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

[Jammyisme]

I watch little television because I prefer books, newspapers or the computer to acquire information and learn something. Over the years I have learned to distrust what comes over the screen, and even more so when it comes to the news. On those days when I have a lot of patience, I use the eight o’clock show as an exercise to detect what is hidden behind the triumphalist phrases. But, I repeat, I only do this when I’m feeling sufficiently stoic.

Still, I feel uneasy if I’m in a hotel and see the tourists watching television stations such as CNN that we Cubans cannot have in our homes. I recently started a discussion with a Peruvian who assured me—passionately—that in every Havana house we could tune into the Latin American station Telesur. He didn’t know, in his absentmindedness, that we are only permitted access to a studied collection of what is transmitted on this channel every day. Barely a few hours in the evening, under the name “Selections from Telesur,” pass through the narrow filter of what can be shown on our televised media.

Curiously, and in spite of the cuts, the Telesur news is miles away from that of National TV. Occasionally something even escapes which negates or calls into question what they’d assured us, a few minutes before, on the officially transmitted Cubavision news. Then I understand why even Telesur can’t be shown without cuts to our eyes eager for news. We should rent a hotel room, paid for in convertible currency, to view without restrictions this channel and all the others they have forbidden to us.

[Jammyisme]

Memories are written at the end of a life and dictionaries with a man’s phrases are compiled when you know he’s finished, incapable of producing new ideas. To be reduced to the pages of a book, when once you held the microphone in front of a million people, must be a consolation as tasteless as the pap they administer to the patient. The Dictionary of the Thoughts of Fidel Castro, by the researcher Salomón Susi Sarfati, will be the farewell of the loquacious leader who flooded our life—every minute of it—with his uncontrolled rhetoric.

According to a press release from Prensa Latina, “exquisite and meticulous in his selection, the author divides the dictionary into the 20 letters of the Spanish alphabet (except k, q, w, x, y, z)…” As I am obsessed with the penultimate consonant that gives its name to this blog, I wonder if in the more than 1,978 aphorisms none will have referred to someone of “Generation Y.” In this Island full of Yordankas, Yohandris and Yunieskies, how is it possible that “the essence of the thinking” of someone who was in power nearly fifty years, does not contain a reference to us. It seems that the book contains only concepts, not people, which, for me, makes it a collection of samples of entelechy, a compendium of incomprehensible ideas.

Perhaps today—his 83rd birthday—the orator of days gone by has this dictionary they have created to flatter him, to tell him that his work will live on and be read for centuries and centuries. He will look at the year of publication and wonder if they will make an expanded edition with the contents of his next reflections. He will not notice the lack of the “Y”, this little and insignificant letter which has not turned out as he would have liked: selfless, altruistic, disciplined and stoic. Probably he will delight more in the “R” of revolution or in the “I” of imperialism, but his great gaze will not reach the end of the alphabet. There, crouched and hidden, is this letter in the form of a slingshot, the elastic tensed in the direction of tomorrow

[Jammyisme]

He could have been an alcoholic lying on a street corner sleeping off his inebriation, like so many others in this city, but he also wanted to act.  He jumped in front of a camera and cried for food which, along with yearning for change, has become the national obsession.  His spontaneity, and the emphasis he gave to asking for “grub” has turned the brief video of Juan Carlos, alias Pánfilo or Dimwitted, into a “superhit” on the alternative information networks.  I don’t remember other visual material that has gone viral so quickly in our society, not even the video of Eliécer Ávila versus Ricardo Alarcón from last year.

Pánfilo would understand, a few days after the broadcast of his image, that his demonstration had been denounced.  His words were like a red circle around his head, a lighted announcement at the entrance to his house, or a finger pointed at his life.  The magnifying glass of power, which hangs over us all, focused on him and begin to rummage through his weaknesses.  Managing to stay afloat with no work, he had been prosecuted for theft, probably bought rum on the black market, and the many other outrages that we Cubans commit every day to survive or escape.  It was enough that he was sincere in front of the microphone and took off his mask to feel the scalpel of repression slicing through his existence.

In a society marked by punishments against those who express their opinions, neither fools nor children say what they think, only drunkards.  Thus, I wasn’t surprised at the news that they found Pánfilo to be a criminal and charged him with “pre-criminal dangerousness” for which he was given two years in prison.  The judicial process must have sobered him up faster than a bucket of cold water and an extremely strong coffee.  Although there is still the possibility of appealing this decision before the court, he’s unlikely to get off without punishment because it is lesson aimed not only at him.  If they don’t condemn him, who will prevent the corner alcoholics, the neighborhood drunks, from standing in front of a camera and starting to shout for everything we lack:  Food!  Future!  Freedom!   

[Jammyisme]

My telephone number shares five digits with that of the nearest pharmacy. So it happens that every day I answer several mis-dialed calls in which someone asks me if this or that medicine has arrived. Normally I give the people the correct number to connect with the dispensary, but to others—at seven on a Sunday morning—I only manage to say, “No madam, in this house we don’t sell this medicine.”

If I take my clue from what people are looking for to relieve their suffering, I would have to conclude that depression is on the rise. Ninety percent of the callers want an anti-anxiety drug or tranquilizer, something to help them disconnect from the unpleasant reality. The difficulties with transportation, the dual currency system, the lines and the stress caused by searching for certain products on the black market, could unbalance anyone. Especially if you’ve lived for decades with the sensation of national instability, of uncertainty and frustration.

So I try to understand, and not insult, those who call me at the most incredible hours thinking they are communicating with the pharmacy. I note in their voices this tone of despair that is only relieved when taking some kind of pill that helps you to relax and sleep. They are the same people who the next day will return to work with their eyelids at half mast, still under the effect of the tranquilizer. The pills will help them to accept that the air conditioning is turned off because of the new energy saving measures, that the bus comes an hour later than expected, that the butcher sold them a kilo of chicken weighing ten grams less. The longed for tablets can’t make things work, but at least they serve to make you not care.

[Jammyisme]

They have finally inaugurated the two elevators in my building, after a year of installation and a long testing period. Friday was the meeting to announce the rules for using the two devices, which already look like they’ve been in service for a decade. The neighbors’ meeting resulted in groans and moans as the enormous block of concrete where we live is deteriorating every day and there are no resources to fix it. Not even the good news of not having to climb the stairs can hide the appearance of recent ruin of this Yugoslav model building.

They have also increased the amount of money collected from each family to pay the salaries of the two retirees who watch the elevators. As the interior of the car barely has enough space for five people, the “custodians” of the Russian apparatuses will sit in a chair at the entrance. Some suggest that instead of watching the board and its buttons, these old people—party militants—are more interested in what we have in our bags and who visits us. I expect the guardians will last about two weeks, until the lack of consistency that characterizes everything here relaxes the issue of supervision.

What I like least about this is that they again apply the formula of greater control, discipline and vigilance, believing that this will solve our problems. Personally, I think everything would be better if every neighbor felt that the building belonged to them and that the common areas are also part of our house. However, years without the ability to decide what goes on in the building, have created a sense of distance and a certain tendency to “pillaging” it. Once they took a corner from us for the CDR office and they converted a place where the children played into an office for OFICODA, the government rationing arm, without the previous consent of those of us who live here. With time and the successive encroachments by so many state organisms needing a fragment of our spacious ground floor, we’ve come to the conclusion that nothing is ours. Not even the two elevators that have just been inaugurated in the last couple of days.

P.S.: The topic of Juanes and his September 20th concern has generated a great deal of debate so I have created a new site with the name Peace Without Borders, where all the information touching on this event will be collected. There will be space there for the opinions of various bloggers and commentators regarding the visit of the Columbian singer to our country.

[Jammyisme]

It's so easy to run into a prison, so short road leading to the cell, we are all potentially-guilty-that haunt the prison. A piece of beef bought on the black market, a couple of sacks of cement purchased from a casual seller, a paper printed and distributed among a group of friends or a furtive meeting to discuss the future, could lead to these prisons low ceiling, concrete columns and pictures of martyrs in the dining room. Freedom is often considered an abstract concept, difficult representation or definition, a matter of philosophers, the prison, however, is a matter of construction workers, smelters, and locksmiths. It is relatively easy to build a prison, how difficult is to outline the contours of freedom.

PS: I leave you some pictures of the walls around Canaleta prison in Ciego de Avila. I have several friends there, most independent journalists imprisoned since the Black Spring of 2003. Some of them dictate to us bloggers, like Claudia Cadel, Ivan Garcia, Reinaldo Escobar and I-news by phone that on the web. That leads me to think that there are no fences enclosing the view that cyberspace has the capacity, too, to slip through the bricks and mortar of these dismal places.

[Jammyisme]

August left us exhausted, after a very wet June and a blisteringly hot July, The power consumption rises and in order to sleep we lie in front of the fan that lulls us, throughout the night, with its hum. The heat brings on intolerance and critics arise on every corner. Those “from up there” know this well and they also fear the eighth month of the year. Because of this they open kiosks with cheap rum in the most populated neighborhoods and avoid cutting off the electricity in the troubled areas of the city. In any event, the tension is palpable in the air, not only because of the temperature but because of the crisis that aggravated the fears and hardships. I have been counting the days until the end of August, hoping that with its end we will also find some relief.

With this feeling of fullness September started with its routines. My son left early for school and mid-morning I asked myself the same question as last year, how to find something to take him for lunch. The teacher announced that those mobilized at the schools in the countryside will return, over the gradual extinction of that program, and now the classrooms will have forty students because there are not enough teachers. Public transport is also more complicated for a couple of days while all the students and workers return from their vacations. Fortunately, no hurricane has hit at the beginning of the month, as Ike and Gustav did a year ago.

All the postponed projects should be launched this September, including those new measures announced, but not accomplished, during the last session of the National Assembly. Our politicians should apply themselves like our students, sharpening the points of their pencils, drawing lines in their notebooks, and setting to work to find solutions to the mountain of problems surrounding us. It’s too bad they know ahead of time that they won’t have to sit for tests, that they won’t be graded as poor, average or good, with a vote left in the ballot box. What a pity that we can’t take the red pencil of disapproval and make a huge X on their term paper about their administrative management. So, they have promoted themselves year after year, starting each September in a class from which no one has the right to suspend them.

* September has also brought me some surprises. Since last Friday it is impossible to connected to Voces Cubanas from the Island. They have applied to it the same slow filter they use to block the connection to desdecuba.com for users in Cuba with very slow speed Internet connections.

[Jammyisme]

" They had a parade with a Virgin Mary Statue"

At a few minutes past six they brought out the Virgin in her glass case. Everything happened in the same parish of Manrique on the corner of Salud, where I should have gone as a child. Only my parents pretended, by then, that they were Marxist-Leninists and my grandmother couldn’t convince them they should let us girls pray.

Today I returned among a crowd of excited women, children dressed in yellow, women in white surrounded by a security cordon and people leaning over balconies that seemed on the point of collapse. A shower of petals fell on us in Reina Street, while my husband shouted, “Viva the Virgin of all Cubans!” For a moment I thought that yes, one day what separates us today will mean nothing… and she will return to take us in under her golden mantle. As she did with me this afternoon…

 

[Jammyisme]

Personally I thought this last blog entry was wonderful 

[Jammyisme]

Painted lips

The economic crisis in Cuba forced us to find substitutes for almost everything, including cosmetics. In the nineties, shoe polish was used to make the eyelashes stand out, dish soap became shampoo and vinegar a softener. A very humble friend was relieved when she discovered she could rub a handkerchief on the whitewashed walls and use it to powder her face. A laxative was left to sit for the mineral oil to separate, which was used as a sun tan lotion.

In a mute complicity men and women arranged to undress with the light off so they wouldn’t show the holes and mendings in their underwear, which would be washed at night and left to dry behind the fridge to wear the next day. The most humiliating was going back to our grandmother’s custom of washing out pads on the days you were menstruating and staying home—sitting in the bathroom—when the cycle of the moon came.

Beginning in the fall of 1993 those who wanted to look good had the opportunity to acquire new products and even to choose among various brands, but they had to carry the money of the “enemy” in their wallets. So at the price of many sacrifices, the women of this Island didn’t let themselves be defeated in their desire to look more beautiful. With their painted lips and their tight-fitting clothes, they laughed at those who—at moments of great extremism—defined the human goal to preen as “frivolous capitalism.” Dying your hair blue, getting a tattoo or attaching a ring to your navel is no longer seen as an ideological debility. Signs have begun to sprout on bodies, of seduction and change.

[Jammyisme]

They were three meters from each other and pointed their mobile phones—like two cowboys in the middle of a duel—to send the video clip “Decadence” and the latest photos of Carlos Lage. The information traveled through the air and stored itself in the memory of each telephone device. They left no traces of the shipment, not even those around them realized that almost fifty megabytes had crossed the park in a few short minutes. As the night advanced, they passed the “materials” to a dozen friends, who the next day transferred it to another fifty.

Bluetooth technology is the nightmare of the censors. Prohibited books in pdf format, songs you’ll never hear on the radio, blogs blocked inside the Island and every kind of news missing from the official media is transmitted through these radio frequencies. In the capital, it is a growing phenomenon, especially among the young. Some carry a cellphone that they use only to store and share photos, music and videos, unable to afford the high price of mobile service.

The intangible is making its way in this society where to print and distribute a publication could lead us to prison for the crime of “enemy propaganda.” Many newspapers, exclusively virtual, are seeing the light of day, while a digital culture leaves those who think revolutions are made only with weapons and speeches out of the game. For them, these omnidirectional waves are purely boys’ play. It is better that they think so. By the time they realize their importance, wireless will have managed to reconnect all these threads that have been cut, systematically, between citizens.

[Jammyisme]

In an atmosphere where the lights are dimmed and with a mojito in hand, I can enjoy songs that in another context would seem hackneyed and pretentious with their corny lyrics. I put the critic in me to sleep and let myself go, if the situation warrants it, for those themes that rhyme “hurting sore” with “I adore,” and “makes me cry” with “must he die?” I can tolerate the romantic kitsch, but bad taste in politics is something I find intolerable. The abuse of images and slogans, repeated until they lose the emotive charge they once had, accentuates the abundant schmaltzyness in societies extremely dominated by ideology, like ours.

Some brief footage of a “Revolutionary Art Bazaar” on a main street in Old Havana, confirms my hypothesis about the decorative elements associated with an ideology. To buy, there, any of these insignias identified with a process, you have to pay with a different currency from that we are paid for our work. Curiously, the “icons” of selfless dedication to a social project are sold based on a clear relationship between supply and demand. In this way the money is transformed into a sweater, a cap or a backpack which is then exhibited like a relic, like some sliver of wood from utopia.

The faces that you see in this small shop are for many people—outside of Cuba—part of a counterculture to confront the status quo. They are the emblems which some call on in an attempt to change what they dislike about their respective societies. But on this Island it is just the opposite, those who look out at us from the posters and T-shirts are, for us, those who created the present order of things, the promoters of the system in which we have lived for fifty years. How could you wear any of these symbols without feeling that you are assuming the culture of power, the emblems of the masters?

[Jammyisme]

Tomorrow will dawn as every Monday. The convertible peso will continue its ascent, Adolfo and his colleagues will have another day behind bars in the Canaleta prison, my son will hear at school that socialism is the only option for the country and at the airports we will continue to ask permission to leave the Island. The Juanes concert will not have significantly changed our lives, but nor did I go to the Plaza with this illusion. It would be unfair to demand of the young Columbian singer that he propel those changes that we ourselves have not managed to make, despite wanting them so much.

I was at the esplanade to check out how different the same space can be when it accommodates crowds organized from above, versus when it shelters a group of people dancing, singing and interacting without the involvement of politics. It was a rare experience to be there, without shouting slogans and without having to applaud mechanically when the tone of the speech marked that it was the time to cheer. Clearly some elements resembled those who march each May first, especially the proportion of plainclothes police in the audience.

Certain technical details were uncomfortable. The audio couldn’t be heard well, the small screen to show what was happening on stage couldn’t be seen from a distance, and the hour chosen was inhuman, coinciding with the worst moments of the sun. Fortunately it clouded over after four, and those who were holed up under the few trees took to dancing with the Orishas. They are details that can be fixed the next time Juanes performs in Cuba, when technical glitches will be few and those excluded this afternoon can sing.

If we see the performance of this September 20th as the dress rehearsal for a concert we’ll have one day, then we must congratulate those who participated. Even if there isn’t another, and the Plaza again takes on its solemnity and grayness, at least this Sunday afternoon we live something different. In a place where the division between us has been systematically sown, Juanes—to the setting of the sun—has shouted, “For one Cuban family!”

[Jammyisme]

Yoani Sanchez's view of the concert...    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XOrRGZYe6Q&feature=player_embedded#t=73

[Jammyisme]

These days, I am submerging myself, again, in the procedures for permission to travel outside of Cuba. The possibility of my being at the Columbia University on October 14 for the Maria Moors Cabot ceremony is remote, but I continue with the paperwork. Nor do I have much hope of attending the presentation of my book in Brazil, even though that country’s senate has engaged in efforts to get me on the plane. All these difficulties to get permission to leave evoke for me the words of eighteen years ago of Carlos Aldana, a youngest son fallen into disgrace who, so they say, now gives classes in Marxism to older adults.

In an interview in 1991 for the Spanish magazine Cambio 16, the former number three in power in Cuba said: “This year Cubans will be able to travel abroad freely.” Only it didn’t specify if we were going to do it on the wings of our imaginations and if it would be in a year containing twelve months or nearly two decades. So that you can review his declarations of then and check the extent to which we continue repeating the same slogans, here is a link to the interview.