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

[Jammyisme]

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.

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[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.

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[Jammyisme]

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 »

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.

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[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.

[Jammyisme]

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.

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[Jammyisme]

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.
   

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[Jammyisme]

     
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.

[Jammyisme]

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

[Jammyisme]

(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

[Jammyisme]

Question

ARe you guys still reading this stuff?   hope so :)