MYSQL [artsToRss] Dotaz:INSERT INTO rss VALUES ('', '139', 'When the Only Thing that Matters is Emigrating', 'Jorge Olivera Castillo', '
As the main interest of an average Cuban has narrowed down to leaving the country as soon as possible, the pro-democracy movement in Cuba has found it increasingly difficult to find new supporters.
To be more specific, there are very few of those who really choose to join an opposition group. A significant part of those who decide to take part in demanding fundamental rights do so in order to get the necessary credit and become eligible for the refugee program run by the United States Interests Section in Havana.
One of the reasons why it is impossible to achieve greater progress in the struggle to extricate Cuba from the realm of authoritarianism lies in the fact that there are only two choices for Cubans rooted in the popular imagination: either leave the country or adapt to the complex reality of a political system which forces people to resort to corruption in order to cover their basic needs.
Although there are sufficient reasons that would justify a wave of mass protests, there have been none. People have been paralysed by fear, which makes them prefer airing their disagreement in safe spaces. Ranting against the government within the four walls of their home or when talking to a close friend doesn't cost anything. It helps them relieve the bitterness and despair they feel without running the risk of being invited for a visit to a dungeon patrolled by rats and mosquitoes, getting a beating from vigilantes or having a court-ordered holiday behind bars for at least one year.
The fear of being punished for openly denouncing the status quo has lead to the emergence of several standardized types of conduct contrary to morality and ethics. Indeed, a rare type of environment has emerged in Cuba where it's nothing unusual if the same person who applauds a speech of a government official or even holds a position in a major social or political organization is disposed to take on an important role in the black market.
Seeing the crowds of people around the United States Interests Section in Cuba waiting for family reunification visas, temporary stay visas or a political asylum, one can no longer wonder why it is so difficult to gather a critical mass to advocate fundamental rights in the country.
Cubans seeking to leave the country seem indifferent to the drama of their fellow countrymen who have been taking part in the struggle for an establishment of a republic without “caudillos” (dictators), humiliating prohibitions and excessive repressions.
A few days ago, I asked some of the Cubans gathered outside of the U.S. Embassy if they knew the dissident intellectual named Antonio Rodiles, who was put to jail for almost a month after having received a severe beating while being arrested. They all responded alike: “I don't know what you're talking about”, “I don't engage in politics”, “Don't make my life more difficult, I want to leave and that's all I care for.”
The democracy that many of us here in Cuba continue to advocate, exposing ourselves to risks, will not be an easy task if people keep adopting this kind of attitude.', '2013-04-08 17:57:53', 'a') Chyba:You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 't cost anything. It helps them relieve the bitterness and despair they feel with' at line 1 MYSQL [artsToRss] Dotaz:INSERT INTO rss VALUES ('', '138', 'A Month and a Day in the Opposition', 'Alejandro Hernández Real', '
It's 10:30pm. My wife is sleeping on a station bench. With her head propped up on a bag instead of a pillow and my sweater spread over her face, she doesn't have to explain anything. It's obvious that despite her being only 17 years old, she prefers not see things. Perhaps she even doesn't want to wake up at all.
I don't want to sleep, so I keep repeating the maxim by Jose Marti: “It's wrong to sleep if there's work to be done.” Yet, I must admit that we are really exhausted. Only eight hours have passed since our last detention and over a month since we started to work as activists for the Eastern Democratic Alliance (ADO).
Being a young man who wants to remember all important moments spent with my partner, I always carry a notebook to be able to take notes. Thus, I have on me the whole chronicle of what has happened to us since the day I started being an activist, which is exactly a month and a day ago. I joined the ranks of activists thanks to my friend Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina, whom I have known since 2009.
I was initiated through several interviews, which I gave to radio programs broadcast by Barrio Adentro (Radio Republica) and Contacto Cuba (Radio Marti). They chose to interview me because I was one of the students who appealed to Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, President of the Cuban Parliament, at the University of Computer Sciences in Havana in 2008, right after he finished his lecture on the importance of voting for the entire slate (“voto unido”). Living in a country with a one-party political system and a history of the State's repressive policies and acts against those who nobly try to implement the concept of the Revolution, there's not much that could surprise me.
Barely a month after I had given the radio interviews, I was definitely fired from the Ministry of Health, for which I worked as an employee of the General Teaching Hospital of Octavio de la Concepcion y de la Pedraja in the municipality of Baracoa. I worked there as the Head of the IT Department for 3 years and 7 months and I had never done anything that would justify a dismissal for indiscipline. Yet, I was fired on the grounds of leaving the office without permission. These breaches were recorded only 3 days after my radio interviews.
A few days later, accompanied by a friend of mine and my wife, I started a march from the Hatuey Park in Baracoa to the Guantanamo municipality with the aim to promote our cause and demand freedom of expression.
We set out at 2:30am, with no money or food. We walked over 153 kilometres, eating only guavas and green mangoes and drinking water from natural springs. We had cardboard signs hung around our necks with a text on the chest reading: “We want freedom of expression.” One day when we were crossing the region of La Chivera - it was 10:30am and we were about to enter the municipality of Imías, we were detained by State Security officials. The First Lieutenant and the Captain and a bunch of other officers keeping patrol transported us to the Municipal Police Unit, where we were forced to take off our cardboard signs with the word “freedom”. Then they drew up a report on each one of us, accusing us of disorderly behaviour. At 9:00pm, after we had been interrogated by some State Security officers, we were taken back to the park where we started the march. In its vicinity we were finally released.
So, we were back in Baracoa. Gradually, we have grown used to the fact that we don't need to worry about the money for a return ticket.
Next day we set out again. This time not on foot but by bus. In Guantanamo we were welcome by Rolando and some other human rights activists. We spent a few days with them, walking around the city, fearing that we might be deported again. As usually, there were people who were giving us hard time - people working for the State Security, who were monitoring us and informing on us. During the afternoon, we sometimes played domino, talked about our struggle and the rough path to democracy. That's how we were spending our time in Guantanamo, enjoying the only one privilege that cannot be taken away from us: the right to choose our friends.
After a few weeks we decided to go to Santiago de Cuba. However, our Jeep was stopped by the State Security at the exit from Guantanamo when we were passing the police checkpoint of Rio Frio. Without any explanation, they transported us to the Operations Department. We were denied information what would happen with us. The place exactly fitted the descriptions I had heard before: it was a perfect torture centre. They kept me locked in a brick cell until the next day, out of which I was dragged only to undergo the torture of an interrogation, a mandatory procedure in all detainees kept there. I was taken to a chilled room (I guess it was to frighten my spirit), where there was a counter-intelligence graduate (G2), armed to the teeth with Marx and Engels' dialectical materialism (which I can't tell from “ Fidelism”). He was the one in charge of examining me by asking tricky questions in order to find out how much was I willing to fight, or how much was I susceptible to becoming a snitch. On the next day, we were “repatriated” back to our home town of Baracoa.
A few days later, my wife got ill and had to go to hospital – to the same hospital where I worked before I was fired. I was denied entrance by the wardens of the clinic, who were acting by order of the hospital management. I begged them and tried to make them understand the reason why I was there, but all in vain. There was no way they would let me in. I wasn't arrested that day. However, they did take me in a few days later when I took part in a march commemorating the first anniversary of the Cuban Resistance movement lead by Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina, general coordinator of the Eastern Democratic Alliance (ADO). We set out from the district of La Laguna, along with other opposition members, chanting anti-government slogans and demanding full freedom for Cubans. Hardly had we passed several blocks before we were stopped by numerous National Police and State Security members. They transported us to the local Police Station of La Punta. I was held there with other activists until noon of the next day. Later I learned that other activists were deported to Guantanamo.
Apart from these acts of repression I had to suffer the most terrible of ordeals: criticism from my own family. I was born to parents integrated in the Castro regime, members of the Communist Party. Even my sister is a member of the Young Communist League (UJC). Thus, my support for a democratic change in Cuba has caused numerous heated arguments within the family, which resulted in my having to sleep at places of my friends, at stops and stations, or even in the street. My wife's experience was similar. Her parents kicked her out of their house right away. They didn't want to get into trouble. Her mother is a doctor and she didn't want to be withdrawn from her mission abroad because the family needed the money from the mission to be able to fix several things at home.
I might have plunged into the movement of peaceful resistance too fast. Yet, thanks to what I've lived in the last month I'm now able to understand the many hardships that all those who get up every morning (as I do) to fix the enclosure in which we have been forced to live.', '2013-03-08 10:43:52', 'a') Chyba:You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's 10:30pm. My wife is sleeping on a station bench. With her head propped up on a' at line 1 MYSQL [artsToRss] Dotaz:INSERT INTO rss VALUES ('', '137', 'The Heat of the Books', 'Tania Díaz Castro', '
Every year when the first winter days come, I think of the women imprisoned in the Manto Negro prison, which is located in the Cuban village of Guanajay, in the Artemisa province. In summer, the small and narrow cells of the prison are like ovens while in winter they turn into real freezers.
I came to the Manto Negro prison in winter 1989, just when the first cold fronts from the North moved in. This allowed me to see right away how the women prisoners managed to wash - many of them were quite elderly, others, on the other hand, appeared too young. At first, I refused to warm the water up the way they did, by burning books, and I washed in cold water, shaking all over.
Then, in January and February, when the cold became more severe, I went against my will and accepted this way of washing (which I baptised “barbaric”) and learned to make a fire. I would crumple up pages of books to make pellets, which I placed under an oil can filled with water standing on two bricks.
“I have just washed thanks to Jose Marti,” a girl of hardly 18 years of age once told me, smiling. She was sentenced to one year in prison because she had accepted shoes from a foreigner.
Not long ago I met one of the women from the prison on the street, so I stopped to talk to her. I asked her if she still burned books to heat the water after my departure and she answered that she did, because Fidel Castro had failed to distribute heating coils among prisoners; nor did he install electric heaters. That would be too much to expect.
The book shelves in the prison library, where I would often go to look for a good book to read, were gradually slimming down in the winter months. The wardens knew how the books disappeared, they knew that they turned to ashes in the fires burnt in the cells.
I must say that in the beginning my heart would sink at seeing these books lose pages – books like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which I read as a teenager, or my father's favourite book, The Divine Comedy, or Stendhal's The Red and the Black, or Jose Marti's books of poems.
However, I have a happy memory of how I managed to persuade the inmates of the Unit One, where I stayed for one year for having publicly demanded a plebiscite in Cuba, to burn old magazines and newspapers with endless speeches of the Commander in Chief (which no one remembers today) instead of valuable works of world literature.
', '2013-02-06 16:33:10', 'a') Chyba:You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's Anna Karenina, which I read as a teenager, or my father's favourite boo' at line 1 MYSQL [artsToRss] Dotaz:INSERT INTO rss VALUES ('', '136', 'Obesity of the Malnourished', 'Gladys Linares', '
Not long ago, the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde published an article by journalist Maite Maria Jimenez written on the occasion of the 16th Latin American Congress of Nutrition, Health Promotion and Disease Prevention recently held at the Havana International Conference Centre.
In this article, Dr. Mercedes Esquivel, senior researcher at the Department of Human Growth and Development of the University of Medical Sciences in Havana, declared that “the growth and development of Cuban children shows a negative trend: an increase in overweight.” The doctor believes that this tendency is “largely determined by the environment in which they grow.”
Poor eating habits of Cuban children are influenced by various factors. First, the low income of Cuban families, which is not sufficient to provide food variety. After years of shortage of vegetables, fruits and cereals, the youngest generation has not developed the habit of eating these foodstuffs. But it's not only that. There are families that have no access to convertible pesos, which would allow them to buy milk, cheese, meat, cereals or grain sold at exorbitant prices in dollar shops.
Children of working mothers at primary schools can buy a lunch for 7 pesos a month, but it's insufficient and poorly made. The menu at school canteens is written on a blackboard and hardly ever changes. Teachers and principals often recommend parents to supplement their children's lunch with some other food.
Snacks given to children usually consist of bread and croquettes, bread and spread or bread with sausage, plus a drink.
When children start attending secondary school, which is around the age of twelve, there's no longer designated lunch time for them and they are not allowed to go out. Instead, they are given “pan con frita” (a kind of hamburger) and a cup of soy yoghurt.
For over fifty years, the ration book has not provided for this sensitive sector of the population. When children reach the age of three, they are excluded from the quota of thirteen monthly jars of purée a month. Tiny jars of Gerber baby food (71g) can be obtained in dollar shops as a substitute; yet, their price is approximately 70 cents CUC. At the age of seven, children stop receiving the ration of milk. Instead, families are offered twelve bags of soy yoghurt a month until their children reach fourteen. However, many parents complain that the supplies of the latter are delayed or sometimes even stopped without any explanation. The situation gets even worse in summer since the trucks transporting the foodstuffs are not refrigerated and the goods often get spoiled.
Lately, the ration book has also denied children one pound of chicken a month and a half pound of spiced minced meat. Instead, they have been offered a pound of minced beef (with little or no content of meat and lots of skin) and a half pound of Bologna sausage. Many parents complain that children refuse to eat it.
To make things worse, the price of a pound of beans has climbed up to 18 - 20 Cuban pesos. It's clear that the times when beans, which formed an indispensable (and almost the only) part of the Cuban diet along with rice, are over.
Every day, a growing number of Cubans realizes that being fat is no longer beautiful nor it is a sign of being healthy. It's a pity that in the environment where we live, eating (let alone eating healthily) has become so difficult.', '2013-01-14 13:10:16', 'a') Chyba:You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's not only that. There are families that have no access to convertible pesos, wh' at line 1 MYSQL [artsToRss] Dotaz:INSERT INTO rss VALUES ('', '135', 'Journalists Against All Odds', 'Agnes Koleman', '
All official journalism that there is in Cuba stems from the State and is subject to censorship that filters all information given to the Cubans, providing them only with inadequate, incomplete facts interpreted beforehand. In addition to it, due to the almost total lack of internet access, Cubans cannot compare the information presented to them with the news brought by foreign press.
However, there is an ever-growing group of men and women working every single day on creating a different kind of journalism with the aim to spread the truth about the everyday reality surrounding them both within the island and abroad.
In our newsletter we have gathered stories of the lives of 10 of them, which have been written by their own colleagues. Some of these journalists, for example Yoani Sánchez, need no introduction. Others, however, are little known even to members of the community that each month eagerly awaits this modest newsletter. However, they all work towards a common goal, which is to break the silence and wake Cuba up from its information sleep, in which it has been submerged for too many years.
The difficulties they face when exercising their profession are numerous: Many of them lack proper education either because they had no access to it or because they were expelled from the university. Also, their old computers and cameras are regularly confiscated by State agents who hardly ever let them connect to the extremely slow internet or hide their printers under the bed. However, with their courage and imagination they have been able to do journalism on an ever-increasingly professional level.
Yet, as Dickens said, the worst of times can also be the best of times and perhaps these journalists, distanced from the government's ideology and independent of any publishing house or editorial policy, are actually doing the freest journalism that they ever could and would. After all, their pens are not only informing us about what is happening in Cuba, they are also rewriting, word for word, the History of the Island.
To read the stories of our journalists, click here:
http://cubalog.eu/download/pdf/dialogues_47.pdf
', '2012-12-16 19:43:28', 'a') Chyba:You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 's ideology and independent of any publishing house or editorial policy, are actu' at line 1