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

[Jammyisme]

 
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 »

[Jammyisme]

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?

 

[Jammyisme]

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

[Jammyisme]

   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.

[Bulldog]

Good stuff Jammy 

[Jammyisme]

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?

[Jammyisme]

   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”

[Jammyisme]

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

[Jammyisme]

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

[Bulldog]

Thanks Jammy, it's a very interesting read 

[Jammyisme]

 

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.

[Jammyisme]

 

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”

[Jammyisme]

 


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.

[Jammyisme]

Let others blow out the candles
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y , Agosto,13,2008 [/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

[Jammyisme]

   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 »