Eric Umansky

Powerful Cuban Vignette

I subscribe to a newsletter from Cubanet. Most of the dispatches are small-bore stuff--like random clips from rowdy Metro section. Today, it offered something a bit different, an essay: "Cubans on the Brink of a Panic Attack." It feels a bit over-the-top. But then, it also feels accurate:

HAVANA, Cuba - August 12 (Richard Roselló / www.cubanet.org) - Shortwave radio broadcasts to Venezuela and Central America were interrupted for two days this week when someone stole aluminum insulators from transmission towers. A source at the towers, located in San Felipe, south of Havana, said the thief slipped through state security and obviously stole the insulators to sell them for the aluminum content. The towers also carry a signal which interrupts reception of the U.S. government's Radio Martí and TV Martí signals from Florida. "The interruption occurred on Monday and Tuesday," said the source. 3) Cubans on the brink of a panic attack     Rafael Ferro Salas, Abdala Press PINAR DEL RÍO, Cuba - July (www.cubanet.org) - Six o'clock in the morning, Cuba. Felipe, 77 years old, leaves his house. He arrives at the corner cafeteria and waits for his first customer to arrive. A 20-year old mulato man approaches him. Felipe puts his hand in his pocket and takes out two cigarettes. The mulato pays him.

By the end of a half hour a dozen persons have bought cigarettes sold by the elderly Felipe. Everything seems normal, but it's not; the old man sells the cigarettes secretly. This kind of selling is forbidden in Cuba. At mid-morning, the old man goes home after buying the newspaper. "Today was good," he says to me. "There were no police, nor inspectors with their fines, but I never stop being nervous."   

At the other end of the city lives Miriam, 32 years old. She's a black woman who has a two-year old boy. She's single. She works at the place where kerosene is sold for household stoves (abundant in Cuba). Miriam's salary doesn't provide her enough to live on and maintain her son, so she seeks alternatives amid high risks.

Near the end of her work shift a sixty-year old woman visits her. She hands over a big can and Miriam fills it with kerosene. The woman pays and leaves satisfied. She was sold her share of kerosene a week ago using her ration card. But it didn't last. So she comes to Miriam and she sells her the extra under the table.

"If we aren't lucky and an inspector catches us, they'll fire me and impose a fine on her," Miriam tells me. "I do everything for my son, the money they pay me doesn't even allow me to clothe him. I get very nervous when I do this. I live alone with my son, and if they fire me from my job or jail me, I don't know what I'd do."

Orlando Zamora is a young man who graduated in computer science two years ago. He is self-employed and works at home writing graduate theses for which he is well paid. Since his graduation he hasn't found work, so writing theses allows him to survive.

I found him one afternoon in the park and he told me he hadn't done any work the whole day. I asked him if his clientele had slackened and he answered me: "There's never a lack of clients, there's always someone who's going to graduate. What happens is I'm afraid to start writing and have a power outage break my computer. Then I'll have to throw it in and die of hunger."

"The power outages make you nervous, don't they?" I asked him in jest. He responded very seriously.

"They have everyone nervous, pal. I think we Cubans will have blackouts for the rest of our lives. It seems the one we'll have after we die isn't enough."

Thinking of what he just told me makes me nervous, too. I realize I've also been attacked today by the syndrome Cubans are dragging behind for some time: the panic attack.

Walking the city is like walking in the 1960s, although I was too young then to do it alone. My mother was at my side. I remember she walked nervously. It seemed we all walked nervously. It was the month of October and we were on the brink of an explosion. Later it became known as the October Missile Crisis.

We Cubans have never stopped being nervous after January 1959. The 1960s arrived and we enlisted in obligatory foreign wars. The 1980s came with collapses and firing squads in high circles. The 1990s left us without any kind of hopes. The new millenium opened its doors but things continue to cling to an enforced stagnation. Cubans debate amidst uncertainty with something in common: we all live on the brink of a panic attack.

Cuba's Fine Electrical Grid

When I was on the island last year,  I could count on two things every afternoon: 1) I'd need to change shirts due to schvitz-factor; 2) a blackout.

Good to know among the inconvenienced recently was the minister in charge of stopping them...

Minister in charge of energy suffers a blackout
SANTA CLARA, Cuba - 5 July (Guillermo Fariñas, Cubanacán Press / www.cubanet.org) - Yadira García Vera, the minister of Basic Industry, was participating in a meeting on Cuba's ongoing electrical shortage when the lights went out, an occurrence she had promised to prevent.

Sources close to the local committee of the Communist Party said that embarrassed party officials offered their apologies to the minister after the blackout June 23 at the theater of the Central University. Power was restored when an emergency generator was put into service.

That evening, the minister experienced another power shortage at a government security center where she was staying. She was then taken to the Granjita tourism area where emergency generators guarantee a continuous flow of electricity.

García Vera was named Basic Industry minister last summer after Marcos Portal was forced to resign after a five-month energy crisis which the new minister promised to resolve.

Because in a communist paradise the tourists must get the juice.

Cuban Coke Factory Raided

Yes yes, as in Coca-Cola:

SANTA CLARA, Cuba - June 23 (Ramón González Abreu, Cubanacán Press / www.cubanet.org) - Special police forces here raided a clandestine soft-drink factory operating out of a home in the El Condado neighborhood, arrested the occupants and seized products and equipment.

Forces of the Interior Ministry Special Brigades found cases of soft drinks, a bottle-filling machine, carbonation equipment and other tools.

The occupants were charged with possession of equipment in pursuit of an illegal economic activity, but they claimed the equipment was all lawfully acquired in hard-currency stores.

Ahhh the joys of entrepreneurship in Cuba. Here's what I wrote last year during my trip to the island:

Walk around downtown and there appears to be at least a smattering of private enterprise. There are multiple car rental companies, even seemingly competing fast food joints (El Rapido and Burgui). Some are run by one government ministry, others by another (for example, some car rental companies are overseen by the tourist department; others are overseen by the ministry of transportation), but in the end all the businesses are owned by the state. "It's the Duff Beer economy," says one expat. "It might all look different, but it's all coming from the same spout."

Our Crazy--And Ever More Vindictive--Cuba Policy

The latest part of the nuttiness:  loyalty tests. A small clip from my buddy Ann Louise Bardach's LAT op-ed:

Hundreds of Cuban artists and scholars — many of them critics of Castro — have been barred from visiting the U.S. on the grounds of "national security" since the Bush administration instituted a litmus test demanded by Miami hard-liners.

The test: No high-profile Cuban artist gets a visa unless he or she is willing to publicly denounce Castro or, better yet, defect.

If you don't play Miami hardball politics, you don't get to come here.

I'd have trouble believing if it weren't for what I know about Claudia Marquez and family.

Marquez was an independent journalist in Cuba repeatedly harrassed by the state security. Her husband, Osvaldo Alfonso was also a dissident; he was jailed for a year-and-a-half after  Castro's March 2003 crackdown. Both applied to the U.S. for asylum. Both had airtight cases. But the U.S. only accepted one: Claudia.  Except for jail-time, here's the only substantive difference between Claudia's case and her husband's: During a show-trial, he  "confessed" to "counter-revolutionary" crimes.

Apparently admitting to non-existent crimes while under duress means you're not a real asylum seeker.

Claudia is free

A bit less than a year ago, I traveled to Cuba and wrote about Claudia Marquez, a young independent journalist who just could not abide and keep her mouth shut. For her work--writing about the seamy underside of Cuba and occasionally sticking it to Fidel--she was repeatedly interrogated by state security and threatened with the lose of her eight-year-old son, Cristian. Meanwhile, Marquez's husband, Osvaldo Alfonso, was a political activist in his own right and tossed in jail during Castro's 2003 crackdown. He"confessed" to having been influenced by the U.S.--a move that ended up breaking up their marriage, and one that brought suspicion from other dissidents not just onto Osvaldo but Claudia too. From my profile:

''Some people suspected Claudia was working for state security or at least had been weakened to the point where she was helping them,'' says Sauro Gonzalez, a researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists, who adds that the suspicions don't appear to have any basis in fact. ''The state managed to drive a wedge between the families.''

So Claudia was stuck in Havana, hassled by state yet seemiingly shunned by many of its opponents. All of which makes me very happy to report that Claudia is no longer in Havana. She's in Naples, Florida.

Bienvenido Claudia--y Cristian! Anybody looking for a whip-smart Spanish-speaking reporter should look her up.

Cuba Clarified

Last week, Cuban dissidents held a public meeting  in Havana. That caught a lot of peoples' attention because Fidel and Co. never let that happen. But as Randy Paul noted, one of the more curious things about the confab was that top democratic dissident Oswaldo Payá skipped it:

"[The organizers ] don't represent the majority of the opposition, or even the most important groups,'' said Payá, lead organizer of the Varela Project democracy effort. "It's a smoke screen.''

So what was Payá's beef? Marc Cooper explains and in the process takes a solid swing at the U.S.'s Cuba policy and the left's often lame response to it:

U.S. diplomatic representatives did attend the meeting and the delegates listened to a tape-recorded greeting from that renown Freedom Fighter, G.W. Bush.  This, of course, is the kiss of death in Cuba. And not just among Fidelistas. Some of the more prominent dissident leaders, indeed, boycotted the weekend meeting precisely because they felt it was too closely aligned with the U.S. and with the more frothy exiles in Miami.

Ignored (when not scorned) by both the Right and the Left, there is a tenuous current of democratic dissidents in both Miami and Havana who want no part of either Castro or Bush. These folks should be the key players in Cuba’s inevitable post-Castro transition.

I have argued for some years now that the longer Fidel clings to power, and the longer the democratic dissidents are snubbed, the farther and harder to the right Cuba will fall after Castro. The best way to guarantee that the next Cuban regime will be a mafia-dominated dictatorship is to continue the current paradigm—the absolutely stupid polarization of Cuba’s future as either pro or anti-Castro.

That the Neanderthal Right should promote this thinking is perfectly logical. It’s in their favor. But why the continuing silence of most of the American Left on Castro? Why is it left only to Nat Hentoff to speak out?  What does it tell us that a great civil liberties lion like Nat is left to publish his op-ed piece in the Washington Times? Why isn’t it on the front page of some other magazines that I could think of?

'It would be a falsehood to say I want to continue living'

A special Mother's Day tribute...

I spent some time in Cuba last summer, including an afternoon with the Ladies in White, an informal group  whose husbands have been tossed in jail for bogus reasons (such as for, you know, trying to express themselves). They went on a moving, silent protest march outside the  church, whose patron saint, Santa Rita, is  the Saint of Lost Causes. Then we sat down and  they got good and pissed off that their husbands are unjustly rotting in jail.  One woman followed me around the room, repeating "Castro es el Diablo! Entiende?"

Entiendo.

Here are some of their Mother's Day thoughts:

Mother's Day for the Ladies in White

By Roberto Santana Rodríguez

HAVANA- May 6 (www.cubanet.org) - Mother's Day for the Ladies in White - the wives of imprisoned dissidents - is a different kind of day, sad but filled with hope and dreams and confidence in the future.

The Ladies in White have undertaken a campaign that has transcended our borders in its goal of obtaining freedom for their loved ones.

Says Dolia Leal Francisco, wife of Nelson Aguiar Ramírez, president of the Orthodox Party of Cuba who is serving a 13-year sentence, says: "We, the Ladies in White, are a kind of association or movement of women and relatives of political prisoners arrested, tried and sentenced during the repressive wave that the Cuban government carried out in March of 2003. We got together at that time to fight for the freedom of those men who have been unjustly jailed."

Q: Why do you dress in white and what have you done?

A: We don't have any political agenda, just a humanitarian spirit that guides us to rectify a bad act of the Cuban government, which was to jail our husbands who had not committed any crime. We dress in white as a sign of purity and peace. We are the eyes, ears and voices of our imprisoned relatives. We've undertaken many activities. We've walked the streets of Havana, especially Sundays after Mass in the Santa Rita church. We haven't missed a Sunday in two years. We've also sent letters to international personalities stating our case for the freedom of our husbands. We've also asked Cuban government dependencies for amnesty for them.

Clara Lourdes Prieto Llorente is the sister pf independent journalists Fabio Prieto Llorente, serving a 20-year sentence. She says: "Everything changed radically in 2003. We no longer have Mother's Day because we're all uncertain whether my brother will be freed or not. My 70-year-old mother, Ramona Llorente, hasn't seen Fabio in a year. She's suffering from leukemia and is unable to go to Camagüey for a visit. Mother's Day has become a day of sadness for us."

Gloria Amaya González is the mother of two prisoners of conscience: Guido and Ariel belong to the Alternative Option Movement and are serving sentences of 20 years. She says: "As the mother of two prisoners, how can I feel with them absent? It would be a falsehood to say that I want to continue living. It's difficult to say what I feel when they've torn from my soul what I most want in my life, my two sons."

Berta Bueno Fuentes is the wife of Alejandro González Raga of the Varela Project who is serving a 14-year sentence. She says: "Mother's Day was very special before 2003. My husband is a joker and used to play all kinds of tricks with my son. They used to write pretty poems and gave me nice gifts. Sadness overcomes us on this day, but we're sure everything will return to normal when Alejandro comes back."

Elsa América González Padrón is the wife of Víctor Rolando Arroyo Carmona, independent journalist sentenced to 26 years. She says: "Mother's Day Hill be a happy one for me because I have my two sons with me, Rainer and Miguel Angel, and my husband, although imprisoned, is alive, strong and courageous. But it will also be sad because it will be another Mother's Day when we're separated."

Laura Pollán Toledo is the wife of Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez, independent journalist and president of the Liberal Party of Cuba. She says: "I was not thinking of going to the Santa Rita church last year until a state security agent came by the house two days before and told me not to go, that we were being manipulated, that is wasn't convenient, that I was in the wrong group. I told him to get out of the house and never return. Since then, I've not stopped going."

Notes from the socialist paradise

From Cubanet:

HAVANA, April 29 - (Richard Roselló / www.cubanet.org) - Twenty-three Cubans who sought asylum in the Mexican Embassy have received prison sentences ranging from tour to 18 years.

Eighteen of the Cubans penetrated embassy grounds February 27, 2002, in a commandeered bus that smashed through the entrance, four scaled the fence and one walked through the damaged gate.

The sentences were made public by Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz,, president of the dissident Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation. He termed the sentences harsh.

The would-be asylum seekers were tried in January, but were only advised recently of the sentences meted out.

Paramilitary forces removed the 23 from the embassy grounds before they were able to formally ask for asylum.

Embassy officials had asked Cuban authorities to allow the 23 to return to their homes and not face trials.

Troubled by low voter turnout?

Like any good, (soy) latte-sipping American, I am. I propose we learn from Cuba:

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba - April 19 (Jorge Ramón Castillo, ICDPress /
www.cubanet.org) - Several government officials, headed by zone delegate Hugo Cuesta, visited Omar Hung at home on Sunday and hectored him for refusing to vote in municipal elections held that day.

The officials reminded Hung that the recommendation of neighborhood authorities are necessary for just about any transaction involving work or study opportunities, and told him his present attitude would bar him later from favorable consideration along those lines.

Hung refused to vote, in spite of his father's entreaties to go and save himself the aggravation. He argued that if the elections were free, why would they force him to participate.

A physician who is Hung's neighbor and also a government opponent, Evelio Manteira, did not vote in the election, and as far as is known, was not visited by the group.

An economist who asked not to be identified said: "I went to vote so as not to brand myself as a counterrevolutionary, because I could lose my job."

Ahhh, that makes me feel better!

Complex Persecution

Randy Paul notes the death of Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante.   Infante was a son of the revolution:

He fell out of favour after opposing the government's decision to ban a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother. Castro publicly rebuked him in a trial and he was henceforth forbidden to publish.

I'm reminded of a line I once read by Infante,  "There is no such as a persecution complex in a place where the persecution is so complex." I can't recall the name of the book because I gave it to Cuban journalist Claudia Marquez.  She emailed in December to say she's been given permission to leave and last I heard she's still stuck there.