Santa Clara-Havana (1)

Image: Hamlet Lavastida, exhibition of August 2009 in a private gallery.

Yesterday I came from Santa Clara in a new Chinese Yutong bus with air conditioning. The wait and the trip could have been perfect, but sadly the institutions, companies and services in this country, even though they invest thousand and thousands of dollars, can’t avoid shocking you in their tortured state agony.

At one in the morning I arrived at Santa Clara station, and as I had no return ticket (it is impossible to buy one in Havana), I put my name on the waiting list for the first bus, at six. The waiting list means that when the bus comes, they call those with no tickets in the order of arrival, and they fill the available seats.

The waiting room was almost empty, some children slept on their mothers’ laps and others bobbed their heads in extremely uncomfortable plastic seats; you have to wonder if the designer felt a dark and twisted hatred for humanity. I was surprised that you could smoke, and even sleep on the floor, but as there were children I smoked outside and I didn't settle myself on the floor as it seemed inhumane. I put my purse in the chair beside me and lay down, it wasn’t a bed but after an hour in a terminal support for your head is like entering paradise. Unfortunately the earthly paradise is only for the privileged, the agent came into the room and woke me up:

- You can’t rest on the chair next to you.
- Why?
- It’s the rule, if the inspector comes he’ll scold me.
- This law is a bit fascist, madam. Did you know that one of the tortures the STASI used was to not let the prisoners sleep? And you can sleep on the floor. This doesn't bother the inspector?
- Also you can’t put your purse on the chair next to you, you are occupying a space that is for people.
- If someone comes I’ll move it, but it’s vacant, I don’t think it will happen.
- You have to vacate it, it’s Mistreating Social Property.
- Excuse me but you must understand that this is not Mistreating Social Property, that’s absurd. I’m sorry, I’m not moving it.

I was biting my tongue to keep from laughing what with the Mistreatment of Social Property. I knew it was going to cost me dear to argue with a state bureaucrat. With these people things can get very serious, they earn a pittance for a salary but have absolute power over five square meters and they apply it with the same irreverence, force and abuse of power that they have seen those with “Absolute Highest Power” apply to them, a kind of revenge I suppose.

She got hysterical and started to shout, telling me that I could not do what I wanted, that the director could not stand that kind of attitude, that who did I think I was and that for my crime they weren’t going to dock her pay because she’d kill me first.

- Excuse me? If I leave my purse here they’ll dock your pay? The minute they start that I’ll move it.
- Nobody is going to take my money. You remove that purse because it is Mistreatment of Social Property or else I’m going to kick you out of here!

Still trying not to laugh, I began to feel a little sorry for this woman who now doesn’t even care about the purse, only about launching her firepower at me. I looked around and saw that people were beginning to smile. Nor can I deny that the slap of an agent in her diarrhea-brown uniform in a bus station at three in the morning is the saddest thing in the world. I tried to calm her down:

- Look, I’ve moved my bag, you can relax.
- Listen you, if I see you mistreating social property or sleeping I’m going to call the police and I myself will drag you by the hair to the patrol car.
- Look, you already woke me up and clearly I’m not going back to sleep, the bag has been removed because I don’t want you to lose your pay, but on the other hand don’t threaten me, I’m not afraid of you or the police. And, when you call the station let me know, I want to hear you say that you need a cop car at three in the morning for a girl who put her purse on the chair next to her, it’s a crime without parallel in human history, I’d be delighted to hear the response you get from the officer on duty.

She left but she was beside herself, still yelling a while around the place, at one point she neared the window and scolded me:

- What happened is that I want you to travel, that’s why I let you be.

I had to work hard to control myself and not tell her, “I too moved the purse to help you, we’re even,” but I was afraid she’d have a stroke that very instant. The rest of the morning she spent keeping any eye on me, waking up a few more who were sleeping on their chairs and managed that, by 5:30, half people in the station were rolling around on the floor disdainfully while the more scrupulous smoked quietly in their seats.

The little things that make it worse

On Thursday a man from the gas company knocked on my door and told me that he was going to change the meter and that I had to give him my last payment receipt. After an hour of turning the house upside down I had to give up: I’ve lost it. I go down and tell him:

- Look, I’m sorry, I don’t have the receipt.
- Then I can’t change the meter.
- No problem, don’t change it.
- I have to change it.
- ?...!

The sad thing is he decided to change it and while he was trying to do that he ended up breaking my deteriorating pipe. He didn’t take the trouble to climb the stairs and tell me because his team is not the “repairers” only the “changers” nor did he try to clean up the mess. He cut off my service, reported my rupture to the company, who later reported it to the office of I don’t know what, who then sent a “repairer” team… in less than 24 hours (this last is the science fiction part).

Friday afternoon, after 24 hours of doing without fire, and everyone knows what that has represented in the long life of homo sapiens, and terrorized by the terrible coming of the weekend, I went out to “resolve” the problem with a private contractor. What happened was the nice gentleman from the company had not broken just any pipe: 4 meters and 20 cm of a ¾ inch galvanized zinc pipe that’s not found “even in the spiritual centers.”

One of my most supportive and good neighbors, so good that he still believes in the Perfected Social Enterprise, spent the day giving me reports about the gas company, whom he called for two consecutive days. I suppose that at some point he told the laconic receptionist, politely, to go to hell, she invariably answered: That is already taken care of, for more information call XXX (where no one ever answered).

On Saturday afternoon we took the project in hand. We reconstructed the pipe with one we found on the roof, connected what was left of my pipe directly to the street and, after tremendous anguish, I made coffee. I’m still waiting for them to connect the meter.

I’m tired of listening to them

Image: Luis Trápaga

Until now I’d completely ignored the issue, but the pitcher can only go to the well so many times before it breaks: mine was just broken by Juan Formell.

Beyond the dissertations about the different reasons—pressures, threats or compromises—that have brought Carlos Varela, Amaury Pérez and Juan Formell to speak badly of Porno para Ricardo in public, for me what counts is the consequence: the flip-flopping, the double standard and the sheer nerve. I remember once some years ago I had a depressing enough discussion with an friend who assured me that Silvio Rodriguez probably was elected to the National Assembly because they had threatened to kill his family.

At that time I was insulted, but today it makes me laugh to see the point to which we—the admiring and following public—are capable of justifying the shameless attitude of some of our artists and intellectuals. I suppose they are the same justifications they make it so that today Pablo Milanés is remembered for his declarations in Spain and not for his declarations on the National Television News after his concert in the Protestodrome: The concert that turned me into a revolutionary (or something of that kind)), while Gorki finished his third day in prison and Ciro was interrogated by State Security.

As the joke goes around here: with a ten minute role in the movie Brainstorm, Alberto Pujol overcame months of having been El Tabo*. With a five minute interview, Formall, Varela, Silvio and Pablo managed it so that I, while I continue to admire their work as artists, got tired of listening to them (I never did like Amaury so I don’t include him in the list).

An overdose for my grandchildren: Popularity and Best Blog

This first Cuban blog contest has been avant-garde in many things, but one of the simplest and yet the most exciting, is that it is the first time that a blogger laureate within the island can participate in the awards ceremony (without having to ask permission to leave). I refer of course to Yoani Sanchez, who has been denied the right to get on a plane five times in only two years.

Her prize for Best Blog in Spanish in the Bitácoras contest, a laptop, was the prize I received yesterday for Best Blog. Luckily Orlando Luis spoke first at the end of the ceremony and my impulse to cry passed. When I came to say a few words which I don’t remember at all, at least I didn’t pout even though later that told me I was “as red as a beet.”

A Virtual Island has been made possible thanks to the perseverance of the organizers and the solidarity that exists within the Cuban blogosphere, to all these people my thanks and admiration.

A Virtual Island Contest

At some point I stopped looking at the on line voting in the A Virtual Island blog contest because it was making me nervous My winning the popularity prize [from readers’ votes] of the first blog contest held within the island is the king of thing that I plan, without a doubt, to tell my grandchildren.

I am very happy and thank all the readers who voted for Octavo Cerco. If we could turn back the hand of time and I was 8 years old and in the fifth grade, there would be no possible way to convince my classmates that one day I would win something related to popularity; if I had told myself that two years ago, even less.

Soon we will have the jury results, on 09.09.09, from this small space of Internet in an island without Internet: Good luck to all the contestants, congratulations to all the organizers (especially to Yoani Sánchez) and a thousand thanks to the readers, without whom none of this would make sense.

Procession of the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre

When I reached the Church could not film because the only think I saw all around me were backs. I ventured to raise my arm as high as I could to film blindly, then I felt a hand grab my wrist and an unknown voice said to my neck:

- I will hold you up so you can film her when she leaves.



I could not even see the face of the girl who helped me, there were thousands of people and even though the traffic hadn’t been diverted for the procession, the cautious drivers made a line in Reina Street, waiting for those walking and cheering for the Virgin to finish their march.



I heard, “Viva the Virgin of all Cubans,” and “Freedom.” I didn’t see them but people said the Women in White were a few feet from us… there were so many people I couldn’t tell what was ten feet in front of me. When I walked behind the Virgin I was thinking of all those who for years dreamed of walking with her but were prohibited from doing so, and all those who could not do it today because they aren’t free to think differently.

Back to my proxy

People who read blogs from Cuba generally do it on vocescubanas. It easier because all the bloggers are together on one platform and you don’t have to spend a lot of time opening multiple pages at the same time. Time on-line in Cuba is gold, either because it’s very expensive, because you are navigating as a “guest” thanks to a member, or because you’re at work and you take advantage of the few minutes when you know the one looking over your shoulder is absent.

A new independent platform gave many bloggers the opportunity to manage their sites
(Yoani Sanchez, Reinaldo Escobar and Miriam Celaya). For me, specifically, it was the challenge of administering my blog in WordPress and the possibility of being read thanks to free software from inside my country. For other bloggers like Pablo Pacheco, it meant the certainty that his posts would be published and read from Havana.

However, for some days we haven’t been able to enter Voces from Cuba, this blockade does not change our conditions much: administering a blog is a luxury and almost all bloggers have found a friend who helps from somewhere in the world where the government doesn’t worry about its citizens navigating freely on the Internet. Whether from Havana or from the North Pole our texts will continue to be published despite government paranoia.

For readers on the island: for each paid censor on the Internet there exists in the world a volunteer hacker. Voces Cubanas opens by proxy, I have confirmed that these work in Cuba as of now:

http://www.kroxy.net/
http://www.hidemyass.com/
http://www.ourproxy.com/
http://www.anonymouse.org/

Information about my disinformation

For several days Octavo Cerco has not been right. While I don’t have the slightest idea of what’s happening, meanwhile I try to fix it without having too much on-line time for obvious reasons.

Maybe it’s coincidence that September has started with turmoil: thanks to you I have won the popularity prize in the Virtual Island contest, it’s been a week since Voces Cubanas has been blocked from inside Cuba and now this… it must be coincidence, or maybe astrology.

Translator's note
For several days the Spanish (original) Octavo Cerco site has not been working; it shows only the most recent entry and the sidebar is gone. Dear readers... we are working on it!

More crises?

Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

I walk down the street and the only thing I hear is the issue of “the stores”, it seems that the technique is infallible. I’ve seen some documentaries about civil actions to pressure the government and in various countries they’ve used an economic boycott to bring about political change (South Africa, Chile).

What’s happening gives me the impression that in Cuba there is another dynamic; the economic boycott is used by the government to put pressure on us. It was about a month ago that some of the convertible money stores (the only ones where you can get the basic market basket of goods) have closed and those that are still open are emptying out bit by bit. The other day I was desperately looking for any kind of detergent, and I went into a store where the only thing they had were shelves and shelves of glass cleaner (something like ten different brands). Who buys glass cleaner in Cuba?

Best of all are the conclusions of the victims; one hears, as always, several versions:
1 – All the stores are going to close little by little to become part of the FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces).
2 – What’s happening is there are no longer foreign investors located in Cuba selling their products because they can’t get their money out of the banks in Cuba and they can’t make transactions in their own countries.
3 – The problem is that Cuba doesn’t have any money now to buy products, and what’s in the stores are the products that were already there and that no one ever bought.

I like conclusion number three because it’s related to the glass cleaner, and I wonder who would think of buying such clean glass in a country where almost all the windows are made of wood. On the other hand it seems that the foreigners aren’t the only ones who can’t get their money out of the banks; a friend told me that in order to collect the 5,000 pesos his father left him as an inheritance he has to do so much paperwork he no longer knows if he’ll ever get his hands on the money.

As none of this is discussed in the newspaper Granma, I don’t know which version is true, or semi-true, or completely false. Now I have to walk six hours to be able to wash the dishes at night. As I go and walk through the streets I wonder, what good does it to do for the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) and Raúl Castro to have the economy of the country in this state? Crisis number what are we entering now? Why is there toilet paper in only one store in all of Havana? Are these economic balancing acts caused by the crisis, or is it what is commonly called the internal blockade?

Police causality

Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

I just called a friend and was shocked to find out that he had slept at the police station. My friend is a painter, 24-years-old, and is universally recognized as “the best there is.” As I know it’s difficult to get involved in problems I dismiss the most common possibilities (those almost all of us under thirty have lived through and we aren’t that good): forgetting your identity card, getting into a fight with someone, shouting Down With…Communism, Fidel, Raúl, State Security…in a dark street, or walking around in a shirt with a “troubling” slogan on it.

Discarding the most common, I’m left with the more complex ones. These rarely end up at the station, unless the officer on duty is in a VERY bad mood (sadly the police suffer from chronic bad humor): urinating in a public place, sitting on the grass in a park or on a wall, talking on the corner with a group of friends, or not wearing a shirt.

What happened was: my friend’s friend wasn’t wearing a shirt and the police office was in a VERY bad mood. There were at a bus stop and from the bus the officer shouted at him to get dressed, which he did without saying a thing. The bad thing is that for that type it wasn’t enough and the officer got off the bus to ask him for his identity card. Not only did he not have his card but, like a good citizen and a gentleman, he was carrying his girlfriend’s and as evil fate would have it he made a mistake and gave the officer a card “with the name of a woman.”

To be an officer of the People’s Revolutionary Police (PNR) implies in many cases that you believe yourself master of destiny, i.e. you live with the conviction that everything arbitrary that happens is related to you or your job or, another way to say the same thing: you have a complex. And the officer understood that it didn’t just happen, but that the friend of my friend had given him the wrong card to make fun of him, a woman’s card for the height of impudence and irrefutable proof of “disrespect for authority” (the incomprehensible twists of police machismo).

By then a patrol that was passing through the zone had reached the “scene of the crime” and the officer was beside himself shouting, “You’re disrespecting me!” and he slapped the one with the girlfriend. The group at the stop didn’t wait but jumped to the defense of the slapped one, without thinking of course that the patrol would jump in at full speed with more officers in a VERY bad mood, with nightsticks in hand and without having passed the course titled do-not-use-your-nightsticks-to-hit-defenseless-citizens.

The chaotic rest of the story is more or less similar to all the others where the protagonists are young men of 25 and police officers who lack registered addresses for housing in Havana. In a moment the first were kicked into the notorious “car cage” and from there taken to the station, where chapter two began: the reconstruction of the facts.

But power is power and in the declaration which my friends refused to sign the charges were: resisting arrest and contempt for authority. Mysteriously there was no mention of the slap, and much less of the effeminate card that gave free rein to the imaginative sense of causality of the officer.