Image taken from http://somoslanoticia.com/

“I prefer a million critical voices
before the silence of the dictatorships.”
Dilma Rousseff

Choosing the time for a presidential visit can be an exceedingly thankless task in this so unpredictable and changeable world. When the date of the visit of a head of state is placed on the agenda, announced, and reconciled with the hosts, life commonly offers up the unexpected. The government palaces don’t control chance, nor anticipate the surprising events that strain the arrival of a dignitary. Dilma Rousseff knows this well. Her presence in Havana was coordinated for weeks and was even preceded by that of the foreign minister, Antonio de Aguiar Patriota. Everything seemed neatly tied up: a fast timeframe, efficient, protocol, focused on economic themes, ending with her boarding her flight to Haiti. But something complicated it.

Several days before the Brazilian economist and politician landed at Jose Marti Airport, a young Cuban died after a prolonged hunger strike. The official media threw itself into presenting him as a common criminal, although he had been arrested at an opposition march through the streets of Contramaestre. The radicalized discourse of power and the political temperature reached those levels where our rulers perform so well. In that context, the recently concluded Conference of the Cuban Communist Party became more an act of reaffirmation than of change, a statement of unity rather than an opening. Many who were waiting for an announcement of political transformations of great significance, realized that the event was, instead, the ultimate lost opportunity for the generation in power. One day after its closure, Raul Castro — General Secretary of the only permitted party — received Dilma Rousseff, the former guerrilla who today leads a country with diverse political forces and a highly critical press.

Dilma’s Cuban agenda includes inspecting the construction work at the Port of Mariel and the possible granting of new bank credits. Brazil is our second largest trading partner in Latin America, but it’s not just a question of resources. The Raul regime also has the urge, at this time, to be legitimized by other presidents in the region. So there will be smiles, handshakes, commitments to “eternal friendship” and photos, lots of photos. The civic activists, for their part, will attempt a meeting with the woman who was tortured and imprisoned during a military government, though there is little chance that she will receive them. Dilma Rousseff will converse with Raul Castro, she will be very close to him at exactly this delicate juncture in which chance has placed her. We hope she will not miss the opportunity and will comport herself consistent with the clamor for democracy, instead of opting for a complicit silence before a dictatorship.

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Note: I will not know until Friday, February 3, whether the Cuban authorities will finally allow me to travel for the presentation of the documentary “Cuba-Honduras Connection” in Jequie, Bahia, in Brazil. Thanks in advance to all who have done something so that I might make it to Brazil. Special thanks to Senator Eduardo Suplicy, to the filmmaker Dado Galvao, to @xeniantunes, and to other Brazilian citizens.

Conexão Cuba Honduras - trailer

"Supply and demand" bicycle taxi

Every so often a new campaign appears in our media, some offensive against certain social or economic phenomenon. Lately the campaign is directed against the mobile vendors, those sellers of fruits and vegetables who transport their goods on a tricycle or other wheeled device. The official journalists argue that such traders operate under the “capitalist” law of supply and demand, rather than making prices more affordable for consumers. They also criticize the fact that they offer their products by the unit, rather than by pounds or kilograms, which gives them room for inflated prices. Although this is a problem that hurts us all, I don’t think we will solve it with appeals to the vendors’ conscience.

The mobile vendor supplies those neighborhoods lacking in farmers markets, and especially during the hours that those that do exist are closed. Their prices also take into account — although the official TV doesn’t recognize this — the time they save their clients who no longer need to travel or to stand in the long lines of a “state market.” For most working women who come home after five to invent a meal, the cry of “Avocados and onions!” shouted at their doors is a salvation. It’s true that the costs of none of these products bear any relation to their salaries, but nor does the produce on these mobile stands rot for lack of buyers. The fact that someone should have to work two days to buy a squash is not an expression of excess on the part of the vendor, but rather of the miserable wages paid.

It’s surprising, for example, that the concerned prime time news reporters don’t take off on the excesses at the stores that sell in convertible pesos, where to buy a quart of oil costs an entire weeks wages. The difference between the mobile vendors and these hard-currency stores is that the first are operated by the self-employed while the latter are the property of the State. Thus, we will never see a report denouncing the extremely high mark-up added to the costs of importing or producing some food offered at the so called “shoppings.” Because it’s better to look for a scapegoat and to use it to explain the life of famine and culinary greyness in which we are submerged. For now, the blame is laid on the mobile vendors. So you should run to your balcony — right now — and watch them pass through your street, because very soon they may no longer exist.

To the memory of Wilman Villar Mendoza

A couple of years ago, my friend Eugenio Leal decided ask for the report of his criminal record, necessary paperwork when applying for certain jobs. With confidence, he applied for the form where it would say he had never been convicted of any crime but found, in its place, a disagreeable surprise: it appeared that he was the perpetrator of a “robbery with force” in the town where he’d been born, although in fact he had never even run a red light. Eugenio protested, because he knew this wasn’t a bureaucratic error nor a mere accident. His activities as a dissident had already made him the victim of repudiation rallies, arrests and threats, and now a blot on his criminal record had been added. He had gone from being a member of the opposition to someone with a past as a “common criminal,” something very useful to the political police to discredit him.

If we allow ourselves to be guided by government propaganda, there is not a single decent person on this island, concerned about the nation’s destiny and who hasn’t committed crimes, who is also against the system. Everyone who offers a critique is immediately branded as a terrorist or traitor, criminal or amoral. Accusations difficult to “disprove” in a country where, every day, the majority of citizens have to commit several illegalities to survive. We are 11 million common criminals, whose misdeeds range from buying milk on the black market to having a satellite dish. Fugitives from a criminal code that strangles us, fugitives from “everything is forbidden,” escapees from a prison that starts with the Constitution of the Republic itself. We are a population almost imprisoned, in the expectation that the magnifying glass of power hovers over us, raking through our lives and discovering the latest offense.

Now, with the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza, once again the old system of State insult repeats itself. A note in the newspaper Granma described him as a common criminal, and perhaps soon there will be a TV program — Stalinist style — introducing the alleged victims of his abuses. The objective is to minimize the political impact of the death of this 31-year-old citizen, convicted in November of contempt, assault and resistance. The official propaganda will attempt to downplay the importance of his hunger strike and shower his name with all sorts of derogatory adjectives. We will also see the testimony — violating the Hippocratic oath — of the doctors who attended him and probably even his mother will come out against her deceased son. All this, because the Cuban government can’t permit even a glimmer of doubt in the minds of ordinary TV viewers. It would be very dangerous if people started to believe that a regime opponent would sacrifice his life for a cause, to be a good patriot and even a decent man.

Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Just today, after seeing a documentary about recent ruins, I was turning my mind to a new post. Under the title “Unfinished Spaces,” I would collect the testimonies of various architects and students who participated in the building of the Superior Art Institute (ISA). All of them spoke of the original beauty of the project, the novelty of its structure, and the desires to make its form and creation coincide. But they also spoke of the abandonment of the construction, along with some of its faculties, which were never completed. So I was thinking in terms of columns, bricks and weed-covered roofs when I received a call telling me of a collapse in Central Havana. At Infanta and Salud streets, a three-story building couldn’t hold up any longer, and it caved in on the evening of Tuesday, January 17.

I recalled the many times I had passed along this block, hurrying my steps past the bad state of the balconies and walls. It evoked all those times I asked myself how it was possible that people continued to inhabit a place so on the verge of collapse. For the inhabitants of this building, the load of construction materials ordered just a few weeks ago came too late. The structural damage suffered by the building had no remedy, because it was the result of State indolence and decades of lack of paint, cement and other materials to repair the structure. The groaning it gave off before the floor gave way and the walls collapsed in on themselves is a part of the architectural rattle of a neighborhood with houses that are beautiful, but in a terminal state.

So far, the official media have reported three dead and six injured in the collapse on Infanta Street. People who lived the last years of their lives looking up and calculating the time left to the rafters, fearing what finally happened. How many others in this capital run the same risk tomorrow? What urgent solution will be applied so that these tragedies won’t continue to be a part of our daily landscape? We will not accept a response in the style of, “We are studying the issue in order to apply solutions in a gradual way.” Nor do we now fault the inhabitants themselves, who stayed in an uninhabitable place. Where could they go? Instead, we demand that the State construct, repair, protect us.

Military ranks, stars, distinctions of greater and lesser importance: decorations that recall past glories. Along with the books sold in the Plaza Vieja — and the tourist postcards of Che’s face — we have the largest market in medals in the whole country. If in East Germany the wall fell and, afterwards, the commerce in badges took over the street, here it has arisen before the very eyes of those who still wear these pieces of tin on their lapels. Many “vanguard” workers, mutilated soldiers, and active combatants who received such honors, today prefer to exchange them for convertible pesos. They trade for hard currency the object that distinguishes them as role models to be emulated.

Pinned to the red tablecloth, now lacking in any sobriety, are displayed the emblems of a nation crushed between diplomas and badges. The Soviet legacy has left us this extensive row of orders, distinctions, olive branches, laurels in soft medals, certificates of distinction, red-painted hammers and sickles, and shields of the republic pressed into zinc. A paraphernalia of recognition calcified in kitsch and the overflowing arrivals from the Kremlin. In those years no one wanted to be left without his decoration, because these distinctions were exchanged for perks and privileges. In the assemblies where refrigerators or washing machines were handed out, those aspiring to home appliances came with their rows of awards pinned to their shirts. The meeting thus became a ring of merits in a carnival of exaggerated exploits. But that was a long time ago…

From the vantage point of a so skeptical 2012, the aesthetics of these insignias provokes in us a mix of curiosity and wonder. Some of the vagabonds of Old Havana hang them on their chests so the smiling tourists will give them some change. Many of these relics also lie hidden in the backs of innumerable drawers, from the indifference or disappointment of their recipients. Others — to put it simply — have a price. They are sold in the antique market along with numismatic samples from the 19th century, or eighty-year-old Leica cameras. The buyers weigh the medals, haggle with the sellers, finally rejecting or claiming the cold metal that contains as much pomp as failure; the splendor and the fall.

The last time Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stepped on Cuban soil, Fidel Castro’s illness had been announced a few weeks prior, generating tons of speculation. In that September of 2006, the Iranian president was a witness to the awarding of the presidency of the Non-Aligned Nations to a head of state physically incapable of exercising it. Instead of the Maximum Leader, in the Palace of Conventions they heard the speech of his younger brother, while in the hallways and in front of the cameras official spokespeople predicted that the Commander in Chief would reappear very soon. But they lied. In the final photo of the event — taken on the lawn under a playful sun — the invited rulers are captured, but the primary host is missing. In the light of today, that was an image almost prescient because it marked the former guerrilla’s loss of leadership in international life.

Now, Ahmadinejad has returned for a new snapshot. This time it will be behind closed doors, perhaps without witnesses, and in the place where Fidel Castro convalesces and from where he writes his lengthy Reflections. Much has changes for both of them in the last five years. The first is in the midst of escalating tensions with Washington and has even threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz; the second is passing through the gradual fading of his image inside and outside the country, and has lost much of the ascendancy he once had.

The political impulse that came close to triggering — in 1962 at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis — the third world war, lives today in the Persian leader who could be a part of the next conflict. Both urgently need this new family photo. The one to prove that he is not isolated, as American diplomacy would like him to be seen, and the other because he needs to demonstrate that he is still alive, as opposed to what is rumored in the social networks. But it will be a portrait almost in sepia, because the color green which has been absent these last five years is an uncomfortable shade for both of them. It reminds Fidel Castro of the uniform from which an important part of his power emanated, while to Ahmadinejad it evokes young people protesting in the streets, the young woman Leda, and the summer of 2009.

*Translator’s note: The title of this post is a play on a line in poem by Garcia Lorca, “Verde, que te quiero verde.” The poem is titled Romance sonámbulo (in English, The Sleepwalker’s Romance).

Image taken from jazzconnexion.com

The singer intones one of his old songs on the stage. The public presses closer, repeats the chorus, is moved to delirium. This week we’ve enjoyed one of the many festivals of trova music that have begun, this time, in Santa Clara province. With themes ranging from the romantic to the most contentious social issues, the event allows to to hear some happy new releases and other well-known compositions. Musical creation that had its golden age in the seventies, but that its now losing ground to more commercial and fast-paced melodic forms. Most young people don’t want to hear trova ballads with lyrics that speak of complaint or daily chronicles, they prefer to relax and enjoy themselves, to abandon reality, if only for one night. They go to the clubs to escape what is outside, not to be reminded of it. So those ideological tunes — alluding to the New Man or the society he will inhabit — have been thrown into the well of forgetfulness.

Despite the loss of popularity, there are still dozens of cultivators of the trova song tradition in Cuba. They sing for people who prefer to ponder daily life and its absurdities rather than run away to another dimension. There are also many of us who still shudder at the lyrics of Silvio Rodriguez, separated as we are from him by an abyss of political opinions, a ravine of philosophical positions. When it comes time to organize our musical — or literary — libraries, we’ve learned that the best idea is not to do it by party preference… if we don’t want to suffer the sad loss of numerous authors.

Beyond the quality of the chords and verses, a good part of the public seeks in trova ballads their ability to evoke past memories: a first love, a close dance, the difficult years, that day of the first kiss, or the concert where we met someone very special. They trigger memories, like Proust’s madeleine, but which enter through the ears rather than the palate. When the singer appears with his guitar in hand, he is, in reality, engaging us in an act of remembrance: taking us back to those times when we were so young, when Nueva Trova had not yet been totally faded by the acid of reality.

This January seems like an October, a July, a November, anything other than the first month of the year. If anything characterizes beginnings it is making plans, projecting what is to come, outlining proposals even later if they aren’t completed. But because we grew up among so many slogans forecasting the future, today we resist talking about tomorrow. Exhausted from imagining a distant future that could be delayed five years or a decade, we no longer want to even predict the coming week. So we focus on this minute, on an immediacy that doesn’t allow us to raise our sights to look ahead. We live in the moment, because for too long they made us wish for a far off time that existed only in their speeches, in the pages of their books.

The next Communist Party Conference is also marked by this skepticism toward the future. Not surprising, then, are the low expectations Cubans show regarding a party meeting on January 28, the little that is said about it in the streets. The trifling comments are limited to an assurance that “this isn’t going to change anything,” or the glimmer of hope that “this will be the last chance for the ‘historic generation’.” Less than three weeks before it begins, even the official television isn’t showing any enthusiasm for the event. In the ranks of the Party itself there are many illusions and more than one militant will turn in his or her party card if the meeting ends with poor results. The time “purchased” last April during the Party Congress is about to end. The political reforms are urgent and even the system’s most faithful have begun to despair.

The most improbable, and yet the most desired, is that in this conference the first priority would be to put the nation ahead of partisan interests. But this would be asking the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) to commit suicide… and they are not going to do that. They are not going to open themselves to citizen participation without exclusions, nor are they going to dismantle the criminalization of disagreement. They bet their power on it. The reforms would have to be so clear, the change in discourse so marked, that instead of simple adjustments they would need to erase the slate and start again… and most likely they will refuse to do that. So, for a long time January hasn’t seemed like January, the Revolutionaries don’t behave that way and the future is a subject only for soothsayers and fortune-tellers.

“If I loved you before, it was for your hair,
now that you’re bald, I no longer love you.”

Children’s song

She woke up at six to meticulously untangle her hair with a broken toothbrush with the toughest bristles. Her hair reached almost to her waist, but now she was giving it a final straightening, a goodbye touch. Before the end of the year she turned her wavy mane into money to celebrate Christmas. “We buy hair,” could be read on the door of the narrow hallway where she went in, without dwelling on it. Two hairdressers assessed her mane based on the number of inches it exhibited, how copious it was, and especially on how well cared for. She arrived early with a long bun and left after noon with barely a bit of fuzz behind her ears. In exchange, she obtained an interesting sum in convertible pesos with which she bought pork, cider and tomatoes, and helped her mother repair her dentures. “It will grow,” she consoled her boyfriend when he saw her for the first time after the scalping. “I cut it because there was a plague of lice”… she fibbed.

The market for hair is gaining strength in a nation that oscillates between the imperatives of coquetry and material difficulties. Late in the Havana night, a good part of the bold hairstyles seen on the streets are achieved thanks to extensions and additions. Buyers with more money look for tresses that haven’t been dyed and particularly those from young women. Some of these traders travel to small towns, knowing that they will find the goods there at cheaper prices from more desperate sellers. In the hands of the stylists, what are also called “mechas” are glued, strand by strand, to the head of a new host in a process that takes hours. Although synthetic locks are also used, those of natural origin are in great demand and fetch a higher price. They are imported from Florida, Ecuador, Mexico and are a recurring order to relatives who travel abroad.

Right now, the only economic capital many women in this country have stems from their scalps. If the going gets tough, there will always be someone interested in buying their mane, an exchange of scissors for money.

Image taken from www.msnbc.msn.com

In October Laura Pollan left us, in a dark hospital on a drizzly day, in a year, 2011, that had been born already battered. In the early months, the final prisoners of the Black Spring had been released and national and international headlines gave most of the credit to the Catholic Church and Spain’s Foreign Minister, downplaying the struggle of the Ladies in White, the pressure exerted from the street, Guillermo Fariñas’ hunger strike, and the wake of outrage left by the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. April, the cruelest month, brought us the Communist Party Congress focused only on economic issues, preferring the word “adjustments” to “reforms,” and consolidating the power of a blood heir to the Cuban throne.

August, with its dog days and its scarcities, wasn’t very different. “Where are the changes?” many asked themselves. It wasn’t until October that they began to trickle out. We could buy a used car, but not freely associate ourselves with a party nor express ourselves without punishment. Then came the most daring of Raul’s measures: it was possible to buy or sell a home, although the most modest of them necessitated the total wages of 45 years’ work. Something was moving in a society mummified for decades, but so slowly we despaired. In mid-December we learned that more than 66,000 Cubans had obtained the nationality of their grandparents, emigrants from the Asturias, the Canary Islands, Galicia… people kept escaping. The despair is not perceived in the streets as much as in the long lines at the consulates.

The area of land allowed to be given to farmers in usufruct grew, but the price of food grew almost as much. The press spoke of advances, but the reality showed stagnation. Private restaurants invaded every neighborhood with their menus of spicy dishes and their anxiety about whether they would be left to survive a while longer. The mute choir of the National Assembly confirmed that for 2012 the country would need much more money to import the foods that could well be produced on our own soil. And the expected travel reform was kept from us again, for the umpteenth time.

On Saint Sylvester night few homes displayed parties or music, at least in Havana. But I felt relief that the year was ending. Of 2011, with its advances overstated by propaganda and its setbacks silenced, once was enough.