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
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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
