The Havana Malecón* is getting ready for Carnival.  On the Piragua,* tents have been set up for restaurants serving international food and colorful kiosks rise throughout the area.  One can already see, on the pavements and in the portals, the metal structures used for reviewing stands, while groups practice the choreography they will show off beginning on Friday.

Because of the successive changes in dates that our popular celebrations have been subject to, we are a people who are never sure when carnivals start.  The announcements that they are about to begin surprise us, and we aren’t even all that frustrated when we hear they have been suspended.  I remember the summer of 2006, when we were left with the painted floats, having been told that Havana’s conga drums didn’t fit with the somber conditions surrounding the illness of Fidel Castro.

Luckily, this year the bands might play.  We continue living in a schizophrenic carnival: most of the products are sold for convertible pesos, with a small portion of the pleasures set aside for those who only have Cuban pesos.*  Due to violence and poverty, our revelries have ceased to be a place for the whole family.  But even so, it is a time to shrug off the slogans, the shortages and the frustrated expectations.  Dancing is a magnificent way of forgetting.

And so we will have a festival along the same perimeter of the coast where, fourteen years ago, Habaneros demonstrated their discontent in a social uprising.*  We will drink, all along the wall that has felt the weight of makeshift rafts heading north.  We will enjoy salsa and reggaeton, on the same ocean front avenue that hasn’t seen ‘official’ demonstrators chanting slogans and waving little flags in months.  To this Malecón, that has witnessed our shouts, our departures and our feigned sentiments, we will go, for a few days, to amuse ourselves.

Translator’s notes:

Malecón:  The seawall and the street along it that circle Havana.

Piragua: An area on the Malecón between the Hotel Nacional and the U.S. Interests Section where concerts and dances are held.

Cuban money:  See the entry, “From the same pocket,” 7 February 2008, and the footnote for “Cyber-mutilated,” 21 July 2008, for more information about the Cuban dual monetary system.

“Social uprising”: See the entry, “Habeas data,” 12 February 2008.  For more information readers may search on “Maleconazo” for information about this event, which occured on 5 August 1994.

To Felipe, who gave me this metaphor

This coming Saturday, July 26, Raúl Castro will speak in Santiago de Cuba.   Broadcasting live on TV, he will address a people who still remember last year’s speech in which he mentioned “structural changes,” “a glass of milk for everyone,” and “the fight against the invasive marabu weed.”  More than just listening to the announcement of new measures, we Cubans are preparing ourselves to confirm how little has been accomplished in the past twelve months.

The time for promises, and for magical solutions to overcome our underdevelopment, is definitely behind us.  The political discourse, without a doubt, has begun its descent.  But this doesn’t mean that some day it will touch down.  A man with maximum powers continues to pilot the plane, while nobody tells us, over the loudspeakers, if we are maintaining our altitude or heading into a nosedive, if we have the wind at our backs or if the engines are about the explode.  Only silence, interspersed with calls for discipline and sacrifice, comes from the speakers of this Soviet-era IL-14 airplane.

We don’t expect pirouettes in the air, nor caramels under our tongues to help us withstand the turbulent ride.  What we do want is for the pilot to show his face, to tell us our itinerary, and for us to decide the course.  We don’t need this speech on Saturday to turn into an exaltation about floating on air; we would prefer a clear report on how and when we can board a different flight.

Working in cyberspace and developing our own projects on the Internet, raises all the issues of citizenship that are too big for Cubans to handle.  We haven’t been able to become citizens in the real world, so we find it difficult to act like citizens in the virtual world.  In this case, there are no shortcuts.  We can’t simply skip over interim stages like we did with videocassettes (which were never sold in the ‘peso stores’* anyway), and tape recorders, and 5-1/4″ floppy disks; instead we must first educate ourselves in civics here in real life.

Let’s see if I can understand the twisted logic of Cuban cyberspace.  “It is not possible for a Cuban citizen to establish their own web domain and house it on a server in Cuba; but it is illegal for them to establish a web domain hosted on a server in another country.”  “Cuba’s ‘official’ bloggers reflect the only true reality.  We, the alternative bloggers, therefore, are puppets of some foreign power.”  “The internet is the terrain where the so-called Battle of Ideas* is fought.  The one principle that defines this battle is: Intolerance.”  In short, in addition to the mutilation of our society, we enter cyberspace — our virtual society — with several pieces missing.

At this point, we see the same behavior on the Internet that we see on our streets.  When placed in front of cameras and microphones, people’s first reaction is to show enthusiasm and ideological fidelity, but their behavior is pure “froth.”  That is why, on the Internet, we call ourselves folklorists and environmentalists.  It’s fine to post employment ads and classified ads, or to distribute free music online, but one needs be careful about expressing opinions.  On the World Wide Web we must hide behind the same masks that we wear in our daily lives.  Having cyber-rights will have to wait, to see if there comes a day when we can at least make a start on becoming citizens.

Translator’s notes:

Peso stores:  Stores that take ‘moneda nacional’ (national money), the currency in which Cubans are paid their wages.  Cuba uses two currencies; the other is the “Cuban Convertible Peso,” (CUC), which is the money sold to tourists.  Many products are sold, even to Cubans, only in CUCs.  The exchange rate between moneda nacional and CUCs is about 24-to-1.

Battle of Ideas:  Readers are encouraged to search on this term to learn more; an explanation would exceed any reasonable length for a footnote.

I go in search of eye drops for my right eye which I irritated a couple of days ago.  The two hour wait at the family doctor gives me time to hear all the gossip of the neighborhood from the mouths of my neighbors who are going to “stop by” the doctor’s office.  The doctor, complaining that her workload is too heavy because some of her colleagues are on a mission to Venezuela, writes me a referral while eating a six-peso pizza.

In the polyclinic the scene is similar, but my worry about my eye makes me behave myself and I wait until they can see me.  One man with antediluvian glasses warns me that he has been waiting in line since six in the morning, so I calculate that I will be able to finish reading the novel I brought, while I wait.  An old woman tells me, sarcastically, without my having opened my mouth, “This is because it’s free.  If people had to pay for it, a different rooster would crow.”*

I am not surprised by the expression she uses because phrases like this are popping up more frequently everywhere, but I am thinking about the peculiar idea of “free” she expresses.  When she tells me this, I imagine that Aladdin’s lamp, rubbed by eleven million Cubans, has succeeded in providing these hospitals, schools and other publicized “subsidies.”  But the image of the genie with his three wishes doesn’t last long, and I start thinking about the high price we pay every day.

The money does not come, as she believes, from the kindhearted pocket of those who govern us, but from the high taxes they charge us for everything we buy in the convertible peso stores, the excessive payments that compel us to take steps to emigrate, the humiliating burden that the foreign currency puts on this island, and the undervalued wages in which all workers are mired.  We are the ones who pay for these services about which, ironically, we cannot complain.

Moreover, we also pay for the gigantic military infrastructure which, because of their warrior delusions, consumes a large share of the national budget.  From our leaking pockets come the political campaigns, the solidarity marches, and the excesses of leadership our government treats itself to around the world.  We are the ones who finance our own gags, the microphones that listen to us, the informers who stalk us, and the quiet parsimony of our parliamentarians.

Nothing is free.  Every day we pay a high price for all these things.  Not only in money, time and energy, but also in freedom.  We ourselves are the ones who defray the cost of the cage, the birdseed, and the scissors with which they clip our wings.

Translator’s note:
A different rooster would crow or, in Spanish, “otro gallo cantaría” = Things would turn out differently.

Habanero Boulevard, on Wednesday night, was the stage for a couple with their son, looking for a little fresh air.  It is only nine o’clock, but judging by the atmosphere it seems like three in the morning.  The smell of urine from every corner confirms that the drunks have started early and that public bathrooms continue to be an illusion.  The abundance of prostitutes causes the mother to hurry through the passage, but the child manages to witness a very direct transaction between a pimp, his “girlfriend” and a tourist.

They have not chosen their route well.  Better they should have taken the bus to Miramar and strolled along 5th Avenue, or stayed home and taken the air from their own balcony.  They go in search of Central Park, but beyond the circle of light surrounding the statue of Martí extends a zone of shadows, propitious to amorous pursuits.  This scandalizes no one as it has been many years since this city has had motels where couples can go.  Sex on a bench in the park is part of the amorous arts for those with no room of their own.

The police are integrated into this sordid nocturnal landscape, and the parents already regret taking their son through this border zone between Central Havana and the historic district.  Each luxurious interior, such as the lobbies of the Telégrafo, Saratoga, Plaza and Central Park hotels, has its counterpart in the dark streets surrounding it.  For each few centimeters of glamour there are meters and meters of crushing poverty.

The little boy only has eyes for the steaming cappuccino that a foreigner, accompanied by two very young girls, is drinking in the La Francia cafe.  From the eyes of a child, the Havana night appears as a succession of light and shadow, of customers who consume and spectators who watch them drink, of blue uniforms who monitor and the specters who evade them, of corners with gorgeous faces and others it is better not to know.

She can withstand a double workday, one as a secretary and the other as a mother and a homemaker, thanks to a few diazepam [Valium] pills that she keeps hidden in her handbag.  No doctor prescribed the drug; instead she herself found the path to peace by trying different medicines.  Only under the small pills’ influence—every time at a greater dosage—can she tolerate the Party meetings, the food lines and the difficulties of feeding her family.

At first she bought them from a neighbor who took various products from a pharmaceutical warehouse.  She experimented with chlorodiazepoxide and amitriptyline, and taking them she was able to sleep at night and to smile when the bus came half an hour late.  During a raid on the black market for medicines, her supplier was sent to jail, and she didn’t have the sedatives that she needed.  Soon after, a new seller appeared, and this one had much higher prices.

Nobody in the family wants to admit that their mother lives in the clouds, with a strangely satisfied face, even when dealing with the problems and shortages.  Her evasion is quieter than her husband’s drunken shuffle as he returns—almost falling–to the house at night.  Both of them have chosen their escape, each of them using what they have at hand; he, with alcohol distilled at the hospital by a skilled hand, and she, with a pill that makes her forget about her own life.

The children can’t adapt themselves to this reality either.  They’d rather nurture dreams of escape, although in a more real and more definitive manner than their parents.  They keep a half-assembled motor underneath the bed, and this August they’ll purr across the Straits of Florida.  The mother won’t worry about them.  Double the diazepam dosage, and she’ll avoid torturing herself with thoughts of sharks, sunstroke, and the separation from her children that awaits her.

Robin Hood has already distributed all the riches seized. At first the poor were contented and screaming for joy from every corner of the forest.  Shortly after, they realized that Sherwood’s great bandit knew only how to redistribute wealth, but not how to create it.

A new session of the National Assembly is now in progress.  What happens inside the Palacio de las Convenciones, however, does not generate high expectations among Cubans.  Not even the official confession of the poor quality of the teachers in secondary and primary educations succeeds in making us feel represented.  For years, we parents have complained – without any result – about the educational disaster created by the presence of young people without much preparation at the front of the classrooms.  Only now does the parliamentary committee recognize it.  

With the same slow motion effect we hear promises of building materials, licenses for anyone who wants to use their car as a taxi, and more products for newborns in the ration market.  All of these promises we have received like a starving person who is offered only a glass of water.  But I clarify that we are not disappointed, we did not expect too much from the parliament that meets today. 

Perhaps if the National Assembly would meet inside one of the Chevrolets that circulates through the streets of Havana, Havanans would dare to demand what we really want.  Only in the ancient seats, sheltered by the anonymity, protected by the speed, would we succeed in externalizing what we want.  Believe me, what is said in these rolling old tin cans does not stop at criticizing the impossibility of buying sand or rebar, nor at the demand for more fabric to make diapers.  Amid the rattling of the gas engines and the screech of the doors, another parliamentary session occurs: smaller, with less power, but – indisputably – more authentic.

Photo caption:  

Reverse with “V” for Victory.  Graffiti in various streets in the Vedado neighborhood. 

With regards to the UPEC* Congress

At the end of my pre-university schooling I had the whim to be a journalist. Between three girlfriends, we contracted with a particular professor who helped us study for the tests to enter the university.  This woman insisted – to the point where I found it annoying – that I would never make a good reporter, but that everything in me pointed to another profession: philology.  Her curse came to pass because I ended up with words, phonics and literary concepts instead of running after the news.

It wasn’t just the prophecy of this Teresias* from Havana that led me away from reporting, but the conviction that in a society marked by censorship, opportunism and double standards, life as a journalist would be the source of a thousand and one frustrations.  I had met Reinaldo,  expelled from Rebel Youth* because, “his line of thought was not in line with the newspaper’s.”  Seeing his desire to write squandered on a tough day as an elevator mechanic was the final blow to my adolescent dreams.

Glasnost had passed us by and in Cuba a sense of lost opportunity spread among reporters and their frustrated readers.  Television told us over and over that production was increasing, the country would resist, and the “invincible leader” would carry us to victory, but our lives gave the lie to every triumphal phrase and each inflated figure.  Time and again I breathed a sigh of relief at not having become a journalist. I thought myself safe in the world of metaphor.

There was not, however, that much distance between the two professions, as the better part of journalism in the official Cuban media encompasses much that is literature.  In fact, I discovered that while trying to escape through fiction, fantasy and the theater, I found the same things the Cuban news bulletins were full of: characters whom nobody believed in, futuristic stories that never materialized, and a few smiling faces selected from among the thousands of anguished visages.

With her prediction, one illicit professor wanted to warn me of something I would discover for myself years later: between the fiction of our press and that of our novelists, the second was going to provide me more certainty.

Photo caption:  Police and “black wasps” control the gay corner of Prado and Teniente Rey

*Translator’s notes: 

UPEC = Association of Cuban Journalists (Unión de Periodistas de Cuba) 

Teresia = From Greek mythology, the blind prophet of Thebes who was transformed into a woman for seven years. 

Rebel Youth (Juventud Rebelde) = “The newspaper for Cuban youth,” according to its website. A daily paper with news of interest to younger people, that is teens and young adults; it is not children’s paper. 

The school year ended and already I see a danger to my bread ration.  My son will be out of school for over two months and, in the excitement of the holiday, could eat the hinges off the doors.  He cannot be satisfied with the floury specimen of 80 grams that he receives from the ration and is sure to attack my quota or that of his dad’s.

Meanwhile, I am preparing myself for the typical questions, “Mommy, aren’t we going to visit our family in Camagüey?”  I try to explain to him that the line for the interprovincial bus is three days long and they are already selling tickets for the second half of July.  Neither will it appease him to know that the price of taking one of the new Chinese Yutong articulated buses to the center of the Island is half the average worker’s salary.

But I will try to please him and will cede my bread, sleep three days in the line for a ticket to Camagüey and until then I will even rent a couple hours of Play Station time from a neighbor.  All this because he has finished seventh grade with good marks and deserves to be honored.  Last Saturday, the end of the school year, he returned to the house with his diploma and launched his war cry from the doorway, “I am on vacation!”

The only thing is, I don’t know if my son has graduated from the seventh grade or from the Communist Party School “Ñico Lopez”. The confusion began when I saw the diploma, which you can look at –  here – so you can see where my uncertainty comes from.  What do you think?

Photo caption:  A vendor exhibits one of the “delicacies” of our days, a claria [a type of catfish]