Out of Focus Report

Photo from the Internet

The Latin America ICAIC (Cuban Institute of the Art and Industry of Cinematography) Newsreel will be recovered. If I’m not mistaken, it is considered a part of Cuba’s and the world’s heritage of documentary news by UNESCO and will be treated with all the technological marvels that restore the old audiovisuals almost for eternity.

Going to the movies was once important, when we looked through the papers to catch the news of the premieres: Do you remember the theater circuits such as Infanta-Acapulco-Lido-Santa Catalina and Payret-Trianon-Ambassador-Alameda? The Metropolitan circuit escapes me, and I’ve forgotten which circuit the Yara theater was on, what to this day continues to be called Radiocentro.

But when there was a movie premiere, or a second run in the neighborhood theaters, the program included the inevitable Weekly ICAIC Newsreel. The great memories of a different visuality, with music that sounded wonderful to my eager ears.Pello el Afrokán may have shared the soundtrack with Rick Wakeman, Bourke with Aretha Franklin, Hendrix with Tata Guines.

These people were “the latest,” they even wore jeans! No one told me, I saw it myself as I studied very close to the ICAIC and went for an afternoon snack for what remained of sodas at the TenCent on 23rd, directly facing the Atlantic building, the film institute headquarters. Those gods with their great manes of hair (by the standards of the time) snacking there too and I alternately dazzled with Adriano, Tito, Livio. Beautiful and impossible with their royal names and their “swing”.

Those were the golden years of the news, where Santiago Alvarez did whatever he wanted, and Sundays I always went to the movies and waited for the news with and I really enjoyed it (a bad habit I never lost) and without knowing it, but intuiting it, because the news created a new artistic jewel every week.

They covered the most important events in the world, but especially, they documented those years in Cuba. Parades, the latest plan, the hijacking of planes (they called them “diversions” when they came from there to here), all with the unmistakable voice of Julio Batista as corporate branding.

When Cubans saw a Jumbo jet for the first time in their lives, thanks to the black-and-white ICAIC Newsreel, I had been hanging out with my brothers at the airport and from the terrace of the original building in Boyeros the imposing nose cone of that giant “diversion” seemed to me a symbol of modernity; in the end, like a chronicle of the past, of that heroic part I felt we were living in those years, there is also a sentiment of loss, preserved in the testimony that will now be “re-mastered,” digitalized and treated with other technological tenderness; the testimony of the cane we cut, the soil we carried in sacks, the coffee we harvested, the anthems we chanted, and the guns we wielded, the uniquely grey clothes in which we believed we were heading along the path toward a perfect place.

June 27 2012

Dear Readers:

I know that you will understand that I’m very busy with my health, and I have not taken up much time with my “Bad Handwriting” blog and with you. I’ve been going to hospitals these days, but don’t be alarmed, one must be careful, that’s all.

June 8 2012

Of… Garlic

A single presentation was applauded last Thursday at the event held by the magazine Temas (Topics). It was that of the young engineer Carlos Fernandez-Aballi Altamirano, professor at the Polytechnic University (CUJAE). This young man explained his experience — or rather his bad experience — as “a self-employed” in the production of dehydrated garlic. At first it made me smile, but after his presentation I approached him. Loquacious and passionate, what is most notable is his creative intelligence. He talked about the frequent attempts to implement modern technology in underdeveloped countries as if they had the same conditions as exist in the First World. To make them workable in an environment like ours seems to be his inspiration.

Fernandez-Aballí is 28 and received his doctorate in Bristol, England. While still a student he won two international awards, and then a third, in Cuba, providing him funding from the Spanish Agency for Iberoamerican Cooperation for to build 100 houses using rice husks, among other materials. I’m not capable of repeating the technical explanation of the advantages of rice husks, but it was convincing. This project failed because the authorities of the municipality where the homes would have been built never responded to the proposal. But this guy is not of those who is daunted. He prepared the feasibility study, especially considering what it costs to import garlic powder for cooking, and with two other friends, he started up the production of dehydrated garlic, granules or powder.

Production has been a success. The product satisfies quality and hygiene standards, but when I asked where it was marketed, Carlos surprised me saying that he could not sell it in the farmers markets, although the price is affordable and the presentation attractive, because… There is no space available for this product. At this point, a suitcase full of samples to give away, was empty.

As long as there are people like this, nothing is lost. Remember this name.

June 4 2012

Topics Meeting on Self-Employment

I’m too lazy to get out! But I do not regret having gone to the meeting yesterday of the last Thursday of each month at the journal Temas (Topics). The theme was the self-employment. A large audience, including 24 Communications students from a university in southern California.

I expanded my horizons as a housewife. I learned that artists and religious priests are also “self-employed” workers, and that this category will soon become 20% of the workforce. I also found a display on 600 employed persons, which showed that they earn on average six times more than in their former state job (is the concept of “exploitation of man by man” falling into disuse?).

There were those who came to the defense of the reviled carretilleros, walking vendors with their carts, who have received a ton of abuse, as if they were responsible for the lack of variety and the high price of vegetables.

Although the panel members still used archaic language (especially the one “self-employed” panel), they generally spoke of the positive impact of this emerging sector in the recovery of the value of working and the need to change social attitudes that see this work as reprehensible — a form of mild forgetfulness that it is a natural reaction to a half century of government stigma associated with private and personal enrichment.

The best part came with the comments. There was a call for a clear regulatory framework and public statistics about this new line of work; there was talk of cooperatives in transport, (the oldest will remember the COA).

The writer Yoss posed a theoretical problem: If all economic power generates political power, is the state resigned to the possibility of losing their power? Then they addressed a legal issue Would it be better to prohibit early what you can NOT do, rather than approve what you can.

The self-employed comrade on the panel made clear that, contrary to what we were taught in the manual of political economy, economic changes will not bring political change, and the party will remain solely and exclusively in charge. The panel moderator joked about science fiction, Yoss’s favorite genre, but he also must remember, like almost all who have studied in Cuba, the topic of changes, an exam question.

Someone suggested a revision in the 1960 phone book regarding the classifications of national products, which are now imported due to the suppression of private labor. He urged scholars to define what are the basic means of production, which by law must be in state hands.

The young people, as always, shone a bright light. One talked about eliminating the fear of the reality of the changes, another asked if it they import and export, if State services such as SEPSA (security) can be used, if credit cards work. Another said that the union’s role is to defend the worker, not tell the bad news through a press organ of the Party. Another young professor explained his experience being self-employed and advocated that the measures to be regularized before implementation and not vice versa.

I left there in a better mood. We are neither brutish nor dull. What we lack is freedom.

June 1 2012

Repudiation Against Acts of Repudiation

The year was 1993, my son was about to be born and I was given a weekend leave from the hospital. Upon my arrival at home, my husband was absent. He arrived very upset from the home of his son from a prior marriage. An act of repudiation had been made against the child’s mother and her spouse. They closed off the street, installed loudspeakers, brought in a mob that vociferated for hours without knowing for what nor against whom.

The couple had been battling for months to travel abroad, but would not accept the definitive exit that authorities wanted to impose. My husband’s son, then an adolescent student of painting, had decided to stay with us. After that demonstration of “revolutionary fervor”, the youth no longer wanted to live in a country where such things happen. A long time afterward, he continued having the recurring dream that the mob would demolish the door to his home and would squash them.

My son was born within a few days, and his brother left into exile three months later. They never had the opportunity of knowing each, of even recognizing one another, since they have a great physical likeness.

So to the ethical reasons, I add this very personal reason for championing a repudiation against acts of repudiation, so that nevermore any government will be in a position of confronting its citizens ones against the others.

Translated by: Maria Montoto

June 1 2012