Global Voices » Cuba

Cuba: Prisoner of 18 Years Released

Janine Mendes-Franco — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:55:57 +0000

“After almost 18 years as a captive in the Castro gulag, Rafael Ibarra Roque on Thursday was released from jail“: Uncommon Sense says that “his release represents a victory for Ibarra, his family and the Cuban opposition.”

Cuba: Collapsing Capital?

Janine Mendes-Franco — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:28:01 +0000

“For Rogelio, 49, the need for housing is stronger than his fear of losing his life due to a collapse”: Iván's File Cabinet discusses the conundrum many inhabitants of Havana face.

Cuba: Pollan's Family Owed Apology

Janine Mendes-Franco — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:11:59 +0000

Iván García writes about the late leader of Las Damas de Blanco, Laura Pollan, recounting a violent assault on the group days before her death and saying: “If they have anything left of humanism and dignity, her assaulters owe a public apology to the family of Laura Pollan Toledo.” Pedazos de la Isla, meanwhile, notes here and here that the violence and intimidation continue.

Cuba: Bloggers Say Pope Should Postpone Trip

Janine Mendes-Franco — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:03:15 +0000

Cuban bloggers have been making their feelings known about the impending papal visit to Cuba, their main concern being that the Vatican is putting its stamp of approval on the Castro regime despite regular reports of human rights violations coming out of the island.

In light of new reports of state-sanctioned actions against members of Las Damas de Blanco Last weekend, diaspora blogger Uncommon Sense suggested that:

Pope Benedict XVI should postpone his planned visit in late March to Cuba. The visit was part of a quid pro quo between the regime and the church, but continued repression of women trying to go to Mass should not have been part of the deal.

The blogger also posted a link to an e-Petition soliciting signatures from people who agreed with the postponement of the pontiff's visit “until human rights conditions improve in Cuba”.

Pedazos de la Isla echoed this concern, as he reported on “another Sunday of repression”:

Just weeks before Pope Benedict’s visit to Cuba in March, another Sunday on the island- February 5th 2012- was marked by an excessive level of violence on behalf of the dictatorship against the peaceful Resistance, for simply trying to attend church.

In the city of Holguin, 5 Ladies in White were brutally arrested around 9 in the morning as they tried to reach the Jesus Christ Redeemer of Men Church.

The post went on to detail the kind of violence some of the women testified about:

In Guantanamo, 11 Ladies in White were able to make it to church, despite a constant vigilance. Another 20 Ladies in White assisted mass in the Santuary of El Cobre in Santiago de Cuba. 16 women were arrested as they tried to get to that mass, however, according to the Twitter account of Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia (@jdanielferrer). Among those arrested, according to his Twitter, were Oria Casanova who was “violently arrested, dragged, and beaten by 4 oppressive agents” and Liudmilla Cedeno who was victim of “sexual harassment in the cell where she was being held”. Ferrer Garcia denounced, also through his Twitter, “that is how the henchmen who sustain the Castro brothers are- they beat, sexually assault, and harass defensless women in Cuba”.

The blogger ended by saying:

In Cuba, the Ladies in White and other pro-democracy activists will continue marching, whether Pope Benedict publicly speaks out for them or not.

Speaking out for the Ladies in White is one issue, speaking with them is another. Capitol Hill Cubans reported that:

Last week, the Vatican confirmed meetings with Cuban dictators Raul and Fidel Castro during Pope Benedict XVI's March visit to the island.

Meanwhile, Cuba's courageous Ladies in White have been told to stand idly by as the Pope's agenda is “very heavy” (apparently from meeting with dictators).

How has the Castro regime received this news?

With impunity, of course.

babalu also commented:

Apparently, the Vatican has set aside time during the Pope's visit to Cuba in late March to have the pontiff meet with dictators Fidel and Raul Castro. However, they are not sure if the Pope will have time to meet with the Ladies in White, devout Catholics who are suffering repression, intimidation, beatings, humiliating sexual assaults, and death at the hands of the Castro dictatorship for trying to attend mass every Sunday.

Is it me, or do the Vatican's priorities appear to be backwards?

Iván García, meanwhile, wrote a thoughtful post on “the flirtations of Castro with the Vatican”:

It has been a formidable spin. Pure political juggling. A future strategy.

After a stormy and hostile period against the priests, Catholics and of other religions, where not a few went to jail or were imprisoned in labor camps, Fidel Castro changed his policy of confrontation. It was because of the rise to power by popular and democratic vote of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1971, that Castro was restated his strategy of gunfire toward the Vatican.

Latin America was and is the region with the greatest number of Catholics worldwide. The bearded commander realized at once that any revolution, whether through elections or armed uprising, should begin by acknowledging the role played by priests, bishops and cardinals in a new proposal for social change and advocacy of the always excluded in the hemisphere.

And he began to design a new ideological castling. The Fourth Congress of the Communist Party in 1991, he accepted as members believers of any denomination.

He realized that to subvert, ideas were more important than bullets. And if these ideas were proclaimed from the pulpit…so much the better.

The post continued recounting the chain of events that will culminate in next month's papal visit:

After Castro was on the threshold of death in 2006, his brother, General Raul Castro, took the reins of power and further paved the way to Rome.

When the a political prisoner Orlando Zapata died on February 23, 2010, as a result of a prolonged hunger strike, and the civilized world launched a major campaign against the regime in Havana, due to excessive repression against opponents and the Ladies in White, Castro II knew immediately who to call.

And he called Cardinal Jaime Ortega…The Cardinal would become key political chess piece for the Castro brothers. He was the partner par excellence between government, the militant Ladies in White and the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos. The talks allowed the release of dissidents who had remained behind bars since the crackdown of March 2003. Someday we will know if Ortega is driven by the hope that the situation in Cuba will lead to a democracy, or other pressures have led him to play a role that some exiled opponents see as cowardly.

What intrigues local observers is whether the conspiracy with the Cuban Catholic Church and the Vatican could lead to a democratic state of law. Or is just a ploy to gain time and give a wider social space to Catholicism in education and health, sectors facing hardships due to the widespread economic crisis in the nation.

Church and state, at least from the Cuban blogosphere's perspective, seem to be irrevocably intertwined.

The thumbnail image used in this post is by Catholic Church (England and Wales), used under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) Creative Commons license. Visit Catholic Church (England and Wales)'s flickr photostream.

Cuba: Cell Phone Power

Janine Mendes-Franco — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:45:12 +0000

“Cell phones have changed our lives,” writes Generation Y, adding: “If, in March of 2008, Raul Castro had imagined the role cell phones would play in Cuba’s incipient civil society, he probably never would have authorized their use.”

Cuba: On Yoani Sánchez and Dilma Rousseff

Firuzeh Shokooh Valle — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:33:18 +0000

La Pupila Insomne launches a ferocious critique of the press coverage [es] of Yoani Sánchez's plea to the President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff to intervene with the Cuban government to grant her the exit permit to travel to Brasil for the screening of a documentary in which she appears.

Cuba: Letters to the Editor

Firuzeh Shokooh Valle — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:18:59 +0000

Elaine Díaz comments on and critiques the state-run newspaper Granma's publishing politics of letters from [es] the readers.

Cuba: New Angle on Wilman Villar Case

Firuzeh Shokooh Valle — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:10:44 +0000

The Miami Herald reports that the widow of Wilman Villar -the Cuban prisoner who died recently after a hunger strike purportedly in protest against the government- has confirmed that her husband was put in jail after being arrested for domestic violence.

Cuba: Fatal Collapse in Downtown Havana Stirs Online Debate

Ellery Roberts Biddle — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:57:55 +0000

Over the last three weeks, two buildings have collapsed in downtown Havana. Located on Calzada de Infanta, a bustling thoroughfare that runs from the Vedado section of the city to Old Havana, the first building to fall killed three of its inhabitants and severely injured six more. There were no fatalities or injuries with the fall of the second building, an old theater that was no longer in use.

Bloggers from Voces Cubanas [es] and Havana Times saw the incidents as clear evidence of state officials' negligence of housing conditions in the city.

Generacion Y's [es] Yoani Sánchez wrote (English translation here):

Calzada de Infanta, in Havana. Photo by Flickr user amycgx (CC: BY - NC)

¿Qué solución urgente se aplicará para que esas tragedias no sigan siendo parte del escenario cotidiano? No vamos a aceptar una respuesta al estilo de que “se está estudiando el tema para aplicar soluciones de manera paulatina”. Tampoco nos vengan ahora con que la culpa la tienen los propios moradores que se quedaron en un lugar inhabitable. ¿A dónde hubieran podido ir? En lugar de eso exigimos que se construya, se repare, se nos proteja.

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.

Sin EVAsion's [es] Miriam Celaya wrote that such incidents have become “commonplace” in the city, but that the first received much greater attention than usual, due to the building's central location, and reports of the collapse by citizens using Twitter.

As Twitter users and bloggers reported on the incident, Celaya wrote that the state press had little choice but to cover it as well. She criticized their approach to the story (English translation here):

La prensa revolucionaria aprovechó la desgracia para resaltar la importancia de la intervención del Cuerpo de Bomberos, la Policía Nacional Revolucionaria, los servicios médicos de urgencia y las autoridades de la provincia y de los municipios Centro Habana y Plaza de la Revolución. Ellos fueron, a juzgar por los medios, los verdaderos protagonistas. La tragedia humana palidecía y se empequeñecía frente a la grandeza de las instituciones revolucionarias.

The revolutionary press took advantage of the tragedy to highlight the importance of the involvement of the Fire Department, the National Revolutionary Police, the Emergency Medical Services and the authorities of the province and municipalities of Centro Habana and Plaza de la Revolución. They were, judging by the media, the true central characters. Human tragedy was dwarfed and paled in comparison to the greatness of the revolutionary institutions.

She summarizes the article about the collapse that appeared in the print version of the national daily, Granma [es], on Thursday, January 19:

“la actuación coordinada e intensa” de “las fuerzas del Cuerpo de Bomberos y los servicios médicos de urgencia en el rescate de las víctimas y en el empeño de salvar la vida de los que se encontraban atrapados”, como si esa no fuera exactamente la función que se espera deben cumplir dichos cuerpos; o como si los derrumbes fuesen un accidente del clima o un mero capricho arquitectónico. Algo inesperado, impredecible, antojadizo, casual.

“Intense and coordinated action” of “the forces of Fire and Emergency Medical Services in the rescue of victims and in the effort to save the lives of those who were trapped,” as if those were not exactly the expected roles of such organizations, or as if building collapses were an act of God, or just an architectural whim; something by chance, unexpected, unpredictable or capricious.

Isbel Díaz Torres, at Havana Times, wrote of the many buildings in Havana that have fallen into disrepair and described how government policies have left Cubans with little capacity to repair their homes:

From what has been announced, the new formula designed by the government to provide home improvement loans and grants doesn’t allow for major structural work, which is what is required for many of the dilapidated buildings that abound across the capital, particularly in the municipalities of Centro Havana and Old Havana.

[…]

Of course many of the buildings are in such deteriorated states of construction that the only plausible solution would be their demolition. This, however, is impossible without a housing option for those people still living in them.

Cuba: Get Mad

Janine Mendes-Franco — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:17:38 +0000

Without Evasion shares her wish for 2012: “To see Cuba full of angry people, for it is on that day that we will be closer to such longed for rights and democracy.”

Cuba: Young Activist

Janine Mendes-Franco — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:10:01 +0000

Pedazos de la Isla blogs about a sixteen-year-old dissident who “calls on ‘all Cuban students' to join the resistance to end with the Castro dictatorship.”

Cuba: Exit Visa as Punishment

Janine Mendes-Franco — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:01:13 +0000

Bloggers republish Amnesty International's statement on the Cuban authorities' decision to deny blogger Yoani Sanchez permission to travel overseas, noting that they “[use] exit permits to punish freedom of expression.”

Cuba: Politics & Internet Access

Janine Mendes-Franco — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:46:06 +0000

Dariela Aquique, writing at Havana Times, has a theory that “the Cuban blogosphere is fragmented, consisting of fiefdoms and courts like in the Middle Ages. While some share commonalities, others are definitely at opposing ends of the political spectrum.”

Cuba: Bloggers on SOPA, Culture and the Democratization of Knowledge

Ellery Roberts Biddle — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:08:46 +0000

Since mid-January 2012, the proposed anti-piracy legislation in the United States Congress known as SOPA/PIPA has drawn reactions from a broad range of cultural and political perspectives around the world.

Global Voices contributors have given readers a glimpse of responses from open Internet advocates throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas (here, here and here). Open Internet advocates in the U.S. scored a major victory in January when members of Congress agreed to withdraw the bills from consideration.

Teatro Karl Marx, by Edgar Rubio. CC: BY-NC-ND.

In Cuba, where very few citizens use the Internet regularly, and where the concept of a site like Wikipedia or BitTorrent remains foreign to most people, bloggers brought a unique perspective to the discussion. Unlike many SOPA/PIPA critics in the U.S. and around the globe, Cuban bloggers did not focus on the technical implications of the proposed laws. Both independent and state-affiliated Cuban bloggers saw SOPA/PIPA not merely as legal measures that would have stifled online innovation and openness, but also as a powerful statement about how legislators (and the music and film industries) value culture and creativity as part of U.S. society.

Karel Pérez Alejo, writing for Cubadebate [es] and Trabajadores [es], framed the issue as a polemic dividing “society” or “the 99%” and the laws' strongest supporters:

Si bien algunos han analizado el fenómeno como la confrontación entre Hollywood y Silicon Valley, los millones de reclamos de los usuarios hablan de una guerra más profunda, entre una sociedad que busca manejar una información sin restricciones y un grupo de intereses que intentan seguir un obsoleto modelo de propiedad.

While some have analyzed the phenomenon as a confrontation between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, millions of users speak to a more profound war, between a society that seeks to manage information without restrictions and a group of interests that are attempting to follow an obsolete model of property.

Voces Cubanas blogger Regina Coyula drew a connection between SOPA/PIPA and the FBI’s partial shutdown of file locker site MegaUpload (Spanish version here). Coyula argued that such shutdowns, which would likely have increased if the legislation passed, limit access to knowledge and culture for people who otherwise can’t afford it:

[US authorities], with allegations of piracy, encroached [upon] the alleged right of millions of citizens of the global village to download content that they know they should not — or cannot — pay for.

On La Pupila Insome [es], Iroel Sánchez compared the paradigm of intellectual property rights in the U.S. to the Cuban model, remarking on the ways in which Cuba’s education and cultural systems have attempted to “democratize” knowledge, making it easily accessible for all:

Cuba, con una formación masiva de profesionales universitarios….no hubiera podido desarrollar [su] capital humano sin una concepción democratizadora y no lucrativa del conocimiento…

Cuba, with its massive population of professionals in academia….could not have developed [its] human capital without a democratic and not profit-oriented conceptualization of knowledge…

Since they were introduced in the 1960s, the revolutionary government’s cultural policies have generated bitter controversies over the ideological role of artists in Cuban society. But they also have yielded a strong system of support for artists and cultural institutions. In Cuba, one can attend the national ballet for just a few pesos more than it costs to buy a movie ticket. Access to culture, knowledge, and education is meant to be open to all citizens.

However, when it comes to culture and knowledge that is created and exchanged online, most Cubans are far worse off than any U.S. citizen. For those who do not occupy high-level positions in government, scientific research, or academia, Internet access remains limited.

The Internet has become a contested space where government authorities and the official press have denounced the United States’ “cyberwar” on Cuba; the seemingly limitless landscape of culture and knowledge online is rarely mentioned in the public sphere. Cuban authorities have elected to limit Internet use, presumably in an effort to dampen the potential societal effects of independent online political speech and economic activity.

Similar to Sánchez, Coyula alluded to the uniquely politicized nature of Cuba’s cultural policies, but cast a critical gaze on this “democratized” system for knowledge exchange. In closing, Coyula promoted the notion of an equilibrium, in which the interests of the market and the public good could be harmonized with one another:

It’s true that there is a symbiotic relationship between art and the marketing that puts it in the hands of the consumers. But to see art as a commodity has resulted in the promotion of products of dubious quality at the expense of other values. […] At some point, a balance must be achieved between both interests.

Cuba: Protest Against Hunger Striker's Death

Janine Mendes-Franco — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:50:21 +0000

Pedazos de la Isla posts a video of dissidents protesting the death of political prisoner Wilman Villar Mendoza in a neighborhood of Guantanamo.