Reason 1

On Friday my phone stopped working, it seemed like it had been cut, so I called 114 to find out what had happened. The customer service girl told me the Commercial Office made a decision to disconnect it. As I hadn’t been late with any payment or had any other kind of problem, I went to the Etesca office at 19 and C in Vedado, my Commercial Office.

All I did was go in and explain the problem to a girl typing on her computer who snarled: “I’m not the one for problems, that’s ‘Reason 1!’ Go in there and see Fulanita.” Fulanita, after trying to communicate with something called MLC and not managing to talk to anyone, typed something, something in her computer as well, and with a smile told me, “Now it’s connected.”

I went home calmly, wondering what could be the problem with this “Reason 1,” how could there be a problem, and who works in the MLC, but I didn’t want to be paranoid. Two hours later I was again at 19 and C, at exactly three in the afternoon (the office closes at four) because they’d cut my line a second time.

From the doorway the girl who doesn’t want problems showed me the way I already knew, the other wrote something on paper and told me the commercial office was exactly there, and they didn’t know anything about anything. I asked her to be honest with me, if they hadn’t disconnected me there, then where, and who had done it: The Higher Powers, she replied. She got up and took the papers to “The Boss” sitting in a little office at the end of the hall, who told me they’d call to see what happened.

The boss was on the phone for like ten minutes and was quite upset. From where I was I couldn’t hear her words but I could read her lips twice: she was saying into the headset that they had to inform her because now she was the one who had to give an explanation; later she said that I was waiting, that she couldn’t put me on the phone again because they would disconnect me again for the one hour maximum.

I was losing patience, I asked to speak to “The Boss” and went into her office, where it was quite hot because the air conditioning wasn’t working. I couldn’t get anything clear, it was a bit cynical. Ultimately I didn’t blame her, I suppose if she told me the truth she’d get into trouble. She told me there was no human way to know what was happening with my telephone, later they would do an investigation of the case to “figure out” what it was, at one point she gave me some analogy between televisions and telephones which I didn’t understand very well. We were both smiling the whole time, it was pure theater, several time I even snickered, especially when she confessed being discouraged by having so many technical things completely outside her control, it would seem that Esteca works through miracles or perhaps the Holy Spirit (or State Security of course).

I will be the whole week without a telephone; on Monday I have to go back even though it became clear that the “answer” was in the hands of “The Higher Powers,” and no one knows who or where they are. As Orlando Luis says, at this stage one could well declare Etesca, Cubalse (or whatever they’re called now), the Ministry of Education, Health, Culture, the cinemas, the theaters, the schools and everything else branches of the Ministry of the Interior. Anyway, we know that “The Highest Power” is precisely the Central Committee.

Segregation?

Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

Written by Anonymous

Despite the fear it gives me to write these emails (which I’m sure are read by them) I have decided to do it, confident that you won’t divulge my name, if the story seems interesting to you.

A few weeks ago I visited Cuba with my boyfriend who’s a foreigner. Among all the things we set out to do was to go to Cayo Coco or Cayo Largo, because I’d heard about how beautiful the beaches are, and also because finally we Cubans are allowed to visit them. My boyfriend is crazy about boats, ships, and in fact here he has one we go out on occasionally. We saw in an advertisement at the travel agency the opportunity to go out on a catamaran at Cayo Largo and dive, to see the bottom of the sea… finally…

We made our reservations at the Hotel Nacional for a very good price for Cayo Largo, a really good package, including airport transfers, the plane ticket, everything to the cayo and back. The catamaran we would have to pay for separately but we didn’t care. Thank God the person who was making the reservation thought to ask me if I was Cuban (my accent already makes them doubt it at times, especially when I realize they treat me better in those places when they think I’m a foreigner and they don’t look at me like I’m a prostitute). I answered yes, I’m Cuban, but I’ve lived abroad for some time, so what’s the problem. He said, “Ah, but if you’re Cuban you can’t go on the catamaran, you can watch it from the sand.” Do I have to agree that I can experience Cayo Coco without going in the catamaran? I’m accustomed to the bad service there, but I didn’t think they would go so far.

Maybe this story isn’t interesting enough for publication, but I want to share with someone that I felt humiliated, that in my own country (because it’s mine, too) I can’t go in a catamaran.

I’m not telling you all the discrimination I faced there because of my nationality, and what shocked me even more was for being with a foreigner, when you walk with another Cuban you almost don’t notice it, or worse, you restrict yourself from doing things you can’t do and no one asks you anything. My boyfriend had a lot of questions and I could only offer a few answers: Because that’s the way it is, because I can’t go in, well imagine, it’s always been like this.

What is a social network?

Photo: OLPL. Paying Gorky's fine of 600 pesos

When Gorky was detained in August, among the blogs of Cubans inside and outside of Cuba we established a social network: exchange of information, giving priority to news about the situation in Havana, etc. From here, we also established a much smaller network connecting the bloggers and prioritizing solidarity. I remember Lizabel Mónica called me and said it could be any one of us who were in the dungeon. If, when we left the protestódromo, a friend with a telephone hadn’t been there to take me on a bike to the home of another friend who had a computer, and I hadn’t had an email account from another friend, I’d never have been able to send out a message about the beatings and arrests. We didn’t know it, but we were a small social network.

What this is, more or less, is a completely independent group of citizens who are not active in the same organization, or who don’t belong to any (like me), and who for solidarity, conviction, or because it works for them and they like it, establish contact for mutual help.

The good thing is that it is NOT an organization and everyone can participate up to whatever point they consider comfortable and convenient. You don’t have to sign anything, write anything, take responsibility, protest, or take any risk you don’t want to take.

I do believe that in Cuba there are people who read the blogs, and I also believe that these people can help other people read the blogs. If you read me from Cuba, you have copies of the discs, pass them around in USB flash drives, renew your copy monthly with the person who gave it to you last month, and pass it on to your friends.

And always remember: You are reading Cuban voices because you like doing it, and that has no risk.

And now what?

Foto: Claudio Fuentes Madan

I waited at 23rd and 10th to get the P4 bus at 7:00 in the morning and got to my destination (Playa) at 9:45. I tried to get on board three buses but I couldn’t do it, and the rest of the time I spent trying to catch a 10 peso taxi, but there were none. A bit strange, what’s happening, I asked myself, while looking up and down a deserted 23rd, normally crammed with taxis.

At 4:00 in the afternoon I was well informed, no one in Havana was talking about anything else: There is an operation and they are seizing cars and so the drivers, of course, are terrified and no one wants to operate. I have several comments on the matter:

- At the bus stations they’re conducting a special operation, confiscating the cars “on site.” Despite numerous calls from the drivers to their contacts in the PNR (National Revolutionary Police), no one can do anything about it.
- Until recently they were giving out licenses, but not anymore.
- A license is unique and not transferable, and represents the car and the owner; this means that only the owner of the car can drive it, not a friend, nor a relative nor absolutely anyone else in the universe.

The consequences? Always the same. Everyone who went by car now has to go by bus. If before it could take you an hour to get aboard, now it can take three, and in 24 hours we’ve returned to the Golden Age of the Post-Transportation Revolution.

Why is the government taking these measures? Beyond control and repression I can’t stop thinking that they must be getting something more, but what? Why not give the licensees a little more flexibility and increase the tax money coming in? Now the bus stops are a crush of people and getting to work is a hardship, with people arriving late or not at all. Not in its wildest dreams can the state transport system meet the demand and nobody wins: not the people, not the taxi drivers and not the state.

From No to Yes in two weeks

This video is from the lobby of the Cohiba: for some weeks it was No, now it's Yes... The most important thing, I think, is that this Yes continues. Also there could be a day when the government says Yes to connecting all Cubans from our homes... perhaps a day not too far off.

All-Inclusive... Segregation too?

Text: The White Salamander



To see how in history a human being has been capable of so many forms of repression and disdain for his fellow men is a challenge to one’s own sensitivity. To feel in one way or another disdained and deprived of some right, for whatever reason, is quite pitiful. It is also a challenge to one’s equanimity, to not suddenly turn into a violent offender every time they make you part of the segregated human race.

We might think bad thoughts and believe that this is a goal of those who divide in order to provoke something bigger if you rebel and disobey the given order. Because to attack in your own defense could turn you into prey by giving cause to the power entity that segregates you, accusing you of physically or verbally attacking authority. 



I comment on this because for some days I felt very irritated and upset. I was around Varadero by chance and decided to take a dip at the beach, but I needed to go to a bathroom in order to change clothes comfortably, to take off my traveling clothes, to look in my suitcase for the bathing suit and to put it on, and as I went by a small hotel, the Hotel Club Tropical to be exact, I went in through the lobby looking for the bathroom and I felt the doorman calling me. I tried to evade him, but he was quite insistent and when he inquired I responded about my need, to which he said absolutely no. Surely, if I had been a foreigner he would have let me go past with hardly a glance.

As almost always happens, I concluded not to ruin my friends’ afternoon and not to spoil the few hours that we would be on that beach. I decided not to make a case of it and not to make the scene everyone deserved, from the foreign tourists to the manager, but most of all the orders-following-Yeti (in uniform, whose back you see in the picture) for wanting to throw me out of there with manners, as if I was a mangy dog and not a person, a domestic tourist, as Cuban as he or anyone in his family is. Then I called a truce and decided to get out of there in search of another place which ended up being a disastrous bathroom in the cafeteria where the modest price of a ham and cheese sandwich is 1.75 CUC, which is about 50 pesos in national money.

Above all, I left that Club Tropical with the fixed idea of at least writing about this, as a way to criticize or denounce what the fact of being segregated by our own kind, even at this time, means. It is unbelievable that something as simple and humane as going into a bathroom to change clothes is not allowed and that, only after a long time, citizens may once again rent a hotel room (but at what prices!) though we may not have the right to all services provided to foreigners, such as the use of the Internet, where, for example, comments such as this to the outside could damage even more the image of the regime in this country. This country, where those who possess the power and who control us from within pride themselves so much about caring for the inviolable human rights. A country where nobody can come to inspect from the outside, but I hope that at least they may eagerly inspect for real improvements for its people.

P.S.: xenophobia: (from xeno and phobia) f. hatred, repugnance or hostility towards foreigners.

If that were the case, what would be the name of the same thing directed towards the natives? Some Cubanologist should tell me, because perhaps the term already exists and I still do not know it.

Look at the signs of the Club Amigo (Club Friend – but friend of whom?) and All-inclusive, segregation too?

For 3 CUCs

Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

Maité works for the Office of the Historian in Old Havana. She’s a museum guard, working Monday to Friday from eight in the morning to six at night, and Saturdays until one. She earns about 350 pesos a month and if she does nothing wrong, is never late and never sick, she receives 10 CUCs along with her salary as an incentive wage.

Entry into the museum is free, although there is a small box where foreigners who feel solidarity with the restoration work of Eusebio Leal can leave something to show their support. Every week a team of collectors goes through the museums and takes the money, which comes in at higher and higher levels.

But Maité’s salary is not enough to live on; sometimes more insightful tourists come into the museum and give her money and it helps a little with the day-to-day. She knows the risks, if the directors of the museum see her taking the tourists’ money, even though they gave it to her, she would be punished or fired from the center (the established rules are clear that one cannot accept ANYTHING from the visitors).

One day she had bad luck, from the floor above the director saw the 3 CUCs given to her and the terrible thing Maité did with them: straight to her pocket.

They didn’t throw her out (the director was kind): they elevated her ‘case’ to personal, had a meeting with all the workers and the union to call public attention to it, fined her salary for four months and made her work in another museum as an assistant cleaner.

Unions

Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

The news on the Havana channel could be described as slightly closer to reality than that on the Television National News, small details make me think there are slightly younger people behind the script. The other day there were talking about the unions and they carried three interviews: two man-on-the-street interviews and one with the head of a union.

The union head explained, not very clearly, that Cuban unions have two missions: to represent the worker and the State. The first was the one everyone knew, fighting for the rights of the worker and ensuring they are not trampled; the second, a little ambiguous, refers to defending the rights of the State, which has the “goodness” to legally recognize the unions, and it was their main task because they, for their part, defended the work of the revolution. He argues that there were contradictions between the interests, but no antagonism. Honestly, I didn’t understand a thing.

The workers interviewed on the street said that their union didn’t exactly represent them, one said “they had to improve the situation.”

When I worked for the State as a teacher I had a contract with an indefinite duration, the type of contract that doesn’t give the worker the right to hardly anything (no retirement, no vacation). After two years I tried to get a fixed contract, as I assumed was my right, but I hit a bureaucratic block: I couldn’t be fixed because the “seat” of teacher was not contemplated at my center.

I talked to the union and asked its help in intervening with the directors and pressing for the creation of a seat. I began to pay almost 100 pesos a year to the union, to go to the meetings, to raise my problem… but nothing happened. The head of my union seemed to be concerned only with collecting the money, attending the meetings (at which she said absolutely nothing) and creating an unblemished Record (everything in order, everything under control). In this same period a colleague of mine got pregnant. Since leave was not covered in our contract, she was informed she wouldn’t get maternity leave. From her first through her eighth month she was working and we were pursuing all the ways to make it happen: we accomplished nothing. The union leaders made jokes in bad taste in the hallways: don’t let me see that you’re pregnant too.

A few months later I stopped paying the union and the following one I cancelled my poor contract, renewable every three months.

More military

Video: Professor The Ciro

Why did the new Education Minister belong to the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR)? Analyzing what meaning the existence of an army might have in society is, without a doubt, beyond my comprehension; that I might dream of a world without armies and without the military is a utopia.

But what is not a utopia is to want a country where the Armed Forces have clearly defined their limitations and where the institutions of civil society maintain, beyond their autonomy, control over military power. The new changes in the government point to increased militarization (if this is even possible) of Cuban society on all levels. All the senior positions that are supposed to be filled by civilians (including the presidency, of course) are gradually being occupied by military men, while the Fidgeter on Olympus announces a change in wardrobe: from white guayabera* to an olive green uniform.

It’s still too early to observe the results of this pyramid of power, but history has already demonstrated to us many times what happens when a society is governed by soldiers.

Translator's note
Guayabera = A Cuban dress shirt

Second Sunday in May, Mother’s Day, no?

On the second Sunday in May, since I have had the power of reason, 12th and 23rd is filled with people: selling flowers, food, thousands of people go to the cemetery to visit the graves of their mothers and grandmothers. The state allows many small food vendors (not cheap, by the way) and people have fun and celebrate a day that in our culture is one of the most important of the year.

I was walking along 12th and 23rd last Sunday, a little surprised because unlike in previous years and despite the balloons and flowers, I didn’t see a single sign that said, “Congratulations Mom!” I thought maybe they’d been forgotten, in the rush to prepare everything at the last minute on Friday. However a single small sign made me think that maybe I was mistaken, that those of us who were celebrating Mother’s Day were the ones who buying, because those who were selling, it appeared, were celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Triumph of the Revolution… again.