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

[flopnfly]

thanks Jammy,

I probably wouldn't be reading any of this if I had to follow a link to a blog.

thanks for posting   

[Jammyisme]

   wow. I just read this . 

[Jammyisme]

she is so brave.

Victim no, responsible
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


I could spend the day scared, hiding from the men stationed below.  I might fill pages with the personal cost this blog has brought me and with the testimonies of those who have been “warned” that I am a dangerous person.  It would be enough for me to decide that every one of my articles would be a long complaint or the accusing finger of one who always looks outside to find fault.  But it happens that I don’t feel myself a victim, but responsible.

I am conscious that I have been silent, that I have allowed a few to govern my island as if they were running a hacienda.  I pretended, and accepted that others will make the decisions that touch us all, while I shielded myself behind the fact of being too young, too fragile.  I am responsible for having donned my mask, for having used my son and my family as a reason not to dare.  I applauded—like almost everyone—and left my country when I was fed up, telling myself that it was much easier to forget than to try to change something.  I am also burdened with the debt of having let myself carry—sometimes—the rancor and suspicion with which they marked my life.  I tolerated their inoculating me with paranoia and, in my teens, a raft in the middle of the sea was a frequently nurtured desire.

However, as I do not feel myself a victim, I raise my skirt a little and show my legs to the two men who follow me everywhere.  There is nothing more paralyzing than a woman’s calf flashing in the sun in the middle of the street.  Nor am I wooden like a martyr, I try not to forget to smile, because giggles are hard stones in the teeth of the authoritarian.  So I continue my life, without letting them turn me into a whiner, with only one regret.  Ultimately, everything that I live today has also been the product of my silence, the direct fruit of my former passivity.

Esta entrada fue escrita el Lunes, 26 de Enero de 2009 a las 08:42 y archivada en Generation Y. Puedes seguir cualquier respuesta a esta entrada a través del feed RSS 2.0. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o trackback desde tu propio sitio web.

2 Respuestas a “Victim no, responsible”
 Andy dice:
26 Enero 2009 a las 09:44
I really don’t get it at all. Cuba is a country that needs EVERYTHING… and they have the resources to waste two people’s time just following Yoani around day and night? Don’t those folks have any REAL work to do? I suppose we should be grateful. If these totalitarian types weren’t so stupid and inefficient they might actually take over the planet. You’d think though, that they could be put to better use… go drive some buses, or cut some sugarcane or something.

But meanwhile, what guts that flaquita has. It boggles the mind! (And I hope she’s just walking them to death… up town, down town, every which way. Wear those suckers out Yoani!)

[Jammyisme]

Locomotive
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


He started with a pick and shovel, planting the heavy crossbeams that support the train lines.  His father had also been a railroad worker, and an uncle even managed to drive the freight cars, loaded with cane, up to the plant.  I was very young and already his life was connected to the journey of a locomotive, with its file of loud, packed cars.  Some years passed, he managed to have, finally, the controls between his hands and to drive the metal serpent through the Cuban countryside.  My father became an engineer, fulfilling a long family lineage, which had been joined to the railroad for decades.

More than once, I myself drove one of those machines along a quiet stretch, while he supervised my movements and taught me to sound the horn.  “We had trains before Spain,” my paternal grandfather said, whenever anyone asked about his work.  So I grew up, smelling the metal of the brakes that screeched at every stop and pulling the rope of my toy train, surrounded by plastic trees and miniature cows.

The collapse of socialism in Europe derailed the family profession.  Many engines stopped for lack of parts, the trips became more widely spaced and the delays habitual.  Leaving Havana headed to Santiago could be delayed twenty hours or three days.  In some small towns the cars were attacked by needy peasants who would steal some of the goods being transported.  The loudspeakers in the central station repeated endlessly, “The departure of the train to… has been cancelled.”  My father was left without a job and his colleagues began to make a living through a variety of illegal work.

The railroad in Cuba hasn’t recovered from this crash.  Aging rail lines, long lines to buy a ticket and the fall from grace of an entire profession, has given this mode of transport the worst reputation.  “At the rate we’re going, we’ll stop having railroads before the Peninsula…” my father says sarcastically.  His gaze is not fixed on the wheel that he begins to dismount—in his new profession as bicycle repairman—but at a point further away, to the mass of iron that he guided along this long and narrow Island.

[Jammyisme]

 


Among the many ways of extinguishing light, there are very peculiar ones such as “shining in its absence.”  An unmistakable gleam has remained reflected in a photo that appeared yesterday on Granma’s front page, where the Cuban flag lacks the five white points in the middle of the triangle.  The commotion has been such that the newspaper was sold out in the early hours of the morning and today, on the street, everyone was talking about it.  Obviously it’s not a question of a printing error, since a star does not escape so easily.

I prefer to think that, capricious and proud, the bright star that represents our sovereignty decided to go away, on the eve of the birthday of the Teacher [José Martí].  Because the independence that he radiates is not only that of being autonomous of a foreign power, but that which allows every citizen to be sovereign of the powerful State.  In light of the fact that it’s so dark, in the field of civil liberties, that we can’t even see our hands, the solitary star deserted its red field leaving the official organ of the Party with its marked absence on the front page.

There are errors that have much greater symbolic weight than hundreds of successes.  Evasive stars and readers who interpret their escape; Islands that live dependent on prophesies and superstitions; days to remember the national hero and flags that dare to show what so many people keep silent about.

* Line from Jose Martí, which originally read: “The star that illuminates and kills.”



 5 Comentarios »

[Jammyisme]

Ene
 
30
 
2009
  School snack
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


Who doesn’t remember the sweets and the accompanying soft drink we received, during the years of the Soviet subsidy, as a school snack.  Like everything that is free, we ended up diminishing its important and during recess many of us played at spraying the fizzy drink and tossing the pastries.  In our hands, the guava pastries and the sugar cookies flew from the balcony of my little school on Salud Street at the corner of Soledad.  In spite of the fact that we undervalued it, without this snack in the middle of classes we would have been hungry and exhausted by midday.

At the beginning of the economic crises of the nineties, one of the first subsidies to disappear was the snack for elementary school students.  The children stopped hearing the sound of the bottles being opened, or of the truck with the tins of cookies that would come early in the morning.  Those tossed sweets became a memory that we tortured ourselves with, for so much wastefulness.  The parents had to take on the task of preparing a snack for school and no one explained in the press why, precisely, they’d decided to eliminate that much needed sustenance.

 3 Comentarios »

[Jammyisme]

Feb
 
02
 
2009
  Ortega y Gasset meet Cachita
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


Since Friday we’ve been in Santiago de Cuba.  My mother asked me to bring stones from the Sanctuary of Cobre, and my sister, as in the refrain of a traditional song, is hoping for a “little Virgin of Charity.”  However, we have come for something more: to spread the virus called “Blogger Journey” to this province, where there is less access to the internet than in Havana but the same need to express opinions.

The trip has left me with a mix of impressions which will require several posts to be told.  I came with the idea of finding a dancing and outgoing people, but I will go without having seen a smile.  The plaza where Raúl Castro spoke of continuity, just a month ago today, is full of people on the hunt for tourists and beggars who ask me for some money for food.  I walked not only through streets filled with shops that trade in convertible pesos, but also along steep streets with houses on the verge of collapse.  “Save water, we can only fill the tank once every two weeks,” was the welcoming phrase from a kind family where we slept for four nights.

Today, Sunday morning, we had the most interesting meeting.  Young people filled with discontent and with desires to make things change, received us to hear about the Cuban blogosphere.  Shy at first, but, after a few minutes, with many questions about the multifaceted and flexible tool that is a blog.  Now we’ll see if they join the Voces Cubanas [Cuban Voices] project.

I was in the sanctuary of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, an island within the Island.  Where, in the same glass case, offerings for the freedom of political prisoners and the insignias of the Rebel Army coexist.  There, I left my Ortega y Gasset prize for journalism, the best place it could possibly be.  Fortunately, the long arm of the censor does not enter her temple.  Around Cachita stretches, still, one of the few strongholds of plurality that you can see in this green alligator of a country.







Translator’s notes

El Cobre, a copper mining town near Santiago de Cuba, is the site of the Sanctuary of Cobre dedicated to Cuba’s patron saint, the Virgin of Charity, nicknamed “Cachita.”  The church houses a small statue of the Virgin Mary which was found floating in the sea off the Cuban coast in the early 1600s.  Visitors to Cachita’s shrine leave gifts, which range from Olympic medals to everyday objects. These gifts are not censored or removed by the State.  Visitors also take away with them copper stones from the mines.  Readers who want to know more can find a great deal of information on the web.

Voces Cubanas (Cuban Voices) is a new home for bloggers on the Island.

 5 Comentarios »

[Jammyisme]

getting up to date 

Feb
 
10
 
2009
  Nostalgia for pizza
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


It arrived in force in the seventies to break the grayness of the rationed market.  Amid the daily rice with beans, pizza invaded us with its novelty and its colors.  Each province built a pizzeria and created its own recipe, a source of dismay for any Mediterranean chef, but how captivating to the islanders.  Thick, with a lot of tomato and crispy edges, thus it was recorded in the minds of several generations of Cubans.

Then came the crisis of the nineties and the local Italian food places sold only an infusion of orange peel and cigars.  We were filled with nostalgia for the lasagna and spaghetti tasted in the “golden” decades of the Soviet subsidy.  The topic of food was inevitable when friends got together and, on that theme, pizza aroused the greatest longing.  When the pressure of hunger and discontent exploded in what was called the Rafter Crisis in August 1994, the government authorized self-employment.  From the hands of those enterprising purveyors the lost products returned, made with flour.

Many Cuban workers today depend on “street” pizza, sold by private hands.  They substitute pizza for the deplorable lunch served in their workplace.  However, for several months, supplies have been scarce in the family enterprises.  The prolonged raids against the informal market, a result of the crisis in the wake of the hurricanes, has strangled the food sellers.  Without the diversion of state resources, few could make it in self-employment where they can’t count on a wholesale market.  There are fears that “street” food will end up being sold only in convertible pesos and thus become inaccessible.  And so we have the joke going around: some people claim that, tired of so much adulteration, the pizza finally packed up and went home to Italy.

 42 Comentarios »
Feb
 
08
 
2009
  José Conrado
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


An unusual Sunday, with barely twenty-three degrees centigrade in Santiago de Cuba, I listened to him speak from the altar.  Over two hundred people attended his sermon in the wooden church in a poor neighborhood with the mountains as a backdrop.  To me, bored by the liturgies, I was surprised to see him celebrate from reality and to take Jesus as reference to deal with today. José Conrado is a difficult man for those who are accustomed to speaking—only them—to a multitude.  A Santiaguan, hearty and cheerful, able to give a piece of his mind to someone who dares to upset his congregation.  Annoying evidence for those who keep quiet and a hard nut for those accustomed to placing gags.

So it didn’t surprise me to see him pick up on the feeling of many people and address an open letter to Raúl Castro.*  I see he’s not waiting for an answer to his missive: he already has it.  It is that silent prayer that goes out from each of his parishioners, the way they cry out for changes, without raising their voices.  In his small Church of Santa Teresita everything has been said and—I who was there—say to them that it has the tone of the petition, which cannot, nor should, wait any longer.



*This letter was translated into English by the Generation Y team and posted as a page on this site.  The original letter, in Spanish, can be read here.


 94 Comentarios »
Feb
 
05
 
2009
  Two agendas
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


The duality, in which we are caught between the official version and the on-the-street reality, also characterizes the demands emerging from this Island.  The list of what we hope for is divided into two different agendas, as dissimilar as they are conflicting.  The first, the government’s list, includes strong declarations calling for the release of the five Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States and has, among its major points, the extradition of Posada Carriles, who is accused of having blown up a plane in 1976.  The official line is that it’s not enough for Obama to close the prison at the Guantánamo base, but he must also return the territory to Cuba and, obviously, there is a section, highlighted in red, about ending the U.S. blockade.

You can read something else if you look at the list of the people’s wishes.  On the first lines there’s the question of what have been called “structural reforms” about which they talked so much two years ago.  One repeated request, to remove the straitjacket on economic initiatives of the people, also would be among the most visible.  With the chipped pencil of waiting we have written, on several pages of this virtual agenda, the need to eliminate the restrictions on entering and leaving the country, the desire for free association, the choice of what creed we raise our children in, and the need to earn salaries in the same money in which most products are sold.  All this and more would be on the frayed list of citizens’ aspirations, if someone would like to browse through it.

The same applies to the official document on human rights which is being presented today at the Human Rights Council.  A fictional summary of what we have—read through rose-tinted glasses and the triumphalist glossary—that is so far, light years away, from what we live.  The work of skilled writers, and so it must be read, like the fictional text of certain authors who avoid writing the log—the real one—of the shipwreck.


Translator’s note: The sign in the empty window reads, “Promotions”

 127 Comentarios »

[Jammyisme]

Fr. José Conrado to Raúl Castro Ruz
Open Letter to General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz,
President of the Republic of Cuba

Written by: Fr. José Conrado

5 February 2009

Dear Mr. President:

Fifteen years ago I dared to write to the then head of the Cuban State, Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, who was then President of our country. The gravity of that hour drove me to do it for the good of the fatherland. The seriousness of this time compels me to write to you to share my current concerns.  Must I describe the situation of our country? The economic crisis affects every household and makes people live agonizingly, asking themselves: what am I going to eat or what am I going to wear? How to get the most elemental things for my family? The difficulties of everyday life become so overwhelming that they keep us mired in sadness and hopelessness. Insecurity and widespread feelings of helplessness lead to amorality, hypocrisy and two-facedness.  Everything is worth it because nothing has value, except survival at all cost, which we later discover is “at any cost.” Hence the dream of Cubans, especially the young, to abandon the country.

It would seem that our country is at an impasse.  As a man of faith, however, I believe that God never puts us in absolutely desperate situations.  I firmly believe that our journey as a nation and a people, will not end in an inevitable precipice, in a reality of irreversible misfortune.  There is always a solution, but it takes courage to seek and to find it. In your recent appeals and urgent calls to work with tireless tenacity, I believe I recognize a peculiar and accurate perception of the gravity of the moment, but also, that you think that the solution depends on us. But as the slogan-turned-into-a-joke said… “It’s not enough to say let’s go, we need to know where.”

We have lived our reality by blaming the enemy, or even our friends: the fall of the communist bloc countries in Eastern Europe, together with the United States trade embargo, have become our scapegoat. And that is a convenient but misleading way out of the problem. As Miguel de Unamuno said, “We tend to entertain ourselves in counting hairs in the Sphinx’s tail because we are afraid to look in his eyes.”

It is not enough, General, to solve the problems, certainly serious and urgent, of food, or of shelter, which in recent hurricanes so many compatriots have just lost “with their poor chattels: fear, grief.”  We are at such a critical time that we must consider a profound review of our criteria and practices, our aspirations and our goals.  And here we might, with all due respect, remember those words that our national apostle José Martí wrote to Generalissimo Gómez in a somewhat similar situation: “One cannot establish a people, general, as one commands an encampment.”

The world is changing. The recent election of a black citizen to hold the presidency of a country formerly known as racist and a violator of the civil rights of blacks, says that something is changing in this world. The laudable and fraternal concern of our brothers in exile before the weather phenomena that have recently beaten our people, and their generous assistance, selfless and immediate, are signs that something is changing here. The Cuban government that you lead today must have the courage to face these changes with new approaches and new attitudes.

Our country has responded with courage when a foreign government has sought to meddle in our national problems. However, when it comes to the violation of human rights, not only governments, but even individuals, ordinary citizens, within or outside the country, have something to say.  In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” We have to have enormous courage to recognize that in our homeland there is a constant and not justifiable violation of human rights, which is reflected in the existence of dozens of prisoners of conscience and the battered exercise of the most basic freedoms: speech, information, press and opinion, and serious restrictions on freedom of religion and politics. Failure to recognize these realities does no favors for our national life and makes us lose self-respect, in our eyes and in the eyes of others, friends or foes.

The cause of peace, both domestic and foreign, and the prosperity of the nation itself, are grounded in the unconditional respect for these rights that express the supreme dignity of the human being as a child of God.  And to keep quiet about this, weighs so heavily on my conscience that I am not able to bear it.  And for me, this is my way of serving the truth and of being consistent with the love I feel for my people.

I confess, general, the disgust and sadness it has caused me to know that our government has rejected, apparently for ideological reasons or political differences, the help that the U.S. and several European nations wanted to send for the victims of the hurricanes that hit our land. When one falls into misfortune, (and that can happen to anyone, including the powerful), it’s time to accept the help that is offered, because this aid reveals a depth of goodwill in the face of pain, of human solidarity, even in those we considered our enemies.  Giving the opponent the opportunity to be good and to do what is just can bring out the best in ourselves and in others, making us change old attitudes and heal damaging resentments. Nothing contributes more to peace and reconciliation among peoples than this giving and receiving.  The phrase of St. Francis de Sales is valid in interpersonal relationships as well as between countries, “More flies are caught with a drop of honey than a barrel of vinegar.” As stated by His Holiness John Paul II during his visit to our country, “Let Cuba open to the world and let the world open to Cuba.” But if we continue with closed doors, no one will be able to enter, no matter how much they want to. A sign of hope for me is the participation and the greater space which has been given to CARITAS to help our people. That deserves a special recognition and is a positive and hopeful change.

Believe me, Mr. President, I do not write to submit a list of complaints and grievances about the national situation, but if I were to do so the list could be very, very long. In truth, I have wanted to talk to you Cuban to Cuban, heart to heart. A priest who was a great friend of mine, now deceased, used to say: “A man’s worth is the worth of his heart.”  At your wife’s funeral, seeing you surrounded by your children and grandchildren, moved to tears, I noticed that you are a sensitive man. And I think there is more wisdom in the heart of a good man than in all the books and libraries in this world, as the song goes: “that which sense can accomplish, knowledge has not been able to do, nor the highest conduct, nor the broadest thought.…”  Therefore I appeal to your sense of responsibility, to your kindness, to tell you not to be afraid, be bold in taking a new and different path in the world that is showing so many signs of change for the better.  As I said to your brother 15 years ago, all Cubans are responsible for the future of the fatherland, but because of the office you occupy, because of the power you now have, that responsibility falls on you in a special way.

If you decide to embark on this journey of hope, count on me, general.  I will be in the first row, to give to Cuba, once again, the only thing I have: my heart; and to you, my honest hand and my unselfish collaboration.  So we can make Martí’s dream a reality, to have a fatherland, “with all and for the good of all.”

I want to end with the words said by our current Pope, Benedict XVI in 1968: “Even above the Pope as an expression of binding ecclesiastic authority, is one’s own conscience which must be obeyed first, if it were necessary, even against what ecclesiastical authority says.”  If that applies to ecclesiastical authority whose origin I consider divine, it applies to all other human authority, however powerful it may be.

With my best wishes,
José Conrado Rodríguez Alegre, Fr.
Pastor of Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús

[Jammyisme]

Request list
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


My friend Yuslemi’s pocket hasn’t recovered from the last meeting at her son’s primary school.  A portion of the meeting between the parents and the teacher was dedicated to the needs of the classroom, and in particular a discussion of the share each family needed to come up with to buy a much needed fan.  The issue of cleaning occupied about twenty minutes and each parent made a note of various products such as detergent, a floor mop, and a broom, they needed to bring in the coming days.  With five pesos a month for each student, they could pay a lady to clean the room once a week.

The school lacks cleaning staff because the low wages don’t attract anyone.  The person they illegally contract with will probably be a retiree who will have no labor protection when performing the work, no vacations, nor any sick pay.  This is similar to what in Europe is called “the black economy,” which in Cuba we know as a job “on the left.”

When it seemed that the meeting was over, it was time for another kind of request list.  They asked if there was a father who could repair the chairs which had been broken and a gentleman raised his hand to take on that task.  Another offered to supply a padlock for the door, and a mom committed to print the math tests which would be given in late January.  The school lacks a copier or printer, so the reproduction of the tests falls on some parent who works in a State enterprise where these resources are available.  Everything was agreed to in an atmosphere of business-as-usual and the teacher, after finishing her reading of the list of requests, declared that the meeting had been a success.

[Jammyisme]

Feb
 
15
 
2009
  Gratitude and request
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


I don’t want to let the days go by and continue the ingratitude of not speaking of the “selfless companions” who monitor the entrance to my building.  They, with their disproportionate sacrifice in the last weeks, have managed to limit the acts of vandalism which are so common on these fourteen floors.  No one has stolen the clothes from the clothesline; we haven’t found any human excrescence adorning the stairs; no exhibitionist has shown his member to some startled teenager; the dominoes table that generates so many shouts has been suspended until further notice and even the vagabond dogs have avoided doing their thing down there.  All this is thanks to the rotating shifts that two disciplined members of the Ministry of the Interior maintain—to keep an eye on me—in the lobby of my concrete block.

I just wanted, along with my infinite gratitude, to ask them, please, for a little blind eye for the illegal vendors.  We live through the same number of days without anyone—not even a distributor of cockroach poison—shouting their wares in our hallways.  I feel I’m to blame for the commercial strangulation in which the other 143 apartments are plunged, and I have to do something to relieve them.  So, I ask them, these soldiers of MINIT lying in wait for their prey—look the other way when it comes to food.  This doesn’t have to become the siege of Lisbon!


 2 Comentarios »
Feb
 
14
 
2009
  Boring home
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


I know of books that have stigmatized their authors and of writers who project a dark shadow over their works.  Cases where the writer is as difficult as his texts seem to raise the question, which is hurt more by the other.  Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo has been the direct cause of the fact that the stories collected under the title Boring Home were not presented at the Havana International Book Fair of 2009.   He and his mania for complicating things, of finding linguistic games in a reality that understands slogans and shouts better.  To make matters worse, he’s dedicated to stealing, with his camera lens, certain imprudent images that contradict the official iconography.  They don’t show the apple, or even Adam, just the snake.

The radioactivity Orlando gives off stopped the presses, scared off the editors and keeps some acquaintances from greeting him in the street.  His name disappeared from the list of writers promoted by the official institutions and was removed from the catalog of this Fair.  However, the nutcase Lawton managed to print his book and now wants to release it. We, his friends—other excluded people—have decided to join him in the alternative launch of his writings on Monday, February 16th at three in the afternoon, outside the fortress of La Cabaña.

Except for the threats, all this could have taken place with a little group sitting on the grass, talking about a published book.  Since yesterday, an email* is circulating on the intranet of the Ministry of Culture, warning us of various reprisals for the alternative release of the stories.  Intimidating calls, accusations of being employees of the Empire—how unoriginal they are!—and even veiled warnings about being beaten up.  All this has raised the profile of the release of Boring Home beyond anything we were looking for, giving the greatest prominence to the presentation of a banned writer.

We will be there, we will see if they let us leave.

*Email text:  Errors in spelling, writing and people’s names are from the original.

I’ve heard a there’s a message circulating, by email, promoting the presentation on this coming Monday, the 16th, outside La Cabaña, of a book by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, and that it will be presented by the infamous and counterrevolutionary blogger, Yoanni Sánchez, who is well compensated by the empire.

A few months ago a photo of Pardo Lazo also circulated, masturbating over a Cuban flag, an act that outrages all the sons of this country and of other latitudes because this is an insult to a symbol of the country. His literary work is little known, however this fact was disclosed as part of the propaganda against Cuba.

Pardo Lazo has become a puppet at the service of Yoanni and her clique.

I don’t think they would carry out this stupid activity, to do so will give them a fright like that I’ve read in the “summons,” and I’ve also had news of some disagreeable surprises they are going to find there.

[Jammyisme]

Between the two walls
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


Today at 3 in the afternoon we managed to present Orlando Luís Pardo Lazo’s book.   After sneaking through the alleys of Cerro to lose the two “securities” who were following us, we ended up at the Capitol and took a bus through the tunnel under the bay.  Tension, fear and doubt joined us on our brief journey to the fortress of La Cabaña.  Orlando was thinking of his mother, with her high blood pressure, frightened by the threatening phone calls.  My mind was on Teo at his school, unaware of the fact that maybe nobody would be there when he returned home.  Fortunately, they were only ghosts.

The police operation had—we understood it a posteriori—an intention to intimidate, but there was little they could do in front of the cameras of the foreign press and of the writers who were invited.  We began, sitting on the grass, speaking with a group of fifteen people, and ended with the closing applause of more than forty.  We were surprised by the presence and solidarity of several young writers and poets with books published by the official publishing house.  Also by the attendance of some Latin American novelists who supported us with words and hugs.  There were Gorki and Ciro of the group Porno Para Ricardo, Claudia Cadelo of the blog Octavo Cerco, Lía Villares, author of the blog Habanemia, Reinaldo Escobar, blogger of Desde Aqui, Claudio Madan and others whose names I won’t mention, so as not to cause them harm.

From the other side of the street a group of persecutors was filming, with a telephoto lens, everything that happened in the green esplanade.  Several primary schools had been invited to fly kites in the same place and a raucous reggaetón started just at three in the afternoon.  However, we managed to isolate ourselves from all that and enter the door of Boring Home; to raise ourselves a few centimeters above the dusty reality of the watched and the watchers.  From where I was sitting, the wall of La Cabaña looked to me more deteriorated, full of small porosities that opened in the stone.

* To download Luís Orlando’s book, please click here

[Jammyisme]

Take me sailing on the wide sea*
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


In a land surrounded by water, the sailor is the link to the other side, the bearer of images that the islander cannot leave to see.  In the case of Cuba, someone who works on a ship can also buy abroad many products unavailable in local markets.  A kind of Ulysses who, after months at sea, brings home a suitcase full of trinkets for the family.  The sailor who brings household appliances destined for the black market in the hold of the ship, makes fashions arrive earlier than the bureaucrats of domestic commerce had planned.

For several decades, to be a “merchant sailor” was to belong to a select fraternity who could go beyond the horizon and bring things never seen in these latitudes.  The first jeans, tape recorders, and gum that I ever saw in my life were transported by these lucky crew members.  The same thing happened with digital clocks, color televisions and some cars that bore no resemblance to the unattractive Russian Ladas and Moskoviches.

For the relatives of a sailor, the long months of absence are softened by the economic balm from ports-of-call with cheaper prices and better quality than in Cuban shops.  When they reach the age to retire and drop anchor, then they can live on what they’ve been able to transport, and the images that remain in memory.

I am telling this whole story of boats, masts and the informal market because of Oscar, the husband of the blogger of Sin Evasion, whom they are threatening to expel from his job as a sailor.  The motive: Miriam Celaya’s decision to drop her mask and to continue writing her opinions with her face uncovered.  The punishment: leaving the family without the support it relies on.  For her to navigate freely on the web, he may lose his chance to sail the waters.

*From the children’s song: Little Paper Boat

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[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.
                                                                                     
Svenska     
Feb
 
23
 
2009
  Cuba Performance
Escrito por: yoanisanchez en Generation Y


Some days ago, at home, we watched the documentary Cuba Performance dedicated to the artistic work of the group Omni Zona Franca.  The room was filled with long-hairs, and even some foreign authors, guests of the Book Fair, climbed the fourteen flights of stairs.  Amaury, the protagonist of the film, wasn’t present because a few days earlier his son had been born and he was drowning in diapers and sleepless nights.  It was Friday the thirteenth with a full moon, but the superstition didn’t stop us from enjoying a few hours of creation, freedom and relaxing.

The director of the documentary, Elvira Rodríguez Puerto, lived for weeks with Eligio, David and the other artists of Alamar.   Thanks to this close interaction, she manages to show us the mix of poetry, painting, zen and graffiti with which these talented autodidacts have filled the streets of the planned city of the “New Man.”  Dysfunctional and stigmatized, this unique eastern town is now a place where few want to live, filled with repetitive, identical concrete blocks.  Amaury lives and makes his art there, a large black man, he strolls with his miner’s hat and flowing tunic.  He manages to involve the neighbors in his performance art, making them forget the empty bags they bring back from the market and helping them loosen the rictus of incredulity with which they observe everything.

Our life is full of performance, and of performance art, loaded with symbolism, even  though we seem totally linear and mundane.  That is the sensation I get listening to the philosophy of this smiling poet who walks with the support of his wooden staff.  To wait for the bus, to stand in line for a single bread ration, to trade goods on the black market, to build a small raft to go to sea and even to pretend that we agree, are part of a script we have performed for decades.  Yet we yearn for the fluency and ease, the happening and spontaneity with which Amaury moves, so far from fear, conventions and controls.





 
 

[Jammyisme]

I skirt the edge of my building, avoiding walking under the balconies, because the kids throw condoms filled with urine to kill the boredom.  A man with his daughter is carrying a bag that’s dripping a mix of grease, water and blood.  They’re coming from the butcher’s, where the line announces that some rationed product came in this morning.  The two climb the stairs happily carrying their trophy meat.  The wife is probably already cutting the onions, while breathing a sigh of relief that the protein is back, after several days’ absence.

I’m behind them and I manage to hear the little girl ask, “Papi, how many chickens have you eaten in your life?”  I see the bewildered face of the father, who’s made it to the sixth floor, sweating from every pore.  His answer is a little brusque.  “How would I know that?  I don’t keep a count of the food.”  But the young girl insists.  Evidently she’s learning to multiply and divide, so she wants to take apart the world and explain it—completely—with pure numbers.  “Papi, if you’re 53 and every month you get one pound of chicken at the butcher’s, you just have to know how many months you’ve lived.  When you have that number you divide it by four pounds, which is more or less what a chicken usually weighs.”

I follow the mathematical formula she’s developed and I figure I’ve eaten 99 chickens in my 33 years.  The man interrupts my calculations, telling her, “Sweetie, when I was born chickens weren’t rationed.”   I start thinking about how I grew up with the shackles of rationing attached to both ankles but, thanks to the black market, the diversion of resources from State enterprises, the shops that sell only in convertible pesos, the trading of clothes for food, and a ton of parallel tracks, I don’t know the exact amount I’ve digested.  As I hurry past and hear the doubting phrase from the little Pythagoras: “Oh, Papi, do you expect me to believe that before, in the butcher shops, they sold you all the chicken you wanted…”