Cuba blog girl is back in action!!!! For your reading pleasure.

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.”

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

 


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 »

[Jammyisme]

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

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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?

[Jammyisme]

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

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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…

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.