Insufficient Qualifications / Regina Coyula

Presenter Aleanys Jáuregui

Cuban television is not characterized by the quality of its domestic programming so I review the movie schedule to see if anything interests me. The only ones I follow are the pirated ones: Grey’s Anatomy, Suits, and Dirty Sexy Money; this latter despite its late night schedule.

But sometimes, by chance, by pure chance, I stumble on programs produced by  Cuban TV, which produces little, bad and late, and luckily fills in with the canned. In a fatal chance I’ve seen some scenes of a horrible thing called Santa Maria of I Don’t-Know-What that shows on the soap opera hour; but the other day I endured with a stoicism worthy of a better cause a humor (?!) program made by women. They were competing, there was a really condescending jury, raising their cards with their ratings.

Bad taste, vulgarity, lack of grace, lack of originality; and an example of all of the above, the host of the program. In the Federation of Cuban Women and the Cuban Writers and Artists Union (UNEAC), institutions that concern themselves interchangeably with female integrity and raising cultural values, should not have seen More Women (with the “more” [plus] sign that I don’t find on the keyboard), this monstrosity of “more” for which I can not find enough adjectives on the keyboard.

20 May 2013

The “Revoliquera” Experience (Reloaded) / Regina Coyula

I put up this post this past Friday, but the WordPress goblins made it disappear. With my scarce connection time and my barely adequate technical knowledge, I wasted a copious amount of time looking for responses in a forum, and along the way, restoring this post. Management having failed, I’ll do this the old way: by repeating it.

The Revoliquera* Experience

If I ask a youth with occasional internet access which page referring to Cuba he visits, almost certainly he’ll respond with Facebook. It doesn’t matter that it’s not Cuban. The social network par excellence keeps him up to date with his artists and favorite athletes and let’s him meet up with his school friends, who today can be the same in Miami as in Madrid or Moscow.

But if I consult a young fan of technology or video games, or who is just growing out of his first childhood, the more sure is that he’ll answer that his favorite page is Revolico, the site of national sales & buying, born from the lack of a physical space inside Cuba to accommodate a classified ad.

It’s impossible to walk down the street and not see bills posted on phone poles announcing electronic musical concerts or house parties. On bus walls appear printed announcements of exchanges, nor does a car attract any attention with a cardboard box behind the windshield with hurried letters that read: “FOR SALE”. The yellow pages of the telephone book increasingly recognize the emerging private services sector, but even there the space is insufficient to insert a perishable or offensive ad. Here is where the online note triumphs.

No matter the real estate market, where the false image of an enormous (and overpriced) residential listing is for sale, poking around on revolico.com reveals that Cubans aren’t too interested in whether or not the government is going to build socialism; but meanwhile, each provides their own management style, and for some it doesn’t seem to be going badly. The productive forces of this country are in the starting blocks waiting for the starter’s gun to go off, and Revolico is becoming pre-competition training.

And if you don’t have access to the internet, that is no longer a problem. Inside a weekly or monthly 500 GB pack you can find an offline version of the popular site that now permits even the opening of links to photos; “It’s exactly the same as seeing it on the Internet,” a neighbor told me who copied her own version from me last week. As it is often forbidden to access Revolico from work and school, or the page won’t open and is redirected to the searcher, disturbed souls have posted alternative addresses and proxies that lead to the revoliquera (messy) experience.

Office services, translations, language classes, wedding dress rental, jobs, loans with interest, clowns, quotes … that amalgam makes up the pages of Revolico, a much better known site within Cuba than Generation Y, and more visited than CubaDebate.

Translator’s note: “Revoliquera” is an adjective roughly meaning “messy” created from the word “revolico” which in Cuban slang means “a mess”; it is the name of the Cuban site that is the equivalent of “Craigslist.”

Translated by: JT

13 May 2013

The Second Sunday of May / Regina Coyula

This Mother’s Day has been distorted over the years. In among the shortages you see everyone going crazy looking for treats for their teacher, their aunt, for the neighbor who is so good, for my friend Fulanita* who gives me something every year, and also buying an impressive number of picture postcards to give to every mother they know.

I do not know if it is a practice of the so-called consumer society that has infiltrated around here, but for me it doesn’t matter. I enjoy my mom every day, I spoil her whenever I can, and if I can’t I already did, we don’t get all in a twist on the issue dates.

But this is me and my circumstances. For all my readers, have a wonderful day and love those close to you very much. If you can, give them something, but don’t give them something as a substitute. (Horrors!!! Now I feel in a position to give advice…)

*Translator’s note: “Fulano/a” is equivalent to “so-and-so”… the unnamed somebody.

12 May 2013

Echoes / Regina Coyula

My friend Ana experienced Chavez’s death like that of a family member — tearfully and without music. Whe nshe speaks of him, her voice breaks. She does not know how to explain the reason for such devotion, but she relied on the Venezuelan broadcaster Telesur for all the details. Since the subject was very emotional for her, it was not until two days ago that I asked what she thought about the recent Venezuelan elections. Her response came as a surprise.

“I would not have voted for either of them. Capriles is from the extreme right, but I don’t know what Chavez saw in Maduro. Someone must have suggested that he read his speeches because he knows how to talk. What he does not know how to do is shut up.”

I heard something similar, though less concise and forthright, from my neighbor Tomás, who said to a visitor with sadness, “Maduro works hard, but he does not have Chavez’s charisma.”

An observation by my mother, who at ninety-six is as lucid as ever, reiterates one often heard during the Venezuelan presidential campaign. “The worst thing he could do is to try to imitate [Chavez],” she noted.

I have also heard cynical comments from people who peevishly detest Maduro, but who detest even more the power outages from which we Cubans have been spared, at least for the next three years.

3 May 2013

Ah! The Old Mentality / Regina Coyula

Although the natural desire of new entrepreneurs is to succeed, the mentality acquired during many years is like the invasive marabou weed.

To please my mom, who had a “craving” after seeing the menu in one of those new “self-employed” businesses I asked to take out an Elena Ruz. I received good service and after some delay which I made a joke about, to which they responded that each order was prepared on the spot, they sent me off with a box inside a bag that would be a surprise for Mom. It was a surprise, but for me.

I had no idea what an Elena Ruz was, but my mom had a good memory. What was in the box was toasted bread (and I suspect it wasn’t fresh) with a light smear of unidentifiable jam, and diced chicken. I was more frustrated than my mom so I returned to the private restaurant, the paladar, and asked to speak to the person in charge who turned out to be a young woman with a nice manner about her.

Advised by my mom, I knew what ingredients and preparation were supposed to be for this spectacular sandwich, and especially how to prepare it, I told the young girl that what they sold could be called a Lina Ruz (the girl didn’t understand anything), Elena the Russian or any other kind, but it was NOT an Elena Ruz.

Her reaction was defensive: The clients like them, no one has complained, everyone has a different opinion about each plate, the culinary standards… it was so much that the only thing I said was, “If you order a daiquiri, and someone brings you a drink that, instead of lemon juice has orange juice, it may be tasty, but it is NOT a Daiquiri.

I left there with a deja vu of a State restaurant, almost convinced that the client didn’t know anything and was never right.

Translator’s note: The recipe calls for a baguette sliced lengthwise, cream cheese, strawberry jam, and sliced turkey breast, and the assembled sandwich is then toasted.

24 April 2013

What Are They Celebrating / Regina Coyula

The Chicago Martyrs

I’m not exaggerating if I tell you that for more than I month it’s been known with precision the exact number of participants by province, union and sector that will fill the country’s plazas with color in “spontaneous” marches for May Day.

What are these Cuban workers celebrating? In reality, they’re not celebrating anything. They consume a representation that started out being genuine but that has shed meaning along the way. In contrast to the working class in other countries, even though they have equal or greater reasons to do so, they do not fight to increase insufficient wages, they don’t demand an end to the dual monetary system, and they don’t unite against the possibility of being laid off, they don’t protest about the slowness and shallowness of the economic reforms, they don’t organize to restructure the union that represents them.

One of the slogans that will preside over the march this year is: “For a prosperous and sustainable socialism.” If there ever really was socialism, at its beginning it brought changes in education and healthcare, which, since the disappearance of the Soviet subsidy, haven’t stopped deteriorating, but prosperity has been an elusive goal of the working class, which at one time perceived the real possibility of reaching it through their own efforts, for long years so demonized.

With regards to sustainability, they should have the grace not to be so dramatic; they’ve had every opportunity over more than half a century at the helm of the government and haven’t even managed food independence despite constantly repeating the official propaganda about the dangers of the Blockade and the Imperialist Threat.

It’s a paradox that the workers march to celebrate conquests that we’ve enjoyed for a half a century or more, but are incapable or organizing themselves around demands that affect their daily lives. Meanwhile, the Cuban working class continues marching being slogans that represent nothing, the legacy of the Chicago Martyrs still leave much to be done among us.

1 May 2013

Charter of Fundamental Rights

For Another Cuba

My interest in Human Rights in the United States is merely informative. There, if any or all of these rights are violated, the organizations of civil society themselves will enforce their demands. But it seems cynical to me on the part of the Cuban government to condition their commitment to compliance with the inalienable rights recognized by the international community on their enemy’s breach of them.

This attitude of being victimized is very bad when it come so this subject where Cuba has gaps; if we are a model society to which humanity should aspire, that example should start by guaranteeing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in full to all its citizens. As long as respect for human rights is selective, everything else will be nothing but demagoguery.

29 April 2013

Before Geneva

My only source of news about this week’s election in Venezuela was Telesur and the Cuban press. Supposedly, Capriles was the villain calling for violence. The victims were exclusively Chavez supporters (though only a carpenter was mentioned and no names or statistics were given). And Maduro made accusations about coup plots and terrorist attacks.

I do not doubt that the situation in Venezuela at the moment is very volatile, but the analysts I saw stressed the fact that Maduro was elected president by half the voting public while forgetting that their coverage made a circus out Mexican elections by claiming that the losing candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, armed and “could arm” crowds in the Zócalo if Felipe Calderón was declared the winner.

The analysts also failed to comment on the quasi-dictatorial attitude of the recently elected Maduro with respect to protests organized by the opposition. “I will not allow it,” he said. (No one told me about this; I saw it live on Telesur.) It is as though the other half of the population does not exist but, more importantly, as though democracy in Venezuela no longer exists.

New coverage of the election in Venezuela confirmed my belief in the need to stay informed. It goes to show how information can be subverted and how the Cuban government will try to retain control for as long as possible. I would therefore like to present this as evidence of manipulation of one of a series human rights outlined in an international letter to be submitted for discussion in Geneva with an official delegation present.

19 April 2013

Indirect Effect

The presidential campaign in Venezuela reaches me indirectly through my room, which is adjacent to the window of my neighbor Tomás, below which he has his television. Tomás follows the details of the rough-and-tumble campaign on Telesur. He thunders against Capriles, whom he considers to be little more than a criminal, and thrills to the son of a very precocious Chávez.

These days I avoid letting the remote linger too long on Channel 15. All the bizarre news and images there no longer surprise me and I am bothered by the excessive propaganda. Cuban television, however, certainly seems to have learned little to nothing from the multi-national broadcaster during all the years in which Telesur was only a three-hour program made up of filtered content.

But besides his devotion to the “candidate of the fatherland” Tomás can also see — if he wanted to see — how Venezuelans are able to choose from among various presidential candidates, how opponents from the opposition are able to make their case and, despite whatever my neighbor might say, can come to the conclusion that Venezuelan democracy is fragile. It is fragile, but it exists — a novel idea for the majority of our population, which was born after 1959.

12 April 2013

Everyone

Times are changing in Cuba.  A simple comparison to five years ago will sustain this statement. One of the expressions of this change is the proposal brought forth by a heterogeneous group of citizens (I have grown fond of the term) at Laboratorio Casa Cuba* to discuss a topic of interest to all of us, including those who do not know about the existence of such proposal.

It should not surprise me, but it does surprise me, to see how from the fringes of the political spectrum, Cuba Soñada** (Cuba Dreams)…receives arrows; from each one according to their position and comprehension: each one of them absolute owners of the truth, each one from the meta-reading, each one disqualifying*** (surreptitiously or not) the project.

Now that is fashionable to defend homosexuals, blacks, women, the disabled and any other socially excluded group, a little bit of respect for politically different ways of thinking would not be bad; and, in this, Laboratorio Casa Cuba is ahead of everyone else: laypersons, Catholics, anarchists and communists have taken equal places around the same table. The document may seem scandalous to many –better controversial than anodyne- but they will not be able to attack it for being offensive toward other schools of thought. Cuba Soñada…gives us the opportunity to discuss.  And, I say this to the orthodox within the one (legally allowed) political party and to those who plan agendas for the transition, in and outside of Cuba, and of course, to everyone else.

Translator’s notes:

*Laboratorio Casa Cuba is an initiative born from the Cuban Catholic publication Espacio Laical that has stated its mission as “to study the Cuban institutional framework” and to promote “research, suggestions for change, reflection and respectful dialog.”  It is integrated so far by communists, democratic socialists, anarchists and Catholics.

**The full title of this document, from the Archdiocese of Havana, is “Cuba dreams – Cuba possible – Cuba future: proposals for our immediate future.”

***”Disqualify” is a term used by the regime towards any expression of dissent as a way of dismissing the source. That is, the speaker/actor is told, essentially, “You are not qualified to speak or act because we — the powers-that-be — say so.” Yoani Sanchez described this in a blog post about a meeting with State Security.

Translated by: Ernesto Suarez

3 April 2013