Belatedly and Wrongly

It was not because the death was expected that the news affected me less. Wilman Villlar was a political activist accused of murder, contempt and who knows what other charges. I heard the news via text message last night. Now we can expect our press to report it, belatedly and badly. Belatedly, because the death took place yesterday and nothing has appeared in the media accessible to the people; badly, because either between the lines or explicitly, we will be given a rewritten version of the life of this man, who was a member of a peace movement, in which we disinformed citizens will be told that he was a mercenary in the pay of the Empire, and other insults of the kind which are now becoming a cliche. Yet, while they remain effective in influencing  national public opinion, these methods won’t be scorned by the government’s propaganda machine. In a modern and open society, political suicide does not exist. This is a blemish that will be hard to conceal, with the Pope’s visit in the offing. Many questions will have to be answered and many explanations given, all as a result of the pressure exerted by Benedict’s visit, since even the most credulous are starting to become suspicious at the deaths of various members of opposition groups in the last two years.

If anyone still places any hopes in a move towards transparency, this is a demonstration of how the “guidelines” are being followed.

Translated by P. Knopinski

January 20 2012

Megadownload and Mini "Download"

Image taken from the Internet

On the TV news I heard about the intervention and closure by the effective and evil FBI of Megaupload, one of the most used internet download sites in the world. “The bad guys,” those who wield freedom as a paradigm, with allegations of piracy, encroached the also alleged right of millions of citizens of the global village to download content that they know they should not — or cannot — pay for.

The issue is extremely complicated for me, a semi-surfer from a semi-connected country. I assume that the technologies have developed faster than the copyright laws and I assume that these illegal downloads don’t affect the artists themselves so much, as it geometrically multiplies the distribution of their work (provided there is no plagiarism and credit is given) as a form of advertising.

It’s true that there is a symbiotic relationship between art and the marketing that puts it in the hands of the consumers. But to see art as a commodity has resulted in the promotion of products of dubious quality at the expense of other values. I don’t consider myself an elitist nor an expert; the simple perception of success and popularity, reveals very aggressive publicity campaigns. You can come up with your own examples.

At some point, a balance must be achieved between both interests. Although more democratic, the Internet is also moved by the market.

But what moved me to write on this subject was the beam in the eye of the news report that “informed” me. Again, you can come up with your own examples.

January 23 2012

Bad Handwriting in La Joven Cuba (24)

Translator’s note: This post is part of a series of conversations Regina is engaging in with the bloggers at La Joven Cuba.

Why doesn’t the Cuban system collapse?

For Alberto for your question of Friday.

I admire the ingenuity of a journalism student. If you didn’t read the Nuevo Herald or one of those newspapers “waging a media campaign against Cuba,” you would have learned of the dead at Mazorra — Havana’s Psychiatric Hospital — when it was already old news in the world. That the national press doesn’t report demonstrations, arrests, police violence, is simply evidence that they don’t publish it, not that it doesn’t exist.

It’s likely that reading those foreign newspapers leaves the impression of a catastrophe (as you call it), but as a student dedicated to a profession so mutilated in Cuba, to open the national press and is to achievements and victories.

Look at last Friday’s Granma; not only does a fifty-year-old photo occupy two-thirds of the front page, but on the inside pages photos taken on the same date are given a full-page. If austerity forces the newspaper to be so small, at least print the news, not propaganda.

The Cuban government is much more of a dictatorship than the complacent mention. Your argument about moral authority is relevant to validate a government in power for half a century. For me, the economic and social crisis we are submerged in is proof enough to demonstrate that no one should be in power for such a long time.

You should do a better job yourself of documenting Fidel’s resignation and the ouster of Urrutia, because your sources tell it in a way that reflects their own self-interest. Did it never occur to you to think it important that if this project has the support of the majority of the population (as was the case), the need for a leader is overrated?

To speak of a majority who support it and a few who don’t could awaken some surprises for you. If you look back to the extinct USSR and Eastern Europe, you would know why I say this. But if your meter is the elections and the political acts, I understand; as I find a lack of transparency in all this, it prevents me from taking it as true. And I’m not saying that the government — the government, not the Revolution — doesn’t enjoy a majority, but not with the percentage the press tells us, of which you will soon be a part.

As history is not your strong point, I refer you to it. Cuba and Puerto Rico ended the Spanish empire in the Americas in 1898, the rest had done it in 1829. There were more counter-guerrillas fighting for the Crown than there were mambises — independence fighters. In the entire Republican history, those who faced off against the government were a small group, some 20,000 Cubans was a figure cited by Miguel Angel Quevado at a time when they lifted press censorship to galvanize public opinion. The courage of the Cuban at these times has been less heroic: resistance and navigation by oars.

Yes. Cubans talk of horrors and then parade in a march in support of the government. I’m not saying citizens don’t go to these marches convinced that we live in the best of all possible worlds, but if there is something that Cubans have learned it is not to express their thoughts openly. In a country where there is no lack of freedom, to express yourself critically as a citizen with rights, you lose your job, your lose your schooling.

January 20 2012

Of Police and Citizens

Photo: OLPL

An amateur photographer friend of mine the other day expressed the disgust of his life. He was sitting near the La Lisa bridge, taking photos with a fixed background and moving objects in front. He saw a man in civilian clothes approaching him and when he got near he asked:

“Where are you from?”

“My friend,” he said, holding onto his camera and standing up, “I’m Cuban. Like you.” The question that followed was the one that upset him.

“Yes, but who do you work for?”

My friend was going to answer, but then he realized he was being interrogated by a civilian, so he replied,

“No, man, who do you work for that you are asking so many questions?”

“Don’t call me man!”

Disconcerted, the guy showed my friend a fleeting fragment of a card where my friend spotted the letters DSE. The whole world here knows what these letters stand for: Department of State Security. In retaliation for my friend’s audacity in questioning his authority, he tried to intimidate him, taking down all the data on his ID card.

When he told me the story, more annoyed than concerned (also: my friend works in a state department), he wanted to know if this guy had the right to ask for his identification even though it is well known that taking photographs is not forbidden.

“In the first place, since you like photography you can take photos anywhere it is not expressly forbidden. Expressly in the form of a visible sign. And in the second place, unfortunately, in Cuba the authorities are authorized to request identification without any specific motive. But — and this is here the mix of ignorance and arrogance that many of these individuals have shows — if they are not in uniform they must correctly identify themselves, even handing their card to person concerned if that is required to establish their identity as an agent for the Ministry of the Interior.”

I explained that to him, despite the fact that I do not know of a single case of someone intercepted by the political police where this formality has been met. Many police officers, both in uniform and civilian dress, mistreat a citizenry ignorant of its rights. I recently saw, in Observatorio Critico, a photo of a young man beaten by three police officers, just for demanding respectful treatment. That’s how bad it is. When you demand from them, they apply violence, verbal — or in this latter painful case, physical — as a response.

For me, the part of the story I liked best was who-do-you-work-for. The question invites speculation about how they “orient” these law enforcement officers in these technological times.

January 18 2012

Bad Handwriting in La Joven Cuba (19)

For Julián Gutiérrez Alonso for changing your mindset.

There are no clues about the author, so I presume after reading the text that he is a young student at the University of Matanzas.

Thinking differently means not to think the opposite. It is to find elements that improve society and thought, in the case in question. On cannot ignore scientific and technical development or make reductions and dogmatic generalizations.

You have been trapped in your own words. If in capitalism higher education is elitist, how can you say in the next paragraph that there is a shortage of unskilled labor. I’m not aware of how all the universities in the world work, but I know good scholarships are awarded to low-income students. Even in Canada and Spain (I don’t know if it is in all the universities and I do not know if it happens in other countries), there is no requirement to pay back the scholarship. There are state universities, there are programs for distance education and evening classes, much used by workers with a desire to excel.

I understand in your work, and I agree, that the State should not guarantee a job for graduates, but places should be occupied based on competition. Comprehensiveness, according to how the term is used in Cuba, is not synonymous with competence. Anyone can graduate if it is their aspiration, but getting a good job will be an additional incentive to be a better student.

[You say] Those without access to professional posts have secured technical jobs and even jobs as workers, but under the premise that the wages paid for the position they hold include a premium for the knowledge they have.

No. I do not think you have to reward students who may have been mediocre. If they are good, they will demonstrate it, because they have studied their career as a vocation, not because it was their lot. If they are not satisfied, they can always open their own business. The State should abandon the paternalistic position of guaranteeing jobs, in fact, it should stop interfering in that process.

Never disregard economic motivation. The best jobs are almost without exception associated with higher wages, fifty years of socialism failed to create wealth with a conscience. Capitalism, with all the evils that you find in it, has not ceased to create wealth that ends up benefiting the whole world irrespective of ideologies and systems. To change your mindset in your case, you could begin by seeing that not everything in capitalism is bad and not everything in socialism is good.

November 9 2011

Bad Handwriting in La Joven Cuba (23)

Translator’s note: These posts are a series of comments Regina has posted in the blog “La Joven Cuba.”

With regards to exegesis, one could say that Lenin was the first revisionist, a tendency that we in Cuba know in passing. I say in passing because they didn’t study the texts of Gramsci, Plekhanov, Rosa Luxemburg; Trotsky was the antichrist. Marcusse did not qualify as a Marxist. I speak of the years before the fall of socialism.

After reading your work [in La Joven Cuba], it seems that not much has changed in the landscape, with the aggravation of the cited “Cuban socialism,” where there will be many adaptations, but not a single  philosopher, where I imagine those booklets full of quotes from Fidel. How could it not be mission impossible to pretend that Frankenstein motivates a student !

Continuing with the exegesis, we may come to the conclusion that Marxism has passed from being a theory; that in Russia in 1917 and Cuba in 1959 there were social revolutions that undertook a semantic adoption of terms, but did not give rise to the embryonic communist, that Marx was right in saying that social formations have to be exhausted to bring about a change.

Clearly one has to be open to new philosophical currents. Marxism is 150 years old and the world has changed in a way that neither Marx nor anyone else could imagine. Therefore it would be better to study Marxism as one more doctrine while we concentrate on finding solutions to bringing the country out of the economic crisis and the crisis of values that it is in, without looking for labels, without putting everything under the ideological microscope. If we even have the luxury of a José Martí, we don’t need to look any further.

January 13 2012

Plowing the Future

It's not an ox, but it looks like one. Photo: OLPL

Evelio requested land and they gave him a piece of brush that he made productive. He just had a bumper crop and has requested more land. Evelio has involved his family and everyone worked very hard. They want to grow and prosper. But if Evelio wanted to buy a tractor, a tiny little tractor that would better their working conditions, he can’t, because he’s not authorized. Animal traction is the technology limit in this legislation what also needs to be reformed, because it is unthinkable to develop any kind of agriculture in the 21at Century with hoes and oxen.

January 11 2012

Cuba and Cuba

Photo: Katerina Bampaletaki

Yesterday, two pleasant women from Madrid appeared in my house. One of them follows Bad Handwriting, and the other came with her because she didn’t want to come alone. After the introductions and making arrangements with the driver of the Soviet-made Lada car that brought them, they told me they had been in Cuba since the last week of December. Fascinated by so much local color, they showed me many photos of beautiful young men with tanned skin and suggestive musculature — “Wow!” — the one who didn’t read me said she admired me (and assured me she would read me in the future without fail) — “And what a New Year’s Eve! My God!”

Laughing, I listened to their accents, the sound of it more entertaining than the details of their New Year’s Eve “a la Cubana.” But once I got used to their pronunciation and their turns of phrase, I realized that they had experienced the New Year in a country different from mine. A country with streamers, candies, grapes, champagne, live music, fireworks, and a countdown. The only thing in common was the pork and black beans.

They didn’t skip the coffee, which they found very good, but I didn’t deceive them, I told them it was mixed with a “substitute” which is added to the coffee sold in local currency. They were delighted with the experience: Cuban blogger, adulterated coffee, Soviet era car. We took several photos, including with the waiting Lada, with just enough time for them to collect their luggage and head to the airport.

I said goodbye to them with genuine sympathy and leaned into the car window to tell them there was a place they had to visit, without fail.

“Where? We’ve been to Trinidad and Varadero is the cat’s pajamas.”

“You mustn’t forget to go to Cuba.”

January 9 2012

Catching Up

Devotee of the Virgin at the Mass on Puerto Avenue

After the claustrophobic feeling of having no internet for two weeks, catching up with events will not be easy, adding the softness of these days. I will summarize in three stories that remained me with me like feedback after the holidays.

Saga

North Korea is one of my favorite fears. The North Koreans are my confederation of dunces. I have seen and read enough about the subject, including an authorized biography of the recently deceased and the documentary One Day in the Life, by his Ministry of Foreign Affairs, both little gems. To see the dear comrade in his glass coffin surrounded by flowers, I don’t know about others, but I was reminded of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. I thought Asians were very restrained in expressing their grief, but I have seen a massive and unanimous cry on camera. Hysterical or histrionic, hinting of complications for those who do not cry. In sharp contrast with the death of Vaclav Havel, who only found space in a column of the inside pages of the newspaper Granma, Kim Jong Il and his designee Kim Jong Un, have been media sensations.

This monarchical succession has not faced the least objection to our media. The Juche idea, Marxism in a free version of the Great Leader, nor is it accused of being revisionist, a term indeed fallen into disuse because of the multiple interpretations and accommodations that everyone makes in the theory of Marx. I do not see such a succession for Cuba even though some people cherish the idea of leading by means of DNA. Yesterday I woke up to the news that the North Korean ambassador has just been awarded the Friendship Medal by our Minister of Foreign Affairs. With friends like these …

Amnesty

My first association on hearing the announcement of an amnesty for nearly three thousand prisoners, from the mouth of our President, was what that figure would represent as a percentage of the total prisoners in Cuba. I have understood that our prison population per capita ranks as one of the highest in the world, so the measure is positive from any point of view, but still do not know if the Black Spring prisoners, released on parole, are included. In my information isolation, I threw out a tweet asking for details via text message, and I got an account key to activate over the Internet, and the Internet was something I didn’t have at year end. Conclusion: I still do not know, but I’m told that the list of the releases is in the Official Gazette. In his long-standing practice of giving prisoners to distinguished visitors, the Cuban government will offer the highest figure to Ratzinger.

Cachita

Cachita is what Cubans call their patron saint — something family and friendly that sounds very good to me. The Virgin has traveled around the country, and the demonstrations of devotion, as opposed to the outraged people (a phrase in common use by the government), have been spontaneous. The Cardinal seems to be interested in politics, and in that love-hate relationship, makes some space. It is not the figure that seduces me, but the drawing power of faith, which is something else, and the Virgin of Charity of Cobre has shown it.

January 6 2012

Bad Handwriting in La Joven Cuba (18)

To Harold for his work on intellectuals.

The intellectuals, understood well beyond artistic creation, have been isolated from early on and isolated they remain, as I see it. I would like to dwell on the artistic intelligentsia for the weight, the social influence involved, and because the innate condition of the artist is criticism, at the end of the day, to be critics is the reality of their work (the quotation is yours).

The famous phrase “words to the intellectuals” — the title of Fidel’s 1961 speech — put a straitjacket on intellectual creation. That and later experiences: The ostracism of important creators like Lezama and Piñera, parametración and the UMAP camps, the powerful alias Leopoldo Avila from the magazine “Olive Green,” the frictions with the artist movement in the eighties.

Still more recently in an unusual episode known as “the little war of the emails,” was the government’s decision to terminate that feverish exchange that went off the rails to take up questions of cultural policy. I’m sure that examples in film and other manifestations escape me.

In Cuba, the art is subsidized by the state, so that the artist feels protected, and this imposes a subjective commitment, but a commitment to the end, not to bite the hand that feeds you. On the other hand, the artist who leaves that position is seen as a traitor or “confused.” Independent artistic projects are viewed with suspicion a priori, often their creators have taken the path of exile, others abjure their projects and in other cases become harmless, having been assimilated by the official culture.

All this creates a reflection. Many embrace art without compromise, an art uncritical and “pretty,” politically correct.

That the politicians don’t use think tanks, talk of divorce and suspicion, besides the incompetence it brings to fill positions based on political loyalty rather than ability.

The artist and intellectual are viewed with reservation by the functionaries because most do not understand them; belittling them is the way to hide one’s ignorance.

October 19 2011