The interesting thing about her comment is that she is picked up and posted on the popular Huff ington Post blog:
Yoani Sanchez, award-winning Cuban blogger
Posted April 15, 2009 | 12:19 AM (EST)
Obama Threw the Ball, Now It's In Raul's Court
The ball is in Cuba's court after Obama threw it yesterday, as he announced new flexibility in his policies toward Cuba. The players on this side seem a bit confused, hesitating between grabbing the ball, criticizing it, or simply ignoring it. The context couldn't be better: loyalty to the government has never seemed more perverse and ideological fervor has never been as feeble as it is now. On top of that, few still believe the story that the powerful neighbor will attack us and the majority feel that this confrontation has gone on too long.
The next move is up to Raul Castro's government but we sense we will be left waiting. He should "decriminalize political dissent" which would immediately annul the long prison sentences of those who have been punished for differences of opinion. The ball we would like him to throw is the one that would open up spaces for citizens' initiatives, permit free association and, in a gesture of the utmost political honesty, put himself to the test of truly free elections. In a bold leap on the field "the permanent second" would have to dare to offer something more than an olive branch. We are hoping they eliminate the travel restrictions, which would put an end to that extortionary business of permission to come and go from the Island.
The game would become more dynamic if they let the Cuban people take hold of the erratic ball of change. Many would kick it to end censorship, State control over information, ideological selection in certain professions, indoctrination in education and the punishment of those who think differently. We would kick it to be able to surf the Internet without blocked web sites, to be able to say the word "freedom" into an open microphone without being accused of "a counter-revolutionary provocation."
Many of us have climbed down from the bleachers from where we were watching the game. If the Cuban government doesn't grab the ball, there are thousands of hands ready to take our turn to launch it.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Cuba says blogger ran afoul of the law (Generacion Y)
AP
Cuba says blogger ran afoul of the law
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer Will Weissert, Associated Press Writer Fri Dec 5, 4:40 pm ET
HAVANA – Police have prohibited Cuba's most prominent blogger from attending an independent cyber-workshop and warned that her activities ran afoul of the law, her husband said Friday.
Yoani Sanchez and husband and fellow blogger Reynaldo Escobar were summoned separately Wednesday to a police station near their apartment in Havana's Vedado district and reprimanded, Escobar said in a telephone interview.
Authorities told the couple they could not travel to the western province of Pinar del Rio for a two-day blogger's workshop scheduled to begin Friday night.
"We aren't attending the inauguration of the workshop, which has not been suspended. We've just changed the dynamic of how we are meeting," said Escobar, without elaborating.
An account of the reprimand appears on Sanchez's blog, "Generacion Y." The site was blocked to Internet users on the island Friday.
Sanchez wrote that police told her, "We want to warn you that you have transgressed all the limits of tolerance with your closeness and contact with elements of the counterrevolution."
Sanchez could not be reached Friday, and Cuba's government had no comment.
Another Havana blogger, Claudia Cadelo, was also called into a meeting with police, but failed to appear because she is in the hospital, Escobar said.
The gathering was supposed to involve about 20 bloggers and is being organized by Dagoberto Valdes, a Roman Catholic layman in Pinar del Rio. Valdes was the volunteer director of the church magazine Vitral, which gently called for more plurality and democratic participation, until he was removed from the post by the island's bishop in April 2007.
Valdes was traveling Friday, but his associate, Virgilio Toledo, said authorities in Pinar del Rio also advised two local activists against attending the workshop.
"They think it's an activity about human rights, which it's not," Toledo said.
The Communications Ministry put into effect a law this week that instructs the island's Internet providers to "prevent access to sites where the content is contrary to social interests, morals or good custom, as well as the use of applications that affect the integrity or security of the State."
Escobar said the police suggested Cuba was especially sensitive to criticism as it struggles to recover from the effects of three storms that hit in less than two months this hurricane season, causing more than $10 billion in damage.
Asked if Cuba could be in the midst of a cyber-crackdown, he said, "I don't know how far they will go."
"For dissidents who traditionally have been surrounded, things have gotten stricter," Escobar said, referring to a small group of activists who dare criticize the island's single-party system.
Cuba tolerates no organized political opposition and dismisses dissidents and activists as "mercenaries" who take money from the United States to undermine the communist system.
Sanchez's posts about the struggles of daily life on the island have made her a sensation overseas and she won Spain's Ortega y Gasset Prize for digital journalism.
According to her blog, police said that her activities had "totally nullified your ability to dialogue with Cuban authorities."
Access to the Internet is strictly controlled in Cuba and the government routinely blocks sites it considers too critical.
Cuba says blogger ran afoul of the law
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer Will Weissert, Associated Press Writer Fri Dec 5, 4:40 pm ET
HAVANA – Police have prohibited Cuba's most prominent blogger from attending an independent cyber-workshop and warned that her activities ran afoul of the law, her husband said Friday.
Yoani Sanchez and husband and fellow blogger Reynaldo Escobar were summoned separately Wednesday to a police station near their apartment in Havana's Vedado district and reprimanded, Escobar said in a telephone interview.
Authorities told the couple they could not travel to the western province of Pinar del Rio for a two-day blogger's workshop scheduled to begin Friday night.
"We aren't attending the inauguration of the workshop, which has not been suspended. We've just changed the dynamic of how we are meeting," said Escobar, without elaborating.
An account of the reprimand appears on Sanchez's blog, "Generacion Y." The site was blocked to Internet users on the island Friday.
Sanchez wrote that police told her, "We want to warn you that you have transgressed all the limits of tolerance with your closeness and contact with elements of the counterrevolution."
Sanchez could not be reached Friday, and Cuba's government had no comment.
Another Havana blogger, Claudia Cadelo, was also called into a meeting with police, but failed to appear because she is in the hospital, Escobar said.
The gathering was supposed to involve about 20 bloggers and is being organized by Dagoberto Valdes, a Roman Catholic layman in Pinar del Rio. Valdes was the volunteer director of the church magazine Vitral, which gently called for more plurality and democratic participation, until he was removed from the post by the island's bishop in April 2007.
Valdes was traveling Friday, but his associate, Virgilio Toledo, said authorities in Pinar del Rio also advised two local activists against attending the workshop.
"They think it's an activity about human rights, which it's not," Toledo said.
The Communications Ministry put into effect a law this week that instructs the island's Internet providers to "prevent access to sites where the content is contrary to social interests, morals or good custom, as well as the use of applications that affect the integrity or security of the State."
Escobar said the police suggested Cuba was especially sensitive to criticism as it struggles to recover from the effects of three storms that hit in less than two months this hurricane season, causing more than $10 billion in damage.
Asked if Cuba could be in the midst of a cyber-crackdown, he said, "I don't know how far they will go."
"For dissidents who traditionally have been surrounded, things have gotten stricter," Escobar said, referring to a small group of activists who dare criticize the island's single-party system.
Cuba tolerates no organized political opposition and dismisses dissidents and activists as "mercenaries" who take money from the United States to undermine the communist system.
Sanchez's posts about the struggles of daily life on the island have made her a sensation overseas and she won Spain's Ortega y Gasset Prize for digital journalism.
According to her blog, police said that her activities had "totally nullified your ability to dialogue with Cuban authorities."
Access to the Internet is strictly controlled in Cuba and the government routinely blocks sites it considers too critical.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Bloggers offer glimpse of uncensored Cuba
Miami Herald
Posted on Mon, Apr. 28, 2008
Bloggers offer glimpse of uncensored Cuba
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
Only a month has passed since ordinary Cubans won the right to own computers, and the government still keeps a rigid grip on Internet access.
But that hasn't stopped thousands from finding their way into cyberspace. And a daring few post candid blogs about life in the communist-run country that have garnered international audiences.
Yoani Sanchez writes the "Generacion Y" blog and gets more than a million hits a month, mostly from abroad - though she has begun to strike a chord in Cuba. On her site and others, anonymous Cubans offer stinging criticisms of their government.
But it isn't simple. To post her blog, Sanchez dresses like a tourist and slips into Havana hotels with Web access for foreigners. It costs about $6 an hour and she can't afford to stay long given the price and the possibility someone might catch her connecting without permission.
It's a testament to the ingenuity and black-market prowess Cubans have developed living on salaries averaging $20 a month, with constant restrictions and shortages.
The connections Cuban bloggers are making with the outside world via the Internet are irreversible, said Sanchez, who this month won the Ortega y Gasset Prize for digital journalism, a top Spanish media award.
"With each step we take in that direction, it's harder for the government to push us back," she said.
On an island where many censor themselves to avoid trouble, Sanchez says Generacion Y holds nothing back.
"It's about how I live," she said. "I think that technically, there are no limits. I have talked about things like Fidel Castro, and you know how taboo that can be."
But she added that "there are some ethical limits. I would never call for violence, for instance."
Since taking over from his ailing brother Fidel in February, Raul Castro has lifted bans on Cubans buying consumer electronics, having cell phones and staying in luxury tourist hotels.
While the changes have bolstered the new president's popularity, most simply legalized what was common practice. In a typically frank recent posting, Sanchez noted that many Cubans already had PCs, cell phones and DVD players bought on the black market.
"Legally recognizing what were already facts prospering in the shadows is not the same as allowing or approving something," she wrote. Cuba's leaders are responding to the inevitable, "but they won't soothe our hunger for change."
Authorities have made no sustained effort to stop Sanchez's year-old blog, though pro-government sites accuse her of taking money from opposition groups.
Only foreigners and some government employees and academics are allowed Internet accounts and these are administered by the state.
Ordinary Cubans can join an island-wide network that allows them to send and receive international e-mail. Lines are long at youth clubs, post offices and the few Internet cafes that provide access, but the rest of the Web is blocked - a control far stricter than even China's or Saudi Arabia's.
Still, thousands of Cubans pay about $40 a month for black market dial-up Internet accounts bought through third parties overseas or stolen from foreign providers. Or they use passwords from authorized Cuban government accounts that hackers swipe or buy from corrupt officials.
Sanchez said so many Cubans read her blog that fans stop her on the street.
Generacion Y takes its title from a Cuban passion for names beginning in Y. It offers witty and biting accounts of Cubans' everyday struggles against government restrictions at every turn.
Some of the bloggers hew to the belief that openness is the best answer to official surveillance.
"By signing your name, giving your opinions out loud and not hiding anything, we disarm their efforts to watch us," Sanchez wrote on her blog.
On a blog called "Sin EVAsion" ("Without Evasion"), Eva Hernandez dared to mock "Granma," the official Communist Party newspaper, for taking its name from the American yacht that brought Castro and his rebels back to Cuba from Mexico to launch their armed rebellion in 1956.
"Cuba is the only country in the world whose principal newspaper, the official organ of the Communist Party and the official voice of the government, has the ridiculous name 'granny,'" she wrote. Piling on the heat, she added that the name "perpetuates the memory of that yacht that brought us so much that is bad."
Generacion Y is maintained by a server in Germany, and Sanchez says the Cuban government periodically attempts to block her site within Cuba, though the problem is always cleared up within hours.
Administrators of the "Petrosalvaje" site also claim to struggle with government-imposed limits. A recent post called uncensored Internet access a "virtual raft" - a reference to the rafts on which Cubans flee to the United States.
The government is also into blogging - maintaining dozens of sites dedicated to promoting the island's image overseas.
"Raul needs time," reads a post on Kaosenlared.net, a forum based in Spain. "We are confident, calm and staying united in favor of the direction of our revolution." It is signed Rogelio Sarforat and was apparently posted from Cuba.
Reynaldo Escobar, Sanchez' husband and a former journalist for official media, now uses his own blog to criticize the government. He said Cuba pays supporters to flood the Internet with positive opinions.
He says he knows of nobody who would spend money to go on the Web and defend the system. "Everyone who argues in favor of the government is paid to do so, or does so because they have been asked to," he said.
Posted on Mon, Apr. 28, 2008
Bloggers offer glimpse of uncensored Cuba
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ
Only a month has passed since ordinary Cubans won the right to own computers, and the government still keeps a rigid grip on Internet access.
But that hasn't stopped thousands from finding their way into cyberspace. And a daring few post candid blogs about life in the communist-run country that have garnered international audiences.
Yoani Sanchez writes the "Generacion Y" blog and gets more than a million hits a month, mostly from abroad - though she has begun to strike a chord in Cuba. On her site and others, anonymous Cubans offer stinging criticisms of their government.
But it isn't simple. To post her blog, Sanchez dresses like a tourist and slips into Havana hotels with Web access for foreigners. It costs about $6 an hour and she can't afford to stay long given the price and the possibility someone might catch her connecting without permission.
It's a testament to the ingenuity and black-market prowess Cubans have developed living on salaries averaging $20 a month, with constant restrictions and shortages.
The connections Cuban bloggers are making with the outside world via the Internet are irreversible, said Sanchez, who this month won the Ortega y Gasset Prize for digital journalism, a top Spanish media award.
"With each step we take in that direction, it's harder for the government to push us back," she said.
On an island where many censor themselves to avoid trouble, Sanchez says Generacion Y holds nothing back.
"It's about how I live," she said. "I think that technically, there are no limits. I have talked about things like Fidel Castro, and you know how taboo that can be."
But she added that "there are some ethical limits. I would never call for violence, for instance."
Since taking over from his ailing brother Fidel in February, Raul Castro has lifted bans on Cubans buying consumer electronics, having cell phones and staying in luxury tourist hotels.
While the changes have bolstered the new president's popularity, most simply legalized what was common practice. In a typically frank recent posting, Sanchez noted that many Cubans already had PCs, cell phones and DVD players bought on the black market.
"Legally recognizing what were already facts prospering in the shadows is not the same as allowing or approving something," she wrote. Cuba's leaders are responding to the inevitable, "but they won't soothe our hunger for change."
Authorities have made no sustained effort to stop Sanchez's year-old blog, though pro-government sites accuse her of taking money from opposition groups.
Only foreigners and some government employees and academics are allowed Internet accounts and these are administered by the state.
Ordinary Cubans can join an island-wide network that allows them to send and receive international e-mail. Lines are long at youth clubs, post offices and the few Internet cafes that provide access, but the rest of the Web is blocked - a control far stricter than even China's or Saudi Arabia's.
Still, thousands of Cubans pay about $40 a month for black market dial-up Internet accounts bought through third parties overseas or stolen from foreign providers. Or they use passwords from authorized Cuban government accounts that hackers swipe or buy from corrupt officials.
Sanchez said so many Cubans read her blog that fans stop her on the street.
Generacion Y takes its title from a Cuban passion for names beginning in Y. It offers witty and biting accounts of Cubans' everyday struggles against government restrictions at every turn.
Some of the bloggers hew to the belief that openness is the best answer to official surveillance.
"By signing your name, giving your opinions out loud and not hiding anything, we disarm their efforts to watch us," Sanchez wrote on her blog.
On a blog called "Sin EVAsion" ("Without Evasion"), Eva Hernandez dared to mock "Granma," the official Communist Party newspaper, for taking its name from the American yacht that brought Castro and his rebels back to Cuba from Mexico to launch their armed rebellion in 1956.
"Cuba is the only country in the world whose principal newspaper, the official organ of the Communist Party and the official voice of the government, has the ridiculous name 'granny,'" she wrote. Piling on the heat, she added that the name "perpetuates the memory of that yacht that brought us so much that is bad."
Generacion Y is maintained by a server in Germany, and Sanchez says the Cuban government periodically attempts to block her site within Cuba, though the problem is always cleared up within hours.
Administrators of the "Petrosalvaje" site also claim to struggle with government-imposed limits. A recent post called uncensored Internet access a "virtual raft" - a reference to the rafts on which Cubans flee to the United States.
The government is also into blogging - maintaining dozens of sites dedicated to promoting the island's image overseas.
"Raul needs time," reads a post on Kaosenlared.net, a forum based in Spain. "We are confident, calm and staying united in favor of the direction of our revolution." It is signed Rogelio Sarforat and was apparently posted from Cuba.
Reynaldo Escobar, Sanchez' husband and a former journalist for official media, now uses his own blog to criticize the government. He said Cuba pays supporters to flood the Internet with positive opinions.
He says he knows of nobody who would spend money to go on the Web and defend the system. "Everyone who argues in favor of the government is paid to do so, or does so because they have been asked to," he said.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
CUBA MUZZLES POPULAR BLOGGER
Roberto Leon/ NBC News
Cuban blogger Yoanis Sanchez works on her computer.
CUBA MUZZLES POPULAR BLOGGER
Posted: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 9:00 AM
Filed Under: Havana, Cuba
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez has something to say and she thinks the government is trying to gag her.
For the past 11 months the 32-year-old cyber rebel has ruthlessly disparaged life on the socialist island in her "Generation Y" blog, tackling taboo topics like the country’s aging leadership and what she sees as Raul Castro’s "vague promises of change.".
She even called for Fidel Castro’s resignation months before he issued it and sarcastically suggested that the next ruler should be a "pragmatic housewife" instead of a soldier, charismatic leader or a great orator.
Since last Thursday, Sanchez charges, Internet users in Cuba are experiencing difficulty logging on to her web site.
She is convinced government censors added filtering software to her page to intentionally slow down the connection.
"So, the anonymous censors of our famished cyberspace have tried to shut me in a room, turn off the light and not let my friends in," Sanchez blogged on Monday.
"It won’t work," she vowed. "This is just fuel for my fire."
Still, it’s frustrating. On Monday, it took Sanchez about 20 minutes to download her page from a public Internet café.
On Tuesday all she got was an "error" message – finding the page completely blocked.
To be fair, the problem could be government interference or just Cuba’s spotty Internet service.
Even corporate customers in recent days complained about the overall poor performance on their high-speed Internet lines, said a tech support person for Etecsa, the government-run phone company and sole Internet provider.
Sanchez though doesn’t buy it, arguing instead that this is a tactic employed by a government determined to muzzle the free expression of public opinion.
The Internet, she says, has become a forum where Cubans are airing complaints. "The authorities are afraid this is turning into something massive."
And, unlike the rest of the press on the island, there is no government control over the printed word on the Internet. "We’ve gone beyond the status quo," said Sanchez.
Her blog, posted on a server in Germany, is growing in popularity. Last month, she says it received over 1.2 million hits. Sanchez believes about a quarter of her readership resides on the island, mostly young Cubans.
Cuba blocks access to top Cuban blog
Reuters UK
Cuba blocks access to top Cuban blog
Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:33pm GMT
HAVANA (Reuters) - The Cuban authorities have blocked access from Cuba to the country's most-read blogger, Yoani Sanchez, she said on Monday.
Sanchez, whose critical "http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/" blog received 1.2 million hits in February, said Cubans can no longer visit her Web page (http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/) and two other home-grown bloggers on the Web site on a server in Germany.
All they can see is a "error downloading" message.
"So the anonymous censors of our famished cyberspace have tried to shut me in a room, turn off the light and not let my friends in," she wrote in her blog on Monday.
Sanchez said she cannot directly access her Web site from Cuba to update postings anymore, but has found a way to beat her Communist censors through an indirect route.
The 32-year-old philology graduate has attracted a considerable readership by writing about her daily life in Cuba and describing economic hardships and political constraints.
She has criticized Cuba's new leader, Raul Castro, who formally took over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro last month, for his vague promises of change and minimal steps to improve the standard of living of Cubans.
"Who is the last in line for a toaster?" was the title of a recent blog that satirized the lifting of a ban on sales of computers, DVD players and other appliances Cubans long for, though toasters will not be freely sold until 2010.
In a country where the press is controlled by the state and there is no independent media, Sanchez and other bloggers based in Cuba have found in the Internet an unregulated vehicle of expression.
"This breath of fresh air has dishevelled the hair of bureaucrats and censors," she said in a telephone interview, vowing to continue her blog. "Anyone with a bit of computer skills knows how to get around them," she said.
The aim of government censors is to block readership in Cuba, where people have limited access to Internet, she said.
"They are admitting that no alternative way of thinking can exist in Cuba, but people will continue reading us somehow," she said. "There is no censorship that can stop people who are determined to access the Internet," she said.
(Editing by Sandra Maler)
Cuba blocks access to top Cuban blog
Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:33pm GMT
HAVANA (Reuters) - The Cuban authorities have blocked access from Cuba to the country's most-read blogger, Yoani Sanchez, she said on Monday.
Sanchez, whose critical "http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/" blog received 1.2 million hits in February, said Cubans can no longer visit her Web page (http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/) and two other home-grown bloggers on the Web site on a server in Germany.
All they can see is a "error downloading" message.
"So the anonymous censors of our famished cyberspace have tried to shut me in a room, turn off the light and not let my friends in," she wrote in her blog on Monday.
Sanchez said she cannot directly access her Web site from Cuba to update postings anymore, but has found a way to beat her Communist censors through an indirect route.
The 32-year-old philology graduate has attracted a considerable readership by writing about her daily life in Cuba and describing economic hardships and political constraints.
She has criticized Cuba's new leader, Raul Castro, who formally took over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro last month, for his vague promises of change and minimal steps to improve the standard of living of Cubans.
"Who is the last in line for a toaster?" was the title of a recent blog that satirized the lifting of a ban on sales of computers, DVD players and other appliances Cubans long for, though toasters will not be freely sold until 2010.
In a country where the press is controlled by the state and there is no independent media, Sanchez and other bloggers based in Cuba have found in the Internet an unregulated vehicle of expression.
"This breath of fresh air has dishevelled the hair of bureaucrats and censors," she said in a telephone interview, vowing to continue her blog. "Anyone with a bit of computer skills knows how to get around them," she said.
The aim of government censors is to block readership in Cuba, where people have limited access to Internet, she said.
"They are admitting that no alternative way of thinking can exist in Cuba, but people will continue reading us somehow," she said. "There is no censorship that can stop people who are determined to access the Internet," she said.
(Editing by Sandra Maler)
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Cubans get OK to buy "banned" electronic goods
MSNBC
Cubans get OK to buy electronic goods
First sign of reforms as Communists permit sale of computers, TVs, DVDs
Reuters
updated 8:53 a.m. PT, Thurs., March. 13, 2008
HAVANA - Communist Cuba has authorized the sale of computers, DVD and video players and other electrical appliances in the first sign President Raul Castro is moving to lift some restrictions on daily life.
"Based on the improved availability of electricity the government at the highest level has approved the sale of some equipment which was prohibited," said an internal government memo seen by Reuters.
It listed computers, video and DVD players, 19-inch and 24-inch television sets, electric pressure cookers and rice cookers, electric bicycles, car alarms and microwaves that can now be freely bought by Cubans.
Raul Castro, 76, has led Cuba since July 2006 when his older brother Fidel Castro provisionally handed over power after intestinal surgery from which he has never fully recovered.
The younger Castro formally became Cuba's first new leader in almost half a century on Feb. 24, and promised to ease some of the restrictions on daily life in Cuba.
"The country's priority will be to meet the basic needs of the population, both material and spiritual," Raul Castro said as he replaced his brother, a staunch critic of capitalist consumer society.
Last year, under Raul Castro's provisional government, customs regulations were eased to allow Cubans to bring in some electronic equipment and car parts.
Cubans get OK to buy electronic goods
First sign of reforms as Communists permit sale of computers, TVs, DVDs
Reuters
updated 8:53 a.m. PT, Thurs., March. 13, 2008
HAVANA - Communist Cuba has authorized the sale of computers, DVD and video players and other electrical appliances in the first sign President Raul Castro is moving to lift some restrictions on daily life.
"Based on the improved availability of electricity the government at the highest level has approved the sale of some equipment which was prohibited," said an internal government memo seen by Reuters.
It listed computers, video and DVD players, 19-inch and 24-inch television sets, electric pressure cookers and rice cookers, electric bicycles, car alarms and microwaves that can now be freely bought by Cubans.
Raul Castro, 76, has led Cuba since July 2006 when his older brother Fidel Castro provisionally handed over power after intestinal surgery from which he has never fully recovered.
The younger Castro formally became Cuba's first new leader in almost half a century on Feb. 24, and promised to ease some of the restrictions on daily life in Cuba.
"The country's priority will be to meet the basic needs of the population, both material and spiritual," Raul Castro said as he replaced his brother, a staunch critic of capitalist consumer society.
Last year, under Raul Castro's provisional government, customs regulations were eased to allow Cubans to bring in some electronic equipment and car parts.
Friday, January 18, 2008
CUBAN CENSORS LIFT BAN ON BASEBALL DOCUMENTARY
MSNBC
CUBAN CENSORS LIFT BAN ON BASEBALL DOCUMENTARY
Posted: Friday, January 18, 2008 8:04 AM
Filed Under: Havana, Cuba
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
Five years ago, Ian Padrón made a documentary about Cuban baseball and ran afoul of government censors.
He took government money from the Cuban Film Institute and told a story about Cuban baseball, "Out of this League" ("Fuera de Liga").
In his daring piece of work, Padrón touched on a number of taboo subjects. He looked at the tough conditions players face on the island and included interviews with athletic icons who defected to the United States to play Major League Baseball.
No surprise, government censors considered it too controversial for the Cuban public. So it ended up on a shelf – barred from playing in state-run theaters or on television.
Which can often backfire in communist Cuba – anything censored often becomes an overnight success. Cubans love nothing better than passing around forbidden material.
In fact, "Out of this League" became one of the hottest pieces of contraband circulating on Cuba’s underground market. Lots of people here in Cuba saw the 68-minute film.
Still, Padrón was frustrated.
"My work deserved a wider audience. I always argued that the Cuban public is more than capable of debating our reality," said Padrón.
Finally, someone in authority seemed to agree with him.
Out of the blue, "Out of this League" aired on Saturday night primetime TV – making television history here.
It’s not often government censors change their minds.
It also marks the first time state-owned television ran images of defectors, considered turncoats by the Cuban government.
El Duque: ‘I am an Industrial"
Baseball fans are delighted by the change of heart, especially loyalists who follow the career of Havana pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, who fled the island in 1997 for fame and fortune in the United States.
"This documentary is about baseball, our lives, our passion. It never should have been banned," said Karel Breto, a 27-year-old maintenance man. "El Duque belongs to us!"
That sentiment echoes what Hernandez said in the film.
"I am not a traitor. I am an Industrial," said Hernandez, referring to "Los Industriales," Havana’s champion team."I've had the opportunity to play for the two best teams in the world: Cuba’s Industriales and the Yankees." (Since the documentary was filmed, Hernandez signed on with the New York Mets and now plays for them).
At the time of his defection, Hernandez had posted a 129-47 career record for the national team but was under suspension. Sports officials had accused Hernandez of being in contact with U.S. agents who had helped other ballplayers leave the island to chase major league dreams.
Some of them appear in the documentary too: first baseman Kendry Morales, now a Los Angeles Angel; Rene Arocha, who pitched with the St. Louis Cardinals; and Euclides Rojas, who played for the Florida Marlins before becoming a bullpen coach for the Boston Red Sox.
Official censors never managed to discourage baseball fans here from continuing to follow the American careers of the men they consider true Cuban athletes.
No politics in baseball
In fact, for many Cuban fans, politics has no place in baseball. The game surpasses government.
"Forget politics. Baseball is my passion and I spend my time rooting for El Duque and our other players in the major leagues," said Ulises Alvarez, a Havana construction worker who commended Cuban TV for broadcasting "Out of this League."
Some Cubans see the broadcast as proof that times are changing in Cuba, a trend of greater tolerance and deliberate debate that began when Fidel Castro fell ill and his brother Raul became acting president some 18 months ago.
"TV has begun to tackle some harsh realities: housing shortages, problems in some hospitals, and in food production. Topics no one dared to touch before," said Ismael Sene, a retired diplomat and Cuba’s baseball historian. "I see this as part of the general policies of the last few months. It’s the only way I can explain why they aired the documentary."
But others think that may not be the case.
"Nothing has changed here," said a Western diplomat who asked not to be identified by name. "You still get chastised for telling unpopular truths."
No matter what, in a nation where the government maintains strict media control, "Out of this League" was not broadcast by accident. And while it’s too soon to tell if this is an isolated event or heralds a new artistic opening, fans here agreed with El Duque when he described the showing to the Miami press as "a breath of fresh air."
CUBAN CENSORS LIFT BAN ON BASEBALL DOCUMENTARY
Posted: Friday, January 18, 2008 8:04 AM
Filed Under: Havana, Cuba
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
Five years ago, Ian Padrón made a documentary about Cuban baseball and ran afoul of government censors.
He took government money from the Cuban Film Institute and told a story about Cuban baseball, "Out of this League" ("Fuera de Liga").
In his daring piece of work, Padrón touched on a number of taboo subjects. He looked at the tough conditions players face on the island and included interviews with athletic icons who defected to the United States to play Major League Baseball.
No surprise, government censors considered it too controversial for the Cuban public. So it ended up on a shelf – barred from playing in state-run theaters or on television.
Which can often backfire in communist Cuba – anything censored often becomes an overnight success. Cubans love nothing better than passing around forbidden material.
In fact, "Out of this League" became one of the hottest pieces of contraband circulating on Cuba’s underground market. Lots of people here in Cuba saw the 68-minute film.
Still, Padrón was frustrated.
"My work deserved a wider audience. I always argued that the Cuban public is more than capable of debating our reality," said Padrón.
Finally, someone in authority seemed to agree with him.
Out of the blue, "Out of this League" aired on Saturday night primetime TV – making television history here.
It’s not often government censors change their minds.
It also marks the first time state-owned television ran images of defectors, considered turncoats by the Cuban government.
El Duque: ‘I am an Industrial"
Baseball fans are delighted by the change of heart, especially loyalists who follow the career of Havana pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, who fled the island in 1997 for fame and fortune in the United States.
"This documentary is about baseball, our lives, our passion. It never should have been banned," said Karel Breto, a 27-year-old maintenance man. "El Duque belongs to us!"
That sentiment echoes what Hernandez said in the film.
"I am not a traitor. I am an Industrial," said Hernandez, referring to "Los Industriales," Havana’s champion team."I've had the opportunity to play for the two best teams in the world: Cuba’s Industriales and the Yankees." (Since the documentary was filmed, Hernandez signed on with the New York Mets and now plays for them).
At the time of his defection, Hernandez had posted a 129-47 career record for the national team but was under suspension. Sports officials had accused Hernandez of being in contact with U.S. agents who had helped other ballplayers leave the island to chase major league dreams.
Some of them appear in the documentary too: first baseman Kendry Morales, now a Los Angeles Angel; Rene Arocha, who pitched with the St. Louis Cardinals; and Euclides Rojas, who played for the Florida Marlins before becoming a bullpen coach for the Boston Red Sox.
Official censors never managed to discourage baseball fans here from continuing to follow the American careers of the men they consider true Cuban athletes.
No politics in baseball
In fact, for many Cuban fans, politics has no place in baseball. The game surpasses government.
"Forget politics. Baseball is my passion and I spend my time rooting for El Duque and our other players in the major leagues," said Ulises Alvarez, a Havana construction worker who commended Cuban TV for broadcasting "Out of this League."
Some Cubans see the broadcast as proof that times are changing in Cuba, a trend of greater tolerance and deliberate debate that began when Fidel Castro fell ill and his brother Raul became acting president some 18 months ago.
"TV has begun to tackle some harsh realities: housing shortages, problems in some hospitals, and in food production. Topics no one dared to touch before," said Ismael Sene, a retired diplomat and Cuba’s baseball historian. "I see this as part of the general policies of the last few months. It’s the only way I can explain why they aired the documentary."
But others think that may not be the case.
"Nothing has changed here," said a Western diplomat who asked not to be identified by name. "You still get chastised for telling unpopular truths."
No matter what, in a nation where the government maintains strict media control, "Out of this League" was not broadcast by accident. And while it’s too soon to tell if this is an isolated event or heralds a new artistic opening, fans here agreed with El Duque when he described the showing to the Miami press as "a breath of fresh air."
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Cuban band battles censorship
Cuban band battles censorship
Posted: Friday, October 05, 2007 12:59 PM
Categories: Havana, Cuba
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
A top Cuban rock band – "Moneda Dura" – is in trouble with government censors. Someone decided their newest song is too controversial. Presumably it’s been perceived as too unfavorable to the Cuban government – so it’s been banned on all state-run airwaves.
But, the songwriter feels his work is misunderstood. "We did something important, that mattered to the people who listen," said Nassiry Lugo, the band leader.
VIDEO: Cuba censors hit song
The song is entitled "Mala Leche" – Cuban slang for "evil intentions." It’s the title track on their latest CD, released this summer on the island’s Egrem label.
Despite the official ban – or maybe helped by it – Mala Leche is gaining fame.
Local fans are downloading the contraband from YouTube – and then, sending it straight to the Cuban underground.
Proof that in today’s high-tech world, censorship is no match for a good song.
VIDEO: "Mala Leche" music video
And here is a translation of the "Mala Leche" lyrics:
Evil Intentions
It’s 4 o’clock, the bus is still not here
People around me won’t stop talking
and they drive you nuts
Sweat rolls down my ears
I’m talking about just another typical day
It’s 6.45, I get on the crowded bus
Nauseated by the bad smell of the guy beside me
People pushing all the time
People with evil intentions
Others who hammer my ears
We’re a mixture of grease and iron
We’re like cows hurrying to the slaughter-house
We’re like ants going into a hole
We’re a ball of fire
I find people who live to make things worse for me
People who don’t talk, only bark
People who spit words
If I don’t hurt you, don’t pick on me
If I don’t hurt you, why your evil intentions?
Ah! Tell me what I did to you to make you target me
Relax and cooperate,
Can't operate on the fat in your brain
Don’t take it so hard, your shouting unnerves me
Ah! But tell me, tell me
Why your evil intentions?
7 o’clock in the morning, I slowly eat breakfast
As if I lived in a palace
(Instead of) this tenement and its noise
The lights are still not on
Without a doubt, today will be fun
I spend 15 minutes spying on my neighbour
I get turned on and she doesn’t even look at me
The electricity bill is killing me
But what can I do, if living is also killing me
Now my brain is in a coma
Now my life is a car without tires
Now I was so happy with my vices
All is well when I'm immoveable
I don’t bring solutions, I don’t give surprises
Why am I to be blamed because of your headaches
If we're doing the same, don’t obsess on me
Give your brain a chance to relax
We come from a unique lineage
If we're the heat that burns deeply,
Why don’t we treat each other as brothers
My heart beats when they call me Cuban
MALA LECHE ( POR MONEDA DURA )
Las 4 de la tarde, la guagua que no llega
La gente que no para de hablar y que se desespera
Gotas de sudor que caen por mis ojeras
Te cuento de otro día normal
Las 6:45 me subo apretado
Revuelto por el mal olor que trae el tipo de al lado
La gente que te empuja todo el tiempo
Gente sin pena, otros que taladran fuerte en las orejas.
Somos una masa de grasa y acero
Somos como vacas que se apuran hasta el matadero
Somos las hormigas que van al agujero
Somos una braza de fuego
Y todavía me encuentro con gente que vive
Para ponérmela más mala
Gente que no habla, solo que te ladra
Gente que escupe las palabras
Si yo no te hago daño, no es pa’ que te despeches
Si yo no te hago daño
¿Cuál es tu mala leche?
Ay! Pero dime qué te hice para que me toques las narices
Relájate y coopera la grasa en el cerebro no se opera
Oye no es para tanto, tus gritos ya me vienen estresando
Ay! Pero dime, dime, dime
¿Cuál es tu mala leche?
7 de la mañana desayuno despacio
Como si estuviera en un palacio
El barrio con su bulla
La luz que no ha venido
Hoy va a ser, sin duda, un día entretenido
Paso 15 minutos espiando a mi vecina
Yo que me enveneno y la muy zorra no me mira
La cuenta de la electricidad me está acabando
Pero qué voy a hacer si es que vivir me está matando
Ahora que tengo mi cerebro en coma
Ahora que el carro de mi vida está sin gomas
Ahora que estaba tan tranquilo con mis vicios
Ahora que todo sale cuando me encapricho
No traigo soluciones, no regalo sorpresas
Qué culpa tengo yo de tus dolores de cabeza
Si estamos en lo mismo, no te ofendas no te reprendas
Dale un chance a tu cerebro pa’ que se distienda
Venimos de una estirpe única en el mundo
Si somos el calor que quema desde lo más profundo
Dime por qué no nos tratamos como hermanos
Me late el corazón cuando me dicen cubano.
Posted: Friday, October 05, 2007 12:59 PM
Categories: Havana, Cuba
By Mary Murray, NBC News Producer
A top Cuban rock band – "Moneda Dura" – is in trouble with government censors. Someone decided their newest song is too controversial. Presumably it’s been perceived as too unfavorable to the Cuban government – so it’s been banned on all state-run airwaves.
But, the songwriter feels his work is misunderstood. "We did something important, that mattered to the people who listen," said Nassiry Lugo, the band leader.
VIDEO: Cuba censors hit song
The song is entitled "Mala Leche" – Cuban slang for "evil intentions." It’s the title track on their latest CD, released this summer on the island’s Egrem label.
Despite the official ban – or maybe helped by it – Mala Leche is gaining fame.
Local fans are downloading the contraband from YouTube – and then, sending it straight to the Cuban underground.
Proof that in today’s high-tech world, censorship is no match for a good song.
VIDEO: "Mala Leche" music video
And here is a translation of the "Mala Leche" lyrics:
Evil Intentions
It’s 4 o’clock, the bus is still not here
People around me won’t stop talking
and they drive you nuts
Sweat rolls down my ears
I’m talking about just another typical day
It’s 6.45, I get on the crowded bus
Nauseated by the bad smell of the guy beside me
People pushing all the time
People with evil intentions
Others who hammer my ears
We’re a mixture of grease and iron
We’re like cows hurrying to the slaughter-house
We’re like ants going into a hole
We’re a ball of fire
I find people who live to make things worse for me
People who don’t talk, only bark
People who spit words
If I don’t hurt you, don’t pick on me
If I don’t hurt you, why your evil intentions?
Ah! Tell me what I did to you to make you target me
Relax and cooperate,
Can't operate on the fat in your brain
Don’t take it so hard, your shouting unnerves me
Ah! But tell me, tell me
Why your evil intentions?
7 o’clock in the morning, I slowly eat breakfast
As if I lived in a palace
(Instead of) this tenement and its noise
The lights are still not on
Without a doubt, today will be fun
I spend 15 minutes spying on my neighbour
I get turned on and she doesn’t even look at me
The electricity bill is killing me
But what can I do, if living is also killing me
Now my brain is in a coma
Now my life is a car without tires
Now I was so happy with my vices
All is well when I'm immoveable
I don’t bring solutions, I don’t give surprises
Why am I to be blamed because of your headaches
If we're doing the same, don’t obsess on me
Give your brain a chance to relax
We come from a unique lineage
If we're the heat that burns deeply,
Why don’t we treat each other as brothers
My heart beats when they call me Cuban
MALA LECHE ( POR MONEDA DURA )
Las 4 de la tarde, la guagua que no llega
La gente que no para de hablar y que se desespera
Gotas de sudor que caen por mis ojeras
Te cuento de otro día normal
Las 6:45 me subo apretado
Revuelto por el mal olor que trae el tipo de al lado
La gente que te empuja todo el tiempo
Gente sin pena, otros que taladran fuerte en las orejas.
Somos una masa de grasa y acero
Somos como vacas que se apuran hasta el matadero
Somos las hormigas que van al agujero
Somos una braza de fuego
Y todavía me encuentro con gente que vive
Para ponérmela más mala
Gente que no habla, solo que te ladra
Gente que escupe las palabras
Si yo no te hago daño, no es pa’ que te despeches
Si yo no te hago daño
¿Cuál es tu mala leche?
Ay! Pero dime qué te hice para que me toques las narices
Relájate y coopera la grasa en el cerebro no se opera
Oye no es para tanto, tus gritos ya me vienen estresando
Ay! Pero dime, dime, dime
¿Cuál es tu mala leche?
7 de la mañana desayuno despacio
Como si estuviera en un palacio
El barrio con su bulla
La luz que no ha venido
Hoy va a ser, sin duda, un día entretenido
Paso 15 minutos espiando a mi vecina
Yo que me enveneno y la muy zorra no me mira
La cuenta de la electricidad me está acabando
Pero qué voy a hacer si es que vivir me está matando
Ahora que tengo mi cerebro en coma
Ahora que el carro de mi vida está sin gomas
Ahora que estaba tan tranquilo con mis vicios
Ahora que todo sale cuando me encapricho
No traigo soluciones, no regalo sorpresas
Qué culpa tengo yo de tus dolores de cabeza
Si estamos en lo mismo, no te ofendas no te reprendas
Dale un chance a tu cerebro pa’ que se distienda
Venimos de una estirpe única en el mundo
Si somos el calor que quema desde lo más profundo
Dime por qué no nos tratamos como hermanos
Me late el corazón cuando me dicen cubano.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Press Time
more anecdotes:
Miami New Times
Press Time
With Fidel on his death bed, journalist Carlos Otero is more critical than ever
By Our Woman in Havana
Published: January 11, 2007
Carlos Rios Otero is trying to write a note, but his black pen has run out of ink. He shakes it furiously, tries to scribble on a piece of thin white paper, and then tosses it on the table.
He shoots the pen a nasty glare, grabs it again, and flings it high into the air.
Carlos is frustrated. The pen is just one more thing that doesn't work in Cuba.
He is trying to change that, one word at a time. He is the rarest of rare on the island — an independent journalist.
But this writer doesn't work for a state-run communist-mouthpiece rag like Granma or Juventud Rebelde. His articles are penned sometimes by candlelight, always in longhand, on the unused side of printed sheets of paper. When he's finished, Carlos whispers his words across crackling phone lines to Miami, where Cuban exiles make sense of them and put them into magazines read by other exiles around the world. Sometimes he appears on Spanish-language radio stations like Radio Mambí (710-AM).
He hopes he doesn't get caught. "It's a brutal way to live," Carlos says matter-of-factly.
We're sitting around a table in the back yard of Carlos's house, a 100-year-old Mediterranean-revival with an iron gate, peeling paint, and pink roses growing in the courtyard. The dry pen is lodged in an overgrown bush. The table is covered with a threadbare red cloth that is pockmarked with holes.
Carlos's wife, Irene — shy and tired-looking — brings us coffee in delicate floral-patterned demitasse cups. She offers a glance that apologizes for not offering more.
It's a critical time for Carlos and all independent journalists in Cuba. As Fidel Castro's illness becomes more mysterious by the week — it's cancer, it's not cancer, he's got a colostomy bag, he's dead and cryonically frozen — Cuban exiles crave news from the island more than ever before.
Years ago Carlos and Irene were young professionals with a baby girl. They could graciously entertain guests — she was a teacher, he was a specialist in agriculture economics who once worked for the government. Carlos's father was a revolutionary, and Carlos himself fought in Angola.
He was rewarded with a post in the Ministry of Sugar — an important government office because sugar was, and remains, one of Cuba's few commodities. But in 1983, he criticized the regime, saying the communist model didn't work. At first, Castro overlooked Carlos's comments because of his family's revolutionary ties. But then the young man made similar remarks in 1986 and again in 1990. He had waded into the dangerous waters of activism in Cuba — he started and joined several groups calling for change.
The government began to pay attention. He was removed from his job and ostracized by the Cuban bureaucracy. The fallout extended to his wife's job and their daughter, now age 21, who has not been able to enroll in college because of her parents' activism — even though she's a top student.
If Hollywood were to film a movie about Carlos's life, he would be played by Lou Reed. When he dons his sunglasses, Carlos is a dead ringer for the singer (circa 1985 Honda scooter ads); he's cool and calm, and more than a bit paranoid about the world around him.
Carlos began his underground reporting sometime in the 1990s; all media in Cuba is state-run and has been for 48 years, so his dispatches are all on the down-low. He is published regularly on www.nuevaprensa.org, an exile-run Website in Miami. When his phone line isn't too fuzzy with interference, he calls dispatches into Miami radio stations and, on occasion, Radio Martí. This past year he was quoted in a report about the sorry state of Cuban journalism published by the international group Reporters Without Borders.
He achieved rock-star notoriety in Cuba and around the world this past December 10, when he and a dozen other dissidents marched in a Havana park to commemorate International Human Rights Day. A mob attacked the demonstrators, and a Spanish news agency photographed Carlos being restrained by a half-dozen government-supported thugs.
During our visit, Carlos shows me a photocopy of the picture and then pulls out a few dog-eared magazines. They contain his writing, but many of his articles are mere briefs about how conditions are deteriorating on the island. Longer stories just aren't easy to report or write. It's a bit sad and surprising to see that a man is risking his life for this.
"It's hard to have sources in Cuba," admits Nancy Perez Crespo, manager of Nueva Prensa Cubana in Miami. "And sometimes they don't even have paper to write on."
Like many of Cuba's journalists, Carlos doesn't usually see his own work, especially if it runs on a Website. He can't afford to use the Internet (it costs about six dollars per hour, about half of the average Cuban's monthly salary). Besides, the Internet is so tightly controlled on the island it's unlikely that Carlos would be able to get near a computer without harassment.
"He's risking his life every time he gives us information," says Perez Crespo.
Yet he writes. He writes about political prisoners who are slowly dying inside Cuba's jails; he writes about the failed distribution of rice cookers to citizens; he writes about the country's dengue fever crisis. He shows me a piece he is working on; this one is about Castro's health.
"His life is in limbo," Carlos says. Then he laughs, as it hits him. "Castro is in limbo, just like the Cuban people."
Carlos's house, located in Santo Suarez, a quiet and once gorgeous Havana suburb, is alternately grand and decrepit. It's filled with books, empty plastic jugs, and some withered root vegetables. At least one room is devoid of any furniture.
Carlos never knows when things will worsen in Cuba, and his stockpiles just might allow him to survive the next rough patch. Indeed this winter he couldn't afford meat for a traditional New Year's Eve meal, and he fretted about his phone bill. (Those dispatches abroad are costly; calls to the United States, for example, are about $2.80 per minute).
He's trying to amass a reference library for budding journalists and anyone interested in human rights. So far it fills three meager shelves.
After talking for a few hours, we decide to visit another independent journalist, Jaime Leygonier, who lives down the street. Carlos's neighborhood is something of a hotbed of dissident activity, with activist and doctor Darsi Ferrer also living nearby. Before we walk out the door, Carlos looks around outside. He wants to know if anyone is watching.
He continues to peer from side to side as we walk down the street together. When we arrive at Jaime's house — another once-great abode with tired furniture — the new host sums it up in a few words: "We're half-crazy with paranoia here."
Jaime used to be a teacher. That career disappeared when he was arrested for writing about Cuba for foreign publications. His relationship with his daughter was also affected by his anti-government stance; when he and his wife split up, they waged a nasty custody battle that was later published in international human rights journals.
"Due to Leygonier's dissident views, his daughter's elementary school has taken a position in the mother's favor and has refused to acknowledge his parental authority, denying him access to the school premises and the opportunity to speak with his daughter," wrote the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in 2004.
These days Jaime also writes for publications around the world and receives a few dollars in return.
Jaime and Carlos are among the lucky independent reporters in Havana. They have phones, which means they can call their dispatches to people "outside."
Around the time I met with Carlos just before Christmas, acting Cuban President Raul Castro appeared on state-run television at an event at the University of Havana. He told students they should debate "fearlessly." Raul didn't say anything about freeing the journalists who "fearlessly" tried to report; indeed there are no indications he will encourage a free press.
Just days before my trip, the Cuban government issued new rules for foreign journalists — including an edict that said a reporting visa could be revoked "when [the reporter] carries out improper actions or actions not within his profile and work content; also when he is considered to have violated journalistic ethics and/or he is not guided by objectivity in his reports.''
The situation, of course, is worse for independent reporters in Cuba. The island jails more journalists than any other nation except China. There are 27 journalists currently imprisoned on the island, according to the IAPA. This past December, Raymundo Perdigón Brito was sentenced to four years in prison, convicted of "conduct that is in manifest contravention of the standards of socialist morality." Also that month, 21-year-old Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia was arrested at home in Havana, and according to the IAPA, police confiscated a mini tape recorder, a computer, a fax machine, two radios, a flashlight, cassette tapes, pencils, sheets of paper, CDs, books, and magazines during a raid on the man's house.
Maybe the fact that Carlos doesn't have notebooks, a computer, or a working pen is a good thing.
New Times is not disclosing the name of Our Woman in Havana because she traveled to Cuba without the proper visa required to report there.
Miami New Times
Press Time
With Fidel on his death bed, journalist Carlos Otero is more critical than ever
By Our Woman in Havana
Published: January 11, 2007
Carlos Rios Otero is trying to write a note, but his black pen has run out of ink. He shakes it furiously, tries to scribble on a piece of thin white paper, and then tosses it on the table.
He shoots the pen a nasty glare, grabs it again, and flings it high into the air.
Carlos is frustrated. The pen is just one more thing that doesn't work in Cuba.
He is trying to change that, one word at a time. He is the rarest of rare on the island — an independent journalist.
But this writer doesn't work for a state-run communist-mouthpiece rag like Granma or Juventud Rebelde. His articles are penned sometimes by candlelight, always in longhand, on the unused side of printed sheets of paper. When he's finished, Carlos whispers his words across crackling phone lines to Miami, where Cuban exiles make sense of them and put them into magazines read by other exiles around the world. Sometimes he appears on Spanish-language radio stations like Radio Mambí (710-AM).
He hopes he doesn't get caught. "It's a brutal way to live," Carlos says matter-of-factly.
We're sitting around a table in the back yard of Carlos's house, a 100-year-old Mediterranean-revival with an iron gate, peeling paint, and pink roses growing in the courtyard. The dry pen is lodged in an overgrown bush. The table is covered with a threadbare red cloth that is pockmarked with holes.
Carlos's wife, Irene — shy and tired-looking — brings us coffee in delicate floral-patterned demitasse cups. She offers a glance that apologizes for not offering more.
It's a critical time for Carlos and all independent journalists in Cuba. As Fidel Castro's illness becomes more mysterious by the week — it's cancer, it's not cancer, he's got a colostomy bag, he's dead and cryonically frozen — Cuban exiles crave news from the island more than ever before.
Years ago Carlos and Irene were young professionals with a baby girl. They could graciously entertain guests — she was a teacher, he was a specialist in agriculture economics who once worked for the government. Carlos's father was a revolutionary, and Carlos himself fought in Angola.
He was rewarded with a post in the Ministry of Sugar — an important government office because sugar was, and remains, one of Cuba's few commodities. But in 1983, he criticized the regime, saying the communist model didn't work. At first, Castro overlooked Carlos's comments because of his family's revolutionary ties. But then the young man made similar remarks in 1986 and again in 1990. He had waded into the dangerous waters of activism in Cuba — he started and joined several groups calling for change.
The government began to pay attention. He was removed from his job and ostracized by the Cuban bureaucracy. The fallout extended to his wife's job and their daughter, now age 21, who has not been able to enroll in college because of her parents' activism — even though she's a top student.
If Hollywood were to film a movie about Carlos's life, he would be played by Lou Reed. When he dons his sunglasses, Carlos is a dead ringer for the singer (circa 1985 Honda scooter ads); he's cool and calm, and more than a bit paranoid about the world around him.
Carlos began his underground reporting sometime in the 1990s; all media in Cuba is state-run and has been for 48 years, so his dispatches are all on the down-low. He is published regularly on www.nuevaprensa.org, an exile-run Website in Miami. When his phone line isn't too fuzzy with interference, he calls dispatches into Miami radio stations and, on occasion, Radio Martí. This past year he was quoted in a report about the sorry state of Cuban journalism published by the international group Reporters Without Borders.
He achieved rock-star notoriety in Cuba and around the world this past December 10, when he and a dozen other dissidents marched in a Havana park to commemorate International Human Rights Day. A mob attacked the demonstrators, and a Spanish news agency photographed Carlos being restrained by a half-dozen government-supported thugs.
During our visit, Carlos shows me a photocopy of the picture and then pulls out a few dog-eared magazines. They contain his writing, but many of his articles are mere briefs about how conditions are deteriorating on the island. Longer stories just aren't easy to report or write. It's a bit sad and surprising to see that a man is risking his life for this.
"It's hard to have sources in Cuba," admits Nancy Perez Crespo, manager of Nueva Prensa Cubana in Miami. "And sometimes they don't even have paper to write on."
Like many of Cuba's journalists, Carlos doesn't usually see his own work, especially if it runs on a Website. He can't afford to use the Internet (it costs about six dollars per hour, about half of the average Cuban's monthly salary). Besides, the Internet is so tightly controlled on the island it's unlikely that Carlos would be able to get near a computer without harassment.
"He's risking his life every time he gives us information," says Perez Crespo.
Yet he writes. He writes about political prisoners who are slowly dying inside Cuba's jails; he writes about the failed distribution of rice cookers to citizens; he writes about the country's dengue fever crisis. He shows me a piece he is working on; this one is about Castro's health.
"His life is in limbo," Carlos says. Then he laughs, as it hits him. "Castro is in limbo, just like the Cuban people."
Carlos's house, located in Santo Suarez, a quiet and once gorgeous Havana suburb, is alternately grand and decrepit. It's filled with books, empty plastic jugs, and some withered root vegetables. At least one room is devoid of any furniture.
Carlos never knows when things will worsen in Cuba, and his stockpiles just might allow him to survive the next rough patch. Indeed this winter he couldn't afford meat for a traditional New Year's Eve meal, and he fretted about his phone bill. (Those dispatches abroad are costly; calls to the United States, for example, are about $2.80 per minute).
He's trying to amass a reference library for budding journalists and anyone interested in human rights. So far it fills three meager shelves.
After talking for a few hours, we decide to visit another independent journalist, Jaime Leygonier, who lives down the street. Carlos's neighborhood is something of a hotbed of dissident activity, with activist and doctor Darsi Ferrer also living nearby. Before we walk out the door, Carlos looks around outside. He wants to know if anyone is watching.
He continues to peer from side to side as we walk down the street together. When we arrive at Jaime's house — another once-great abode with tired furniture — the new host sums it up in a few words: "We're half-crazy with paranoia here."
Jaime used to be a teacher. That career disappeared when he was arrested for writing about Cuba for foreign publications. His relationship with his daughter was also affected by his anti-government stance; when he and his wife split up, they waged a nasty custody battle that was later published in international human rights journals.
"Due to Leygonier's dissident views, his daughter's elementary school has taken a position in the mother's favor and has refused to acknowledge his parental authority, denying him access to the school premises and the opportunity to speak with his daughter," wrote the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) in 2004.
These days Jaime also writes for publications around the world and receives a few dollars in return.
Jaime and Carlos are among the lucky independent reporters in Havana. They have phones, which means they can call their dispatches to people "outside."
Around the time I met with Carlos just before Christmas, acting Cuban President Raul Castro appeared on state-run television at an event at the University of Havana. He told students they should debate "fearlessly." Raul didn't say anything about freeing the journalists who "fearlessly" tried to report; indeed there are no indications he will encourage a free press.
Just days before my trip, the Cuban government issued new rules for foreign journalists — including an edict that said a reporting visa could be revoked "when [the reporter] carries out improper actions or actions not within his profile and work content; also when he is considered to have violated journalistic ethics and/or he is not guided by objectivity in his reports.''
The situation, of course, is worse for independent reporters in Cuba. The island jails more journalists than any other nation except China. There are 27 journalists currently imprisoned on the island, according to the IAPA. This past December, Raymundo Perdigón Brito was sentenced to four years in prison, convicted of "conduct that is in manifest contravention of the standards of socialist morality." Also that month, 21-year-old Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia was arrested at home in Havana, and according to the IAPA, police confiscated a mini tape recorder, a computer, a fax machine, two radios, a flashlight, cassette tapes, pencils, sheets of paper, CDs, books, and magazines during a raid on the man's house.
Maybe the fact that Carlos doesn't have notebooks, a computer, or a working pen is a good thing.
New Times is not disclosing the name of Our Woman in Havana because she traveled to Cuba without the proper visa required to report there.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Cuban official defends Internet controls
Cuban official defends internet controls
By JOHN RICE, Associated Press WriterWed Feb 14, 1:11 AM ET
A senior Cuban official has defended the country's Internet restrictions as a response to U.S. aggression and called for controlling "the wild colt of new technologies."
Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes opened an international conference on communication technologies Monday by complaining that Washington is choking Cuba's access to the Internet even as U.S. military and intelligence services use it to undermine the communist government.
Internet technologies "constitute one of the tools for global extermination," he said, referring to U.S. policies, but they "are also necessary to continue to advance down the path of development."
He defended Cuba's "rational and efficient" use of the Internet, which puts computers in schools and government computer clubs while prohibiting home connections for most citizens and blocking many sites with anti-government material.
"The wild colt of new technologies can and must be controlled," he said.
Valdes, who has fought alongside and then governed under Fidel Castro since 1953, is an influential figure in Cuba's communist hierarchy, although he was not among the small group Castro named to oversee its affairs under acting President Raul Castro after he fell ill in July.
Valdes expressed dire suspicions of U.S. intentions for the World Wide Web, citing post-Sept. 11 security measures and news reports that technology giants Microsoft and Google have cooperated with U.S. intelligence agencies.
"These actions bring the destabilizing power of the empire to threatening new levels," he said.
U.S. law calls for efforts to overthrow Castro's government through a sweeping commercial embargo and other policies. Valdes said those have choked the island's attempts to extend its Internet connections.
Valdes said there were about 1,300 delegates from 58 countries at the conference. The U.S. trade embargo with Cuba discourages many companies from doing business with Cuba — a fact emphasized by the lineup of conference exhibitors, which was weighted heavily toward companies from leftist allies such as China, Vietnam and Venezuela.
Since 1996, Cuba has used a relatively low-capacity satellite link to connect to the outside world because the United States has blocked it from connecting to nearby fiber-optic networks that run to the U.S. or through U.S.-administered Puerto Rico.
To overcome that problem, Cuba signed an agreement with ally Venezuela last month to lay a 965-mile fiber optic cable across the Caribbean Sea connecting the countries. It was not immediately clear when that line might be built.
Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Tuesday that although Internet use in Cuba is hampered by the U.S. blocking access to fiber-optic networks, an October report by the media advocacy group found that access is deliberately restricted, with less than 2 percent of the population online.
"It would anyway have been astonishing if a country that has no independent radio or TV station or newspaper did allow unrestricted access to the Internet," the group said.
Valdes said a way should be found to eradicate "the diffusion of pornography, encouragement of terrorism, racism, fraud, spread of fascist ideologies and any kind of manifestation of cybernetic crime."
By JOHN RICE, Associated Press WriterWed Feb 14, 1:11 AM ET
A senior Cuban official has defended the country's Internet restrictions as a response to U.S. aggression and called for controlling "the wild colt of new technologies."
Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes opened an international conference on communication technologies Monday by complaining that Washington is choking Cuba's access to the Internet even as U.S. military and intelligence services use it to undermine the communist government.
Internet technologies "constitute one of the tools for global extermination," he said, referring to U.S. policies, but they "are also necessary to continue to advance down the path of development."
He defended Cuba's "rational and efficient" use of the Internet, which puts computers in schools and government computer clubs while prohibiting home connections for most citizens and blocking many sites with anti-government material.
"The wild colt of new technologies can and must be controlled," he said.
Valdes, who has fought alongside and then governed under Fidel Castro since 1953, is an influential figure in Cuba's communist hierarchy, although he was not among the small group Castro named to oversee its affairs under acting President Raul Castro after he fell ill in July.
Valdes expressed dire suspicions of U.S. intentions for the World Wide Web, citing post-Sept. 11 security measures and news reports that technology giants Microsoft and Google have cooperated with U.S. intelligence agencies.
"These actions bring the destabilizing power of the empire to threatening new levels," he said.
U.S. law calls for efforts to overthrow Castro's government through a sweeping commercial embargo and other policies. Valdes said those have choked the island's attempts to extend its Internet connections.
Valdes said there were about 1,300 delegates from 58 countries at the conference. The U.S. trade embargo with Cuba discourages many companies from doing business with Cuba — a fact emphasized by the lineup of conference exhibitors, which was weighted heavily toward companies from leftist allies such as China, Vietnam and Venezuela.
Since 1996, Cuba has used a relatively low-capacity satellite link to connect to the outside world because the United States has blocked it from connecting to nearby fiber-optic networks that run to the U.S. or through U.S.-administered Puerto Rico.
To overcome that problem, Cuba signed an agreement with ally Venezuela last month to lay a 965-mile fiber optic cable across the Caribbean Sea connecting the countries. It was not immediately clear when that line might be built.
Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Tuesday that although Internet use in Cuba is hampered by the U.S. blocking access to fiber-optic networks, an October report by the media advocacy group found that access is deliberately restricted, with less than 2 percent of the population online.
"It would anyway have been astonishing if a country that has no independent radio or TV station or newspaper did allow unrestricted access to the Internet," the group said.
Valdes said a way should be found to eradicate "the diffusion of pornography, encouragement of terrorism, racism, fraud, spread of fascist ideologies and any kind of manifestation of cybernetic crime."
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Fledgling Official Dissent in Cuba
Miami Herald
Posted on Sat, Feb. 03, 2007
CUBA
In Cuba, dissent by invitation only
In the first sign of internal dissent in Cuba since Fidel Castro ceded power six months ago, intellectuals held a forum to discuss government censorship in the 1970s.
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@MiamiHerald.com
One by one, Cuban artists and intellectuals in Havana did something unprecedented this week: They stood before the government and criticized a particularly harsh era of censorship -- out loud and in the open.
Perhaps even more surprising than the conference held Tuesday to discuss a dark period of Cuban cultural oppression was what happened outside: a protest by those shut out of the invitation-only event. Also out loud and in the open.
''I don't know how important it can be, but what's true is that I have never seen anything like that in Cuba,'' Cuban writer Ena Lucía Portela told The Miami Herald in an e-mail. ``It was rudimentary, passionate, incoherent, but it was the closest thing to freedom of expression I have seen in this country in my entire life.''
In a move that Cuba experts say signals a significant shift in Cuban domestic policy, the government led by interim President Raúl Castro appears to be cracking open the door to debate. After Castro publicly asserted he was open to discussion, and later convened a committee to study flaws of socialism, experts say there has been a clear changing of the guard in Cuba, one that allows at least controlled discussion.
In the first sign of internal dissent since Fidel Castro ceded power six months ago, intellectuals furious over the television appearances of 1970s-era government officials responsible for a crackdown on intelligentsia convened a conference to discuss it. But while the event was an extraordinary display of criticism, opponents of the Castro brothers point out that the conference was not open to the public, suggesting that the steps the government has taken toward discussion are small and wobbly.
PROVOCATIVE PROFILE
The flare-up was triggered when Cuban TV ran a laudatory profile last month of Luis Pavón Tamayo, the former chairman of the National Culture Council. Pavón's five-year reign was dubbed the ''The Gray Quinquennium'' -- The Five Gray Years -- for its record of arrests and censorship.
A flurry of e-mails condemning the TV appearances swept Cuba's cultural community, leading to a rare statement by the artists' guild published in the state-controlled newspaper, Granma, which denounced the TV shows.
''The act established a turning point that we hope will be irreversible,'' writer Reynaldo González, winner of the 2003 National Literary Prize, said in an e-mail to The Miami Herald. ``And it has created an echo that will be difficult to stifle, even if someone tries to do so.''
A magazine editor convoked a conference led by writer Ambrosio Fornet and attended by Culture Minister Abel Prieto to debate the topic. But tickets were given only to some 450 people.
YOUNG EXCLUDED
Reports from Cuba say young writers who were not invited protested outside.
Portela, 34, wasn't invited, and viewed the conference as a white-wash. ''A half-century of lies is not something that can change overnight,'' she said.
Former Cuban political prisoner Manuel Vásquez Portal agreed, saying it was nothing but a political ploy aimed at identifying dissenters.
''Look, Raúl Castro is a soldier. Soldiers don't debate. They order,'' said Vásquez, a former independent journalist. ``If he wants to debate, he'd free prisoners of conscience and invite them to debate.''
Prieto did not return e-mails requesting comment. Fornet sent a copy of his speech, in which he acknowledged that today's young Cubans don't know about the Pavón period -- because nobody ever told them.
''When evoking the Gray Quinquennium, I feel that we're plunging headlong into something that not only deals with the present but also projects us forcefully into the future,'' Fornet said, 'even if only because of what [Spanish philosopher Jorge Ruiz de] Santayana said: `Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it.' That danger is precisely what we're trying to conjure here.''
Florida International University Professor Uva de Aragón said the fact that the event took place shows Cuba is changing.
'The first time I heard Raúl say `open to discussion,' I knew Fidel was no longer in control,'' she said. ``It should not be that much surprising. They must realize things are coming to an end. I think at this point, intellectuals figure they have nothing to lose.''
Miami Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.
Posted on Sat, Feb. 03, 2007
CUBA
In Cuba, dissent by invitation only
In the first sign of internal dissent in Cuba since Fidel Castro ceded power six months ago, intellectuals held a forum to discuss government censorship in the 1970s.
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@MiamiHerald.com
One by one, Cuban artists and intellectuals in Havana did something unprecedented this week: They stood before the government and criticized a particularly harsh era of censorship -- out loud and in the open.
Perhaps even more surprising than the conference held Tuesday to discuss a dark period of Cuban cultural oppression was what happened outside: a protest by those shut out of the invitation-only event. Also out loud and in the open.
''I don't know how important it can be, but what's true is that I have never seen anything like that in Cuba,'' Cuban writer Ena Lucía Portela told The Miami Herald in an e-mail. ``It was rudimentary, passionate, incoherent, but it was the closest thing to freedom of expression I have seen in this country in my entire life.''
In a move that Cuba experts say signals a significant shift in Cuban domestic policy, the government led by interim President Raúl Castro appears to be cracking open the door to debate. After Castro publicly asserted he was open to discussion, and later convened a committee to study flaws of socialism, experts say there has been a clear changing of the guard in Cuba, one that allows at least controlled discussion.
In the first sign of internal dissent since Fidel Castro ceded power six months ago, intellectuals furious over the television appearances of 1970s-era government officials responsible for a crackdown on intelligentsia convened a conference to discuss it. But while the event was an extraordinary display of criticism, opponents of the Castro brothers point out that the conference was not open to the public, suggesting that the steps the government has taken toward discussion are small and wobbly.
PROVOCATIVE PROFILE
The flare-up was triggered when Cuban TV ran a laudatory profile last month of Luis Pavón Tamayo, the former chairman of the National Culture Council. Pavón's five-year reign was dubbed the ''The Gray Quinquennium'' -- The Five Gray Years -- for its record of arrests and censorship.
A flurry of e-mails condemning the TV appearances swept Cuba's cultural community, leading to a rare statement by the artists' guild published in the state-controlled newspaper, Granma, which denounced the TV shows.
''The act established a turning point that we hope will be irreversible,'' writer Reynaldo González, winner of the 2003 National Literary Prize, said in an e-mail to The Miami Herald. ``And it has created an echo that will be difficult to stifle, even if someone tries to do so.''
A magazine editor convoked a conference led by writer Ambrosio Fornet and attended by Culture Minister Abel Prieto to debate the topic. But tickets were given only to some 450 people.
YOUNG EXCLUDED
Reports from Cuba say young writers who were not invited protested outside.
Portela, 34, wasn't invited, and viewed the conference as a white-wash. ''A half-century of lies is not something that can change overnight,'' she said.
Former Cuban political prisoner Manuel Vásquez Portal agreed, saying it was nothing but a political ploy aimed at identifying dissenters.
''Look, Raúl Castro is a soldier. Soldiers don't debate. They order,'' said Vásquez, a former independent journalist. ``If he wants to debate, he'd free prisoners of conscience and invite them to debate.''
Prieto did not return e-mails requesting comment. Fornet sent a copy of his speech, in which he acknowledged that today's young Cubans don't know about the Pavón period -- because nobody ever told them.
''When evoking the Gray Quinquennium, I feel that we're plunging headlong into something that not only deals with the present but also projects us forcefully into the future,'' Fornet said, 'even if only because of what [Spanish philosopher Jorge Ruiz de] Santayana said: `Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it.' That danger is precisely what we're trying to conjure here.''
Florida International University Professor Uva de Aragón said the fact that the event took place shows Cuba is changing.
'The first time I heard Raúl say `open to discussion,' I knew Fidel was no longer in control,'' she said. ``It should not be that much surprising. They must realize things are coming to an end. I think at this point, intellectuals figure they have nothing to lose.''
Miami Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Cuban artists' union enters censor debate
Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, Jan. 19, 2007
CUBA
Cuban artists' union enters censor debate
A union of Cuban writers and artists expressed indignation, and apparent resignation, over the reappearance of a government censor.
From Miami Herald Staff and Wire Reports
HAVANA - The Cuban government's union of writers and artists on Thursday backed intellectuals who protested the recent TV reappearance of a censor blamed for Stalinist-type purges in the 1970s, but issued what appeared to be a warning that limits remain on criticisms of Fidel Castro's revolution.
The statement by the National Union of Cuban Artists and Writers appeared aimed at defusing a fiery and unusually public debate among Cuban intellectuals on and off the island about the former censor's TV appearance. Two other former hard-line culture officials also appeared on TV recently.
Published in the Communist Party daily Granma, the union's statement said it shared the ''just indignation'' of intellectuals disturbed by the resurfacing of the official.
But it blamed part of the controversy on people abroad ''obviously working for the enemy'' and concluded by noting that Cuba's 'anti-dogmatic, creative and participatory cultural policy maintained by Fidel and Raúl [Castro], founded with `Some Words to the Intellectuals,' is irreversible.''
''Some words to the intellectuals'' refers to a famous 1961 speech in which Fidel Castro warned an audience of intellectuals that there were limits to criticism of his government: ``Within the Revolution, everything. Outside the Revolution, nothing.''
The words were later taken as the basis for crackdowns on intellectuals during the 1960s and '70s known in Cuba as the Quinquenio Gris -- the gray 15-year period.
In Miami, a website run by pro-Havana commentator Francisco Aruca said a seminar on Quinquenio Gris: Revisiting the Term, will be held Jan. 30 at the Cuban Film Institute in Havana, apparently as part of the settlement of the dispute over the reappearance of the censor.
Since censor Luis Pavón Tamayo's TV appearance, Cuban writers on the island and in exile have engaged in a spirited debate about what it all meant -- a public dispute specially unusual because of Fidel Castro's current illness.
Castro ceded his powers provisionally to his brother Raúl on July 31.
Raúl Castro recently has been campaigning for fearless and critical debate within the confines of the island's communist system.
In the flap about the former censor, the union statement did not name Pavón, who was president of Cuba's National Culture Council from 1971 to 1976.
During those years, writers and artists were expelled from their jobs for being gay or not toeing the government line. Some were hounded into exile. Beatles music, and even long hair, were banned on the island.
The statement said union leaders had met with writers who worried that the new appearances by Pavón and the others could ``express a tendency other than the political culture that has guaranteed and will guarantee our unity.''
Posted on Fri, Jan. 19, 2007
CUBA
Cuban artists' union enters censor debate
A union of Cuban writers and artists expressed indignation, and apparent resignation, over the reappearance of a government censor.
From Miami Herald Staff and Wire Reports
HAVANA - The Cuban government's union of writers and artists on Thursday backed intellectuals who protested the recent TV reappearance of a censor blamed for Stalinist-type purges in the 1970s, but issued what appeared to be a warning that limits remain on criticisms of Fidel Castro's revolution.
The statement by the National Union of Cuban Artists and Writers appeared aimed at defusing a fiery and unusually public debate among Cuban intellectuals on and off the island about the former censor's TV appearance. Two other former hard-line culture officials also appeared on TV recently.
Published in the Communist Party daily Granma, the union's statement said it shared the ''just indignation'' of intellectuals disturbed by the resurfacing of the official.
But it blamed part of the controversy on people abroad ''obviously working for the enemy'' and concluded by noting that Cuba's 'anti-dogmatic, creative and participatory cultural policy maintained by Fidel and Raúl [Castro], founded with `Some Words to the Intellectuals,' is irreversible.''
''Some words to the intellectuals'' refers to a famous 1961 speech in which Fidel Castro warned an audience of intellectuals that there were limits to criticism of his government: ``Within the Revolution, everything. Outside the Revolution, nothing.''
The words were later taken as the basis for crackdowns on intellectuals during the 1960s and '70s known in Cuba as the Quinquenio Gris -- the gray 15-year period.
In Miami, a website run by pro-Havana commentator Francisco Aruca said a seminar on Quinquenio Gris: Revisiting the Term, will be held Jan. 30 at the Cuban Film Institute in Havana, apparently as part of the settlement of the dispute over the reappearance of the censor.
Since censor Luis Pavón Tamayo's TV appearance, Cuban writers on the island and in exile have engaged in a spirited debate about what it all meant -- a public dispute specially unusual because of Fidel Castro's current illness.
Castro ceded his powers provisionally to his brother Raúl on July 31.
Raúl Castro recently has been campaigning for fearless and critical debate within the confines of the island's communist system.
In the flap about the former censor, the union statement did not name Pavón, who was president of Cuba's National Culture Council from 1971 to 1976.
During those years, writers and artists were expelled from their jobs for being gay or not toeing the government line. Some were hounded into exile. Beatles music, and even long hair, were banned on the island.
The statement said union leaders had met with writers who worried that the new appearances by Pavón and the others could ``express a tendency other than the political culture that has guaranteed and will guarantee our unity.''
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Cuba’s Rap Vanguard Reaches Beyond the Party Line
HAVANA — In a country like Cuba, where the state has its hand in just about everything, it is perhaps not surprising that there is a governmental body that concerns itself with rap music.
Alarmed by the number of young people in baggy clothing and ill-aligned baseball caps rapping around the island, the government created the Cuban Rap Agency four years ago to bring rebellious rhymers into the fold.
The person chosen to lead the agency was Susana García Amaros, 46, who studied Latin American literature at the University of Havana, specializing in the writings of Afro-Cubans. She said that when officials from the Ministry of Culture approached her for the job she told them that she was not a rap expert. But she said she appreciated the music and its underlying messages.
“Rap is a form of battle,” she said. “It’s a way of protesting for a section of the population. It has force. It’s not just the beat — the boom, boom, boom — it’s the lyrics.”
The rap agency became a co-sponsor of an annual hip-hop festival that began in 1994, and it started promoting rappers and helping them to produce occasional albums. But only artists whose rap does not veer too much from the party line qualify for the government aid.
“We don’t have songs on a record that speak badly of the revolution,” Ms. García Amaros said on a recent day. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Not surprisingly, most rappers, who are by definition a rebellious lot, are averse to joining forces with the government, even as they struggle to spread their rhymes on their own. Only nine groups are working with the agency. Of the remaining 500 or more across the island, some voice discontent with Cuban society in language that is as blunt as the accompanying beat is loud.
“We are not in agreement with any political system, the one here or the one you have,” said Aldo Rodríguez Baquero, 23, who teams up with his friend Bian Rodríguez Gala in a popular group called Los Aldeanos, or The Villagers. “We want liberty and freedom.”
While rap appeals to just a subset of Cuba’s youngsters, many of the five million Cubans under the age of 30 similarly question the system.
The government’s own surveys have found that the bulk of the unemployed in Cuba are young and that many youths are uncertain about their future. The blame, the government argues, lies with the United States trade embargo.
Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque raised the disenchantment of many of Cuba’s young people in a speech last year, which was reported by The Miami Herald. “We have a challenge,” said Mr. Pérez Roque, who is in his early 40s and is considered one of the next generation of Cuban leaders. “These young people have more information and more consumer expectations than those at the start of the revolution.”
He added that young people were more likely to hear their elders telling stories about social progress under the current government and respond, “Oh, please, don’t come to me with that same old speech.”
The situation among Afro-Cubans, about 60 percent of the population, is especially acute. They are considerably poorer than whites, according to studies. Among the reasons are that white Cubans are more likely to have relatives sending remittances from the United States, and whites hold the bulk of the jobs in the profitable tourism industry.
Afro-Cubans complain that they have inferior housing and are more likely than whites to be hassled on the streets by the police.
The rappers speak of these and other problems, often bluntly.
“What we sing, people can’t say,” said Mr. Rodríguez Baquero, who wore a blue bandanna to pull back his braided hair as he rapped on the sidewalk outside an overflowing club. “They think we are crazy. We say what they only whisper.”
He acknowledged that his mother and his rap partner’s mother worried about their outspoken ways. “They don’t want to lose us,” he said.
But they keep rapping, even though some of Havana’s club owners have banned them for a time over some of their toughest songs, including one dealing with police harassment.
As for the rap agency, Mr. Rodríguez Baquero dismisses that with a wave of his hand. “We don’t want to be in any agency,” he said. “It’s the same as slavery for us.”
But not all that many people hear what he and other independent rappers have to say. They produce albums in their homes in bare-bones studios and distribute them by hand.
“It’s very difficult to do rap in Cuba,” he acknowledged.
One of those working behind the scenes to aid Cuba’s rappers is Cheri Dalton, an American who goes by the name Nehanda Abiodun. She is a black militant who is wanted by the F.B.I. in connection with a string of robberies, including a 1981 holdup of an armored car near Nyack, N.Y. Now living in exile in Cuba, she has formed a Havana chapter of Black August, a grass-roots group that promotes hip-hop culture.
“There’s always been a love for music from the States in Cuba,” said Ms. Abiodun, who declined to discuss her own case. “You can go back to Nat King Cole, Earth Wind & Fire and Aretha Franklin.”
Rap, first heard in the ’80s by those in eastern Cuba who picked up Florida radio stations, is no exception. “They spit out rhymes on everything from race to gender to police harassment,” she said of Cuba’s hip-hop generation. “They point out contradictions in society that were taboo to talk about.”
But despite the disenchantment of many young people with Cuba’s system, rap appears to be losing some ground here. The hip-hop festival, held every August, was a flop last year and was canceled this year. Nobody seems sure why. Some rappers say the culprit was not so much the government involvement as it was another musical genre that is pushing rap aside. Reggaetón, a blend of reggae, rap and Latin music that was born in Puerto Rico, is now the rage.
The governmental rap agency has begun promoting reggaetón artists, whose messages are often intended more to get people on the dance floor than to protest. It is harder than ever for rappers to find a stage.
“Reggaetón is about sex and girls and that’s it,” grumbled Mario Gutiérrez, 19, who criticizes his fellow rappers who have speeded up their beat and gone reggaetón. “We are singing for change. We want freedom. We want a better Cuba than this one.”
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