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

[Jammyisme]

President Obama’s Responses to Yoani Sanchez’s Questions


President Barack Obama: Thank you for this opportunity to exchange views with you and your readers in Cuba and around the world and congratulations on receiving the Maria Moore Cabot Prize award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for coverage of Latin America that furthers inter-American understanding. You richly deserve the award. I was disappointed you were denied the ability to travel to receive the award in person.

Your blog provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba. It is telling that the Internet has provided you and other courageous Cuban bloggers with an outlet to express yourself so freely, and I applaud your collective efforts to empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology. The government and people of the United States join all of you in looking forward to the day all Cubans can freely express themselves in public without fear and without reprisals.

Yoani Sánchez: QUESTION #1. FOR YEARS, CUBA HAS BEEN A U.S. FOREIGN POLICY ISSUE AS WELL AS A DOMESTIC ONE, IN PARTICULAR BECAUSE OF THE LARGE CUBAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY. FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE, IN WHICH OF THE TWO CATEGORIES SHOULD THE CUBAN ISSUE FIT?

All foreign policy issues involve domestic components, especially issues concerning neighbors like Cuba from which the United States has a large immigrant population and with which we have a long history of relations. Our commitment to protect and support free speech, human rights, and democratic governance at home and around the world also cuts across the foreign policy/domestic policy divide. Also, many of the challenges shared by our two countries, including migration, drug trafficking, and economic issues, involve traditional domestic and foreign policy concerns. Thus, U.S. relations with Cuba are rightly seen in both a foreign and domestic policy context.

QUESTION 2: SHOULD YOUR ADMINISTRATION BE WILLING TO PUT AN END TO THIS DISPUTE, WOULD IT RECOGNIZE THE LEGITIMACY OF THE RAUL CASTRO GOVERNMENT AS THE ONLY VALID INTERLOCUTOR IN THE EVENTUAL TALKS?

As I have said before, I am prepared to have my administration engage with the Cuban government on a range of issues of mutual interest as we have already done in the migration and direct mail talks. It is also my intent to facilitate greater contact with the Cuban people, especially among divided Cuban families, which I have done by removing U.S. restrictions on family visits and remittances.

We seek to engage with Cubans outside of government as we do elsewhere around the world, as the government, of course, is not the only voice that matters in Cuba. We take every opportunity to interact with the full range of Cuban society and look forward to the day when the government reflects the freely expressed will of the Cuban people.

QUESTION 3: HAS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT RENOUNCED THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE AS THE WAY TO END THE DISPUTE?

The United States has no intention of using military force in Cuba. The United States supports increased respect for human rights and for political and economic freedoms in Cuba, and hopes that the Cuban government will respond to the desire of the Cuban people to enjoy the benefits of democracy and be able to freely determine Cuba’s future. Only the Cuban people can bring about positive change in Cuba and it is our hope that they will soon be able to exercise their full potential.

QUESTION 4: RAUL CASTRO HAS SAID PUBLICALLY THAT HE IS OPEN TO DISCUSS ANY TOPIC WITH THE U.S. PROVIDED THERE IS MUTUAL RESPECT AND A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. IS RAUL ASKING TOO MUCH?

For years, I have said that it is time to pursue direct diplomacy, without preconditions, with friends and foes alike. I am not interested, however, in talking for the sake of talking. In the case of Cuba, such diplomacy should create opportunities to advance the interests of the United States and the cause of freedom for the Cuban people.

We have already initiated a dialogue on areas of mutual concern – safe, legal, and orderly migration, and reestablishing direct mail service. These are small steps, but an important part of a process to move U.S.-Cuban relations in a new and more positive, direction. Achieving a more normal relationship, however, will require action by the Cuban government.

QUESTION 5: IN A HYPOTHETICAL U.S.-CUBA DIALOGUE, WOULD YOU ENTERTAIN PARTICIPATION FROM THE CUBAN EXILE COMMUNITY, THE CUBA-BASED OPPOSITION GROUPS AND NASCENT CUBAN CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS?

When considering any policy decision, it is critical to listen to as many diverse voices as possible. When it comes to Cuba, we do exactly that. The U.S. government regularly talks with groups and individuals inside and outside of Cuba that have an interest in our relations. Many do not always agree with the Cuban government; many do not always agree with the United States government; and many do not agree with each other. What we should all be able to agree on moving forward is the need to listen to the concerns of Cubans who live on the island. This is why everything you are doing to project your voice is so important – not just for the advancement of the freedom of expression itself, but also for people outside of Cuba to gain a better understanding of the life, struggles, joys, and dreams of Cubans on the island.

QUESTION 6: YOU STRONGLY SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES. BUT, CUBANS CONTINUE TO HAVE LIMITED ACCESS TO THE INTERNET. HOW MUCH OF THIS IS DUE TO THE U.S. EMBARGO AND HOW MUCH OF IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT?

My administration has taken important steps to promote the free flow of information to and from the Cuban people particularly through new technologies. We have made possible greater telecommunications links to advance interaction between Cuban citizens and the outside world. This will increase the means through which Cubans on the island can communicate with each other and with persons outside of Cuba, for example, by expanding opportunities for fiber optic and satellite transmissions to and from Cuba. This will not happen overnight. Nor will it have its full effect without positive actions by the Cuban government. I understand the Cuban government has announced a plan to provide Cubans greater access to the Internet at post offices. I am following this development with interest and urge the government to allow its people to enjoy unrestricted access to the internet and to information. In addition, we welcome suggestions regarding areas in which we can further support the free flow of information within, from, and to Cuba.

QUESTION 7: WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO TRAVEL TO OUR COUNTRY?

I would never rule out a course of action that could advance the interests of the United States and advance the cause of freedom for the Cuban people. At the same time, diplomatic tools should only be used after careful preparation and as part of a clear strategy. I look forward to visit a Cuba in which all citizens enjoy the same rights and opportunities as other citizens in the hemisphere.

[Jammyisme]

The store is located in the left atrium at the corner of Galiano and San Rafael streets, where there used to be a Ten Cent store, long since rotted from age and filth. It’s like an alien spaceship that landed in a neighborhood that has seen many of its businesses turned into homeless shelters, and insignificant small offices closed because of blocked sewers. But Trasval is different. People baptized the large store, run, so they say, by the Ministry of the Interior, “the museum”, because of the high prices, in convertible pesos, of all the merchandise.

Trasval was playing at capitalism, with background music, employees dressed in suits and sporting earphones, cameras everywhere, and products we had never seen. We felt like chicks, tucked up in the lamplight and the tinkle of the melody, which would end at the cash register slaughterhouse where we would pay three months wages for a can opener. Inside, you can still see an area with tools for your swimming pool, though the clerks haven’t smiled at the customers in months and they no longer answer questions nicely.

The last time I was in that black-tile-lined bunker the collapse was already imminent. The air conditioning didn’t work; the employees had shed their warm clothing, including the ties; and yards and yards of the same product warned of the decline. All the can openers has disappeared and a scandalous rumor of corruption spread in the aisles. Its splendor was brief, its profit would have been enormous. Because Trasval was the latest commercial snare offered to Cubans, the latest elaborate bait prepared by that mix of merchants and secret police who swarm everywhere these days. Individuals who both traffic in goods and inform on us, sell us a lamp or spy on us from a corner, count the money or finger the pistol they wear on their hip.

[kharmar77]

Thanks, JOhn.. very interesting reading.

[Jammyisme]

more

On December 10 a mob assaulted women who had only gladioli in their hands. Fists raised—urged on by plainclothes police—they surrounded these mothers, wives and daughters of those imprisoned since the Black Spring of 2003. Several of the attackers learned the script on the run and mixed current political slogans with those popular almost three decades ago. It was a shock troop with license to insult and beat, granted by precisely those whose job it is to maintain order and protect all citizens. On Friday’s news the announcer said that those who berated the Women in White represented an “enraged people”, but on the screen there was no hint of spontaneity or real conviction. It just looked like fanatics who were afraid, very afraid.

I’m ashamed to say it, but in my country the demons of intolerance were having a party on Human Rights Day. They were incited by those who have long since lost the capacity to convince us of their argument or to win us over with a new and just idea. They don’t even have an ideology any more, but only keep their hands on the reins of fear, calling for “exemplary” acts of repudiation to stem the growing discontent. In the faces of those summoned to a social lynching, however, one could see doubt alternating with rage and the exaltation with the trembling of knowing themselves observed and evaluated. As painful as it may be, it’s easy to foresee that perhaps one day a multitude just as unthinking and blind might direct their anger against those who, today, pit some Cubans against others.

With a lack of openings, of more food on the plate, of structural changes or long-awaited relaxations, Raul Castro’s government seems to have chosen punishment as the formula for self-preservation. It shows no tangible results from its management, rather there is the sound of the rusty instruments of control and the old techniques of punishment. In recent months it hasn’t even put forth promises of projects, or announced plans with imprecise dates. Rather, it has reached for its belt, not exactly to tighten it in a gesture of austerity and saving, but rather to use it as authoritarian parents do, on the hide of its children

[Jammyisme]

Like the sneeze of a desired flu, the alternative Cuban blogosphere continues to propagate itself. It is no longer like the bleak wasteland that displayed—if anything—a few pseudonymous pages in April 2007, when I started Generation Y. I’ve lost count of how many we are now, because every week I learn that at least two new virtual spaces have been born. The blockade of various blogger platforms and the constant attacks have served only to make the virus of free opinion mutate into forms more complicated to shut up. The DNA of citizen expression will not concede in the face of vaccines based on intimidation and defamation; eventually everyone will be infected.

The plurality of approaches is the sign that the public squares of discussion have found, in cyberspace, a scenario more tolerant than reality. I know sites of catharsis for accumulated frustrations, while others specialize in news or protest. They range from pleasant blogs such as Cuba Fake News, to magazines filled with indispensable articles in the style of Convivencia. Their authors range from former counterintelligence agents from the Interior Ministry to exiled writers from the official publishing houses. They are all joined by the need to express themselves, the tense desire to be done with the cycle of silence that has lasted too long.

Such a bundle of free electrons, this blogosphere doesn’t respond to any hierarchy or leading figures. Its strength is that it is not possible to cut off its head, or to catch it, a slippery and playful being with no need to reach agreement or carry credentials. During the time they spend developing a strategy to fight it, for which they meet on high, preparing a law under the direction of the possible executors of censorship, the number of sites on the Island has already doubled. When they begin to understand what it’s about and how to administer an antidote, the blogger fever will have made the temples of thousands of Cubans throb.

[Jammyisme]

The Big Bad Wolf or the Boogieman was called something else in my childhood: The Urban Reform. Raised in a house for which my parents had no papers, when there was a knock on the door it scared us to death because it might be the housing inspector. I learned to look through the blinds before opening, a practice I keep to this day, to avoid those with portfolios who snooped around and warned us of the legal fragility of our home. The institution they represented was more feared in my tenement than the police themselves. Numerous confiscations, stamps stuck on the doors, evictions and fines made even the tough guys of Central Havana tremble when they heard someone talking about the Housing Institute.

Now the ghost of my childhood has returned, with what happened to the patio of my friend Karina Gálvez. An economist and university professor, this pleasant woman from Pinar del Río, was part of the editorial board of the magazine Vitral, and now is an essential pillar of the portal Convivencia (Coexistence). This, in a society where censorship and opportunism are growing everywhere, like the marabu weed, could be interpreted as a great mistake on the part of Karina. To make matters worse, she has always believed that her parents’ house, where she was born and has lived for more than forty years, was a family property, as it says in the title deed stored in the second drawer of her dresser. On the basis that building one’s own patio should be something as personal as the decision to let one’s nails grow, she built a covered patio that her friends all contributed to. Gradually it became a place for discussion, an epicenter of reflection, and a place of essential pilgrimage for the artists and free thinkers of Pinar del Río.

Until Bishop Emeritus Ciro González came to bless the Virgin of Charity that presided over this cozy space. I remember that Reinaldo and I are looking for a ceramic artist who recorded the Cuban flag and shield for the improvised altar in the now famous “Patio of Karina.” Then the legal skirmishes began, the Urban Reform inspectors with their threats of forced destruction and expropriation. It seemed that it would all end with a monetary penalty or, in the worst case, in tearing down what had been built. But for those who don’t know how to build, it gives them a special pleasure to confiscate, to remove the achievements of others, seizing what they themselves have not created. And so it was yesterday, Tuesday, that a brigade came to the house of my friend and announced that the patio was not hers, but rather the property of the State enterprise CIMEX which abuts the house. At a speed rarely seen in these parts, they raised a metal barrier which that night was converted into a brick wall.

Karina, in her infinite capacity to laugh at everything, said that she will paint a pair of roosters on the ugly wall, announcing the dawn. On the other side, the land that has always been hers is now used by others. One day she will get it back, I know, but not the Urban Reform, nor the political police, nor the rapid response brigade stationed outside will keep us from continuing to say and feel that this is Karina’s Patio.

Photo gallery from Yoani’s Flickr.

*Translator’s note

El Patio De Mi Casa Es Particular (The patio of my house is private/special) is a very common children’s song; click on the link for a YouTube video with subtitles. The word “particular” means both “private” and “special”.

[Jammyisme]

For Roberto San Martín

I’ve lived here and there. I’ve been a voice asking permission to leave my country and an exile waiting for permission to enter. The machine has crushed me between both sides of its serrated cogs: for being outside of, and for deciding to stay in, my Island. I went to the consulate to pay the high monthly tariffs to stay in another country, and have also faced the costs of return, the enormous personal sum of being a returnee. For two years I looked at the Island in the distance and faced the dilemma of whether I could drink the “Coca-Cola of forgetting” or the “cane juice of nostalgia”, but neither of the two went down my throat. I preferred the bittersweet taste of this reality.

I have nightmares where I go through Cuban customs and someone in uniform leads me to a grey room. Surrounded by unpainted walls and a huge photo of Fidel Castro, they take my passport and tell me that if I come in I can never again travel to another destination. All this is explained to me by an official with a sweaty face, a pistol on his hip, and a ballpoint pen sticking out of his pocket. I have a presentiment that I will spend eternity facing this being of sullen words, with no opportunity to pass through the door into the room where my family is waiting for me. The anxiety rises to the point where I wake up and verify that I am in my house, still prey, but happy to be back.

This obsessive dream alternates with another where they will not let me fly to my own country. I am in a far away airport, trying to board a plane destined for Havana. The girl who checks the tickets tells me I cannot depart. “We have orders not to let you board”, she concludes, without the dramatic weight of someone who has just notified another of their expatriate status. There is no one around to appeal to while the electronic blackboards display the next departures for New York, Buenos Aires, Berlin. I sit and put my suitcase between my legs so I can lean on it and try to sleep. This can’t be true, I tell myself, I have to rest and when I wake up I’ll be in the cabin thousands of feet in the sky.

I’ve tried tea with lime, reading stories of pilots before going to bed, playing relaxing music in the room. But the only thing that will end this oneiric sequence of being shut in and forced out, is the end of the immigration restrictions for Cubans. I want to have the right to travel, like I want to be able to sleep without seeing someone in uniform taking my passport, and without hearing the roar of an airplane as it takes off, leaving me in a foreign land.

[Jammyisme]

Yesterday I ran from the El Cerro neighborhood home, at the setting of the sun, to film it and post it on my blog. The last circle of fire displayed in 2009 turned out to be surrounded by clouds and impossible to record with the camera. Somewhat frustrated, I looked to the northeast and a spectacular moon was rising alongside the column of smoke from the Nico Lopez refinery. Light side by side with the filth, a silver ring next to the flames generated by the burning of that “dark” petroleum.

I leave you here, along with this text, some images of this natural satellite that shone with all its brilliance upon us. I also threw the traditional bucket of water from my balcony at midnight, in an act of yearly cleansing to expel everything that keeps us from advancing as a Nation. Today, in the morning, the first sun of 2010 dried the puddles from the streams of water that fell from the buildings all around. These streams sounded like a cataract, plural and dispersed, as they left every house. “Let the bad go, let it go,” we thought, in unison, millions of Cubans.

[Jammyisme]

Three generations


The new ration book surprised us at the end of December, just when speculation was growing about the demise of this booklet with its grid-paper pages. It arrived, like every year, surrounded by anxiety and annoyance, submerging us in that approach-avoidance conflict generated by the subsidized. In its little pages I notice the absence of many products that once made up the monthly quota, now reduced to just a monotonous repertoire with insufficient nutritional values and rising costs.

For the first time in our house we are all in the same age bracket among the five defined by the Ministry of Internal Commerce. Exactly in the box for 14 to 64 years my son appears, together with Reinaldo and me, but at least three generations of Cubans have seen the store clerks mark down what we can put in our mouths. Trapped in poverty, millions of compatriots depend on price assistance to survive. Rationing is a trampoline and falling is certain, a dependency we all wish would end, but that almost no one can let go.

I see my name written next to Teo’s and I’m afraid that his children, too, will receive milk only until the age of seven, be allotted washing soap every two months or a tasteless toothpaste to clean their teeth. I shudder imagining that in thirty years we will still have to prove, with a doctor’s certificate, that we have an ulcer to have the right to a few ounces of meat or a container of soy yogurt. With its minimal quantities and doubtful quality, the ration market has also instilled in us an unhealthy gratitude and a guilt complex that cannot be our legacy to those yet to come. If another December arrives and we receive a new ration book, it will not be because we have avoided the economic cuts, but rather because we have fallen another step lower in our citizen autonomy.

[Jammyisme]

 go out with several sweaters and a very old scarf wrapped around my neck. The errand is short, but with the temperature so low every step I take is a great sacrifice. People beside me in the street are equally “disguised” and I even see someone who appears to have a bed blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Although in the short trip from home to the bakery I don’t see anyone wearing a nice coat, I see that popular inventiveness does not end when the thermometers fall. The Soviet-era raincoats have been dusted off, with their enormous buttons and now faded colors. Others, those who don’t even have something to cover themselves, have simply stayed home.

I go to a place where they sell bread outside the rationed market and a baguette costs a whole day’s wages. Curiously, many of those I have seen on the road, with their peculiar and improvised costumes, are headed in the same direction I am. As we get nearer I confirm that everyone is going after the little food that has kept us in suspense for several weeks now. A few feet from the place, someone ahead of us raises the cry, “There isn’t any more!”, throwing a real bucket of cold water on us. I turn around and go home. Tomorrow will be another day without breakfast.

The arrival of these winds from the north has coincided not only with the disappearance of bread, but also with the flight of the milk. As if winter had affected the ovens and frozen the cows’ udders. Although on TV they announce that the production targets for the precious milk have been exceeded, they deny us the solitary cup of coffee or the insipid tea every morning. These are times to jerk yourself awake without looking at the table, to tell the kids not to ask questions, and to put aside work, the blog, friends, life, to devote yourself entirely to the pursuit of a piece of bread and a glass of milk. Time to drag ourselves through the dust of shortages and lines and because to break this contemptible cycle and fly we need—more than wings—the fuel of food.

[Jammyisme]

An island that has seen a host of tragedies, invasions, dictators, today shows the wreckage of a disaster, a quake no less horrendous for being natural. In that Haiti shown to us by Carpentier in “The Kingdom of This World,” that the news has made us pity, misery has become chronic and crying an everyday language. More than a quake, the homeland of Jacques Roumain has been shaken by misfortunes that come and fall on the social instability, economic malaise and despair. For any nation, something like this would be a calamity, for Haiti it is a complete apocalypse.

This is not the time to play politics with the pain, nor to step in front of the microphones promising help, but rather to come to their aid unconditionally, without desire for recognition or gratitude. It especially frightens me that three months from now the suffering will no longer be a headline in any newspaper and people will have ceased to feel the urgency of the Haitian drama. I am afraid that we become accustomed to the misery and harden our hearts to the tragedy, focusing on our own problems without considering that others, next door, are screaming.

The seismograph may indicate that here are no new shocks, but the needle on the meter of life is reading red. It is the time for help, and we must do so immediately.

Currently several bloggers, along with others from Cuban civil society, are seeking a way to make our small contribution to the victims. We propose to collect clothes, medicines and personal care supplies, and bring them to the representative of Caritas in Havana

[Jammyisme]

Much More Frightened Than Me

This Friday was complicated from the start, I won’t deny it. In the morning, we were missing Claudio, a photography professor at the Blogger Academy, because an agent – who barely deigned to show him a card with the initials DES (Department of State Security) – arrested him. We had a little party at our house after the classes to celebrate the first anniversary of Voces Cubanas, which in its brief life now has 26 sites. I remember that in the middle of the hugs and smiles, someone told me to be careful. “In the system as it is today, there is no way to protect yourself from attacks from the State,” I told him, with the intent to scare away my own fear.


Around six in the evening we were on our way to a family gathering. My sister was celebrating her 36th birthday; my father heard her first cry early in the morning on the day set aside to celebrate railroad workers. Even Teo, with his adolescent reluctance to participate in “old people’s” activities, agreed to come with us. We were expecting the usual birthday party, with photos, candles to blow out, and “Happy birthday to you, Yunia, may you enjoy many more.” But, the many eyes that were lurking had another plan for us. On Boyeros Avenue, a few yards from the Ministry of the Interior and Raul Castro’s office, three cars stopped the miserable Russian Lada we had taken at a corner.


“Don’t even think about going to 23rd Street Yoani, because the Union of Young Communists is having an event,” shouted some men who got out of the Chinese-made Geely, which reminded me of a sharp pain in my lumbar zone. I lived through something similar already last November and today I would not allow them to put me head first into another car, with my son. A huge man got out of the vehicle and started to repeat his threats, “What is your name?” was Reinaldo’s question which the man never bothered to respond to. From Teo’s lanky body rose the ironic phrase, “He doesn’t say his name because he is a coward.” Worse still, Teo, worse still, he doesn’t say his name because he is not recognized as an individual, but rather simply as a voice for others much higher up. A professional camera was filming our every move, waiting for an aggressive pose, a vulgar phrase, an excess of anger. The injection of terror was brief, the birthday found us bitter.


How can we emerge unscathed from all this? How can a citizen protect himself from a State that has the police, the courts, the rapid response brigades, the mass media, the capacity to defame and lie, the power to socially lynch him and turn him into someone defeated and apologetic? What were they thinking would happen on 23rd Street today that would make them arrest several bloggers?


I feel a terror that almost doesn’t let me type, but I want to tell those who today threatened me and my family, that when one reaches a certain level of panic, higher doses don’t make any difference. I will not stop writing, or Twittering; I have no plans to close my blog, nor abandon the practice of thinking with my own mind and – above all – I am not going to stop believing that they are much more frightened than I am.

[Gambitt]

How can a citizen protect himself from a State that has the police, the courts, the rapid response brigades, the mass media, the capacity to defame and lie, the power to socially lynch him and turn him into someone defeated and apologetic?

Sounds just like Another Government I know....  

My favourite joke has always been :  What's the difference between the Canadian Gov't and the Cuban Gov't...  In Cuba they only have to pay for One Party of Thieves, Cheats and Liars!!  

[Jammyisme]

  It is sad isnt it?


Outlawed Information

Rumors spread, murmurs become official notes and newspapers report – several weeks later – what the whole country already knows. We have gone from rationed information to a veritable “coming out” that flows in parallel with the censorship of the official media. Our glasnost has not been driven from offices and ministries, but has emerged in mobile phones, digital cameras and removable memories. The same black market that supplied powdered milk or detergent now offers illegal Internet connections and television programs that arrive through prohibited satellite dishes.

This is how we learned of the events in Venezuela during the last week. My own cell phone has been on the verge of collapse from so many messages telling me about the student protests and the closure of several television stations. I forward copies of these brief headlines to everyone in my address book, in a network that mimics viral transmission: I spread it to many and they in turn inoculate a hundred more with the information. There is no way to stop this form of broadcast news, because it does not use a fixed structure but mutates and adapts to each circumstance. It is anti-hegemonic, although the little word acquires different connotations in the Cuban case, where the hegemony has belonged to the newspaper Granma, the TV show The Round Table, and the DOR*.

We knew of the deaths in the psychiatric hospital days before the official announcement and we heard of the fate of those pushed out** in March 2009 through “radio bemba” – literally “lip radio” or Cuba’s gossip network – and one day we will know that the “end” has come, before they authorize the press to report it. The flow of information has quintupled, although it does not obey a government decision to inform us of major events, rather it is technological development that has allowed us to skip over triumphalist headlines and newcasts empty of content. We are increasingly less dependent on the ideological pap of the television news. I know hundreds of people who haven’t tuned into Cubavision and the rest of the national channels for months. They only watch forbidden television.

The screen of a Nokia or Motorola, the bright surface of a CD or the tiny little stick of a flash drive, shred our disinformation. On the other side of that veil of omissions and falsehoods – created over decades – there is an extension, unknown and new, that frightens and attracts us.

* The Cuban Communist Party Central Committee’s Department of Revolutionary Orientation that determines the information policy of every newspaper in the country.

[Jammyisme]

 

We become used to the inflated figures, the secrecy when something goes wrong, and a gross domestic product that never reflects the contents of our pockets. For decades the economic reports have had the ability to hide, through pages filled with numbers and analysis, the seriousness of the problems. Among those qualified in the inexact science of finance, there were some, such as Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who dared to unmask the falsity of certain numbers and who were punished with the “pajama plan” of unemployment and disgrace.

This week my reading of the serious and well-argued analysis published by Father Boris Moreno in New Word, the magazine of the Havana Archdiocese of the Catholic Church, has increased my anxiety about the collapse we are heading into. With the suggestive title, “Whence the Cuban ship?  A look at the economic environment,” the author warns us of a fall – a nosedive – in the material and financial state of the Island. Words that should terrify us, if not for the fact that our ears have become somewhat impervious to bad news about plunges in productivity and shortages

I agree with this holder of a Master’s degree in Economic Science that the first and most important step is “the government’s formal commitment to recognize the ability of all citizens to express their opinions without reprisals of any kind. We should eliminate in our environment the labels that restrict the exchange of ideas and opinions.” After reading this, I imagine my neighbor, a retired accountant, openly expressing his views about the need to allow private enterprise, without this earning him a repudiation rally in front of his door. It takes work to project something like this, I know, but I cherish the idea that some day – without fear that they will be accused of being “mercenaries in the pay of a foreign power” – thousands will express their ideas and propose solutions. What enormous capital Cuba would recover!

While the coffers are not going to be filled solely by proposals and reasoning, our experience tells us that voluntarism and exclusions have only contributed to emptying them.