Our sexuality, no matter what, can only be judged in its beauty, by our own way of assuming it respecting the other.
By Ernesto Estévez Rams | internet@granma.cu
September 13, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
For all the scandal they caused, in life and in death, Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs, his collection of orchid and lily photos would pass, on a first reading, as almost virgin works. They are not.
Mapplethorpe was a New York photographer who died in 1989 of AIDS. By the time of his death, his photographic work was famous, particularly the black-and-white portraits he took of famous people, including a few Hollywood celebrities, throughout his career.
Robert was a homosexual, a condition which, far from being hidden, he incorporated into his work, to the shock of censorship and to the extent of provoking notoriety. But to say it that way does not do justice to the place the photographer gave to sexuality in his life. Exploring what he considered the individual limits of erotic pleasure, Robert not only exposed his sexuality at its fullest, but also vindicated the dominance that each person should exercise over it to the extent of their own fulfillment.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, when AIDS was already advanced, he summarized the meaning of his most sexually explicit photos, saying that forcing people to do things they don’t want to do is not erotic. Consistency also implied the daring to look beyond the conventional, as long as it was “people looking for a simultaneous orgasm.”
Mapplerthorpe’s work is a continuous cry of an unsuccessful search of the self, in the images that he managed to capture of others. In that sense, through some of his photos, the spectator transforms his condition of observer to that of observed. What happens in all of them is that it is almost impossible not to react to them. In many cases, it makes our subconscious uncomfortable, as it accepts beautifully what the indoctrinated conscious insists on rejecting. A colleague photographer, anonymously, confessed to a chronicler that Robert’s erotic work would not have been acceptable if it had been about heterosexual relationships. He is probably right, such is the prejudice.
The Perfect Moment collection, which displayed explicit photos of high sexual content (of all kinds), was censored as pornography by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. The controversy reached such prominence that even members of the U.S. Congress spoke out about the use of public funds to promote art. In 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati was sued for the exhibition of the collection, which was labeled obscene. The gallery was acquitted, along with its director Dennis Barrie. This was the first time that an art gallery was sued for the contents of an exhibition.
In 1998, a book displaying the Mapplethorpe photos was confiscated by the police in England. A University of Central England student, writing a thesis, took the text to a local store to have copies made of some photographs. The shopkeeper, alarmed by the photos he saw, called the police, who did not believe to was art. The university was required, as a condition for the return of the book, that certain pages of the book be hidden. After six months of back and forth, the book was finally returned without censorship.
The well-known writer, musician and playwright Patti Smith was a Mapplethorpe partner , whom she met in a bookstore in the mid-1960s. The relationship was as deep as it was torrid because, by that time, Robert was still dealing with his sexual identity. Despite their separation as a couple, they remained friends all their lives, and she called him one of the most important people in her life.
In 1969, Patty and Robert moved to the Chelsea Hotel, next door to the El Quijote restaurant. As Craig Brown describesit, when Patti entered the restaurant, “the scene was absurdly typical of the era, with musicians and bottles of tequila scattered in equal proportions. Jimi Hendrix is there with a large sombrero, perched on a table at the end. To his right, Grace Slick and the rest of Jefferson Airplane, sitting around another table. To his left, Janis Joplins in a conspiracy with her musicians”.
It was Bobby Neuwirth, a friend of Bob Dylan’s, who introduced Patti to Janis. He told the singer, “This is the poet Patti Smith. From that moment until Joplins’ death, she called her friend, the poet.
From Porgy and Bess is the famous Summertime aria, whose lyrics are by DuBose Heyward and music by George Gershwin. They were taken out of the original opera, and performed by the most diverse artists over the years. There are said to be more than 25,000 recordings of the song, beginning with its first commercial success in 1936, in the voice of Billie Holiday.
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong have their version of Summertime, with a memorable trumpet introduction, followed by the irruption of Ella’s voice alternating with Louis’. Can it get any better? Perhaps not, but in 1976 Ray Charles performed it with Cleo Laine at a transcendent height, and Miles Davis (ah, Miles) played it in an instrumental version that was true to his Midas status: everything he played he turned into jazz.
In another vein, Peter Gabriel, with a captivating harmonica introduction by Larry Adler, gave us a Summertime with a guttural voice to break us like a pencil, and Sting, in 1991, did his thing with the Dutch orchestra of the 21st century.
But, in spite of all the excellence of those interpretations, I am left, if I have to choose, with the incomparable Janis Joplin, the voice of several generations who came with the flower boy and opposition to the Vietnam War, along with the breaking of the sexual norms of the 1960s.
How beautiful you are Janis. / You sang as if they were confessions. / It doesn’t matter if the songs were of others, / you made them a testimony of your sins.
Janis Joplin was born in Texas in 1943 and was abused by other students at school as a freak. She was obese and had very bad acne, and was yelled at for doing horrible things, including racially-motivated offenses for getting along with Black people. Her shelters were reading, painting and music. While at the University of Texas, the campus newspaper referred to her as a brave woman, unafraid to distinguish herself from others by the way she dressed, contrary to the conventions of the time, her love of music and her habit of going barefoot.
No one managed the discursive capacity of the scream as she did, / no one managed the body language as she did, / hers was the method brought to the song. The James Dean / of that world she assumed until she broke it / like him: at the wheel of different cars. / All that and more happened before the crows descended / and turned the whole landscape into a firework display.
On one occasion, Janis was crying inconsolably, because a flirt of the night had left with another woman. Dressed in magenta and pink, wearing a kind of scarf with purple feathers, depressed by her failure, she said to Pattyi, “This always happens to me, partner. Another lonely night”. Patti accompanies Janis to her room and listens to her tell of her unhappiness over and over again. As a consolation, Patti confesses that she has written a song for her and sings it to her to encourage her. In an explosion of depressed joy, Janis jumps from the song “That’s My Song,” she screams, as she arranges her scarf in front of the mirror. Two months later she was dying of a drug overdose.
I don’t know if Robert Mapplethorpe ever photographed Janis Joplin directly, but I can’t wait to see her in the magenta, pink and purple orchids that I can guess behind her photos, even in the gray ones. The photographer’s orchids transcend innocence to become what is perhaps his most aggressive break.
Far from the shocking direct message against conventionality, those photos where the flowers end up being pure eroticism. They express a transcendent, and in a certain way fulminating, apprehension of something beautifully ungraspable. They shout to us that our sexuality, no matter what, can only be judged in its beauty, by our own way of assuming it respecting the other.
El marcado aislamiento de la isla ha sido útil para contener el coronavirus, pero difícil en cuanto a problemática economía. Las andanzas de un fotógrafo capturaron la belleza de Cuba y la resistencia de un pueblo que ha luchado durante mucho tiempo con el flujo y reflujo de la historia.
Por Tony Perrottet
7 de septiembre de 2020 8:21 am ET
Traducido y editado por Walter Lippmann para CubaNews.
Mil gracias a Pedro Gellert por su indispensable ayuda en esta traducción.
Cuando los viajes internacionales comenzaron a cerrarse en marzo debido a la pandemia de coronavirus, Collin Laverty tuvo que tomar una decisión repentina: ¿Miami o La Habana? Para un norteamericano que divide su tiempo entre las dos ciudades mientras dirige Cuba Educational Travel, una agencia que en tiempos menos restringidos contaba entre su clientela con senadores estadounidenses y luminarias del mundo de la tecnología, la elección era obvia. “Sentí que los cubanos iban a hacer un mejor trabajo”, explicó por teléfono desde La Habana. “Estaría más seguro aquí.”
Se ha demostrado que Laverty tenía razón. Mientras la situación se ha deteriorado este verano en Florida -una población de 21,5 millones con casi 10.000 muertes, o 46 por cada 100.000 habitantes- la isla cubana de 11,3 millones de habitantes había registrado a mediados de agosto 88 fallecimientos, o menos de una muerte por cada 100.000. A pesar del pequeño brote ocasional en las provincias, la isla informaba muchos días con cero casos nuevos o con pocos como para contarlos con los dedos de una sola mano.
El éxito de Cuba fue el resultado de una respuesta de libro de texto: Las autoridades sanitarias (que habían estado en constante diálogo con la Organización Mundial de la Salud desde enero) cerraron el país, suspendieron los vuelos internacionales, llevaron a cabo amplias pruebas, aislamiento y rastreo e impusieron el uso de cubrebocas, un proceso sin duda más fácil en un sistema autoritario.
Una guagua [autobús] en una carretera de Pinar del Río, una provincia al oeste de La Habana.
FOTO: ANDREW JACOBS PARA WSJ. MAGAZINE
“Es una cultura diferente”, dice Laverty. “Si los funcionarios de salud te dicen que es mejor usar un cubreboca, usas un cubreboca. Y a diferencia de los EE.UU., no hay medios alternativos que le digan a la gente que no use un cubreboca”.
Aunque el sistema de salud de Cuba está plagado de escases crónicas, la capacidad de su fuerza laboral médica le ha servido bien durante la pandemia. Cuba tiene el porcentaje más alto de médicos per cápita que cualquier otro país del mundo, y están capacitados para dar una respuesta comunitaria rápida a los huracanes y otros desastres naturales. “Había médicos y enfermeras en bata de laboratorio que llamaban a la puerta una o dos veces al día, para registrarse”, dice Laverty.
La otra cara de la moneda es que la crisis ha castigado a una economía que ya estaba en serios problemas por la mala gestión interna y su desconexión del resto del mundo. Mientras que Cuba ha estado alejada durante seis décadas de su socio comercial natural, los Estados Unidos, a través de un embargo comercial conocido en la isla como “el bloqueo”, el Covid-19 ha llevado el aislamiento del país a nuevos extremos. El cierre de un día para otro de la industria del turismo, la principal fuente de divisas de Cuba, ha llevado el desempleo y la escasez de alimentos a niveles nunca vistos desde el “período especial” de hace 30 años, cuando el colapso de la Unión Soviética y el fin de sus subsidios económicos dejaron a la isla varada y empobrecida.
Cuba ha dado algunos pasos tentativos hacia la reapertura al turismo. Se han destinado cinco arenosos cayos septentrionales para recibir vuelos chárter, donde los visitantes extranjeros serán sometidos a pruebas de detección del virus a su llegada y alojados en centros turísticos de playa lejos del resto de la población. Hasta ahora, ha habido pocos viajeros. Los canadienses hambrientos de sol, el mercado objetivo lógico, han sido desalentados por su gobierno a viajar al extranjero, y los europeos también están nerviosos por aventurarse lejos de casa. Los locales también son cautelosos: “Los cubanos han sacrificado mucho”, dice Laverty. “Saben que tan pronto como se abran existe el riesgo de una segunda ola”.
Un posible resquicio de esperanza es que la crisis ha empujado al presidente Miguel Díaz-Canel a reiniciar las reformas de la economía estatal, un proceso que había comenzado bajo el mandato de Fidel Castro en 2011 pero que se estancó hace tres años debido a la resistencia de los partidarios de la línea dura del gobierno. El anuncio se hizo a mediados de julio; los detalles siguen siendo vagos, pero la idea es fomentar la empresa privada y la agricultura y reducir la regulación gubernamental. “Es una noticia muy positiva, pero también hay mucho escepticismo”, dice Laverty. “Todo el mundo está esperando a ver qué pasa”.
La pandemia es sólo el último capítulo de la montaña rusa de Cuba desde la revolución de 1959: períodos de grandes esperanzas seguidos de desilusiones. Como resultado, hacer frente al incierto flujo y reflujo de la historia se ha convertido en una especie de especialidad cubana, una resistencia que permite a su pueblo sobrevivir a desafíos que podrían haber sido aplastantes en otros lugares.
Este espíritu fue capturado por otro observador de Cuba, el fotógrafo neoyorquino Andrew Jacobs, que exploró la isla en el verano de 2019, sin saber que la pandemia pronto daría mayor resonancia a su trabajo. Al igual que muchos estadounidenses (emigró a los Estados Unidos desde Sudáfrica a los 13 años), Jacobs visitó Cuba por primera vez tras el llamado deshielo de Obama, un delirante espasmo de optimismo que parece hoy en día historia antigua. La reapertura de las relaciones diplomáticas entre Cuba y los EE.UU. en 2014 llevó a una escena improbable tras otra: El presidente Obama de gira por La Habana y asistiendo a un partido de béisbol con Raúl Castro; los Rolling Stones jugando ante una multitud masiva al aire libre; se aflojan las restricciones de viaje de los Estados Unidos que habían estado vigentes desde la época de Eisenhower; y dentro de Cuba, nuevos negocios individuales que convierten a la isla en una fiesta elegante y a la vez desgtastada.
Para los observadores veteranos de Cuba, las nuevas posibilidades estaban simbolizadas por el Bar Roma, una asociación entre un DJ local y un yanqui expatriado que se ocultaba en la azotea de un decrépito edificio de apartamentos art decó en la Habana Vieja. Encontrado de boca en boca, se calificaba como el Estudio 54 de Cuba: Desde el desmoronado vestíbulo, un ascensor de jaula operado a mano crepitaba hacia arriba sobre ruedas sin engrasar, y luego se abría a una multitud felliniesca de jóvenes fashionistas de La Habana y extranjeros conocidos que bailaban sobre los tejados coloniales iluminados por la luna. El co-director cubano, Alain Medina, señaló el lugar del suelo de baldosas donde nació. Para visitar un baño, los invitados le pasaban dinero a uno de los residentes del último piso y luego pasaban por delante del sofá mientras la familia se sentaba y veía la televisión.
Fue esta atmósfera eufórica la que cautivó a Jacobs, nacido en Johannesburgo, cuando una tarea periodística repentina e improvisado a principios de 2017 lo transportó de Nueva York a La Habana a través de uno de los nuevos vuelos directos de JetBlue. El rodaje comercial de los trajes de baño de Onia duró menos de una semana y no le llevó más lejos de la capital que las playas locales, pero quedó asombrado por lo que encontró. “Me cautivó lo vibrante que era Cuba”, recuerda. “Era muy visceral. Dejé de querer fotografiar a las modelos con las que estaba. Quería fotografiar a la gente en la calle.”
Cuba se mantiene fuerte
El marcado aislamiento de la isla ha sido útil para contener el coronavirus, pero difícil en cuanto a problemática economía. Las andanzas de un fotógrafo capturaron la belleza de Cuba y la resistencia de un pueblo que ha luchado durante mucho tiempo con el flujo y reflujo de la historia.
Jacobs juró volver de forma independiente para documentar la nueva Cuba. Cuando finalmente lo hizo, en junio de 2019, el curso de la historia había cambiado de rumbo otra vez. Los EE.UU. invirtió el deshielo de Obama, endureciendo las sanciones económicas y volviendo el reloj a la Guerra Fría. La belicosa retórica del presidente Trump había asustado a la mayoría de los viajeros americanos, y las reformas del sistema socialista de Cuba se habían estancado. Cuando Jacobs se puso en contacto con Talía Bustamante, una productora de La Habana a la que había conocido en su anterior visita, llevaba más de un año luchando por encontrar un trabajo estable, al igual que su marido, Alejandro Callejas, un operador de cámara. Como para simbolizar el nuevo frío, el Bar Roma pronto cerraría sus puertas, después de una disputa entre los co-directores cubano y americano. “Fue muy difícil para los cubanos”, dice Laverty, cuya propia empresa había traído a muchos empresarios estadounidenses al país para investigar las oportunidades. “Eran la comidilla del mundo, este lugar guay y sexy; luego les dieron una serie de golpes en el cuerpo.”
Jacobs descubrió que, a pesar de este giro que truncaba muchas esperanzas, la vitalidad que lo había atraído primero a la isla seguía intacta. Generaciones de tumultos y reveses han enseñado a los cubanos a apreciar el adagio “Las mejores cosas de la vida son gratis”. Tienen la bendición de vivir en una isla tropical con 3.500 millas de costa, bosques exuberantes, playas de arena y un clima benigno. Este ambiente acogedor ha ayudado a fomentar la vida comunitaria, que, tras el paréntesis de las restricciones de Covid-19, ha empezado a recuperarse. Los cubanos siguen desparramándose por las esquinas, tocando música con instrumentos improvisados, bromeando entre ellos sobre sus políticos y disfrutando de la sensualidad de las tardes con aroma a azúcar. Dependen de recursos de ingenio y humor conversacional hasta un punto que otras culturas, inundadas por la tecnología, han abandonado. La Habana Vieja colonial puede estar desmoronándose, con un aire tangible de privación a la vuelta de la esquina de las zonas que han sido embellecidas para los turistas, pero muchos residentes se conocen por su nombre. Los adolescentes a veces se agrupan a lo largo del Malecón, el paseo marítimo de la ciudad, para compartir una botella de ron y bailar bajo las duchas de rocío marino.
Para capturar este espíritu, Jacobs se propuso explorar la capital a pie, con el azar y el capricho de su única agenda, caminando, hablando y conociendo gente mientras Bustamante servía de guía y traductor. Durante su viaje de 2019, fue estimulante renunciar a todo lo que se parezca a un programa de rodaje. “La moda está completamente planeada”, dice. “Cuando haces fotografía de calle es lo contrario. Eso es lo que quería abrazar.”
Un día, se encontraron con una pequeña liga de béisbol [little league] en la que los jugadores llevaban zapatos de gran tamaño y uniformes de segunda mano. Como neoyorquino, Jacobs fue recibido como una celebridad. “Los niños estaban tan emocionados que no podían quedarse quietos ni mirarme durante mucho tiempo”, dice.
Cuba is Staying Strong
El marcado aislamiento de la isla ha sido útil para contener el coronavirus, pero difícil en cuanto a problemática economía. Las andanzas de un fotógrafo capturaron la belleza de Cuba y la resistencia de un pueblo que ha luchado durante mucho tiempo con el flujo y reflujo de la historia.
Para explorar las provincias, Jacobs hizo un viaje por carretera a Pinar del Río, al oeste de La Habana. La logística se improvisó al clásico estilo cubano: El marido de Bustamante se apuntó como conductor, y durante los tres días de viaje Jacobs y su ayudante se metieron en el asiento trasero del pequeño vehículo bajo montañas de equipos de cámara. La recompensa fue explorar el Valle de Viñales, donde un mosaico de plantaciones y granjas de tabaco de una exuberancia imposible está enmarcado por espectaculares afloramientos de piedra caliza llamados mogotes (“Como el Parque Jurásico”, dice Jacobs). La hermética sociedad rural tiene un aire de otro mundo: campesinos bañados por el sol con sombreros de paja que cabalgan a caballo pasando por bohíos, chozas de paja, creando escenas tropicales que recuerdan los lienzos de Gauguin.
Las imágenes de Jacobs rara vez incluyen signos reveladores de lugares específicos -no estatuas, catedrales o vistas de postales para turistas- y en cambio se concentran en detalles íntimos. Le atraía especialmente lo que había detrás de las puertas cerradas. La arquitectura hispano-caribeña, con sus balcones de hierro forjado, pórticos cubiertos y ventanas con contraventanas, protege a los residentes del sol pero también desvía las miradas indiscretas. “En las calles, se puede acercar a cualquiera, charlar, reír y tomar fotos”, dice Jacobs. Pero acceder a las casas privadas era un asunto delicado; a muchos les preocupaba que sus circunstancias pudieran ser juzgadas por un extrañjero.
En realidad, Jacobs era lo opuesto a juzgar, ya que se vio envuelto en la poesía casual de la vida doméstica de los cubanos. “La gente no tiene mucho, pero es hermoso”, dice. “La luz, la forma en que arreglan las cosas, el uso del color. Los cubanos sacan lo mejor de lo que tienen.”
Los cubanos son legendarios por la creatividad que aplican a los bienes materiales. Sin acceso a las nuevas piezas mecánicas, son expertos en el reciclaje, con Chevrolets, Dodges y Buicks de los años 50 reconfigurados para durar décadas más allá de su vida natural, a veces con motores Toyota bajo el capó, con cables que sostienen las ventanas agrietadas o con tablones de madera usados como tablas del suelo. Pero el acceso a los lujos más retro se desgasta en las provincias. Muchas de las aldeas que Jacobs visitó exudaban un aire fantasmal.
Típico era el puesto de avanzada de Hershey (hoy conocido como Camilo Cienfuegos), aproximadamente a 35 millas de La Habana, un pueblo fundado en 1916 para proveer de azúcar a la compañía de chocolate con sede en Pennsylvania. Las calles estaban antaño bordeadas de ordenados bungalows que hacían eco de las ciudades modelo de los suburbios americanos -un mundo desaparecido capturado en la novela de Rachel Kushner de 2008, Telex desde Cuba. Cuando la refinería fue nacionalizada después de la revolución, la ciudad siguió funcionando mientras la URSS compró la cosecha de azúcar de Cuba a un precio inflado. “Era como un pueblo del Viejo Oeste en pleno auge del oro”, dice Jacobs. Hoy en día, la refinería cerrada se cierne como una catedral en ruinas sobre calles habitadas sólo por ancianos.
Para esta generación mayor, los sueños fracturados de Cuba en la última década tienen un aire familiar, que se hace eco de ciclos históricos más largos de esperanza y decepción. Al principio, la llegada de Fidel Castro y sus románticos barbudos (“los barbudos”, como se conoció a sus guerrilleros en la Sierra Maestra) fueron recibidos con un éxtasis. Toda la isla se vio envuelta en el cuento de hadas “revolución juvenil” contra el brutal dictador Fulgencio Batista, mientras Cuba se embarcaba en un experimento que parecía prometer una utopía política, económica y racial. Con el paso de los años, la desilusión se instaló, y el sueño se derrumbó en la década de 1990.
Aún así, dentro de la Cuba de hoy, la esperanza continúa. “Si todo se alinea, Cuba estará en un buen lugar”, dice Laverty. “Pero para llegar allí, tendrán que lidiar con muchas dificultades.” Como siempre, los cubanos tendrán mucha experiencia en la que apoyarse. -•
By Jorge Gómez Barata
September 9, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
For stating that: “If I won the elections, I would take up Barack Obama’s policy towards Cuba…”, Joe Biden, candidate for the presidency of the United States, does not need any more to settle the doubts regarding the government and the Cuban people.
Giving continuity to Obama’s Cuban policy expresses the will for détente that would configure a platform to bring positions closer, define agendas and propitiate a climate from which it is possible to advance, not only towards what Cuba wanted, but also towards what Barack Obama preferred. He considered the policy followed by the previous administrations obsolete, including the blockade that, according to his creed, instead of isolating Cuba, isolated the United States”.
Obama was neither a friend nor an ally of Cuba, but rather a president of the United States who, saving the asymmetries and the historical disagreement initiated by the Platt Amendment, as well as the insurmountable ideological differences derived both from the anti-communism in force in US policy and the aggressiveness in the face of the Revolution, worked to replace the hostility between the United States and Cuba with neighborliness.
Nobody discovers anything new when they observe that, as the political head of the empire, Obama would like a change in the orientation of Cuban policy, for which he set up premises, different from the aggressive policies of his predecessors. Obama chose options that were closer to the battle of ideas preferred by Cuba. Obviously, there are also Cubans who would applaud a socialist United States, but that does not mean that they would make such a commitment a political objective.
Whatever may be said, Barack Obama was the only US president who, in the 118 years of Cuba’s republican history, spoke with the national authorities on bilateral issues on an equal footing. He did this without prior conditions, without demands and without meanness, which had been a hope of the Cubans and a brilliant conquest of the Revolution. Besides, he is the only one who visited the Island and fraternally talked to the people and the authorities.
Raúl Castro, who added political sagacity and diplomatic skill to his firmness in the defense of national sovereignty and socialist principles, saw the moment when an opportunity opened up and, with integrity and flexibility, took advantage of it. He took steps towards meeting the political coherence of Barack Obama, reaching a common ground on which it was possible to understand each other and move forward until diplomatic relations were re-established.
The flexibility and political stature allowed both to understand that: differences do not prevent civilized coexistence. From Biden, I expect nothing else… I hope he wins. See you there.
By Osviel Castro Medel
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
August 25, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
From the nasobuco, that addendum of which we knew little in times of normality, one can write today almost a treatise, the same with Cuban humor as with the most serious things.
There have been those who, accustomed to using it almost all the time, forgot to take it off before performing some acts and thus spilled coffee on their bodies or bit their tongues trying to eat.
It has also been responsible for certain language tangles, such as that of a Bayamese man who spoke to his wife about “fixing the pedals to look for food for the boys” and she understood that when the carnivals were suspended they would have to sell the “males” (as pigs are called in much of the Orient). “Don’t even think about it,” she answered, to the surprise of the first.
Regardless of any joke, the nasobuco helped, along with other measures, to contain the new coronavirus in Cuba. However, for some weeks now we have seen with alarm how hundreds of people have dispensed with its use, not only in the Cuban capital, the epicenter of the disease.
Let us go -even in the provinces that are right now in the third phase- through some main streets, let us go to one of the long daily queues, let us go to the parks, to the bus stops, let us get on public transportation or let us enter centers that serve the population and we will find many citizens without the minimum protection that these times advise.
There have even been images uploaded to social networks of crowds drinking beer from the same tap, or rum from the bottle, as if they were celebrating the end of the pandemic. They have, unfortunately, entered the so-called relaxation stage, unaware of the aforementioned and recited perception of risk.
The bitter spike in numbers these days – which are people, not numbers, of course – is linked precisely to overconfidence or chanting victory ahead of time.
A few days ago a friend, in an educated hypothesis, was walking without her nasobuco in the middle of a crowd. When I made the observation, she answered the incredible: “Ah, we are already in the third phase, stop that, there is no need”.
When the Temporary Working Group of the Government for the confrontation of the new coronavirus announced the entry into the third phase of almost all the provinces and the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud, it was emphasized: “We reiterate the need to maintain the health measures and physical isolation, which are applicable in the three phases, including the use of nasobuco in public and closed places, where there is a concentration of people”.
Do we need to pressure our hands a little with the fines and other coercive measures? Could it be that the messages in the media calling for a collective conscience do not reach the majority? Will we courageously denounce the irresponsible without creating a witch-hunt? Have we already forgotten the regulations regarding the hygienization of hands and surfaces, the distance between people and the recommendation to keep ourselves informed?
These are questions that can help move thought and generate action. In the end, the most important thing is to know that the battle against the virus is not over; it has probably entered its most critical phase, and we can continue to move backwards if, as we say in the popular jargon, we throw ourselves into the middle street or get infected with “extreme freedom” and throw the nasobuco and all the rules related to the preservation of our health into a corner.
By Carlos Rafael Dieguez
August 31, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Jack Lieberman has just died physically in Fort Lauderdale and continues to live forever in the heart of the Cuban people and the world. Fervent revolutionary Liberman, one of his close friends Camillo Coco remembers him: “Our brother Jack Lieberman passed away. The South Florida activist community has lost a great organizer, a fighter, and a man full of principles and love for his fellow human beings. Jack Lieberman was simply the best. He was so good to our members, especially in the last 5 months of the pandemic. He was one of the first to see us when the layoffs started. He was a generous and kind soul, but also fiercely committed to the fight for justice. He was always, always there.
He will be deeply missed. I was lucky enough to meet Jack and I am very proud to have worked with him. This is a very sad moment for me and many others who knew and collaborated with him in many struggles. He continues to be an example of dedication to the social causes he fought for.
For our part, from RADIOMIAMITV, we have many things to say about Jack Lieberman among them, and the most important one is that he always stood by the people of Cuba in the struggle for the removal of the US blockade against our country. He participated in dozens of caravans and meetings in La Alianza Martiana, he always supported and advocated for good relations between his country and ours. He was always accompanied by a smile of joy, the same size as the firmness and love with which he confronted injustice.
In one of our last interviews with Jack Lieberman, together with André Gómez, coordinator of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, he left us his pro-Cuba opinion for history.
On his Facebook Wall, Mike Martinez writes: “I am proud to have always been at Jack Lieberman’s side. A titan among titans. A servant of the people.” Other writings also appear. Today I lost a best friend, a mentor, a hero and a role model. Jack Lieberman is part of my extended family and was my most trusted friend in politics. We spoke often and above all, he was my rock on every campaign and a North Star. Jack Lieberman (also known as Radical Jack) is a true legend and his memory will live on.
The Coronavirus has taken away a hero from a thousand battles that the American people, the Cuban people and the world will never forget.
Cuba will review more than 50 laws, as soon as the commissions are created for each of them, to decide whether to create a comprehensive law to address violence against women or to include it in other laws, said Dr. Mariela Castro Espín, President of the National Center for Sex Education, in an interview with the Cubasí website.
By We Editor
internet@granma.cu
December 2, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Cuba will review more than 50 laws, as soon as the commissions are created for each one of them, to decide whether to create a comprehensive law for the attention to violence against women or to include it in other laws, declared in an interview with the Cubasí portal Dr. Mariela Castro Espín, President of the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex).
Cenesex, in recent times, joins more institutions and organizations of civil society and the State to advance campaigns and concrete actions that help to take better the policy of protection to the woman to the legislative changes that arise from the constitutional change and that it has contemplated to attend this reality, pointed out the specialist.
Castro Espín pointed out that the Cuban State deals with this issue, as evidenced by the fact that during the 1st International Symposium against Gender-Based Violence, Sexual Tourism, Human Trafficking and Prostitution, it was agreed that within the National Program of Education and Sexual Health, the Program of attention to all forms of violence would be addressed.
“In September we submitted to the Ministry of Public Health the proposal for a comprehensive education policy on sexuality and sexual rights.
However, she denounced the fact that there are attacks to discredit our institutions. Specific people based on the distortion of her words and efforts on the issue “and begin unfair attacks, without foundation, with a deep ignorance and ignorance, which do not help us move forward on the issue,” she said.
She also denounced the fact that “There is a lot of money, especially from the United States government, towards five main evangelical churches, which are trying to sabotage many initiatives. They are using this term gender ideology, which was created by a Catholic bishop in the 60s, precisely to discredit the international advances in the field of women’s rights and the thought of Marxist origin in relation to this issue. And our Revolution, as Fidel said, has the right to defend itself, it has the right to defend its social conquests, the rights that have been achieved in the Constitution and in the whole legislative system that is already being changed since the constitutional change”.
As a message to Cuban women, Mariela Castro sent the request that “we study, that we prepare ourselves well, because there are many people who fall into the traps of campaigns to discredit our efforts”.
She also called for not acting in isolation: “we have to unite, make alliances, because every time we make alliances and unite, we achieve effectiveness, we really achieve changes, so we do not play into the hands of the enemies of the Revolution, we unite among the organizations and institutions that are really working and that are open to all the ideas that are truly sincere and committed to revolutionary work.
In the middle of the National Day Against Violence Against Women and Girls, Mariela Castro Espín, about the origins of this social problem, said that it comes from centuries and has been expressed from a place of power. She also emphasized the role of the Catholic Church and how it has promoted nine centuries of persecution against women.
Today, she said, there are countries where women are totally enslaved and suffer greatly. Already in the 1970s, she explained, more specific terms emerged, such as femicide, which mainly alludes, from the work that Mexican anthropologist Marcela Lagarde has developed, to the irresponsibility and abandonment of the state in the face of the problem. There are studies that differentiate what is a homicide from a femicide and characterize them.
The director of CENESEX reminds us that the struggles for women’s rights around the world, the feminist movements, and women’s organizations linked to scientific study, have been contributing ways of thinking and acting on these issues, and proposals for laws have been emerging.
(With information from Cubasí)
By JAPE
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
August 22, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
To be honest, I thought, at first, that the word nasobuco was an Asian voice like Kawasaki or Tamagochi. Since it was the genesis of the pandemic in that region, the word could well spread along with the new coronavirus. However, in recent readings of specialized articles, I could confirm that it is not so, even some scholars consider that Cuba is one of the few countries in America, where this garment or tool that protects the nose and mouth from the exit and entrance of microbes and bacteria is called this.
The most experienced ones grant the Cuban people this linguistic license because of its deep relationship with the medical and scientific community, which is where this neologism is really used more, referring to the nasal and mouth region (nose and mouth) belonging to the respiratory system.
For other countries, it is less complicated and they simply call it tapaboca, cubreboca, mascara, or barbijo… The important thing in all cases is to keep it well on and not to use it as a hat, mask, cubrementón or “tapa güergüero”, as my grandmother would call it when it is worn around the neck as if it were a bandage covering a tracheotomy.
The truth is that the nasobuco (or whatever you want to call it) has come to stay for an indeterminate period of time and with great possibilities that it will be a garment that we will carry in our wallet or pocket like we carry a handkerchief, keys or wallet.
It is already part of our attire and although many times we forget it when we leave the house and have to return to look for it, it is a component that has taken on vital (and read well: vital) importance.
Like everything new in clothing, the nasobuco does not escape fashion. Its confection already reaches personalization edges. The same is combined with the colors of clothes, shoes, cap, headscarf, necklaces, bracelets… When its color does not play with any of the above-mentioned it is that it is combined with the panties, brassiere’s or panties that we carry. In this case, it is not advisable to find out too much.
The designs and materials used are different. Those more spiritual, artistic and sensitive, make drawings, embroider flowers, embed a sticker of your company, favorite sports club or the name of your loved one. It should not be misunderstood in case you have two names embodied. It can be your wife and daughter or son, father and brother… in short, if not, it is not your business either: each one puts in their nasobuco what they want! I said whatever you like, not wherever you like; we talked about that and I hope it was clear, even though I said it with the nasobuco on.
By Mailenys Oliva Ferrales and Eduardo Palomares Calderón
internet@granma.cu
August 23, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
United by the Sierra Maestra mountain range and the waters of the Cauto River, in the struggles marked by Mariana Grajales, Canducha “la Abanderada”, and more recently by Celia Sánchez and Vilma Espín, the women of Santiago and Granma are now united in this beautiful story woven by the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), in the 60 years they observed this August 23.
It was to Vilma Espín Guillois, a brave and sensitive woman from Santiago, that Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz entrusted the creation and strengthening of the organization destined to work for full gender equality in the new society. This is why the FMC women of her territory made a firm commitment this time to dedicate the Vanguard flag and the national act for the date.
“For all the FMC women of the country it has been a year of intense work -considers Elena Castillo Rodríguez, secretary-general of the FMC in Santiago de Cuba-, first because we started it under the incentive of such an important anniversary, and then because the appearance of the pandemic changed the life of all Cubans and, of course, it imposed the reorientation of our work.
“Based on the Party’s motto in the territory: “With the effort of all, we will win!”, we did the same intensity of work from the Guantanamo border of Yerba de Guinea to the Granmense of Baire, and that allowed us to declare all the municipalities (9) as Vanguards, and to seal that result at the level of the country.
Based on the solid tradition that has kept it in the vanguard in recent years, Granma was very close, achieving vanguard status in ten of its 13 municipalities. It wa, a challenge that, according to the Secretary General, María Elena Hechavarría Carralero, was focused on strengthening its grassroots structures and community action.
“We are one of the links that the enemy imagines with weaknesses to try to distort the reality of the Island, but, considered by Fidel as well as by Raúl and Díaz-Canel, as bastions in each project undertaken, we have taken all the spaces to demonstrate that women are an essential force in the sovereignty of the Nation”.
THE VITAL HEARTBEAT OF SOCIETY
For most of the 412,500 FMCers in Santiago and the 325,000 in Granma, one of the most important, humane and beautiful activities of recent times has been the challenge taken on from the COVID-19 pandemic, because not only was it to make thousands of nasobucos, but they also provided the fabric and thread, and then went to donate them in the neighborhoods, squares and workplaces.
In both territories, they also went voluntarily to the health control points, to the sanitation and hygienization of public areas, to the house-to-house investigation and, without thinking twice, not a few young people took the step to contribute in what was necessary in the red zone of hospitals and centers of isolation of suspects.
Perhaps there is something more emotional,” says Castillo Rodriguez, “than seeing a girl with a pharmacy card or a warehouse notebook buying medicine and food products for a vulnerable person, or for the members of the Federation who took care of the old man who lives alone and brought him the same food prepared for the family.
Our women have grown up during the confrontation with COVID-19,” says Hechavarría Carralero, “because they did not wait to be called, they began to spontaneously deploy initiatives and we generalized and brought them together so that their impact would be greater, and all this has had the moral recognition that contributes to new efforts.
Within this complex situation, both leaders agreed that the scourge of gender violence that has wounded the world so much, has not been an embarrassing problem for their respective territories, since the Women’s and Family Orientation Centers work preventively, and a differentiated work has been done in dysfunctional nuclei.
Through specialists, talks have taken place aimed at promoting family unity and curbing the tendency to burden women with domestic tasks. At the same time, through dozens of training programs, the FMC has held training courses in socially useful activities for women and men who are not working.
In this way, including in recent days, some of the so-called “choleras” received job offers in the state sector or on their own account, ranging from pharmacy and commerce clerks, technical services, gastronomy, barbers and other trades that reintegrate them with dignity.
IN FRONT OF THE FURROW
According to Castillo Rodríguez, “Hot spots” in her province are the fronts for food production that women share today. This is not because of the complexity of the work, but because of its importance. In addition to facing the pandemic, they moved to gardens and patios to plant short-cycle crops and medicinal plants, which are already bearing fruit.
A lot has been said about the initiative of the food production areas in Santiago,” he explains, “and those structures are already in all the municipalities, where, if in the agricultural ones there is parity between men and women, in the industrial ones the majority of the women are making bread, cookies, candies, preserves and dozens of assorted products.
Currently, the strategy concluded in the Second Front and that goes through the Third Front, is sealing each municipality with the patios incorporated into urban agriculture, and the creation of agreements for pigs, sheep and poultry, attended purely by women or jointly with the family, which provides them with meat, food, grains and vegetables.
The women of Granma also contribute to these forms of agri-food production, their presence in the mobilizations called for, and the empowerment achieved in the labor area, where they make up 67% of the technical force, and assume key management positions, from the base up to all levels.
VALIDITY OF VILMA
Although the Commander-in-Chief considered the full incorporation of women as a Revolution within the Revolution, among the greatest teachings bequeathed by Vilma Espín is the defense of rights and the work she has conquered. This is why Santiagueras and Granmenses are now equally focused on confronting social indiscipline.
Her actions in the face of coleros, resellers and hoarders range from preventive work with people characterized by that anti-social behavior in the community, which has made it possible to detect soluble dysfunctional problems and the incorporation of 12 cases to work in Santiago de Cuba, to the support to order in the lines [in from of] commercial establishments.
Elena Castillo and María Elena Hechavaría emphasize the enthusiasm with which the FMCers have received the respective recognitions as vanguard and outstanding women. There is in a 60th anniversary celebrated in all the municipalities, in centers such as hospitals and of textile clothing, with high presence of women, and of course in the base.
In a special way, the Vilma Espín Memorial, located in the house where she lived and matured as a revolutionary, by turning it into a meeting point and even a staff for young clandestine fighters, once again hosted the Vilma en la memoria workshop, with the presentation of 28 research papers from the provinces of Granma and Santiago de Cuba, on the extraordinary woman.
Coinciding with the date and in view of the impossibility, due to the COVID-19, of the desired mass mobilization, a representation of the municipality of Segundo Frente paid homage to the eternal President of the FMC, Vilma Espín Guillois, in the name of Cuban woman, and before the rock monument that in the mausoleum to the heroes and martyrs of the II Eastern Front receives its ashes.
By José Alejandro Rodríguez
pepe@juventudrebelde.cu
August 22, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Now that Cuba is on the offensive against economic crime, corruption and all sorts of indiscipline and violations, the most sensible thing is not to limit ourselves only to repudiating and neutralizing these demonstrations and the police operations. We must also diagnose with a perennial scalpel the socioeconomic causes that generate these evils and distortions, in order to prevent them and remove them at their roots.
Without ignoring the syndrome of asphyxiation caused by the imperturbable American blockade, the recent self-critical recognition by the country’s authorities of the slowness and lack of integrality in the process of updating the Cuban economic model in recent years is at least promising. And in the midst of so many difficulties and hardships, the new post-Covid-19 strategy raises expectations and encouragement to face the crisis. It also aims to translate into irreversible transformations what is pending in guiding documents such as the Economic and Social Guidelines and the Conceptualization of our Socialist Model.
In the opinion of many Cuban economists, who have been loyal to socialism since the brave critical and saving diagnosis, the recently announced strategy confers a much more audacious, systemic and integrating emphasis to transformations: it removes knots and obstacles to productive forces. It decentralizes and confers greater horizontality. It promotes food self-sustainability, greater export diversity and less dependence on imports. It makes the economy more democratic and invigorates entrepreneurship, because it seeks complementarity and similar possibilities among the different forms of ownership and management. It promotes incentives rather than prohibitions. It opens the doors of the watertight compartments.
Of course, these are the purposes. Changes will take time to reap their fruits, paradoxically in a fight against time. What is important about this strategy is not only its goals, but the way in which they are expressed, the intelligent ways to open those gates without being flooded and swallowed by the transformations. The other would be to fail through dogmatic starvation, to accept that economic problems continue to be faced with voluntary administrative measures and the attachment to the ucase, which is never political.
To the liberating and emancipatory character of the announced measures, the permanent scientific diagnosis of the transforming work should be added, so that from an observatory the errors and deviations in the shaping can be corrected. And at the same time promote the feedback of the states of opinion and popular consensus in terms of decision making.
For now, the daily episodes of police operations on economic crime reveal how far the Cuban economy has been submerged for years in the black market and illegalities, and in social coexistence with moral deterioration, to the nation’s detriment. And at the same time they alert us to how many distortions and design errors need to be corrected.
I will never justify crime and economic fraud no matter how difficult the circumstances. But it is also true that we lived for years among too many economic prohibitions that are now beginning to be rectified. And a proverbial ability to transgress the “legal” in order to survive was created, while it took a long time for these realistic processes of validation and sincerity to be carried out for many activities that were considered alien to the socialist ideal.
The result is what we are witnessing. Hence, post-Covid-19, with the ramifications of the world economic crisis and the perennial Yankee blockade, there will be no alternative but to assume all the risks of the transformations. On the one hand, rigor and discipline; on the other, incentive and entrepreneurship so that honest work, whether State-run or not, is the cornerstone that leads us to prosperity without abandoning social justice.
By Julio César Sánchez Guerra
internet@granma.cu
July 29, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
This coronavirus that goes around the world, brings us some lessons and challenges. There are ancient truths that sometimes remain hidden in the agility of the days. These are some of them: sickness can knock at the door of the prince or the beggar; man’s life is fragile, and we all have, as an increasingly connected species, a common destiny. That, in a way, reminds us of César Pavesse’s dramatic verse: “Death has a look for everyone”.
Overwhelming were the images of empty cities in the midst of quarantine. It seemed as if a flutist had taken away the inhabitants of a town, or that we were leaning out of a window that let us see clip from one those science fiction images in dystopian and apocalyptic societies.
There are countries where human health is just another commodity; where a test to determine whether someone is a carrier of the virus could cost $3,000. Is that true? And how do those who have no health insurance manage? COVID-19 lays bare the structural flaws of social systems, where people are the screws of the great machinery that produces millions of dollars for a few, and poverty for many.
Now the virus is also an examination of ethics; selfishness makes its trenches, lies and morbidity run through the social networks exacerbating panic and uncertainty, and solidarity is a bit of fire that survives the drizzle.
How beautiful was the scene of the Italians singing as a chorus from their balconies! It is as if they were contaminated by the virus of collective happiness, of laughter, or that mystery of love that cannot be defeated in the best of peole.
That’s why Evangelina, in Havana, took three of her sheets and turned them into nasobucos for anyone who needs them, no matter who is a stranger. And a ship, where there were people carrying the virus, was given permission, despite the risks, to enter a Cuban port for humanity, and then sent them all home by plane.
Perhaps for Cubans, the biggest problem has been how to avoid hugs, effusive greetings, that habit of affection that identifies us as much as an identity card. It’s just is that we are used to rolling over in a conga, even after that cyclone that blows us away; to throwing the domino on the table to sing a capicua; to dance casino or to argue about a ball in a corner.
Today we still need that distance that this terrible disease forced us into. In spite of the phases that put the country on the road to a new normality, it is still necessary to delay the overdose of affection; to continue the truce by talking to us so closely; to extend the rest to the squeezes of euphoria. We still need to greet each other with closed fists, with forearms, with that gesture, which is not ours, of bowing like someone going to a judo match, or retiring from the tatami.
Let’s give ourselves one more time. Everything has its time. We are winning, but let’s not be in a hurry to go back to the burden of divided hugs, to that mania of walking mixed up in the noise and the affections. Let responsibility and patience dominate our actions, so that the unwanted return of the virus, in the form of carelessness, does not destroy love, optimism or desire.
Let us keep an open book so that, later on, we can fill it with hands that squeeze, in this Island where joy lives on guard.
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