by the sea. If, for one moment, this wall of controls and prohibitions that surrounds us would materialize, it would be a pleasure to paint an enormous graffiti on it. We could bring a ladder to look over to the other side—as the dancers did on Friday night—or dig a tunnel in its hard concrete. If none of that worked, we could take an abundant and challenging pee against the cold structu
-
CUBALSE and General Motors
On June first what everyone predicted was confirmed: General Motors declared bankruptcy. National television aired reports on the fallen giant while in our streets the old models, from fifty years ago, are still rolling. The tall silver tower that houses the headquarters of the firm has become the symbol of the current global economic crisis. Within Cuba there are other signs of these bad times: the blackouts return, tourists are scarce and public transport suffers another cutback. Financial shares don’t crash because they don’t exist; companies hide their bankruptcies because being state-owned they don’t report their finances to the public.
Another business conglomerate fell apart on our side, but the national news avoided mentioning it. The powerful CUBALSE, which had among its powers that of employing those who work in embassies and diplomatic residences, has just disappeared. Even the most absent minded Cuban knows that to be a gardener at an embassy or a manager at a foreign exchange store you have to pass a powerful ideological filter and, in certain cases, monetarily reward those who select the staff. CUBALSE had been a pioneer in selling in convertible currency in a country where the majority are paid in Cuban pesos, its employees seeming to be a mix between capitalist entrepreneurs and soldiers in a commercial army.
A discrete document detailed the dismemberment of the Company for the Provision of Services to Foreigners, whose pieces went to other institutions. A whole structure of powers, loyalties and personal interests must have come crashing down when they announced the death of this “small giant.” The requiem was played in hushed tones, however, so as not to unduly alarm us. We don’t need to look at the collapse of General Motors to make unnecessary comparisons, to conclude that this is happening not only outside our borders, but also within them.
Junio 11th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 5 comments | Printable version
Party without guest of honor
A couple of days ago we held a small celebration with friends, in honor of the completion of the installation of new elevators. The party was well deserved because for more than seven months we had to climb up to our fourteenth floor via the stairs. We let everyone know by phone that there would be merrymaking until late and everyone brought something to contribute to the fun. It was a shame that they arrived so tired and with an expression on their faces of having been cheated, because the brand new, recently installed Russian elevators announced with the flashing of their red lights that they were broken.
The officials who traveled to Russia to buy the new equipment had decided that it wasn’t necessary to spend the money to acquire the lateral guides for the elevators, a kind of track for where the car slides. They had diagnosed that the old structures, installed more than twenty-five years ago, were compatible with the new equipment and they began to install them. I’m not going to speak metaphorically or draw parallels between electromechanics and politics, but applying innovative transformations on demonstrably worn out tracks sounds familiar.
The end result has been little compatibility between the old Soviet elements and the new Russian equipment, which makes horrifying noises when going up and down, in addition to constantly breaking. Supposedly the installation is already done; in the business plan it must be put in writing with the word “completed” and soon the mechanics will be off to another building. However, we continue ascending most of the time by the stairs and we look like jokers to our friends, who think our party was a joke in bad taste, to inaugurate the elevators that don’t move.
-
Hilda Molina and I share a couple of rare “privileges”; we were both mentioned in the prologue of the book Fidel, Bolivia and Something More and we were both denied, on several occasions, permission to leave Cuba. In her case the immigration authorities justified this refusal based on her past as a scientist. They spread the rumor that she was in possession of classified information that should not be known beyond our borders. Many of us suspected, however, that this wasn’t the real reason for keeping her here, rather it was the whim of a man who demanded her forced imprisonment.
My “crime” is located in the future, in that part of tomorrow where neither the well-known prologue writer nor the limitations on leaving the Island will exist. My detention is not about what I’ve done but about what I might do; the “fault” falls on this citizen I am not, yet, but who is incubating in this blog. In any event the punishment is the same for both, because a system based on limits, controls and closures, knows only how to penalize by locking up. For Hilda this sanction just ended; although one accused never again sleeps peacefully, faced with the fear of returning to her cell.
I am happy for her family and for her, but troubled by the existence of those who decide who leaves and who enters Cuba. I feel sorry for someone whose reunification with her family depends on a long negotiation between parties, governments and presidents. I see an aging woman who will finally be able to meet her grandchildren and whom nothing can compensate for so many years of loneliness and anguish. I can only suggest that she not harbor resentment against her jailers, because they are imprisoned today by their power, their fear and the inevitable proximity of their end.
Junio 14th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 9 comments | Printable version
Another generation that waits
I’m thirty-three with two gray hairs. I’ve spent at least half my life wishing for a change on my Island. In the summer of 1990, I peeked out the shutters of my house at the corner of Lealtad and Lagunas, when people’s shouting made me think of a revolt. From there I saw rafts carried on shoulders to the sea and saw the police trucks controlling the nonconformity. The anxious faces of my family foretold that soon the situation would evolve, but instead the problems became chronic and solutions were postponed. After I had my son, between blackouts and calls of “don’t despair,” I understood that it would only happen if we ourselves could make it happen.
This June has begun very similar to those dark years of the Special Period.* Uneasiness, power cuts in some neighborhoods, and a general sensation that we are going downhill. I’m no longer that fearful and passive teenager whose parents said so many times, “Go to bed, Yoani, today we have nothing to eat.” I’m not inclined to accept another era of slogans and empty plates, of a city stopped by lack of fuel and stubborn leaders with full refrigerators. Nor do I think of going anywhere, so the sea will not be the solution in my case for this new cycle of calamities which is starting.
The restless seed of Teo will soon fertilize a woman to create another generation that waits. I refuse to believe that there will be adults looking out the window hoping for something to happen, Cubans full of dreams deferred.
Translator’s note:
Special Period: The extremely difficult era after the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of its
-
What is happening in Iran and its dissemination through the Internet is a lesson for Cuban bloggers. The authoritarians of the court also must be taking note of what great dangers result from—in these events—Twitter, Facebook, and mobile phones. Seeing those young Iranians use all the technology to denounce the injustice, I notice everything that we lack to support those who maintain blogs from the island. The acid test of our incipient virtual community has not yet arrived, but maybe it will surprise us tomorrow… with the aggravation of low connectivity.
In our blogger meetings, which we hold every week, we watched a small video about the Iranian cybernauts. I watched it again today in lieu of the images of the demonstrations that our official television refuses to show. I haven’t contemplated the faces painted green, nor heard any announcer speak of the seven dead, but with this brief animated short I can imagine everything. I visualize an entire generation weary of old structures that it wants to change, a people—like me—who has ceased to believe in enlightened leaders who lead us like cattle. In the midst of all this, to our satisfaction, are the bytes and screens modifying the form of protest.
On days like this I greatly regret not being able to be online; I feel like I’m choking having to wait to hear all the news. If there’s still time for me to extend my solidarity to the Iranian bloggers, then here is a post to tell them: “Today it’s you, tomorrow it could well be us.”
Junio 17th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 10 comments | Printable version
Quixote is spelled with “K”
A news release has delighted some and annoyed others: spelling will once again be taken into account in the assessments of Cuban schools. The reign of the missing accents and of “s” replaced by “c” is about to end, according to an announcement made on TV a few weeks ago. Students could fail an exam or even have to repeat the school year if they don’t master the rules of spelling the complex and beautiful language that is Spanish. We linguists, as expected, are giddy with relief.
I had already become accustomed to deciphering strange words composed according to the personal tastes of each writer. Even on the blackboards, written by the teachers themselves, the terminology of a new language appeared, adhering to no rules or standards. Not even my self-assured phonetics, where the “h” has always seemed unnecessary, could remain calm in the face of five-letter words with four errors. I’m not exaggerating; once I reviewed a history exam where someone had written “sibir” for “civil”. Of course in that case they were talking about a concept little known in a society like this one, where citizens are considered soldiers, not entities with rights.
One day I got a major fright, however, when I was dictating to the amusing students at a secondary school in Zanja Street. I happened to come across, on the list of words, the title of the greatest classic of Hispanic letters. It was a way of reviewing the figure of Cervantes without overloading the test with complicated words such as “shortages” or “proposition.” The truth is that on reviewing the sheets from that day I found at least a couple of students who had spelled “Quixote” with a “K”. I could not believe that someone would use a letter with such a small presence in the Spanish dictionaries to write the symbol of our Spanish heritage.
Since that day I understood that spelling is the expression of a general culture that has its basis in reading and books. How can one ask them to use the appropriate consonants if they don’t even know the meaning and history and certain words? The officials of the Ministry of Education sensed the same thing when they chose to remove spelling from the evaluations. Hence, Sancho came to be called “Zancho” and Rocinante… well… who can venture to say what they turned Rocinante into.
-
San Lázaro is the saint of sores and dogs; his saint’s day is December 17. His name has been given to a long street in Central Havana, filled with scars and abandoned animals. It doesn’t have the magic of the avenue that borders the Malecón along the waterfront and between its peeling facades flow the lives of thousands of people. For some years it was the street most commonly used to go to Vedado, and so enjoys the affection of a well-known place. To traverse it is to see the real Havana, that which the tourist ads show in different colors.
A few weeks ago I made the video I’m showing you today, because I have a premonition that a day will come when everything will look different in this street. My prediction doesn’t come—this time—from pessimism, nor from the belief that half the houses will fall down before repairs start. San Lázaro will heal and shrug off the ochre colors you now see. I will be there with my camera, to show it to you then.
* Music from the CD “Libre” of Boris Larramendi.
-
We’ve gone from one extreme to the other. Three years ago we had a president who spoke for long hours in front of the microphones and now we rely on another who doesn’t send a single word our way. I confess I prefer the restrained style, but there are a lot of explanations outstanding which, in the face of so much discontent, are urgent. Someone has to stand up and explain why the wage reform failed, the reason for delaying the handover of the so critical supply of land, and the reasons that prevented them from reducing the gap between the Cuban peso and the convertible currency.
A face must show itself to give us an account of what stopped the elimination of the need for permission to travel outside Cuba, what happened with the repeated slogan of reducing imports, or what path was taken by the so-called business improvement program. The same voice that in 2007 declared that hopefully there would be “a glass of milk within reach of everyone” needs to reveal to us now why it has become so difficult to put the precious liquid into the mouths of our children. This man who reignited the illusions of many of my compatriots, must now express himself and confess his failure or at least tell us of his limitations.
I am waiting for a clarification about why he hasn’t accepted Obama’s proposal for U.S. telecommunications companies to provide Internet to the Cuban people. I demand, like many around me, a convincing argument for why we are not going to join the OAS, or the reasons for not implementing, still, the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The list of unanswered questions is long and to hide from so many questions is not going to solve the problems. Please, let somebody—with answers—show his face soon.
-
A television personality has lent his name to an amusing adornment in the shape of a dog that is placed inside cars. Always agreeing has caused this host to be compared to the bobble-head animals who nod with every rattle of the car, as if to say “yes”. Said gentleman always approves what his bosses say, so much so that his neck turns into a spring when he presents one of the programs with the fewest viewers on Cuban television.
A Mexican friend gave me this turtle who says “no”, which reminds me of the negatives that citizens have never been able to express in public. To the rhythm of this nice chelonian, I would like to emphasize everything that I disapprove of but that I’m not permitted to decide through the ballot box. Moving your head from side to side when you don’t agree implies a greater share of value than agreeing or consenting all the time. The sport of saying “yes” has cost my generation, which suffers the consequences of agreements and commitments made by our parents, to lose too much.
We could start by saying no to centralization, bureaucracy, the cult of personality and the absurd prohibitions of the gerontocracy. As a fan that turns from right to left, so would I move if someone consulted me on the management of the current government. “No” is the first word that springs to mind when people ask me if the Cuba of today resembles that which I was promised as a girl. They will not broadcast my disapproval on TV, nor will it earn me obliging pats on the head from some boss, but at least it’s not automatic like the “yes” of the little plastic dog who looks out through the windshield.
-
You spend your life wishing for the dessert you see through the glass and when they invite you in to offer you the slice you want, it turns out you’ve lost your appetite. Permission to hold more than one job has ceased to be a popular demand among us for many years, because it was assumed to be impossible. Its authorization has come at a time in which it is difficult to determine if it’s a step forward or a gesture of desperation.
Throughout the text of the Official Notice published in the newspaper Granma, I was pleasantly surprised to see that students at the middle and senior level are permitted to look for work while still qualifying as students. Five years in which you couldn’t work and earn a salary has led many to forgo entering the university because they don’t have a family that can afford clothes, food and transport during their student years. I know well what I’m talking about because while studying Philology—and being a mother—I had to work illegally as a city guide to support myself. Only then could I obtain the title I keep in the bottom drawer of the dresser. I know of many who until yesterday had to do the same, driven by economic reasons to skirt the laws or drop out.
The acceptance of moonlighting, however, has come late—even though it’s welcome—and has as its main obstacle the low level of wages. To have two occupations will not mean that we live doubly well, nor even a quarter part more comfortably. What the baker receives for working at night as a guard will not be enough to save his family from the black market, the diversion of resources or from emigration. The question isn’t the authorization to get a job in various labor centers, but what products can we buy with the devalued national money. The days would have to have some thirty hours, because only then would moonlighting provide us the necessities of life.
-
does anyone besides Jammyisme get to post here? Like, ask questions? Or is this just something we are supposed to read and believe?
Sorry if I don't understand.
-
Hey Windsor :hiwave: be my guest. The only reason why I post this is because nobody seems to be too interested in checking on the link so I copy and post it for people to see. Its called a blog and I believe it is worth seeing. It is supposed to generate discussion. So what do you think? You seem offended by it. Im curious why?
-
it's point of view from someone living it, believe it or not :dontknow: but I take it for what it is, A young Cuban woman's point of view :happy3:
I for one laugh when I here from Canadians who think they have a clue what it's like to live there just because they read a book or spoken to a few Cubans :ROFL:
All post are welcome :grin:
-
I'm not at all offended by it - I just couldn't quite understand what was going on - why no one seemed to be asking any questions, yet there were many many viewers that (hopefully) were reading and reflecting on what was being written.
Bulldog, I also laugh when I think of what people 'think' they know about Cuba, or Canada, or anywhere else for that matter, after a short visit or a movie or a book.
-
If you go to her blog site, there is a lot discussion that is going on.
http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/
-
Thanks Jammyisme, I now understand; you are not writing this, it is a blog from Cuba that you transfer to this venue. Thank you for the blog address, I find it very interesting.
-
Claudia Cadelo, Lia Villares and I, an afternoon of bloggers.
The Octavo Cerco blogger celebrates her 26th birthday.
The second time I met Claudia Cadelo we were holding up—each of us by one corner—a piece of sheet with the name “Gorki”. It was at the concert at the Anti-Imperialist Bandstand, where we chanted for the liberation of the singer from the band Porno Para Ricardo. Our shouts were heard briefly and then cut short thanks to the beatings they gave us and the enormous loudspeakers broadcasting the imperturbable voice of Pablo Milanés. A short time later, that girl by my side would open an honest and uninhibited blog that now has many followers inside and outside of Cuba.
What I like most about Claudia is that she admits to being afraid, confesses that she jumps when she hears noises and that she fears of the long arm of State Security. Who doesn’t? In a country where so many have called themselves heroes, to declare in advance that you are frightened is something too sincere to be accepted. There is a mistaken idea that courage takes epaulettes, years of incarceration, or scars; not the languid face of a calm woman who displays not rancor but questions. This fragile blogger, from her fear, disproves these stereotypes every day.
Today we are going to celebrate Claudia’s birthday at our home. With the Blogger Journey, discussions, a documentary and even a little rum. I will drink to this girl who writes her opinions, these truths that many mature and stout males only dare to whisper into the ears of their wives.
Julio 9th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 5 comments | Printable version
Something is achieved
Remember my son Teo’s seventh grade diploma? Well today a new diploma arrived for the recently completed grade and it bears the face of José Martí. I’m wondering if my criticism of the design of the previous certificate influenced, even in a small way, the substitution of the imagine accompanying the phrase: “To: __________ for having satisfactorily completed studies corresponding to the eight grade.”
Accident or intent, it doesn’t matter, I only know that the teacher was much closer to the model I would like for my son. I hope to see her face, which unites rather than excludes, on the next diploma.
The diploma from this year.
The diploma from last year.
-
We were going to spend Reinaldo’s birthday listening to the songs of Pedro Luís Ferrar at a concert titled “Velorio” at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Vedado. But it happened that the culture police didn’t let us enter, using their bodies like a barricade between the door and the seating area. They accused us of wanting to organize a supposed provocation there even though, for us, they and the official television cameras they’d called to film us provoked the major commotion. I believe these anxious boys of State Security are watching a lot of Saturday movies, since our plan was rather familiar—we even took our son—and consisted of listening to the songs of the well-known musician and then dropping in at a friend’s house.
At the Museum entry a real repudiation meeting* was waiting for us, all it lacked to be complete was the eggs and the blows. A man who didn’t identify himself—continuing the style of not showing one’s face—yelled at me that I wanted “to destroy Cuban culture” and that that space was “only for the people.” It seems that what happened at Tania Bruguera’s performance has rubbed the nerves raw among the bureaucrats who saw the spectacle. They fear we’ve returned to seize the microphones, as if it weren’t better to put a loudspeaker on every corner for everyone who wants to say something. I must point out that many of those who witnessed this abuse of institutional power avoided greeting us, in view of the huge operation surrounding the place. Nevertheless others, whose names I withhold to protect them, showed solidarity and weren’t afraid of being seen with us.
We stayed outside the railings and in the patio a strange audience full of retirees and men with military haircuts seemed not to know the songs of Pedro Luís to be able to hum along. Some friends, among them Claudia, came to show solidarity with our forced “exile” and we stayed outside until the last chord was played. When all the musical instruments were in their cases and the troubadour came out he was surprised by what had happened and said he would speak to the vice-minister about it. We didn’t want to disabuse him of the idea, but I don’t think this high-ranking official could do anything to prevent the actions of a repressive body which is superior to him and of which he’s perhaps even a part.
Since I know they read my blog—all those who prevented me from going inside the railing seemed to know me—I want to tell them that they are not going to force me to withdraw into my house. I do not think I’ll stop going to concerts, clubs, cultural or humorous events. I’m a cultured person, even though they want to reserve such an appellation for a group of ideologically-screened chosen ones. They will have to stand guard in the doors of every theater, club and music room. I could show up at any of them. Who knows if I might climb to the dais and take the microphone?
Translator’s note:
Repudiation meetings. Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board describes these activities as follows: Acts of repudiation (actos de repudio) are another form of harassment that dissidents in Cuba may face. Amnesty International describes these as “meetings or demonstrations organized by government officials or mass organizations supporting the government at which the person or persons concerned are subjected to criticism and abuse, sometimes physical, because of their so-called `counter-revolutionary’ views or activities”. The civilian groups that carry out the acts of repudiation are commonly referred to as Rapid Response Brigades and are thought to be initiated by authorities.
-
For more info on the Rapid Response Brigades, Google Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR)
-
Scary . She has been offline since this last post. I wonder if the government finally got to her? :confused2: Hope not.
-
A Generation Y reader sent me a piece of the Berlin Wall. The fragment of concrete has come to me, a person also surrounded by certain limits, not less severe for being intangible. The stone painted with remnants of graffiti suggests to me an impossible collection of what has contributed to the separation of Cubans. According to a Latin American writer it would be a list of “the things, all the things” that have intensified the division and tension among those of us who inhabit this Island.
You could put in this particular collection of objects a stretch of the wire fence that once surrounded the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP*); a shard from the nuclear missiles* placed on our land which brought all of us to the verge of disappearing; one of those pages where millions signed—without having the option of marking “no”—that socialism would be irrevocable*; and a sliver from one of the clubs that cracked heads on Havana’s Malecón on August 5, 1994*. The display of samples would not be complete if I didn’t add a shell from the eggs thrown during the Mariel Boat Lift and some millimeters of ink from the reports and denunciations that have abounded in recent years. There would not be a museum capable of also housing the beings and situations that have acted like a great barrier of brick and cement among us.
Each Cuban could create his own repertoire of the walls that still surround us. What seems more difficult is to draw up the list of what unites us, of the possible hammers and picks with which we tear down the walls that remain. For that reason the gift of this frequent commentator has made me happy because I have the impression that our barriers and divisions will also—one day—be pieces valued only by the collectors of bygone things.
Translator’s Notes:
Please use your search engine to find more information on these events. Briefly:
Military Units to Aid Production were forced labor camps. Among those incarcerated there were homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Nuclear Missiles: Placed by the Soviet Union in Cuba in October 1962.
Socialism irrevocable petition: In 2002 the Cuban constitution was changed to make socialism “irrevocable”, following the distribution of a petition which 8-9 million Cubans reportedly signed calling for the change. The petition was launched in response to the Varela Project, which reportedly collected 11,000 signatures asking for a referendum on individual rights such as free speech.
Malecón on August 5, 1994: A spontaneous riot along Havana’s waterfront boulevard and seawall.
-
I love this comment a user made on Yoani's blog....
A smart Cuban government will see that the only way to “cure” this disease is to find room for her in their government. A job improving the use of the internet in Cuba, freeing expression in Cuba will shut this philologist down! A strong person doesn’t fear the opinions of others.
-
Milk, water and shadow
Raúl Castro’s words on July 26, 2007* were christened by the population as the “milk speech” because of his call to increase dairy production. In the next one, which he made a year later, he aimed lower and only promised to solve the water problems in the province of Santiago de Cuba. Everything seems to indicate that his address from this Sunday will be remembered for the opening lines, “I’m sure that none of you can see me, maybe you will see a shadow; that’s me.”
The general made no notable announcements, nor did he allude to the olive branch he once said he was willing to extend to the American administration. Nor did he detail future projects, nor measures for ending the crisis, much less confirm whether the Communist Party Sixth Congress will be held. He merely limited himself to informing us about the upcoming meetings of government bodies where, it seems, some decisions will be made. The Holguín sun found a place full of white and red T-shirts, presided over by an ancient orator without much to say. The applause lacked enthusiasm and through my television screen I noted the shared desire to finish, as soon as possible, with the formalities of the celebration.
On returning home, the thousands present at this event will have little to say, as it wasn’t a trick of the lighting that made a shadow of someone who never shone with his own spark. This was the speech of the “shadow” because light is something the authoritarians cannot tame, something that disobeys military uniforms. Raúl Castro is right: we can no longer see him, because the twilight he represents lacks, as it has for a long time, any kind of luminosity.
Translator’s note
July 26 is the anniversary of the 1953 assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba led by Fidel Castro. This event, a failure at the time which resulted in the deaths of many of the rebels and the imprisonment of Fidel and others, is considered the “birth” of the Cuban Revolution.
Julio 26th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 2 comments | Printable version
Adios to schools in the countryside
The idea of combining study with work in high schools looked very good on paper. It had the air of an immortal future in the office where they turned it into a ministerial order. But reality, stubborn as always, had its own interpretation of the schools in the countryside. The “clay” meant to be formed in the love of the furrow, was made up of adolescents far away—for the first time—from parental control, who found housing conditions and food very different from their expectations.
I, who should have been the “new man” and who barely could have become a “good man”, was trained in one of these schools in the Havanan municipality of Alquizar. I was fourteen and left with a corneal infection, a liver deficiency and the toughness that is acquired when one has seen too much. When matriculating, I still believed the stories of work-study; at leaving, I knew that many of my fellow students had had to exchange sex for good grades or show superior performance in agricultural production. The small lettuce plants I weeded every afternoon had their counterpart in a hostel where the priorities were bullying, lack of respect for privacy and the harsh law of survival of the fittest.
It was precisely one of those afternoons, after three days without water and with the repetitive menu of rice and cabbage, that I swore to myself that my children would never go to a high school in the country. I did this with the unsentimental adolescent realism that, in those years, calms us and leaves us knowing the impossibility of fulfilling certain promises. So I accustomed myself to the idea of having to load bags of food for Teo when he was away at school, of hearing that they stole his shoes, they threatened him in the shower or that one of the bigger ones took his food. All these images, that I had lived, returned when I thought about the boarding schools.
Fortunately, the experiment seems to be ending. The lack of productivity, the spread of diseases, the damage to ethical values and the low academic standards have discredited this method of education. After years of financial losses, with the students consuming more than they manage to extract from the land, our authorities have become convinced that the best place for a young person is at the side of his parents. They have announced the coming end of the schools but without the public apologies to those of us who were guinea pigs for an experiment that failed; to those of us who left our dreams and our health in the high schools in the countryside.
Julio 24th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 17 comments | Printable version
Relics and souvenirs
A Generation Y reader sent me a piece of the Berlin Wall. The fragment of concrete has come to me, a person also surrounded by certain limits, not less severe for being intangible. The stone painted with remnants of graffiti suggests to me an impossible collection of what has contributed to the separation of Cubans. According to a Latin American writer it would be a list of “the things, all the things” that have intensified the division and tension among those of us who inhabit this Island.
You could put in this particular collection of objects a stretch of the wire fence that once surrounded the Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP*); a shard from the nuclear missiles* placed on our land which brought all of us to the verge of disappearing; one of those pages where millions signed—without having the option of marking “no”—that socialism would be irrevocable*; and a sliver from one of the clubs that cracked heads on Havana’s Malecón on August 5, 1994*. The display of samples would not be complete if I didn’t add a shell from the eggs thrown during the Mariel Boat Lift and some millimeters of ink from the reports and denunciations that have abounded in recent years. There would not be a museum capable of also housing the beings and situations that have acted like a great barrier of brick and cement among us.
Each Cuban could create his own repertoire of the walls that still surround us. What seems more difficult is to draw up the list of what unites us, of the possible hammers and picks with which we tear down the walls that remain. For that reason the gift of this frequent commentator has made me happy because I have the impression that our barriers and divisions will also—one day—be pieces valued only by the collectors of bygone things.
Translator’s Notes:
Please use your search engine to find more information on these events. Briefly:
Military Units to Aid Production were forced labor camps. Among those incarcerated there were homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Nuclear Missiles: Placed by the Soviet Union in Cuba in October 1962.
Socialism irrevocable petition: In 2002 the Cuban constitution was changed to make socialism “irrevocable”, following the distribution of a petition which 8-9 million Cubans reportedly signed calling for the change. The petition was launched in response to the Varela Project, which reportedly collected 11,000 signatures asking for a referendum on individual rights such as free speech.
Malecón on August 5, 1994: A spontaneous riot along Havana’s waterfront boulevard and seawall.
Julio 22nd, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 10 comments | Printable version
Transgressing the limits
Seven months after they warned me, in a dark police station, that “you have transgressed all the limits,” I continue traveling to Pinar del Río to conduct the Blogger Journey. Instead of curing the virus of expressing ourselves online, that December 6th ban on our meeting has fueled, in many, the desire to become infected.
Here are some photos taken Sunday in the west of the country, while I was teaching the guts of Wordpress and tricks for updating a blog.
Julio 20th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 12 comments | Printable version
A new kind of savings
A store on Neptune Street closed yesterday so they wouldn’t have to turn on the air conditioner after exceeding the strict plan of kilowatts consumed. In a five-star hotel they tell the tourists they’re repairing the air conditioner but in reality they turn it off so the meter won’t run so fast. In both places the employees breathe the hot stuffy air while few customers venture into the large market to buy, or remain in the lobby of the luxurious accommodation.
Fans appear everywhere in a savings plan that is costing the country a figure the press doesn’t publish. The housewives avoid submerging themselves in the sticky atmosphere of the convertible peso stores; those wanting to make a deposit escape after half an hour inside the windowless bank; coffee shops see their sales decline; private money changers are having a heyday because the state currency exchange offices (CADECAS) close midday; and in the movie theaters one doesn’t know whether to scream at the monster who wants to devour the protagonist or at the unbearable heat.
Obviously these measures originated in some office air-conditioned by “up there”; they occurred to those who, at three in the afternoon, didn’t have to wait for a document in a place where more than twenty people were crowded together, sweating. I would like to throw out a proposal to the architects of this program, that they extend the cuts to certain untouchable sites where the thermometer still shows less than 25 degrees Celsius. It would be good, for example, to ask the members of the National Assembly, who are meeting on August 1st, to travel to their meeting on public transport so as not to waste fuel on their chartered bus. They should, keeping with the electrical restrictions we all live with, deliberate by the light of candles, drink warm soft drinks at the break, and limit their session to only a couple of hours, to avoid the costs of using the microphones and the TV transmitters. The unanimous approval and frantic applause which characterizes all their actions don’t require much meeting time, nor the enjoyment of relaxing air conditioning.
Julio 17th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 14 comments | Printable version
Survival
Today I am showing you the oldest neon sign in my Central Havana neighborhood. With its red letters, the ad invites you to have a cup of Pilón coffee, although at this location they now offer only tepid dishwater from an undefined powder.
Incredibly, the structure has survived children’s rocks and the state’s intention to sweep away all the brands that remind us of the past. This “fossil” still hangs in Galiano Street, though its interior light has failed to illuminate the small sign for years and underneath it you can no longer drink coffee made without chickpeas.
Julio 17th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 9 comments | Printable version
Chicken for fish
Saturday morning, I learned that chicken had arrived at the rationed market and I went to the butchers where they usually sell eggs and soy-based “ground meat”. But there weren’t any customers there. The employee, with the muteness common among those who serve the public, called my attention with a pointed finger to the hundred people in line in front of the fish store.
For some time there’s been a shortage of products from the sea and the natural sources for obtaining the nutrient phosphorus are more lost than the ark in the Indiana Jones films. Thus, in the little grid in the ration book where they should mark a portion of mackerel or hake, they now enter a tiny portion of thigh, and next to thigh, chicken. I spent two hours waiting, and finally entered the place where nothing remains of the odor of the African coasts, which is where the Cuban fishing fleet captures its fish… in the idealized time of true socialism.
The seller was standing on a mat made of cartons where one could read—perfectly clearly—the origin of the merchandise: “Made in USA.” An old man with a malicious tongue didn’t miss this detail and commented, “These American chickens are certainly well fed.” The lady took our ration book where it specifies we are three people, and threw 33 ounces on the scale, none of which was breast, telling me the price was one peso fifty centavos. “When is the fish coming?” I inquired, but she didn’t answer me with words but rather with an index finger pointing to the sky.
Julio 13th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 27 comments | Printable version
Social workers: the ephemeral body of action
With their red shirts they appeared in my neighborhood one day to inventory the old American refrigerators and the Soviet air conditioners. They came vested with full powers and one early morning they also descended on the service stations in an operation to stop the illegal sale of fuel. They were young people who hadn’t been able to enroll in the university and a plan—gestated at the highest levels—converted them into a troop available for any task, on the promise of a place in higher education. Allocated a set of clothes, they started to move across the country in newly purchased Chinese buses, flamboyant and imposing. Their authority to appear at any labor center and ask for accounts, do an audit and even replace personnel, earned them the alarming nickname, “children of the Comandante.”
Some of them abandoned the ten-year commitment they’d signed on for and for them leaving was difficult and the black mark on their file certain. The same ones changed light bulbs on the streets of Caracas as controlled the sales people in the convertible peso stores. They were the new eyes of power among us and yet they belonged to the generation most affected by the Special Period, the dual monetary system and the fading of the myth. So it was common to see them exchange self-confidence for obedience and slogans for words of boredom. Their brilliance was as brief as the denim trousers they were allocated at the start of their work.
Today, one hardly hears them mentioned. Although there has been no announcement that the social workers have been demobilized, at the very least it seems that their work lacks substance. There are now no electric pots to distribute, no public opinion surveys to conduct, and it seems that the enormous physical infrastructure of shelters, snacks and buses that supported their work can no longer be guaranteed. I rarely run into any in the street, but those I do see no longer have that arrogant air, nor display their previous pose of belonging to an elite group.
Julio 12th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 9 comments | Printable version
Culture for a group of the chosen ones
We were going to spend Reinaldo’s birthday listening to the songs of Pedro Luís Ferrar at a concert titled “Velorio” at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Vedado. But it happened that the culture police didn’t let us enter, using their bodies like a barricade between the door and the seating area. They accused us of wanting to organize a supposed provocation there even though, for us, they and the official television cameras they’d called to film us provoked the major commotion. I believe these anxious boys of State Security are watching a lot of Saturday movies, since our plan was rather familiar—we even took our son—and consisted of listening to the songs of the well-known musician and then dropping in at a friend’s house.
At the Museum entry a real repudiation meeting* was waiting for us, all it lacked to be complete was the eggs and the blows. A man who didn’t identify himself—continuing the style of not showing one’s face—yelled at me that I wanted “to destroy Cuban culture” and that that space was “only for the people.” It seems that what happened at Tania Bruguera’s performance has rubbed the nerves raw among the bureaucrats who saw the spectacle. They fear we’ve returned to seize the microphones, as if it weren’t better to put a loudspeaker on every corner for everyone who wants to say something. I must point out that many of those who witnessed this abuse of institutional power avoided greeting us, in view of the huge operation surrounding the place. Nevertheless others, whose names I withhold to protect them, showed solidarity and weren’t afraid of being seen with us.
We stayed outside the railings and in the patio a strange audience full of retirees and men with military haircuts seemed not to know the songs of Pedro Luís to be able to hum along. Some friends, among them Claudia, came to show solidarity with our forced “exile” and we stayed outside until the last chord was played. When all the musical instruments were in their cases and the troubadour came out he was surprised by what had happened and said he would speak to the vice-minister about it. We didn’t want to disabuse him of the idea, but I don’t think this high-ranking official could do anything to prevent the actions of a repressive body which is superior to him and of which he’s perhaps even a part.
Since I know they read my blog—all those who prevented me from going inside the railing seemed to know me—I want to tell them that they are not going to force me to withdraw into my house. I do not think I’ll stop going to concerts, clubs, cultural or humorous events. I’m a cultured person, even though they want to reserve such an appellation for a group of ideologically-screened chosen ones. They will have to stand guard in the doors of every theater, club and music room. I could show up at any of them. Who knows if I might climb to the dais and take the microphone?
Translator’s note:
Repudiation meetings. Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board describes these activities as follows: Acts of repudiation (actos de repudio) are another form of harassment that dissidents in Cuba may face. Amnesty International describes these as “meetings or demonstrations organized by government officials or mass organizations supporting the government at which the person or persons concerned are subjected to criticism and abuse, sometimes physical, because of their so-called `counter-revolutionary’ views or activities”. The civilian groups that carry out the acts of repudiation are commonly referred to as Rapid Response Brigades and are thought to be initiated by authorities.
Julio 11th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 9 comments | Printable version
Persepolis
As a child I liked books with little drawings and this attraction for text accompanied by images remains with me today. It gives me the greatest pleasure when I find a well-written story with illustrations drawn by the author herself. It was precisely this combination in Persepolis, by the Iranian author Marjane Satrapi, that captivated me. Her very first pages pulled me in, evoking my days as a reader of comic books, but I did not imagine that her vision of Iran would affect me so deeply.
Like everything that comes quite late to my Island, first I learned of the green tide in Tehran and later was able to explore the story of this woman growing up in the midst of intolerance and prohibitions. The young Marjane can’t stop asking questions, as has been the case for me for more than twenty years. If it weren’t for the black veil on her hair and the constant presence of religion, I would think that Persepolis tells the story of the Cuba in which I’ve lived. Especially with regards to the extreme tension, the constant mention of an external enemy and the creation of a cast of martyrs around the fallen.
I showed Teo some pages of the book and he fixed his eyes on the panel where Marjane reflects about a political billboard. It featured the phrase, “To die as a martyr is to inject blood into the veins of society” for which the girl drew a body that was screaming while transfusing the insatiable Nation. My son, who is no slouch when it comes to questioning everything, found similarities with the slogan, “We are ready to shed every last drop of our blood,” so often repeated in these parts. I could not control my graphic imagination and visualized a Cuban dripping on native soil, after being squeezed to the maximum.
Julio 9th, 2009 | Category: Generation Y | 7 comments | Printable version
Older Entries »
Yoani Sánchez
Graduate in Philology. Lives in Havana and combines her passion for information science with her work on the Portal Desde Cuba.
yoani.sanchez@gmail.com
-
Years ago I turned my back on the academic and intellectual world, tired of seeing, so frequently, the masks covering the faces of my teachers and fellow students. Today begins my journey back to the university campus, bearing in hand the special mention in the Maria Moors Cabot Journalism prizes with which I’ve been honored by Columbia University. An award that I’ve received for—among other things—refusal to take part in this “cultivated” complicity that I was so frustrated to discover on the part of Cuban letters.
Escaping from a bookish erudition detached from reality, I went to the opposite extreme: that of circuitry and binary code. There are roads, however, that lead us always to the same place and that can make a renegade philologist re-embrace the habits of the academy. Particularly, if this return to the world of gowns and diplomas happened for having behaved as a free person in cyberspace.
I think I will use the prestige and protection that the Cabot Prize brings with it to continue to grow the Cuban blogosphere. The alternative journey that unites us every week has reached a point where it must become an authentic blogger academy. As I don’t plan to wait to be allowed to open a school of digital journalism in order to realize this project, I will begin it with bureaucratic and legal formality. The distinction that I have received today can contribute to the birth of a new kind of instruction here, one without ideological conditions, and without those ugly costumes which at one time made me distance myself from the academic world.
-
Soap operas or realities
For Mariana and Paulo
Some day the history of our last decades will have to be told through the Brazilian soap operas that have played across the small screen. We will hear specialists establishing parallels between the quantity of tears spilled in front of the TV and the degree of resignation or rebelliousness embraced in real life. Another area for study will be the hope created in us by some character—from the television soap operas—who managed to leave misery behind and realize their dreams.
This likely analysis will have to include, without a doubt, the stormy drama of The Slave Isaura. This mixed-race woman who escaped from a cruel master paralyzed our country to the point that on one occasion the passengers of a train refused to board, staying in the station while the final episode aired. It even served us as a source of analogies between the slave’s mistress who refused to give her servant freedom and those who acted like our masters, controlling everything. In these same years my mother’s friends divorced en masse, guided by the independent character of Malú, who raised a daughter alone and didn’t wear a bra.
Then came 1994 and the “maleconazo“* forced the government to accept certain economic openings, which materialized as rooms for rent, private taxis, and private restaurants. At that time we had the plot of a production from Rio de Janeiro that directly influenced the naming of these new circumstances. Cubans baptized restaurants run by common people “paladars,” or palates, after the food company created by the protagonist of the show Vale todo. The story of the poor mother who sold food on the beach and ended up founding a large consortium seemed to us like that of the newly emerging “self-employed,” who fixed up the living room of their house to offer dishes that had been extinct for decades.
Then things started to get complicated and we saw serials where farmers were reclaiming their land, fifty-year-old women made plans for the future, and reporters from an independent newspaper managed to attract more readers. The scripts of these dramas have ended up being—on this Island—the keys to interpreting our reality, comparing it with others, and critiquing it. Thus, three days a week, I sit in front of the television to read between the lines of the conflicts that surround each actor, because from them arise much of the attitudes that my countrymen will adopt the following morning. They will have more hopes or more patience, in part “thanks to” or “as the fault of” these soap operas that come to us from the south.
Translator’s note:
Maleconazo: A spontaneous riot on August 5, 1994, along Havana’s waterfront boulevard and seawall.
-
Adiós muchachos, “compañeros” of my life…
There are words that have their moment, while others manage to survive the fads to remain in our everyday lives. The disproportionate presence of certain words contrasts with those that have been condemned to oblivion, to be mentioned only to evoke the past. All these processes of rejection or approximation that occur in our heads are evident in our speech. Hence, the public death of a politician starts when people cease to create nicknames; the crisis of an ideal shows when few make reference to it, and the ideological propaganda falter when no one repeats their Manichean slogans. Language can validate or bury any utopia.
Among the linguistic evidence of our current lack of appetite is the gradual disappearance of the term “compañero.” This formula is used less and less to refer to a lifelong friend or someone we meet for the first time. Having banished—for their petit bourgeoisie inferences—the titles “señor,” “señora” and “señorita,” others came along in order to demonstrate a greater familiarity among Cubans, such as the imported “comrade.” They were used even in tragicomic cases, for example when a person called a bureaucrat, who made them wait six hours for a paper, “compañero,” even though in reality they wanted to insult him.
For years if you addressed someone differently from the “Aye aye, Mate” promulgated by the Party, it could be taken as a deviant ideology. We were all “equal” and even the use of the formal form of “you” disappeared in this false familiarity that often degenerates into disrespect. On opening the island to tourism, one of the first lessons the employees of the hotels learned was to return to the stigmatized “señor’ when dealing with guests. Little by little the titles of the recent past were reduced to the vocabulary of the most loyal, the oldest. So, among the thousands of salutations you hear today on our streets—brother, pal, partner, buddy, friend, mate, pure and simple “pssst”— the sonorous syllables of “compañero” appear less and less.
-
I watch little television because I prefer books, newspapers or the computer to acquire information and learn something. Over the years I have learned to distrust what comes over the screen, and even more so when it comes to the news. On those days when I have a lot of patience, I use the eight o’clock show as an exercise to detect what is hidden behind the triumphalist phrases. But, I repeat, I only do this when I’m feeling sufficiently stoic.
Still, I feel uneasy if I’m in a hotel and see the tourists watching television stations such as CNN that we Cubans cannot have in our homes. I recently started a discussion with a Peruvian who assured me—passionately—that in every Havana house we could tune into the Latin American station Telesur. He didn’t know, in his absentmindedness, that we are only permitted access to a studied collection of what is transmitted on this channel every day. Barely a few hours in the evening, under the name “Selections from Telesur,” pass through the narrow filter of what can be shown on our televised media.
Curiously, and in spite of the cuts, the Telesur news is miles away from that of National TV. Occasionally something even escapes which negates or calls into question what they’d assured us, a few minutes before, on the officially transmitted Cubavision news. Then I understand why even Telesur can’t be shown without cuts to our eyes eager for news. We should rent a hotel room, paid for in convertible currency, to view without restrictions this channel and all the others they have forbidden to us.
-
Memories are written at the end of a life and dictionaries with a man’s phrases are compiled when you know he’s finished, incapable of producing new ideas. To be reduced to the pages of a book, when once you held the microphone in front of a million people, must be a consolation as tasteless as the pap they administer to the patient. The Dictionary of the Thoughts of Fidel Castro, by the researcher Salomón Susi Sarfati, will be the farewell of the loquacious leader who flooded our life—every minute of it—with his uncontrolled rhetoric.
According to a press release from Prensa Latina, “exquisite and meticulous in his selection, the author divides the dictionary into the 20 letters of the Spanish alphabet (except k, q, w, x, y, z)…” As I am obsessed with the penultimate consonant that gives its name to this blog, I wonder if in the more than 1,978 aphorisms none will have referred to someone of “Generation Y.” In this Island full of Yordankas, Yohandris and Yunieskies, how is it possible that “the essence of the thinking” of someone who was in power nearly fifty years, does not contain a reference to us. It seems that the book contains only concepts, not people, which, for me, makes it a collection of samples of entelechy, a compendium of incomprehensible ideas.
Perhaps today—his 83rd birthday—the orator of days gone by has this dictionary they have created to flatter him, to tell him that his work will live on and be read for centuries and centuries. He will look at the year of publication and wonder if they will make an expanded edition with the contents of his next reflections. He will not notice the lack of the “Y”, this little and insignificant letter which has not turned out as he would have liked: selfless, altruistic, disciplined and stoic. Probably he will delight more in the “R” of revolution or in the “I” of imperialism, but his great gaze will not reach the end of the alphabet. There, crouched and hidden, is this letter in the form of a slingshot, the elastic tensed in the direction of tomorrow
-
He could have been an alcoholic lying on a street corner sleeping off his inebriation, like so many others in this city, but he also wanted to act. He jumped in front of a camera and cried for food which, along with yearning for change, has become the national obsession. His spontaneity, and the emphasis he gave to asking for “grub” has turned the brief video of Juan Carlos, alias Pánfilo or Dimwitted, into a “superhit” on the alternative information networks. I don’t remember other visual material that has gone viral so quickly in our society, not even the video of Eliécer Ávila versus Ricardo Alarcón from last year.
Pánfilo would understand, a few days after the broadcast of his image, that his demonstration had been denounced. His words were like a red circle around his head, a lighted announcement at the entrance to his house, or a finger pointed at his life. The magnifying glass of power, which hangs over us all, focused on him and begin to rummage through his weaknesses. Managing to stay afloat with no work, he had been prosecuted for theft, probably bought rum on the black market, and the many other outrages that we Cubans commit every day to survive or escape. It was enough that he was sincere in front of the microphone and took off his mask to feel the scalpel of repression slicing through his existence.
In a society marked by punishments against those who express their opinions, neither fools nor children say what they think, only drunkards. Thus, I wasn’t surprised at the news that they found Pánfilo to be a criminal and charged him with “pre-criminal dangerousness” for which he was given two years in prison. The judicial process must have sobered him up faster than a bucket of cold water and an extremely strong coffee. Although there is still the possibility of appealing this decision before the court, he’s unlikely to get off without punishment because it is lesson aimed not only at him. If they don’t condemn him, who will prevent the corner alcoholics, the neighborhood drunks, from standing in front of a camera and starting to shout for everything we lack: Food! Future! Freedom! :cubaflag:
-
My telephone number shares five digits with that of the nearest pharmacy. So it happens that every day I answer several mis-dialed calls in which someone asks me if this or that medicine has arrived. Normally I give the people the correct number to connect with the dispensary, but to others—at seven on a Sunday morning—I only manage to say, “No madam, in this house we don’t sell this medicine.”
If I take my clue from what people are looking for to relieve their suffering, I would have to conclude that depression is on the rise. Ninety percent of the callers want an anti-anxiety drug or tranquilizer, something to help them disconnect from the unpleasant reality. The difficulties with transportation, the dual currency system, the lines and the stress caused by searching for certain products on the black market, could unbalance anyone. Especially if you’ve lived for decades with the sensation of national instability, of uncertainty and frustration.
So I try to understand, and not insult, those who call me at the most incredible hours thinking they are communicating with the pharmacy. I note in their voices this tone of despair that is only relieved when taking some kind of pill that helps you to relax and sleep. They are the same people who the next day will return to work with their eyelids at half mast, still under the effect of the tranquilizer. The pills will help them to accept that the air conditioning is turned off because of the new energy saving measures, that the bus comes an hour later than expected, that the butcher sold them a kilo of chicken weighing ten grams less. The longed for tablets can’t make things work, but at least they serve to make you not care.
-
They have finally inaugurated the two elevators in my building, after a year of installation and a long testing period. Friday was the meeting to announce the rules for using the two devices, which already look like they’ve been in service for a decade. The neighbors’ meeting resulted in groans and moans as the enormous block of concrete where we live is deteriorating every day and there are no resources to fix it. Not even the good news of not having to climb the stairs can hide the appearance of recent ruin of this Yugoslav model building.
They have also increased the amount of money collected from each family to pay the salaries of the two retirees who watch the elevators. As the interior of the car barely has enough space for five people, the “custodians” of the Russian apparatuses will sit in a chair at the entrance. Some suggest that instead of watching the board and its buttons, these old people—party militants—are more interested in what we have in our bags and who visits us. I expect the guardians will last about two weeks, until the lack of consistency that characterizes everything here relaxes the issue of supervision.
What I like least about this is that they again apply the formula of greater control, discipline and vigilance, believing that this will solve our problems. Personally, I think everything would be better if every neighbor felt that the building belonged to them and that the common areas are also part of our house. However, years without the ability to decide what goes on in the building, have created a sense of distance and a certain tendency to “pillaging” it. Once they took a corner from us for the CDR office and they converted a place where the children played into an office for OFICODA, the government rationing arm, without the previous consent of those of us who live here. With time and the successive encroachments by so many state organisms needing a fragment of our spacious ground floor, we’ve come to the conclusion that nothing is ours. Not even the two elevators that have just been inaugurated in the last couple of days.
P.S.: The topic of Juanes and his September 20th concern has generated a great deal of debate so I have created a new site with the name Peace Without Borders, where all the information touching on this event will be collected. There will be space there for the opinions of various bloggers and commentators regarding the visit of the Columbian singer to our country.
-
It's so easy to run into a prison, so short road leading to the cell, we are all potentially-guilty-that haunt the prison. A piece of beef bought on the black market, a couple of sacks of cement purchased from a casual seller, a paper printed and distributed among a group of friends or a furtive meeting to discuss the future, could lead to these prisons low ceiling, concrete columns and pictures of martyrs in the dining room. Freedom is often considered an abstract concept, difficult representation or definition, a matter of philosophers, the prison, however, is a matter of construction workers, smelters, and locksmiths. It is relatively easy to build a prison, how difficult is to outline the contours of freedom.
PS: I leave you some pictures of the walls around Canaleta prison in Ciego de Avila. I have several friends there, most independent journalists imprisoned since the Black Spring of 2003. Some of them dictate to us bloggers, like Claudia Cadel, Ivan Garcia, Reinaldo Escobar and I-news by phone that on the web. That leads me to think that there are no fences enclosing the view that cyberspace has the capacity, too, to slip through the bricks and mortar of these dismal places.
-
August left us exhausted, after a very wet June and a blisteringly hot July, The power consumption rises and in order to sleep we lie in front of the fan that lulls us, throughout the night, with its hum. The heat brings on intolerance and critics arise on every corner. Those “from up there” know this well and they also fear the eighth month of the year. Because of this they open kiosks with cheap rum in the most populated neighborhoods and avoid cutting off the electricity in the troubled areas of the city. In any event, the tension is palpable in the air, not only because of the temperature but because of the crisis that aggravated the fears and hardships. I have been counting the days until the end of August, hoping that with its end we will also find some relief.
With this feeling of fullness September started with its routines. My son left early for school and mid-morning I asked myself the same question as last year, how to find something to take him for lunch. The teacher announced that those mobilized at the schools in the countryside will return, over the gradual extinction of that program, and now the classrooms will have forty students because there are not enough teachers. Public transport is also more complicated for a couple of days while all the students and workers return from their vacations. Fortunately, no hurricane has hit at the beginning of the month, as Ike and Gustav did a year ago.
All the postponed projects should be launched this September, including those new measures announced, but not accomplished, during the last session of the National Assembly. Our politicians should apply themselves like our students, sharpening the points of their pencils, drawing lines in their notebooks, and setting to work to find solutions to the mountain of problems surrounding us. It’s too bad they know ahead of time that they won’t have to sit for tests, that they won’t be graded as poor, average or good, with a vote left in the ballot box. What a pity that we can’t take the red pencil of disapproval and make a huge X on their term paper about their administrative management. So, they have promoted themselves year after year, starting each September in a class from which no one has the right to suspend them.
* September has also brought me some surprises. Since last Friday it is impossible to connected to Voces Cubanas from the Island. They have applied to it the same slow filter they use to block the connection to desdecuba.com for users in Cuba with very slow speed Internet connections.
-
" They had a parade with a Virgin Mary Statue"
At a few minutes past six they brought out the Virgin in her glass case. Everything happened in the same parish of Manrique on the corner of Salud, where I should have gone as a child. Only my parents pretended, by then, that they were Marxist-Leninists and my grandmother couldn’t convince them they should let us girls pray.
Today I returned among a crowd of excited women, children dressed in yellow, women in white surrounded by a security cordon and people leaning over balconies that seemed on the point of collapse. A shower of petals fell on us in Reina Street, while my husband shouted, “Viva the Virgin of all Cubans!” For a moment I thought that yes, one day what separates us today will mean nothing… and she will return to take us in under her golden mantle. As she did with me this afternoon…
-
Personally I thought this last blog entry was wonderful :happy3:
-
Painted lips
The economic crisis in Cuba forced us to find substitutes for almost everything, including cosmetics. In the nineties, shoe polish was used to make the eyelashes stand out, dish soap became shampoo and vinegar a softener. A very humble friend was relieved when she discovered she could rub a handkerchief on the whitewashed walls and use it to powder her face. A laxative was left to sit for the mineral oil to separate, which was used as a sun tan lotion.
In a mute complicity men and women arranged to undress with the light off so they wouldn’t show the holes and mendings in their underwear, which would be washed at night and left to dry behind the fridge to wear the next day. The most humiliating was going back to our grandmother’s custom of washing out pads on the days you were menstruating and staying home—sitting in the bathroom—when the cycle of the moon came.
Beginning in the fall of 1993 those who wanted to look good had the opportunity to acquire new products and even to choose among various brands, but they had to carry the money of the “enemy” in their wallets. So at the price of many sacrifices, the women of this Island didn’t let themselves be defeated in their desire to look more beautiful. With their painted lips and their tight-fitting clothes, they laughed at those who—at moments of great extremism—defined the human goal to preen as “frivolous capitalism.” Dying your hair blue, getting a tattoo or attaching a ring to your navel is no longer seen as an ideological debility. Signs have begun to sprout on bodies, of seduction and change.
-
They were three meters from each other and pointed their mobile phones—like two cowboys in the middle of a duel—to send the video clip “Decadence” and the latest photos of Carlos Lage. The information traveled through the air and stored itself in the memory of each telephone device. They left no traces of the shipment, not even those around them realized that almost fifty megabytes had crossed the park in a few short minutes. As the night advanced, they passed the “materials” to a dozen friends, who the next day transferred it to another fifty.
Bluetooth technology is the nightmare of the censors. Prohibited books in pdf format, songs you’ll never hear on the radio, blogs blocked inside the Island and every kind of news missing from the official media is transmitted through these radio frequencies. In the capital, it is a growing phenomenon, especially among the young. Some carry a cellphone that they use only to store and share photos, music and videos, unable to afford the high price of mobile service.
The intangible is making its way in this society where to print and distribute a publication could lead us to prison for the crime of “enemy propaganda.” Many newspapers, exclusively virtual, are seeing the light of day, while a digital culture leaves those who think revolutions are made only with weapons and speeches out of the game. For them, these omnidirectional waves are purely boys’ play. It is better that they think so. By the time they realize their importance, wireless will have managed to reconnect all these threads that have been cut, systematically, between citizens.
-
In an atmosphere where the lights are dimmed and with a mojito in hand, I can enjoy songs that in another context would seem hackneyed and pretentious with their corny lyrics. I put the critic in me to sleep and let myself go, if the situation warrants it, for those themes that rhyme “hurting sore” with “I adore,” and “makes me cry” with “must he die?” I can tolerate the romantic kitsch, but bad taste in politics is something I find intolerable. The abuse of images and slogans, repeated until they lose the emotive charge they once had, accentuates the abundant schmaltzyness in societies extremely dominated by ideology, like ours.
Some brief footage of a “Revolutionary Art Bazaar” on a main street in Old Havana, confirms my hypothesis about the decorative elements associated with an ideology. To buy, there, any of these insignias identified with a process, you have to pay with a different currency from that we are paid for our work. Curiously, the “icons” of selfless dedication to a social project are sold based on a clear relationship between supply and demand. In this way the money is transformed into a sweater, a cap or a backpack which is then exhibited like a relic, like some sliver of wood from utopia.
The faces that you see in this small shop are for many people—outside of Cuba—part of a counterculture to confront the status quo. They are the emblems which some call on in an attempt to change what they dislike about their respective societies. But on this Island it is just the opposite, those who look out at us from the posters and T-shirts are, for us, those who created the present order of things, the promoters of the system in which we have lived for fifty years. How could you wear any of these symbols without feeling that you are assuming the culture of power, the emblems of the masters?
-
Tomorrow will dawn as every Monday. The convertible peso will continue its ascent, Adolfo and his colleagues will have another day behind bars in the Canaleta prison, my son will hear at school that socialism is the only option for the country and at the airports we will continue to ask permission to leave the Island. The Juanes concert will not have significantly changed our lives, but nor did I go to the Plaza with this illusion. It would be unfair to demand of the young Columbian singer that he propel those changes that we ourselves have not managed to make, despite wanting them so much.
I was at the esplanade to check out how different the same space can be when it accommodates crowds organized from above, versus when it shelters a group of people dancing, singing and interacting without the involvement of politics. It was a rare experience to be there, without shouting slogans and without having to applaud mechanically when the tone of the speech marked that it was the time to cheer. Clearly some elements resembled those who march each May first, especially the proportion of plainclothes police in the audience.
Certain technical details were uncomfortable. The audio couldn’t be heard well, the small screen to show what was happening on stage couldn’t be seen from a distance, and the hour chosen was inhuman, coinciding with the worst moments of the sun. Fortunately it clouded over after four, and those who were holed up under the few trees took to dancing with the Orishas. They are details that can be fixed the next time Juanes performs in Cuba, when technical glitches will be few and those excluded this afternoon can sing.
If we see the performance of this September 20th as the dress rehearsal for a concert we’ll have one day, then we must congratulate those who participated. Even if there isn’t another, and the Plaza again takes on its solemnity and grayness, at least this Sunday afternoon we live something different. In a place where the division between us has been systematically sown, Juanes—to the setting of the sun—has shouted, “For one Cuban family!”
-
Yoani Sanchez's view of the concert... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XOrRGZYe6Q&feature=player_embedded#t=73
-
These days, I am submerging myself, again, in the procedures for permission to travel outside of Cuba. The possibility of my being at the Columbia University on October 14 for the Maria Moors Cabot ceremony is remote, but I continue with the paperwork. Nor do I have much hope of attending the presentation of my book in Brazil, even though that country’s senate has engaged in efforts to get me on the plane. All these difficulties to get permission to leave evoke for me the words of eighteen years ago of Carlos Aldana, a youngest son fallen into disgrace who, so they say, now gives classes in Marxism to older adults.
In an interview in 1991 for the Spanish magazine Cambio 16, the former number three in power in Cuba said: “This year Cubans will be able to travel abroad freely.” Only it didn’t specify if we were going to do it on the wings of our imaginations and if it would be in a year containing twelve months or nearly two decades. So that you can review his declarations of then and check the extent to which we continue repeating the same slogans, here is a link to the interview.
-
“It will be resolved in another way,” Jorge told his brother when he learned of the abolition of lunch at several workplaces. His job as a cook in a state agency had made him live on the margin of the symbolic salary he received every month. Thanks to the diversion of food and its subsequent sale in the black market, he managed to exchange his small house for a more ample one. He acquired a DVD player that let him avoid the boring television programming and even took his kids on vacation to Varadero in the past. His business was simple: he was in charge of providing rice to a kiosk that offered boxed lunches, he supplied oil—that he got from a warehouse—to an entrepreneur, and a sandwich seller paid him for those breads that never made it to the trays of the workers.
Now, everything seems to be over for this agile trader at the margins. Several ministries will begin to distribute 15 Cuban pesos for the employees to arrange for their own midday meal. The figure has surprised many, especially those who earn less than that amount for an eight hour working day. If the amount dedicated to lunch reaches such a number, then the Cuban State is recognizing that to cover the costs of food and transport they would have to pay, at least, three times this amount for each day of work.
Now Jorge is thinking about changing jobs within the same company and taking on the position of manager. Until a week ago, this was a job with too many responsibilities and too few “perks”, but suddenly it has become an attractive position. It will be in his hands to confirm how many days an employee worked and was entitled to the lunch payment. He is already planning to take a broad view towards employee absences and divide the lunch allotment between himself and the employee who didn’t come. He will happily change the sacks of beans and flour for the names and cards where attendance is recorded. Maybe by next year he’ll be able to take his family to the far off beach at Baracoa.
Octubre 2nd, 2009 |
-
A broken bridge, the indigenous name and the feeling that the town of Taguayabón is stranded in the first years of the twentieth century. This is how I saw it three weeks ago when we transferred the blogger virus to Villa Clara province. The amazed eyes of those who had never sat in front of a computer connected to the web were looking through the blogs we brought copies of. To explain Google to them was complicated, because in this place the simple search for a birth certificate in the civil registry is already extremely difficult. Imagine the surprise when they discovered that with a simple click one can list all the references to a fact, a personality, a particular subject matter.
The new technologies in citizens’ hands was the central theme of a conversation Reinaldo and I had with about a dozen people, some of whom came from Camajuaní. When we left to go to another area, a flight of motorcycles—Suzukis*—glided along the small main street and the bordering routes. They interrogated several of the participants of that day of knowledge, intimidating the youngest, and even confiscated a horse that—I can assure you—had nothing to do with the Blogger Journey. The fear extinguished the virtual air flow that had briefly blown over the inhabitants of that Villa Clara land. The restless boys who don’t show their faces returned to play out their role and repeat the same old same old—about the CIA and the Pentagon being behind the alternative Cuban blogosphere. But the germ of Wordpress and Blogger had been planted under their skin. Tuesday, some inhabitants of Taguayabón called to confirm to me that, “We want to start publishing on the Internet.”
*Suzuki motorcycles are associated with the presence of State Security officers.
-
In all the schools in the country, today is the ceremony for the first grade students to enroll in the Pioneer organization. The morning assembly lasts longer than usual, the parents accompany their children while they put on the neckerchiefs and shout, for the first time, the slogan, “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.” I also went through this on two occasions, once when I was enrolled in the OPJM* and the other on the day when I witnessed Teo being initiated. My recollections of the two are so different they seem to have occurred in diametrically opposite dimensions.
In my case it was the years of ideological fervor and, barely three feet tall, I was determined to give my life for the neckerchief they had just put on me. I felt touched by the hand of the Fatherland even though in reality I was only being added to the ranks of an ideology. The slogan of the organization I had just entered seemed like the magic words that would open all doors to me, though at that time I didn’t even know that the suffix “ism” forms nouns that mean “doctrine, sect, system.” Much less would I have wanted to be separated like Lybna who, because she was a Jehovah’s Witness, did not take “her vows” together with the rest of the children in the classroom. Around her hovered a cloud becoming darker, precisely because the blue cloth was not tied around her neck.
Twenty years passed and I was there with my son one morning in October to see him initiated into the Pioneer movement in which I no longer believed. The teacher walked up and down the ranks and asked the children to repeat the slogan about Che Guevara. Teo remained silent, with a pout that didn’t escape the eagle eyes of the principal. When they asked him why he didn’t say the slogan like the rest of the students he pointed out, with childish simplicity, “Because Che is dead and I don’t want to be dead.” I assumed my son was about to be entered into the ideological catalog under the worst of the letters, the “C” for counterrevolutionay. But no, the teacher laughed and gave him his first lesson in opportunism, “Ah Teo, repeat the slogan now, why make problems for yourself.”
*Jose Marti Pioneer Organization
-
In the early morning they removed the first bricks from the exterior wall to sell—each one—at three pesos on the black market. Like an army of ants, the poorest people in the area took the old closed factory and began to dismantle it. On the corner some kids watched in case the police approached, while the parents sifted through the residue of the debris to extract the mortar. Deft hands knocked it down during the day and carried it away at night, these construction materials that would allow them to build their own homes. After three weeks, all that was left of the enormous building was the floor and some columns standing in a vacuum. Everything that could be used had been moved to the territory of needs, had gone to support the architecture of the emergency.
On an island where to acquire cement, blocks or steel is comparable to getting a bit of lunar dust, destroying in order to build has become common practice. There are specialists in extracting clay bricks intact after eighty years of being embedded in a wall, experts in peeling off the glazed tiles from a demolished mansion, and adroit “deconstructors” who extract the metal girders from the collapsed heaps. They use the reclaimed materials to build their own habitable spaces in a country where no one can buy, legally, a house. Their main “quarries” are those houses that have fallen down or workplaces abandoned for many years by the apathetic State. They fall on these with an efficiency in looting that one might want to see in the dozing bricklayers who work for wages.
Among these skilled recyclers, some have been killed by a collapsing roof or falling wall, riddled by too many holes in its base. But at times lady luck also smiles on them and they find a toilet without cracks, or an electric socket that, in their hurry, the owners of the demolished house couldn’t take with them. A few kilometers from the site of the looting a small dwelling of tin and zinc slowly begins to change. The tiled floor from a house that fell in at Neptuno and Aguila streets has been added, along with a piece of the exterior railing from an abandoned mansion on Linea Street, and even some stained glass from a convent in Old Havana. Inside this house, fruit of the pillaging, a family—equally plundered by life—dreams of the next factory that will be dismantled and loaded onto their shoulders.
The poem “Economic Plan” by Amaury Pacheco, read by the author.
-
am a little delusional. Until a minute before the Maria Moors Cabot prize ceremony – held yesterday – I thought the Cuban government would change its decision and let me leave. So I saved the recording I made at the Immigration Office on Monday, October 12. Today, seeing that I am in the same place, I have decided to publish it, thinking especially of all those who are going through the same experience.
Emotion – having so much to say – did make me speak at a velocity difficult to subtitle, but I feel the relief of having said directly to those military uniforms everything I think about them and their absurd restrictions.
Forgive the problems with the video, but it is a completely amateur recording, like everything in this blog.
English Transcript of Video
[Informational text] The office with all the requirements for travel. Bureau of Immigration and Foreigners for the municipality of Plaza, at 17th Street, between J and K, Vedado.
Yoani: Who is last in line for information?
Clerk: Yoani?
Yoani: Well, I need to know if you have lifted the ban on my traveling that has been in effect for a year.
[Informational text] From here the recording is audio only.
Clerk: You still cannot travel.
Yoani: Still? And when will you lift this prohibition.? Do you have an idea? I need to know.
Clerk: Prohibition?
Yoani: Well, not allowing me to get on a plane is a prohibition.
Clerk: You are still not authorized to travel.
Yoani: And for what reason?
Clerk: I do not know the reason.
Yoani: I have no pending legal case, I’m not being prosecuted before a court. Pay attention to this citizen. I’ve already come many times. You know me here. What I want to know is if this prohibition is unending. If I will one day be able to leave the country. If I continue trying. What do I have to do?
You know this is a violation of my constitutional rights. You people are violating my rights as a citizen, the ability to travel, to leave and enter my country. It is very serious. That a military institution denies a fundamental right of a civilian citizen, it is like the right to an education, to food, the right to travel.
Clerk: At this time you cannot travel.
Yoani: Yes, I have heard it already, I repeat. But what I want is to have the person who made the decision give me the answer to my face.
Clerk: I am giving it to you.
Yoani: No you are not giving me the answer, you are repeating to me the same thing it says in those papers. Why can’t Yoani Sanchez leave the country? Why are you so afraid of my being outside of Cuba?
Clerk: At this time you cannot travel.
Yoani: Why don’t you want me to put one foot on a plane? What are you afraid of? What can this 110 pound person do? Create a tsunami? Why then won’t you let me leave the country?
Clerk: I already told you…
Yoani: You are being ridiculous. But no, I don’t want to repeat. You are making a travesty of life. This institution, that you represent, this permission to leave, some day this is going to end. My grandchildren are not going to live under these conditions. When I tell them the story of how the institutions of my country violated my rights, my right to travel, they’re not going to believe me. What will you tell your children? That you dedicated yourself to violating the rights of Cubans? Is that what you’ll say? Because really, I feel sorry for you for what you are going to have to tell your children in the future.
Me, no. I’ve never violated the rights of anyone. I only want to exercise my right. And act like a free person. Why can’t I? Why? Why do you routinely deny me permission? Who is the person who makes the decision? Why don’t they stop being a coward and show their face? And say to me, “Yoani Sanchez, you are not traveling for one, two, three…” But no.
No, you are saying to me, “No.” You are not giving me an explanation, the why. I am not being prosecuted in court. I have no pending cases, I’ve never been a soldier. I don’t have State secrets. I’m not even a doctor, and you have prohibited medical personal from leaving for five years. They need to be freed. I am none of that. I am a person dedicated to letters. Why can’t I leave. Ah… I do know why I can’t leave, but I am waiting for you people to tell me. Because you have an ideological filter. This country is a huge prison, with an ideological boundary. And the citizens here are judged by political colors. Here there are first citizens, and second, and in the fifth category… I don’t know what category I’m in but I must be in the basement, no? Why? Because of an ideological filter.
But one day this will end. Because this Nation has nothing to do with ideology, or with a party. This nation existed before you and it will exist after you. And then you are going to have to give an accounting of all the violations you visited upon Cubans. In truth, I’m very sorry but the future does not belong to you. The future is ours. I am 34-years-old, I am going to live it, I am going to live it. I am going to be very happy when I can travel freely. And all you are doing is tightening the rubber band. When I can step foot outside this country, the consequences will be much greater because you made it happen. Every day more people read my blog, because you also have made that happen. More people are amazed and greet me in the street, because you have caused that. With your prohibitions and your authoritarianism and your police watching everything. The only thing you’ve done is to make what I do more attractive. So then, if I have to thank anyone I have to thank the organs of State Security, the Ministry of the Interior, and Immigration who have contributed to the phenomenon of my blog growing bigger and bigger. Really, thanks very much!
-
No one knows the mechanisms of censorship in Cuba better than those who write in the few newspapers of national circulation. The press here has been turned into a delicate profession required to measure adjectives, carefully weigh topics and often to hide personal opinions in order to keep a job. It is a life decision to be a journalist for the official media, I know, but I also know some who have been trapped in the twists and turns of complicity, waiting for the day when they can write what they think.
From the Juventude Rebelde newspaper office where Reinaldo worked until 1988, there is very little left because most of his colleagues now live in Miami, Mexico and Spain. Others have retired from the profession, disillusioned with the aborted glastnost and the consecutive calls for criticism, which ended up being bait for the most daring. José Alejandro Rodríguez survived all this and carried his personal battle into the “Receipt Requested” section where he published readers’ letters with their complaints and questions. Every time I read his crusade against bureaucracy and poor work, I sense the regressive countdown that will probably culminate in his professional silencing.
A few days ago José Alejandro could take no more. He took everything he has accumulated about the “excessive centralization” that the press on this Island is subject to and condemned the secrecy surrounding government decisions. In his article “Against the demons of kidnapped information” he used the language of an honest man who always believed in the possibility of humanizing the current system through the transparency of information. I respectfully differ with him, because what has been built on a foundation of hiding, condemning and filtering cannot survive the clear light that emanates from an incisive and free journalism.
The three pages of his harangue lasted just a few hours on the on-line version of Juventud Rebelde. The article was kidnapped by the shrewd hawks of orthodoxy, who know well the danger of a Nation that begins to learn everything you have hidden.
A copy of the article “Against the demons of kidnapped information” can be read here.
-
Against the demons of kidnapped information
I am going to dream, once again. I am going to imagine that I have never pondered it up to the weariness. I am going to believe that I come to release an unusual approach. I am going to become convinced of that creature is worth while keeping on fighting for this preterida so-called information, it captivates between silences and excessive control panel.
The mission of the journalist is to report; skylight that also to think, to recreate the reality, to describe, to narrate … but first of all to report. Because to open all the genres, forms and speeches of the journalism, first it is necessary to be informed … and to report.
The information is a duty of the journalist and it is a right of the citizen, of this historical subject who has supported this Revolution, and who as today never needs to know the area that he treads and pays, in the middle of multiple complexities. As today this Liborio never needs to define and to re-define the coordinated ones in which his life journeys. As today it never presses of the information to be able to interact with the society and to take part in her, as an active subject, and not as a "pigeon" – phrase much in vogue these days - for that he waits give him his exact dose of the information from above.
The problem, - and we it are living in Rebellious Youth - is that the information does not escape to the excessive centralization of our economy and of the society in general, a little that for anything has to be a fatidical genetic component of the socialism, as any they believe; rather it obstructs it in his democratic potentialities. Well above there is decided often what to say and to report, what not to say about the big topics of the society, even if the obstinate life should pass there below, with his complexities.
At this point, it gives sadness to state it, a minister can afford to push a request of a journalist back and cercenar the right to more information, assuming that already went to the Round table to unpack everything. Or rather quite what wants to be said. The hiperbolización of the Round table as the stage of the supreme information, is an offence to the necessary versatility and variety that distinguishes to the good journalism. This "mesaredondización" is a round contribution to the burocratización of the journalism, with the due respect for the companions of this space, who are not the persons in charge of the phenomenon.
Someone – I swear that does not imagine who is this anybody - who can decide that certain measurements in the socioeconomic stage should be put into practice, without a strategy informacional directed to the historical subject that will assume them. Examples remain of changes that have registered without the necessary information in our means: of the process of request and delivery of grounds in usufruct, something that supposedly dinamizará our agriculture, there was a moment, two, three … has had: or will there be yet?, in that it was possible neither to speak scarcely nor mention. It was said to me in this writing that it was coming of above.
There was not reflected in the means the rich process of debate promoted by Raúl two years ago, expression cimera of our socialistic democracy. It is not also possible today to mention the last one, in which militants of the Party and revolutionary beyond the card, debate the problems that bother his groups.
The press is summoned so that he accompanies gregariamente the promotion of the Resolution on the payment for results of the Department of Labour and Social Security. This editor gets excited in spite of caressing a rescue of the Law of Socialistic Distribution, which so much has moved away us: He interviews the vice-minister of the MTSS, creates expectations with that one of that those who should work more and better they will be able to win and to live better.
In the end, the application of the Resolution aborts, the bureaucrats refuse to complicate in the norms and the mobile forms of payment. The egalitarianism is easier, which it touches you. And nobody explains why the payment by yield is hindered in Cuba.
A reporter, for indication of his managers, comes to the Department of Economy and Planning so that, before the avalanche of rumours on the disappearance of the working dining rooms in the foreign press, with his schismatic and tendentious approaches in certain cases, this department confirms if it is true, and I based it, and if it is not true refute it. The minister delegates in the viceminister, the viceminister says to the reporter that it must consult it with the minister... There it begins the rally, until the viceminister confesses to the journalist that there is an experience in study, but it is not desirable to report of that "for the time being". A week, a work appears in Granma on this matter, and the reporter feels cheated. Will it be the concept of the "mesaredondización" or the "granmatitis"? Will it be that in Granma he acquires majestad supreme the information?
Examples would remain, of how many officials there is abrogated the right to decide what can find out, after looking up to receive the extremaunción of the already dead news. Almost nobody dares to inform himself the press and open horizontal relations without the consent of his Superiors. And often the genuflexa chain goes along along several levels and instances … until the news is already buried by the proper life.
It is true that the information is a double-edged weapon, because it reveals the lights, but also the dark holes of the reality. But the information is a public good, and we cannot replace it with the opportune authorized information, with the virtual information, with the information - propaganda or the suitable information, the information with tweezers, or since it wants to call him him. The information is an information.
In any case the information, with all his tones, with his clair-obscure ones, will always make us more effective ones and revolutionary ones, more concientes of the historical moment; more illustrious to discern the possible of the impossible thing, and more participativos; because everything – included the information - cannot be cooked from cenacles. The Cuban needs to look at the future, to know what happens, and not to walk to tientas and blindly, to favor of the crust of information. The Cuban needs to take part actively, to propose and to be born in mind, to heft between the good and evil, to strengthen his Revolution.
It is clear that I will not speak about the faults of the journalists, the more daring some, different more tired and conformists. In the measurement in which there persists this restrictive and control model of informative politics, our professionals will encourage more disappointments and hibernations between.
And without information, without participation of the historical subject, it is impossible to establish concientemente a fuller and democratic socialism.
After all this, we are not going to cut the veins of the profession. The revolutionary journalist has to keep on battling here and there. If the doors close you, this can be the news. An alternative before the stubbornness is to focus the phenomena from other not so institutional sources and so above, from the people that is the principal support of this Revolution. And to do it with commitment and seriousness.
Rebellious youth has gained good stretch and prestige in this Cuban fight against the demons of the kidnapped information. Are we going to step back? This is the biggest challenge for the new direction of this newspaper that is still not known, but that, finally we are all.
Published in: The Tone of the Voice | Updated 17/10/2009 15:56
-
Mail boxes look like ballot boxes, they have a slot to insert the paper and its contents, it could be a letter or a ballot, which receive similar respect on this Island. Despite the limitations on correspondence, it turns out that it is easier to get one to its destination than it is to influence the course of the country with our vote. Hence, one of the most popular sports for my fellow countrymen is that of writing their complaints to the higher authorities, addressed precisely to those most responsible for our problems.
A woman writes a long lament about the sewer ditch that flows into the nearby school yard; the pizza seller denounces in writing the inspector who demands a percentage of revenues in exchange for not shutting down his kiosk; one patient needing surgery deposited his letter recounting the year he had been waiting to get into the operating room. The complaints are so numerous that in many ministries there is a department with several employees for the receipt of the letters. A true flood of sheets that repeat – over and over – the familiar heading, “By this means I turn to you…”
As a part of this, in time, the digital letter appeared, circulating through the intranet to several institutions. The intellectual debate of 2007 began in a similar way, and now we see the nonconformist opinions of various cultural personalities showing up. Parading across my screen have been the letter of the actor Armando Tomey, along with another from the literary critic Desiderio Navarro and a very good one from Luis Alberto Garcia, who played the role of Nicanor in the short films of Eduardo del Llano. This Chartism has become a substitute for the referendum needed to express our call for change.
Our epistolary tendency has similarities with the movement in nineteenth-century England which managed to get more than a million signatures to present the People’s Charter to the House of Commons. The Chartists then managed to press for the introduction of certain reforms, but I have the impression that our notes are worthless, mock ballots, ink that dissolves before the inertia of the State.
-
I wore a red and white uniform, I was ten years old, and the subject of the “blockade” was barely mentioned in the ideological books they gave me at school. Those were optimistic times and we believed that the F1 cows* would give enough milk to flood the streets of the whole country. The future had those golden hues that never showed themselves in our faded reality but we were a too colorblind to notice. We thought we had discovered the formula to be among the most prosperous people on the planet, so that our children would live in a country with opportunities for all.
From the podium a bearded leader defiantly pointed to the North, because he counted on the pole of the Kremlin subsidy to vault over any obstacle to the construction of communism. “Despite the blockade…” we said, with the same conviction that in years past we’d talked about the ten million tons of sugar*, coffee growing all around the cities*, and a supposed industrialization of the country that never came. We had to cut short our dreams when the flow of oil and rubles abruptly stopped. The years came of beginning to explain the setbacks and comparing ourselves to the poorest nations in the region to make us feel, if not happy, at least satisfied.
As I began my adolescence, the issue of trade restrictions was on nearly every billboard in the country. At the political rallies we no longer shouted, “Cuba yes, Yankees no” but a new hard-to-rhyme slogan: “Down with the blockade.” I looked at my nearly empty plate and couldn’t imagine how they had managed to blockade our malangas, orange juice, bananas and lemons. I grew up repudiating the blockade, not because I swallowed the line about the country we could be if the blockade weren’t preventing it, but simply because they tried to explain that everything that wasn’t working was a result of it.
If my friends were leaving the country en masse, it was because of the United States policy of harassment; if the cockroaches were crawling all over the walls at the maternity hospital, it was the fault of the North Americans; even if a meeting at the university expelled a critical colleague, they explained to us that he had fallen under the ideological influence of the enemy. Today, everything begins and ends with the blockade. No one seems to remember the days when they promised us paradise, when they told us that nothing – not even the economic sanctions – would prevent us from leaving behind our underdevelopment.
Translator’s notes
F1 cows: A breed that is a cross of Holstein and Zebu (Cebu) cattle. Fidel believed these cattle would allow Cuba to export beef and dairy products. It didn’t work out; both meat and milk are severely rationed in Cuba.
Ten million tons of sugar: In 1970 Fidel turned the resources of the entire country to a achieving a record ten-million ton sugar harvest, even “rescheduling” Christmas for July so as not to interfere with the work. The target was missed and Cuba’s sugar crop has declined ever since; in 2009 the total was barely over one million tons.
Coffee growing in the cities: Fidel had a plan to grow coffee in Havana despite expert advice that the climate was unfavorable; it didn’t work out.
-
not know where to begin to tell what happened in the debate about the Internet that took place yesterday, organized by the magazine Temas. Undoubtedly, the blonde wig I put on allowed me to slip through the controlled entrance of the Fresa y Chocolate Cultural Center. That and high heels, lipstick, shiny earrings and an enormous, painfully-bright purse, transformed me into someone sufficiently different. Some friends came to tell me that I looked better like that, with a tightly-fitted short dress, a sexy walk and square-framed glasses. My apologies to them, the person whose role I acted didn’t last long and today I’ve returned to my disheveled and boring appearance.
They didn’t allow Claudia, Reinaldo, Eugenio, Ciro and other bloggers to enter. “The institution reserves the right of admission,” and my cyberspace colleagues showed the impertinence of those who have already been excluded from other places, but didn’t want to retreat, embarrassed and in silence. Inside, I managed to find a seat next to the panel of speakers. Some adroit eyes had already detected my reedy physiognomy and a camera filmed me with the insistence of one preparing a dossier.
A young writer asked to speak and lamented that so many had been prevented from entering; then someone came and mentioned terms such as “enemy,” “dangerous,” and “defend ourselves.” When finally I was called, I took the opportunity to ask what relationship there is between the limitations in bandwidth and the many websites censored for the Cuban public. There was applause when I finished. I swear I didn’t collude with any of them. Afterward, a university professor came up and questioned why I had received the Ortega y Gasset journalism prize. I still haven’t managed to find the relationship between my question and her analysis, but the paths of defamation are so twisted. At the end, several came up to me to give me hugs, one woman gave me just a touch of her hand and said “congratulations.” The crisp October night waited for me outside.
If all those not allowed access had managed to participate, that would have been a true space for debate about the web. What happened felt withered and shackled. Only one of the speakers mentioned concepts such as Web 2.0, social networks and Wikipedia. The rest was the anticipated vaccine against the perverse web, the repeated justifications for why Cubans cannot access it en masse. I took my phone and quickly Tweeted, “I think it would be best to organize another debate about the Internet, without the burden of censorship and exclusion.” This morning, with dark circles from having slept only three hours, I was delivering technical manuals in the second session of our Blogger Academy.
Some of the images in this video were taken by friendly hands in solidarity and are from inside the room.
-
stopped for you because you’re white,” the taxi driver tells me after the tires screech in Reina Street around midnight. From his wide mulatto lips come the justifications, one after another, for why he doesn’t accept clients “of color” at this late hour. He looks for complicity in me, who was born in a majority black neighborhood and who loves skin the color of cinnamon. I barely listen to him. Those who discriminate against people like themselves especially bother me: the hotel doorman who berates the Cuban but lets a shouting gesturing tourist pass; the prostitute who will go, for ten convertible pesos, with a Canadian twice her age but doesn’t want to seem “defeated” by accepting a fellow Cuban; the Santiaguan who, once installed in Havana, mocks the accents of people from his own city.
Often I wake up and wish I was mixed, like Reinaldo and Teo, because when you look at my straight nose and my pale skin you think I have it easy. But it’s not true. There are many ways of being separate, because along with racism here we have discrimination based on social origin, the stigma of ideological affiliation, and the exclusion for not belonging to a family clan with power, influence or relationships. Not to mention the underestimation one receives in a macho society for having a pair of ovaries hidden in the middle of your belly. And so I am bothered by the dissertation of the driver who stopped the car because of the pallor of my skin. I want to get out, but it’s late, very late.
“What do you do?” he asks me under the streetlights of Belascoain Street. I’m a blogger, I warn him, and the lights of Carlos III Avenue show me his suspicious and fearful face. “Look, don’t go and tell what I just said,” he says, changing the indulgent tone he used when picking me up amid the gloom. “I don’t want you to publish later some nonsense about me on the Internet,” he clarifies, while grabbing his crotch in a gesture of power. My straight hair is no longer a reason to trust me, now my eyes don’t seem so almond-shaped, and when I explain—through my narrow lips—the subjects I deal with in my blog, it’s as if I am threatening him, razor in hand, a dangerous criminal. I confirm, then, that his spectrum of classification stigmatizes not only some shades of color, but also certain leanings of opinion, those tones which are not carried on the epidermis but that also lead, on this Island, to displays of segregation and rejection.
-
HAVANA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Well-known Cuban blogger and government critic Yoani Sanchez said she and two fellow bloggers were detained briefly on Friday by security agents and accused of being "counter-revolutionaries" as they walked to a demonstration against violence.
Sanchez, 34, told Reuters the agents forced her and blogger Orlando Luis Pardo into a car as they neared the demonstration in Havana's Vedado district, took them to a spot near her home and dropped them off, throwing her purse on the street as they drove away.
"We were detained by three men who came in a black Chinese car," said Sanchez, who is known internationally for her "Generation Y" blog, which frequently criticizes Cuba's communist-led government.
Sanchez said she told people standing nearby they were being kidnapped, but the men told the bystanders: "They are counter-revolutionaries. Don't get involved."
"There was no chance to resist, they were strong men."
The men offered no explanation for the seizure, but Sanchez said she believes they were preventing her from attending the demonstration. "I'm flustered. It has been very intense," she said. She said she had a sore shoulder and back from the encounter, but no serious injuries.
Pardo was released with her and had no injuries, she said. Another blogger, Claudia Cadelo, was taken away in a separate police car and released unharmed at a different location.
Sanchez said they had gathered at her home to "reconstruct the events."
About 60 people attended the demonstration, which is a rare event in Cuba, and unfurled signs that said "No to violence. Join us." They milled around for a few minutes, gave no speeches and left without incident. One participant said the march was not aimed at Cuba, but at violence around the world.
Sanchez, who has won several international prizes for her blogs, but is little known in Cuba, where Internet access is limited. The Cuban government does not hide its distaste for Sanchez, who is occasionally attacked in the state-run press as an enemy of the state.
Cuba is said to have about 200 political prisoners, whom the government views as traitors working with the United States to toppled the Cuban government. (Reporting by Jeff Franks and Rosa Tania Valdes; editing by Todd Eastham)
-
Near 23rd Street, just at the Avenida de los Presidentes roundabout, we saw a black car, made in China, pull up with three heavily built strangers. “Yoani, get in the car,” one told me while grabbing me forcefully by the wrist. The other two surrounded Claudia Cadelo, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and a friend who was accompanying us to the march against violence. The ironies of life, it was an evening filled with punches, shouts and obscenities on what should have passed as a day of peace and harmony. The same “aggressors” called for a patrol car which took my other two companions, Orlando and I were condemned to the car with yellow plates, the terrifying world of lawlessness and the impunity of Armageddon.
I refused to get into the bright Geely-made car and we demanded they show us identification or a warrant to take us. Of course they didn’t show us any papers to prove the legitimacy of our arrest. The curious crowded around and I shouted, “Help, these men want to kidnap us,” but they stopped those who wanted to intervene with a shout that revealed the whole ideological background of the operation, “Don’t mess with it, these are counterrevolutionaries.” In the face of our verbal resistance they made a phone call and said to someone who must have been the boss, “What do we do? They don’t want to get in the car.” I imagine the answer from the other side was unequivocal, because then came a flurry of punches and pushes, they got me with my head down and tried to push me into the car. I held onto the door… blows to my knuckles… I managed to take a paper one of them had in his pocket and put it in my mouth. Another flurry of punches so I would return the document to them.
Orlando was already inside, immobilized by a karate hold that kept his head pushed to the floor. One put his knee in my chest and the other, from the front seat, hit me in my kidneys and punched me in the head so I would open my mouth and spit out the paper. At one point I felt I would never leave that car. “This is as far as you’re going, Yoani,” “I’ve had enough of your antics,” said the one sitting beside the driver who was pulling my hair. In the back seat a rare spectacle was taking place: my legs were pointing up, my face reddened by the pressure and my aching body, on the other side Orlando brought down by a professional at beating people up. I just managed to grab, through his trousers, one’s testicles, in an act of desperation. I dug my nails in, thinking he was going to crush my chest until the last breath. “Kill me now,” I screamed, with the last inhalation I had left in me, and the one in front warned the younger one, “Let her breathe.”
I was listening to Orlando panting and the blows continued to rain down on us, I planned to open the door and throw myself out but there was no handle on the inside. We were at their mercy and hearing Orlando’s voice encouraged me. Later he told me it was the same for him hearing my choking words… they let him know, “Yoani is still alive.” We were left aching, lying in a street in Timba, a woman approached, “What has happened?”… “A kidnapping,” I managed to say. We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.
I managed to see, however, the degree of fright of our assailants, the fear of the new, of what they cannot destroy because they don’t understand, the blustering terror of he who knows that his days are numbered.
-
After an attack there are certain myopics who blame the victim herself for what happened. If it is a woman who has been raped, someone explains that her skirt was very short or that she strutted provocatively. If it is a robbery, there are those who will say a flashy purse or shiny earrings provoked the criminal’s greed. In the case of someone who has been the object of political repression, there is no lack of people who will justify it, saying that imprudence was the cause of such an “energetic” response. In the face of these attitudes, the victim feels doubly assaulted.
The dozens of eyes that watched as Orlando and I were forced into a car with blows would prefer not to testify, and so they put themselves on the side of the criminal.
The doctor who does not make a record of an act of physical mistreatment, having already been warned that in this “case” there must be no document to prove the injuries received, is violating his Hippocratic oath and, with that wink, becomes the culprit’s accomplice. To those who feel there should be more bruises and even fractures before they can feel compassion for the person attacked, not only are they quantifying the pain, they are also saying to the attacker, “You have to leave more signs, you must be more aggressive.”
Nor is there any shortage of those who are always going to assert that the victim inflicted the wounds upon herself, those who don’t want to listen to the screams or the laments right next to them, but who emphasize and publish what happens thousands of miles away, under another ideology, another government. They are the same non-believers who thought that UMAP* was an enjoyable camp, combining military preparation and farm work. Those who still continue to believe that executing three men* was justified to preserve socialism, and that when someone punches a nonconformist it is because the latter was asking for it with her critiques. The eternal justifiers of violence are not convinced by any evidence, not even the brief initials R.I.P. on white marble. For them, the victim is the cause, the aggressor the mere executor of an obligatory lesson, a simple judge and corrector of our deviations.
Brief medical report
I am recovering from the physical injuries resulting from the abduction of last Friday. The bruises are lessening and what bothers me the most now is a sharp pain in the lumbar region which obliges me to use a crutch. Last night I went to the clinic and they treated me for the pain and inflammation. It is nothing that my youth and good health cannot overcome. Fortunately, the blow they gave me when they forced my head to the floor of the car has not affected my eye, only the cheekbone and the brow. I hope to have recovered in a few days.
Thank you to friends and family who have looked after and supported me, the effects are fading, even the psychological ones which are the hardest. Orlando and Claudia are still in shock, but they are incredibly strong and also will overcome it. We have already begun to smile, the best medicine against abuse. The principal therapy for me remains this blog, and the thousands of topics still waiting to be touched on.
(Editor’s note: Post dictated by telephone)
Translator’s notes
UMAP = Military Units to Aid Production. Forced labor camps established in Cuba in 1965 under the banner of ideological rehabilitation. Inmates included a wide variety of “anti-social elements” as well as religious people and gays.
Executing three men = On April 2, 2003 a group of Cubans hijacked a ferry with about 50 people on it, planning to sail it to the United States. Just over a week later, Lorenzo Copello, Barbaro Sevilla and Jorge Martinez were executed for “grave acts of terrorism.”
-
After what happened last Friday, I decided to bring to light a series of pictures of people who watch and harass me.
My relationship with the movies has always been from the seats in the shadow of a room where you can hear the sound of an old projector. It kept on like this until I started to live in my own movie, a type of thriller of the pursuers and the pursued, where it is up to me to escape and hide. The reason for this sudden change from spectator to protagonist has been this blog, located in this wide space—so little touched by celluloid—that is the Internet. I woke up two years ago with the desire to write the true script of my days, and not the rosy comedy they show in the official newspapers. I went, then, from watching movies to inhabiting one.
I have my doubts whether some day I’ll see the curtain come down and be able to leave the movie theater alive. The long film that we have been living for decades in Cuba does not seem to be close to the point where the credits are shown and the screen goes blank. However, the spectators are no longer interested in the interminable filmstrip shown by the authorized projectionists. Rather, they seem captivated by the vision of those who create a blog, a blank page where they record the questions, the frustrations and the joys of citizens.
Believing myself Kubrick or Tarantino, I have begun to post a testimony of these creatures who watch and harass us. Beings from the shadows who, like vampires, feed on our human happiness and inoculate us with terror through punches, threats and blackmail. Individuals trained in coercion who could not foresee their conversion into hunters who are hunted, faces trapped on camera, mobile phones, or in the curious retina of a citizen. Accustomed to gathering evidence for this dossier about each of us kept in some drawer, in some office, now they are surprised that we make an inventory of their gestures, their eyes, a meticulous record of their abuses.
-
President Obama’s Responses to Yoani Sanchez’s Questions
President Barack Obama: Thank you for this opportunity to exchange views with you and your readers in Cuba and around the world and congratulations on receiving the Maria Moore Cabot Prize award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for coverage of Latin America that furthers inter-American understanding. You richly deserve the award. I was disappointed you were denied the ability to travel to receive the award in person.
Your blog provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba. It is telling that the Internet has provided you and other courageous Cuban bloggers with an outlet to express yourself so freely, and I applaud your collective efforts to empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology. The government and people of the United States join all of you in looking forward to the day all Cubans can freely express themselves in public without fear and without reprisals.
Yoani Sánchez: QUESTION #1. FOR YEARS, CUBA HAS BEEN A U.S. FOREIGN POLICY ISSUE AS WELL AS A DOMESTIC ONE, IN PARTICULAR BECAUSE OF THE LARGE CUBAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY. FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE, IN WHICH OF THE TWO CATEGORIES SHOULD THE CUBAN ISSUE FIT?
All foreign policy issues involve domestic components, especially issues concerning neighbors like Cuba from which the United States has a large immigrant population and with which we have a long history of relations. Our commitment to protect and support free speech, human rights, and democratic governance at home and around the world also cuts across the foreign policy/domestic policy divide. Also, many of the challenges shared by our two countries, including migration, drug trafficking, and economic issues, involve traditional domestic and foreign policy concerns. Thus, U.S. relations with Cuba are rightly seen in both a foreign and domestic policy context.
QUESTION 2: SHOULD YOUR ADMINISTRATION BE WILLING TO PUT AN END TO THIS DISPUTE, WOULD IT RECOGNIZE THE LEGITIMACY OF THE RAUL CASTRO GOVERNMENT AS THE ONLY VALID INTERLOCUTOR IN THE EVENTUAL TALKS?
As I have said before, I am prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a range of issues of mutual interest as we have already done in the migration and direct mail talks. It is also my intent to facilitate greater contact with the Cuban people, especially among divided Cuban families, which I have done by removing U.S. restrictions on family visits and remittances.
We seek to engage with Cubans outside of government as we do elsewhere around the world, as the government, of course, is not the only voice that matters in Cuba. We take every opportunity to interact with the full range of Cuban society and look forward to the day when the government reflects the freely expressed will of the Cuban people.
QUESTION 3: HAS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT RENOUNCED THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE AS THE WAY TO END THE DISPUTE?
The United States has no intention of using military force in Cuba. The United States supports increased respect for human rights and for political and economic freedoms in Cuba, and hopes that the Cuban government will respond to the desire of the Cuban people to enjoy the benefits of democracy and be able to freely determine Cuba’s future. Only the Cuban people can bring about positive change in Cuba and it is our hope that they will soon be able to exercise their full potential.
QUESTION 4: RAUL CASTRO HAS SAID PUBLICALLY THAT HE IS OPEN TO DISCUSS ANY TOPIC WITH THE U.S. PROVIDED THERE IS MUTUAL RESPECT AND A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. IS RAUL ASKING TOO MUCH?
For years, I have said that it is time to pursue direct diplomacy, without preconditions, with friends and foes alike. I am not interested, however, in talking for the sake of talking. In the case of Cuba, such diplomacy should create opportunities to advance the interests of the United States and the cause of freedom for the Cuban people.
We have already initiated a dialogue on areas of mutual concern – safe, legal, and orderly migration, and reestablishing direct mail service. These are small steps, but an important part of a process to move U.S.-Cuban relations in a new and more positive, direction. Achieving a more normal relationship, however, will require action by the Cuban government.
QUESTION 5: IN A HYPOTHETICAL U.S.-CUBA DIALOGUE, WOULD YOU ENTERTAIN PARTICIPATION FROM THE CUBAN EXILE COMMUNITY, THE CUBA-BASED OPPOSITION GROUPS AND NASCENT CUBAN CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS?
When considering any policy decision, it is critical to listen to as many diverse voices as possible. When it comes to Cuba, we do exactly that. The U.S. government regularly talks with groups and individuals inside and outside of Cuba that have an interest in our relations. Many do not always agree with the Cuban government; many do not always agree with the United States government; and many do not agree with each other. What we should all be able to agree on moving forward is the need to listen to the concerns of Cubans who live on the island. This is why everything you are doing to project your voice is so important – not just for the advancement of the freedom of expression itself, but also for people outside of Cuba to gain a better understanding of the life, struggles, joys, and dreams of Cubans on the island.
QUESTION 6: YOU STRONGLY SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES. BUT, CUBANS CONTINUE TO HAVE LIMITED ACCESS TO THE INTERNET. HOW MUCH OF THIS IS DUE TO THE U.S. EMBARGO AND HOW MUCH OF IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT?
My administration has taken important steps to promote the free flow of information to and from the Cuban people particularly through new technologies. We have made possible greater telecommunications links to advance interaction between Cuban citizens and the outside world. This will increase the means through which Cubans on the island can communicate with each other and with persons outside of Cuba, for example, by expanding opportunities for fiber optic and satellite transmissions to and from Cuba. This will not happen overnight. Nor will it have its full effect without positive actions by the Cuban government. I understand the Cuban government has announced a plan to provide Cubans greater access to the Internet at post offices. I am following this development with interest and urge the government to allow its people to enjoy unrestricted access to the internet and to information. In addition, we welcome suggestions regarding areas in which we can further support the free flow of information within, from, and to Cuba.
QUESTION 7: WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO TRAVEL TO OUR COUNTRY?
I would never rule out a course of action that could advance the interests of the United States and advance the cause of freedom for the Cuban people. At the same time, diplomatic tools should only be used after careful preparation and as part of a clear strategy. I look forward to visit a Cuba in which all citizens enjoy the same rights and opportunities as other citizens in the hemisphere.
-
The store is located in the left atrium at the corner of Galiano and San Rafael streets, where there used to be a Ten Cent store, long since rotted from age and filth. It’s like an alien spaceship that landed in a neighborhood that has seen many of its businesses turned into homeless shelters, and insignificant small offices closed because of blocked sewers. But Trasval is different. People baptized the large store, run, so they say, by the Ministry of the Interior, “the museum”, because of the high prices, in convertible pesos, of all the merchandise.
Trasval was playing at capitalism, with background music, employees dressed in suits and sporting earphones, cameras everywhere, and products we had never seen. We felt like chicks, tucked up in the lamplight and the tinkle of the melody, which would end at the cash register slaughterhouse where we would pay three months wages for a can opener. Inside, you can still see an area with tools for your swimming pool, though the clerks haven’t smiled at the customers in months and they no longer answer questions nicely.
The last time I was in that black-tile-lined bunker the collapse was already imminent. The air conditioning didn’t work; the employees had shed their warm clothing, including the ties; and yards and yards of the same product warned of the decline. All the can openers has disappeared and a scandalous rumor of corruption spread in the aisles. Its splendor was brief, its profit would have been enormous. Because Trasval was the latest commercial snare offered to Cubans, the latest elaborate bait prepared by that mix of merchants and secret police who swarm everywhere these days. Individuals who both traffic in goods and inform on us, sell us a lamp or spy on us from a corner, count the money or finger the pistol they wear on their hip.
-
Thanks, JOhn.. very interesting reading.
-
more
On December 10 a mob assaulted women who had only gladioli in their hands. Fists raised—urged on by plainclothes police—they surrounded these mothers, wives and daughters of those imprisoned since the Black Spring of 2003. Several of the attackers learned the script on the run and mixed current political slogans with those popular almost three decades ago. It was a shock troop with license to insult and beat, granted by precisely those whose job it is to maintain order and protect all citizens. On Friday’s news the announcer said that those who berated the Women in White represented an “enraged people”, but on the screen there was no hint of spontaneity or real conviction. It just looked like fanatics who were afraid, very afraid.
I’m ashamed to say it, but in my country the demons of intolerance were having a party on Human Rights Day. They were incited by those who have long since lost the capacity to convince us of their argument or to win us over with a new and just idea. They don’t even have an ideology any more, but only keep their hands on the reins of fear, calling for “exemplary” acts of repudiation to stem the growing discontent. In the faces of those summoned to a social lynching, however, one could see doubt alternating with rage and the exaltation with the trembling of knowing themselves observed and evaluated. As painful as it may be, it’s easy to foresee that perhaps one day a multitude just as unthinking and blind might direct their anger against those who, today, pit some Cubans against others.
With a lack of openings, of more food on the plate, of structural changes or long-awaited relaxations, Raul Castro’s government seems to have chosen punishment as the formula for self-preservation. It shows no tangible results from its management, rather there is the sound of the rusty instruments of control and the old techniques of punishment. In recent months it hasn’t even put forth promises of projects, or announced plans with imprecise dates. Rather, it has reached for its belt, not exactly to tighten it in a gesture of austerity and saving, but rather to use it as authoritarian parents do, on the hide of its children
-
Like the sneeze of a desired flu, the alternative Cuban blogosphere continues to propagate itself. It is no longer like the bleak wasteland that displayed—if anything—a few pseudonymous pages in April 2007, when I started Generation Y. I’ve lost count of how many we are now, because every week I learn that at least two new virtual spaces have been born. The blockade of various blogger platforms and the constant attacks have served only to make the virus of free opinion mutate into forms more complicated to shut up. The DNA of citizen expression will not concede in the face of vaccines based on intimidation and defamation; eventually everyone will be infected.
The plurality of approaches is the sign that the public squares of discussion have found, in cyberspace, a scenario more tolerant than reality. I know sites of catharsis for accumulated frustrations, while others specialize in news or protest. They range from pleasant blogs such as Cuba Fake News, to magazines filled with indispensable articles in the style of Convivencia. Their authors range from former counterintelligence agents from the Interior Ministry to exiled writers from the official publishing houses. They are all joined by the need to express themselves, the tense desire to be done with the cycle of silence that has lasted too long.
Such a bundle of free electrons, this blogosphere doesn’t respond to any hierarchy or leading figures. Its strength is that it is not possible to cut off its head, or to catch it, a slippery and playful being with no need to reach agreement or carry credentials. During the time they spend developing a strategy to fight it, for which they meet on high, preparing a law under the direction of the possible executors of censorship, the number of sites on the Island has already doubled. When they begin to understand what it’s about and how to administer an antidote, the blogger fever will have made the temples of thousands of Cubans throb.
-
The Big Bad Wolf or the Boogieman was called something else in my childhood: The Urban Reform. Raised in a house for which my parents had no papers, when there was a knock on the door it scared us to death because it might be the housing inspector. I learned to look through the blinds before opening, a practice I keep to this day, to avoid those with portfolios who snooped around and warned us of the legal fragility of our home. The institution they represented was more feared in my tenement than the police themselves. Numerous confiscations, stamps stuck on the doors, evictions and fines made even the tough guys of Central Havana tremble when they heard someone talking about the Housing Institute.
Now the ghost of my childhood has returned, with what happened to the patio of my friend Karina Gálvez. An economist and university professor, this pleasant woman from Pinar del Río, was part of the editorial board of the magazine Vitral, and now is an essential pillar of the portal Convivencia (Coexistence). This, in a society where censorship and opportunism are growing everywhere, like the marabu weed, could be interpreted as a great mistake on the part of Karina. To make matters worse, she has always believed that her parents’ house, where she was born and has lived for more than forty years, was a family property, as it says in the title deed stored in the second drawer of her dresser. On the basis that building one’s own patio should be something as personal as the decision to let one’s nails grow, she built a covered patio that her friends all contributed to. Gradually it became a place for discussion, an epicenter of reflection, and a place of essential pilgrimage for the artists and free thinkers of Pinar del Río.
Until Bishop Emeritus Ciro González came to bless the Virgin of Charity that presided over this cozy space. I remember that Reinaldo and I are looking for a ceramic artist who recorded the Cuban flag and shield for the improvised altar in the now famous “Patio of Karina.” Then the legal skirmishes began, the Urban Reform inspectors with their threats of forced destruction and expropriation. It seemed that it would all end with a monetary penalty or, in the worst case, in tearing down what had been built. But for those who don’t know how to build, it gives them a special pleasure to confiscate, to remove the achievements of others, seizing what they themselves have not created. And so it was yesterday, Tuesday, that a brigade came to the house of my friend and announced that the patio was not hers, but rather the property of the State enterprise CIMEX which abuts the house. At a speed rarely seen in these parts, they raised a metal barrier which that night was converted into a brick wall.
Karina, in her infinite capacity to laugh at everything, said that she will paint a pair of roosters on the ugly wall, announcing the dawn. On the other side, the land that has always been hers is now used by others. One day she will get it back, I know, but not the Urban Reform, nor the political police, nor the rapid response brigade stationed outside will keep us from continuing to say and feel that this is Karina’s Patio.
Photo gallery from Yoani’s Flickr.
*Translator’s note
El Patio De Mi Casa Es Particular (The patio of my house is private/special) is a very common children’s song; click on the link for a YouTube video with subtitles. The word “particular” means both “private” and “special”.
-
For Roberto San Martín
I’ve lived here and there. I’ve been a voice asking permission to leave my country and an exile waiting for permission to enter. The machine has crushed me between both sides of its serrated cogs: for being outside of, and for deciding to stay in, my Island. I went to the consulate to pay the high monthly tariffs to stay in another country, and have also faced the costs of return, the enormous personal sum of being a returnee. For two years I looked at the Island in the distance and faced the dilemma of whether I could drink the “Coca-Cola of forgetting” or the “cane juice of nostalgia”, but neither of the two went down my throat. I preferred the bittersweet taste of this reality.
I have nightmares where I go through Cuban customs and someone in uniform leads me to a grey room. Surrounded by unpainted walls and a huge photo of Fidel Castro, they take my passport and tell me that if I come in I can never again travel to another destination. All this is explained to me by an official with a sweaty face, a pistol on his hip, and a ballpoint pen sticking out of his pocket. I have a presentiment that I will spend eternity facing this being of sullen words, with no opportunity to pass through the door into the room where my family is waiting for me. The anxiety rises to the point where I wake up and verify that I am in my house, still prey, but happy to be back.
This obsessive dream alternates with another where they will not let me fly to my own country. I am in a far away airport, trying to board a plane destined for Havana. The girl who checks the tickets tells me I cannot depart. “We have orders not to let you board”, she concludes, without the dramatic weight of someone who has just notified another of their expatriate status. There is no one around to appeal to while the electronic blackboards display the next departures for New York, Buenos Aires, Berlin. I sit and put my suitcase between my legs so I can lean on it and try to sleep. This can’t be true, I tell myself, I have to rest and when I wake up I’ll be in the cabin thousands of feet in the sky.
I’ve tried tea with lime, reading stories of pilots before going to bed, playing relaxing music in the room. But the only thing that will end this oneiric sequence of being shut in and forced out, is the end of the immigration restrictions for Cubans. I want to have the right to travel, like I want to be able to sleep without seeing someone in uniform taking my passport, and without hearing the roar of an airplane as it takes off, leaving me in a foreign land.
-
Yesterday I ran from the El Cerro neighborhood home, at the setting of the sun, to film it and post it on my blog. The last circle of fire displayed in 2009 turned out to be surrounded by clouds and impossible to record with the camera. Somewhat frustrated, I looked to the northeast and a spectacular moon was rising alongside the column of smoke from the Nico Lopez refinery. Light side by side with the filth, a silver ring next to the flames generated by the burning of that “dark” petroleum.
I leave you here, along with this text, some images of this natural satellite that shone with all its brilliance upon us. I also threw the traditional bucket of water from my balcony at midnight, in an act of yearly cleansing to expel everything that keeps us from advancing as a Nation. Today, in the morning, the first sun of 2010 dried the puddles from the streams of water that fell from the buildings all around. These streams sounded like a cataract, plural and dispersed, as they left every house. “Let the bad go, let it go,” we thought, in unison, millions of Cubans.
-
Three generations
The new ration book surprised us at the end of December, just when speculation was growing about the demise of this booklet with its grid-paper pages. It arrived, like every year, surrounded by anxiety and annoyance, submerging us in that approach-avoidance conflict generated by the subsidized. In its little pages I notice the absence of many products that once made up the monthly quota, now reduced to just a monotonous repertoire with insufficient nutritional values and rising costs.
For the first time in our house we are all in the same age bracket among the five defined by the Ministry of Internal Commerce. Exactly in the box for 14 to 64 years my son appears, together with Reinaldo and me, but at least three generations of Cubans have seen the store clerks mark down what we can put in our mouths. Trapped in poverty, millions of compatriots depend on price assistance to survive. Rationing is a trampoline and falling is certain, a dependency we all wish would end, but that almost no one can let go.
I see my name written next to Teo’s and I’m afraid that his children, too, will receive milk only until the age of seven, be allotted washing soap every two months or a tasteless toothpaste to clean their teeth. I shudder imagining that in thirty years we will still have to prove, with a doctor’s certificate, that we have an ulcer to have the right to a few ounces of meat or a container of soy yogurt. With its minimal quantities and doubtful quality, the ration market has also instilled in us an unhealthy gratitude and a guilt complex that cannot be our legacy to those yet to come. If another December arrives and we receive a new ration book, it will not be because we have avoided the economic cuts, but rather because we have fallen another step lower in our citizen autonomy.
-
go out with several sweaters and a very old scarf wrapped around my neck. The errand is short, but with the temperature so low every step I take is a great sacrifice. People beside me in the street are equally “disguised” and I even see someone who appears to have a bed blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Although in the short trip from home to the bakery I don’t see anyone wearing a nice coat, I see that popular inventiveness does not end when the thermometers fall. The Soviet-era raincoats have been dusted off, with their enormous buttons and now faded colors. Others, those who don’t even have something to cover themselves, have simply stayed home.
I go to a place where they sell bread outside the rationed market and a baguette costs a whole day’s wages. Curiously, many of those I have seen on the road, with their peculiar and improvised costumes, are headed in the same direction I am. As we get nearer I confirm that everyone is going after the little food that has kept us in suspense for several weeks now. A few feet from the place, someone ahead of us raises the cry, “There isn’t any more!”, throwing a real bucket of cold water on us. I turn around and go home. Tomorrow will be another day without breakfast.
The arrival of these winds from the north has coincided not only with the disappearance of bread, but also with the flight of the milk. As if winter had affected the ovens and frozen the cows’ udders. Although on TV they announce that the production targets for the precious milk have been exceeded, they deny us the solitary cup of coffee or the insipid tea every morning. These are times to jerk yourself awake without looking at the table, to tell the kids not to ask questions, and to put aside work, the blog, friends, life, to devote yourself entirely to the pursuit of a piece of bread and a glass of milk. Time to drag ourselves through the dust of shortages and lines and because to break this contemptible cycle and fly we need—more than wings—the fuel of food.
-
An island that has seen a host of tragedies, invasions, dictators, today shows the wreckage of a disaster, a quake no less horrendous for being natural. In that Haiti shown to us by Carpentier in “The Kingdom of This World,” that the news has made us pity, misery has become chronic and crying an everyday language. More than a quake, the homeland of Jacques Roumain has been shaken by misfortunes that come and fall on the social instability, economic malaise and despair. For any nation, something like this would be a calamity, for Haiti it is a complete apocalypse.
This is not the time to play politics with the pain, nor to step in front of the microphones promising help, but rather to come to their aid unconditionally, without desire for recognition or gratitude. It especially frightens me that three months from now the suffering will no longer be a headline in any newspaper and people will have ceased to feel the urgency of the Haitian drama. I am afraid that we become accustomed to the misery and harden our hearts to the tragedy, focusing on our own problems without considering that others, next door, are screaming.
The seismograph may indicate that here are no new shocks, but the needle on the meter of life is reading red. It is the time for help, and we must do so immediately.
Currently several bloggers, along with others from Cuban civil society, are seeking a way to make our small contribution to the victims. We propose to collect clothes, medicines and personal care supplies, and bring them to the representative of Caritas in Havana
-
Much More Frightened Than Me
This Friday was complicated from the start, I won’t deny it. In the morning, we were missing Claudio, a photography professor at the Blogger Academy, because an agent – who barely deigned to show him a card with the initials DES (Department of State Security) – arrested him. We had a little party at our house after the classes to celebrate the first anniversary of Voces Cubanas, which in its brief life now has 26 sites. I remember that in the middle of the hugs and smiles, someone told me to be careful. “In the system as it is today, there is no way to protect yourself from attacks from the State,” I told him, with the intent to scare away my own fear.
Around six in the evening we were on our way to a family gathering. My sister was celebrating her 36th birthday; my father heard her first cry early in the morning on the day set aside to celebrate railroad workers. Even Teo, with his adolescent reluctance to participate in “old people’s” activities, agreed to come with us. We were expecting the usual birthday party, with photos, candles to blow out, and “Happy birthday to you, Yunia, may you enjoy many more.” But, the many eyes that were lurking had another plan for us. On Boyeros Avenue, a few yards from the Ministry of the Interior and Raul Castro’s office, three cars stopped the miserable Russian Lada we had taken at a corner.
“Don’t even think about going to 23rd Street Yoani, because the Union of Young Communists is having an event,” shouted some men who got out of the Chinese-made Geely, which reminded me of a sharp pain in my lumbar zone. I lived through something similar already last November and today I would not allow them to put me head first into another car, with my son. A huge man got out of the vehicle and started to repeat his threats, “What is your name?” was Reinaldo’s question which the man never bothered to respond to. From Teo’s lanky body rose the ironic phrase, “He doesn’t say his name because he is a coward.” Worse still, Teo, worse still, he doesn’t say his name because he is not recognized as an individual, but rather simply as a voice for others much higher up. A professional camera was filming our every move, waiting for an aggressive pose, a vulgar phrase, an excess of anger. The injection of terror was brief, the birthday found us bitter.
How can we emerge unscathed from all this? How can a citizen protect himself from a State that has the police, the courts, the rapid response brigades, the mass media, the capacity to defame and lie, the power to socially lynch him and turn him into someone defeated and apologetic? What were they thinking would happen on 23rd Street today that would make them arrest several bloggers?
I feel a terror that almost doesn’t let me type, but I want to tell those who today threatened me and my family, that when one reaches a certain level of panic, higher doses don’t make any difference. I will not stop writing, or Twittering; I have no plans to close my blog, nor abandon the practice of thinking with my own mind and – above all – I am not going to stop believing that they are much more frightened than I am.
-
How can a citizen protect himself from a State that has the police, the courts, the rapid response brigades, the mass media, the capacity to defame and lie, the power to socially lynch him and turn him into someone defeated and apologetic?
Sounds just like Another Government I know....
My favourite joke has always been : What's the difference between the Canadian Gov't and the Cuban Gov't... In Cuba they only have to pay for One Party of Thieves, Cheats and Liars!!
-
:binkybaby: It is sad isnt it?
Outlawed Information
Rumors spread, murmurs become official notes and newspapers report – several weeks later – what the whole country already knows. We have gone from rationed information to a veritable “coming out” that flows in parallel with the censorship of the official media. Our glasnost has not been driven from offices and ministries, but has emerged in mobile phones, digital cameras and removable memories. The same black market that supplied powdered milk or detergent now offers illegal Internet connections and television programs that arrive through prohibited satellite dishes.
This is how we learned of the events in Venezuela during the last week. My own cell phone has been on the verge of collapse from so many messages telling me about the student protests and the closure of several television stations. I forward copies of these brief headlines to everyone in my address book, in a network that mimics viral transmission: I spread it to many and they in turn inoculate a hundred more with the information. There is no way to stop this form of broadcast news, because it does not use a fixed structure but mutates and adapts to each circumstance. It is anti-hegemonic, although the little word acquires different connotations in the Cuban case, where the hegemony has belonged to the newspaper Granma, the TV show The Round Table, and the DOR*.
We knew of the deaths in the psychiatric hospital days before the official announcement and we heard of the fate of those pushed out** in March 2009 through “radio bemba” – literally “lip radio” or Cuba’s gossip network – and one day we will know that the “end” has come, before they authorize the press to report it. The flow of information has quintupled, although it does not obey a government decision to inform us of major events, rather it is technological development that has allowed us to skip over triumphalist headlines and newcasts empty of content. We are increasingly less dependent on the ideological pap of the television news. I know hundreds of people who haven’t tuned into Cubavision and the rest of the national channels for months. They only watch forbidden television.
The screen of a Nokia or Motorola, the bright surface of a CD or the tiny little stick of a flash drive, shred our disinformation. On the other side of that veil of omissions and falsehoods – created over decades – there is an extension, unknown and new, that frightens and attracts us.
* The Cuban Communist Party Central Committee’s Department of Revolutionary Orientation that determines the information policy of every newspaper in the country.
-
We become used to the inflated figures, the secrecy when something goes wrong, and a gross domestic product that never reflects the contents of our pockets. For decades the economic reports have had the ability to hide, through pages filled with numbers and analysis, the seriousness of the problems. Among those qualified in the inexact science of finance, there were some, such as Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who dared to unmask the falsity of certain numbers and who were punished with the “pajama plan” of unemployment and disgrace.
This week my reading of the serious and well-argued analysis published by Father Boris Moreno in New Word, the magazine of the Havana Archdiocese of the Catholic Church, has increased my anxiety about the collapse we are heading into. With the suggestive title, “Whence the Cuban ship? A look at the economic environment,” the author warns us of a fall – a nosedive – in the material and financial state of the Island. Words that should terrify us, if not for the fact that our ears have become somewhat impervious to bad news about plunges in productivity and shortages
I agree with this holder of a Master’s degree in Economic Science that the first and most important step is “the government’s formal commitment to recognize the ability of all citizens to express their opinions without reprisals of any kind. We should eliminate in our environment the labels that restrict the exchange of ideas and opinions.” After reading this, I imagine my neighbor, a retired accountant, openly expressing his views about the need to allow private enterprise, without this earning him a repudiation rally in front of his door. It takes work to project something like this, I know, but I cherish the idea that some day – without fear that they will be accused of being “mercenaries in the pay of a foreign power” – thousands will express their ideas and propose solutions. What enormous capital Cuba would recover!
While the coffers are not going to be filled solely by proposals and reasoning, our experience tells us that voluntarism and exclusions have only contributed to emptying them.
-
Concerning the migration talks between Cuba and the United States which are taking place today in Havana.
Carlitos finally made it to Atlanta, after trying five times to cross the Straits of Florida. On two occasions he was intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard and returned to the Island. For months he saved the yellow form they gave him to request – legally – a visa from the United States Interest Section. However, he preferred a faster way to leave behind the room he shared with his grandmother and the police harassment in his neighborhood. He was also captured by the Cubans, on August 13 three years ago, when the boat’s propeller broke and his trip ended in a jail in the village of Cojimar. There he was fined and a plainclothes office began visiting him to demand he find a job.
After demonstrating his few talents as a sailor, this young man of 32 managed to go to Ecuador, one of the few countries that still does not require a visa from Cubans. The South American nation was the trampoline to enter the United States, where he is now trying to start a new life. He left his GPS in the hands of some of his friends who had helped him in his journeys, along with that form he had never filled out to ask for a humanitarian visa. He did not leave for a pre-determined destiny, rather he feared turning into a frustrated forty-year-old. Not even in his most optimistic days could he foresee he would come to have his own roof, or a salary that would save him from having to divert State resources to survive.
Like so many other Cubans, Carlitos had no hope that the promises made to him when he was a child would materialize. He did not want to grow old sitting on the sidewalk in front of his house, taking the edge off his failure with alcohol and some other pill. He planned every kind of escape, but finally his uncle paid for the ticket to Quito with the illusion that he would be able to get the rest of the family out. He still dreams of boats that draw near in the middle of the night and take him back to Cuba in handcuffs, smelling of salt and oil. He wakes up and looks around to confirm that he is still in the little apartment he has rented with a girlfriend. “Once a rafter, always a rafter,” he muses, while turning over his pillow and trying to dream on solid ground.
-
This afternoon, hours after the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Reinaldo and I were able to approach the Department of Legal Medicine, where autopsies are performed, in Boyeros Street.
A cordon of men from State Security were watching the place, but we managed to approach Reina, the mother of the deceased, and ask her the questions in the recording posted here.
Pain, indignation in our case… sadness and fortitude in hers. Here is the recording, amateur and in very low light, but the heartbreaking testimony of an anguished mother.
English transcript of Yoani Sanchez video interview of Reina Tamayo, mother of Orlando Zapata Tamayo
Yoani Sanchez: We are here to express our condolences. We would like to know at what time did he pass away, what do you know about his last minutes, what are your feelings right now, and what is going to happen after he is released by the coroner?
Reina Luisa Tamayo Dangier: I am Reina Luisa Tamayo Dangier, the mother of prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo who was interned in the hospital of the Habana del Este Prison. Last night he was moved to the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital where he passed away at 3:00 PM.
I can tell you I feel a horrible pain, but I am holding on, enduring through this pain. I was able to be at his side until he passed away and now hope to have the courage to dress my son Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
We will leave for Banes, Holguin Province, Embarcadero road, house number six, where we will hold the wake before our family altar, at my home, for as long as required.
I want to tell the world about my pain. I think my son’s death was a premeditated murder. My son was tortured throughout his incarceration. His plight has brought me great pain and has been excruciating for the entire family. Even, as he was transferred to this prison, he was first held in Camaguey without drinking water for 18 days. My son dies after an 86-day hunger strike. He is another Pedro Boitel for Cuba. [Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 during a hunger strike while serving a 10-year prison sentence in Cuba]
In the midst of deep pain, I call on the world to demand the freedom of the other prisoners and brothers unfairly sentenced so that what happened to my boy, my second child, who leaves behind no physical legacy, no child or wife, does not happen again. Thank you!
-
Bicycles
Twenty years ago our streets began to fill with bicycles and empty of cars. It wasn’t in fashion to protect the environment, nor to get exercise, rather it was the direct result of the end of the Soviet subsidy. The preferentially priced oil supplies from the East were interrupted, public transport collapsed and my father lost his job as a train mechanic. In those days, getting to work could take the equivalent of half a day and we frequently traveled hanging out of the doors of the bus, like bunches of human grapes.
Then the successive shipments of bicycles from the land of Deng Xiaoping arrived, and were distributed among the outstanding workers and vanguard students. Now the reward for a meritorious task or for unconditional ideology was no longer a trip to East Germany or the delivery of the latest model Russian Lada, but rather a shiny Forever brand bicycle. Parking lots where the light vehicles were protected from thieves sprang up everywhere and my father opened a workshop to repair punctures. Innovations also appeared with the addition of baby seats, trailers and front baskets. Even women of an advanced age, reluctant to show off their legs while they worked the pedals, ended up adapting themselves to the rhythm of the times.
With the dollarization of the economy high level officials, artists and foreign residents were permitted to import their own cars, while tourists could rent a Peugeot or Citröen. So the streets experienced once again the steady rolling of tires. The number of bicycles dwindled because ships full of them no longer arrived, spare parts became scarce, and Cubans got tired of pedaling everywhere. A slight improvement in the bus service has led many to get rid of their rolling comrade, as if by this gesture they could rid themselves of the crisis.
-
:binkybaby: Kisses For One Night
With a tight sweater and gel-smeared hair, he offers his body for only twenty convertible pesos a night. His face, with its high cheekbones and slanted eyes, is common among those from the East of the country. He constantly moves his arms, a mixture of lasciviousness and innocence that at times provokes pity, at others desire. He is a part of the vast group of Cubans who earn a living from the sweat of their pelvis, who market their sex to foreigners and locals. An industry of quick love and brief caresses, that has grown considerably on this Island in the last twenty years.
Havana has the air of a brothel at times, particularly if you pass through Monte Street where it meets Cienfuegos. Young women in their flashy – if a little faded – clothes offer their “merchandise,” especially after night falls and the spandex doesn’t look quite as baggy nor the circles under their eyes quite as dark. These are the ones who can’t compete with those who can snag a manager or a tourist to take them to a hotel and offer them, the next morning, a breakfast that comes with milk. These are the ones who don’t wear perfume and who finish their work in the cramped quarters of a solar or even on the landing under the stairs. They traffic in groans, exchanging spasms for money.
These men and women – merchants of desire – avoid tripping over the uniformed police who guard the area. Falling into their hands can mean a night in a cell or, for those in the city illegally, deportation to your home province. Everything can be “resolved” if the officer accepts the hint of a probing thigh and agrees to withhold an official warning in exchange for a few minutes of privacy. Some officers return regularly to take their cut, in money or in services, that allows these nocturnal beings to continue taking up their positions on the corner. A woman who refuses the exchange can find herself in a prostitute reeducation camp, while the men might be charged with the crime of pre-criminal dangerousness.
And so the cycle of sex for money comes full circle, in a city where honest work is a museum relic and the needs bring many to position their bodies and swing their hips in hopes of an offer.