¡Tú estás totalmente equivocado! - The Best Thing (about Cuba) I've Read (in Spanish) This Week (IV)

You Are Totally Wrong!

Fernando Ravsberg, 2009-12-10

I recently discovered the work of Fernando Ravsberg, the BBC foreign correspondent in Cuba. Ravsberg churns out some really good articles and interviews on the usual suspects and topics - los Hnos. Castro, Yoani Sanchez, politics, U.S.-Cuban relations, etc. However, in an effort to focus attention on the often ignored struggles and joys of daily life in Cuba for its average citizens (and often in the neglected "provinces," faraway from the overexposed capital city), he also launched a blog, Cartas desde Cuba, two years ago.

His first five posts all appeared in a single week in mid-November of 2007. They covered fascinating subjects like the daily struggles to make ends meet, a handfull of Cuban children abandoned by their parents who live quite well at a state-run orphanage, trying to spend a weekend at Varadero when you (like Ravsberg) are a foreigner with a Cuban spouse (back then, Cubans couldn't stay in hotels and foreigners could only stay in them), the underground rock scene and the youth hang-out at 23 y G in Vedado, and corruption, the black market, and the creeping privatization of state enterprises by their "enterprising" employees.

His fascination with this Cuba, "beyond the headlines," led to his rich and vivid blog (now two years old). To this we can add the rich and provocative comments his world-wide reading audience have sent in.

Here is how he described the purpose and focus of his blogging adventure back in November of 2007:

"In the press we are acoustomed to read, see, or hear about Cuba only when some kind of political event occurs; whether it has to do with Fidel Castro, Cuba's historic leader, or when there is an incident concerning relations with the United States, among other themes. Nevertheless, we know and read little about the day-to-day life of this Caribbean island.

"For that reason, our correspondent Fernando Ravsberg ventured out into the streets in order to search for and write about the daily lives of Cubans, sharing his expereinces with you in these 'Cartas desde Cuba.' We also invite you to read the many comments we have received responding to his work during this week."

Luckily for us, this week-long experiment went so well that Ravsberg decided to continue blogging into 2008 and 2009.

His latest post, "You Are Totally Wrong!" is his 100th. It is highly recommended for its wit and for its focus on Cuban political culture, where respectful dialogue and debate is often a faraway dream. Instead, both government critics and pro-revolution stalwarts tend to attack one another with "verbal violence," refusing to ever really hear what the other is saying.

Click above to read the post in Spanish.  My translation follows below.

The Savaging of Yoani Sánchez: The Reasons Why... (Part 3/3)

My previous post in this three part series, "The Savaging of Yoani Sanchez," described the flood of recent articles in the Cuban press aimed at disqualifying the blogger. Essentially, these articles allege that she is a foreign media phenomenon, completely unknown in Cuba, financed by enemies of the revolution.

While it is clear that Sanchez began with a much greater following abroad than she has so far attained within her own country (kind of like the Buena Vista Social Club, come to think of it), none of her critics care to admit that this fact is due primarily to the government's monopoly on mass media in Cuba. By law and by definition, Cuban mass media is Cuban state media. Remember, the national daily Granma is the "Organo Oficial del Comite Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba" (the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party).

Indeed, up until last week, the state media had steadfastly refused to even mention her by name, knowing perhaps that the wily Cuban public is often skeptical of what it reads in Granma, and may become interested in "un tal Yohanis" exactly because the government has begun to badmouth her. This is also likely the reason that the article that did attempt to savage her, " Yoani Sánchez: la hija de PRISA" (a reprint of an article first published on-line back in January, 2009) appeared only in the weekly, Spanish-language version of Granma Internacional, not in the national daily Granma.

Furthermore, the fact that Sanchez's blog, along with a growing number of the blogs and portals that she is associated with, are "blockaded" by the government and thus inaccessible to the vast majority of the Cuban public did not seem to merit mention by her critics. (Last year on a trip to Cuba I confirmed this when I was unable to access her blog or the portal that houses it, DesdeCuba.com, from a number of Havana hotels).

Instead, with a twisted logic, her critics use the fact she is (still) relatively unknown within Cuba (because of this internal "embargo" on the free flow of information) as "proof" that she is a foreign media construction and, it is insinuated, a foreign agent, whose critiques of Cuba's socialist system serve foreign interests and and are not shared by her fellow Cuban subjects, er, citizens.

Thus, out of overconfidence, naivete, jealousy, or just a lack of understanding of this new generation and their newfangled gadgets, and in their effort to disqualify the blogger, her critics have willfully overlooked or conveniently ignored the real reasons for her substantial success and rapid rise to international influence to date.

So, here I offer my own analysis of "the reasons why"; my “top ten list” of what is really "behind" what her critics have labeled alternately “The Yoani Phenomenon” or more sinisterly “La Operación Yoani.”

1. David vs. Goliath: The laudatory international media frenzy that initially greeted Fidel Castro in the 1950s (with Herbert Matthews of the New York Times - pictured with Castro above [Fildel's the one with the cigar] - describing him as "an overpowering personality" whose "men adored him"; "he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island," "an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, courage, and of remarkable qualities of leadership"), is ironically being replayed here with Sánchez and her “revolutionary” blog. Remember, Batista also attempted to censor the Cuban national media preventing them from fueling Castro's rising popularity within the country - necessitating the foreign media's "infiltration" of the country to get the story out. However, Batista was much less adept at completely controlling a national media (which was still then in private hands) than is the current government, of which the national mass media is an official extension.

Let a Thousand Flowers..., uh, Bloggers Bloom!: Of Blogrolls and BestBlogs (Part 1)

I was just in the process of updating my blogroll, that list at the right-hand side of the blog where I link to other blogs of Cuba interest. Mine's called "BestBlogs."

I guess you could say I "recommend" them, since I do call the list "BestBlogs." However, the usual disclaimer applies - recommendation does not imply agreement.

For example, the logo, "Free @ Internet," pasted to the upper left here is used on many blogs connected to the dual projects, Itinerario/Academia Blogger and Voces Cubanas, a weekly blogger workshop and blog portal, respectively, for independent Cuban bloggers usually run out of the home of Yoani Sanchez and Reinaldo Escobar. There are 16 blogs currently collectively housed at the "Voces Cubanas" portal, while the number of such independent blogs in Cuba could easily be double or tripple that.

The logo on the right, on the other hand, is from the main portal of another group of young bloggers, lanuched informally by a group of 15 students and professors at the University of Havana, calling themselves simply, "Bloggers Cuba." Notice that they both use the Cuban flag - but in very different ways. Both groups have also been organized for about a year and meet up regularly to share blogging strategies and encourage one another. Of course, there is also much that separates them.

Keep reading this new five-part series, "Let a Thousand Flowers..., uh, Bloggers Bloom!", as I will have much more to say about these and various other blogger movements and internet news sources rapidly flourishing (despite and sometimes because of government repression and/or support) in today's Cuba.

So, I "recommend" that you check out both of these portals, while I do not uncritically "endorse" all the content of either. In fact, my list of "BestBlogs," like my list of best friends, I only agree with about 50% of the time. What's the point of talking, debating, reading, exchanging ideas, and dialogando (that word with such a tragic Cuban/Cuban-American history - e.g., dalogueros, Cuban-Americans who dared exchange ideas with the Cuban government back in the 1970s and 1980s and were met with terrorist violence because of it in Miami), if we are already in agreement.

I do, however, make recommendations with an eye to the importance of a source's serious contribution to the Cuba debate or if it is sharing of a perspective that is not likely to get much play in the monopolistic corporate media in the U.S. and even less so in the state/party controlled media in Cuba.

Remember these wise words from journalist A. J. Liebling:

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed...
only to those who own one."

The Savaging of Yoani Sánchez: Of Straw Men, Cocky Hens, and Lobeznas Disfrazadas (Part 2/3)

In the first part of this series, "Crying Wolf(ette)," I highlighted a series of articles appearing in the Cuban press (in print and on-line) aimed at disqualifying Yoani Sanchez. Without exception, they deploy one or more of a handful of tired tactics traditionally aimed at discrediting any critics of the Cuban revolution.

Most commonly, they attack the critic, not the criticism; the messenger, not the message.

In other words, they attack Sánchez’s person, her integrity, her motivations, her (rich and luxurious?) lifestyle, or even her choice of fashion (a blond wig in Cuba – how dare she!), choosing to ignore her arguments and analysis about Cuba’s many pressing problems:

Official corruption, collapsing infrastructure, an inefficient economic system, lack of freedom of expression, of the press, of association, of assembly, to travel freely abroad, to live where one chooses, to buy and sell one’s belongings (including one’s home or car), to work on one’s own account, not to mention the severe limits on other political, civic, economic, and human rights.

In other words, these attacks are a concerted but unsuccessful attempt to change the subject. Cuba’s real problems don’t appear on that long list above and can simply be reduced to this: the fatherland is threatened by an ungrateful, anti-Cuban, skinny computer hacker with a poison pen (ink bought and paid for by Uncle Sam, of course).

This elegant graphic comes to us courtesy of the blog of Cuban journalist Norelys Morales Aguliera - Islamia.

Luckily, Yoani hasn't taken the bait. She refuses to be dragged down into the mud with her critics, even having the class to express solidarity and understanding with them as fellow bloggers. Instead of being distracted by the noise, er, news, she has kept up her mission of expanding the space for critical dialogue by speaking truth to power, refusing to stop "kicking the darkness 'till it bleeds daylight" - verbally speaking, of course.

Los Consejos de Carlos: Elaine Diaz @ La Polemica Digital

Some of the best comments that I've gotten so far on this 6-week old blog* have been direct e-mails from readers, some angry and others complimentary. Unfortunately, however much they warm my heart or boil my blood, these direct e-mails never see the light of day.

However, I received one e-mail about two weeks ago from an old friend in Cuba, Carlos Alzugaray, a former diplomat, active scholar (see his recent essay, "Continuity and Change in Cuba at 50" here), and a professor of Political Science in Havana, that was quite helpful for me in expanding my still limited knowledge of the blogosfera cubana.

Carlos and I have since kept up a healthy e-mail exchange, not always agreeing, but always open to debating and learning from one another. If we were not separated by those pesky 90 miles, we'd also likely share a bottle of ron anejo as we argue over US-Cuban relations.

Given the recent rise in the temperature of the debate surrounding the Cuban blogosphere and the flood of personal attacks, innuendo, and basic lack of buenos modales or even el respeto por el derecho ajeno from some bloggers, I think Carlos' note is a good example of respectful, fruitful engagement.

With his permission, I'm pasting his initial e-mail here as food for thought and fodder for more critical and respectful debate.

Adelante Carlos!

Hi Ted!

I have been following your blog and I cannot help but notice your infatuation with Yoani. No doubt an intelligent, articulate and attractive figure. I think in many ways she reflects what many young Cubans of her generation think.

Nevertheless, since you are a scientist and I am one too, I must point out that I find your attention on Yoani excessive and supporting a distorted view of Cuban reality. Your blogs give the impression that the Cuban blogosphere begins and ends with Yoani and the group of young people that surround her and follow her, an idea that Yoani and her husband, Reinaldo Escobar, tend to promote.

BREAKING NEWS: A Nuestros Lectores...

The editorial board of the website CubaEncuentro.com will split off from the parent organization, the Association "Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana." The entire editorial board of the website, as well as a number of the directors of the magazine, Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, will leave Encuentro and start a new website Diario de Cuba, (http://www.ddcuba.com/), effective immediately.

In an editorial dated tomorrow morning, Friday, December 4, 2009, what is easily the best one-stop website for intelligent, professional, trustworthy, well-balanced, and up-to-the-minute news on Cuban politics, culture, and day-to-day life in general in Cuba will split, with the entire editorial board leaving to start a new venture Diario de Cuba.

An editorial, signed by Pablo Díaz Espí, Editorial Director of the portal Cubaencuentro.com, and Antonio José Ponte, Co-director of the magazine Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, entitled, "A Nuestros Lectores," gives the following explanation (my translation follows):

A Classy Lady: Sánchez Responds to Critics (via Twitter!)

Yoani Sánchez
yoanisanchez

I have come to think that those who are always ready to insult, disqualify, and attack as a way of life, are quickly neutralized when confronted with sweet words. 23 minutes ago reply

For now, I send them all a complicit wink: I know very well that one’s mask can drop away in a split second, that their true opinions will blossom one day. 2 hours ago reply

Someday, we Cuban bloggers of al stripes will be able to come together and debate without insults and personal attacks. It’ll be soon. 2 hours 10 minutes ago reply

I know that behind all those offensive words and defamations against me, many times there is a journalist under pressure from their superiors. I don’t hold grudges. 2 hours 15 minutes ago reply

Although it may seem that we alternative bloggers are separated by a great difference of opinion from the official ones, we really have common problems. 2 hours 25 minutes ago reply

I want to thank all these official Cuban blogs that keep the topic of the alternative blogosphere on the front burner. Keep it up!!! 2 hours 30 minutes ago reply

Join the

conversation

Note: To navegate to the other entries in thies series, "The Savaging of Yoani Sanchez," you click here on Part I, "Crying Wolf(ette)," Sanchez Responds to Critics, "Classy Lady," Part II, "Of Strawmen...," or Part III, "The Reasons Why..."

The Savaging of Yoani Sánchez: Crying Wolf(ette) - Part 1/3

Is this the sound of the other shoe dropping? You can be forgiven for not having noticed, but while you were eating your Lechón con flan over the long Thanksgiving weekend, the Cuban government clearly changed its strategy in dealing with the independent blogger movement and especially with the most prominent member of that movement, Yoani Sánchez.



Of course, October and November were quite eventful in the Cuban blogósfera, featuring a series of audacious guerrilla video maneuvers from La Flaca (first at an immigration office and then inside the Temas internet debate). This was followed by a pair of violent, government-orchestrated crackdowns, both taking place in the streets and aimed at reminding her and her husband, Reinaldo, along with their pesky blogger friends like Claudia Caudelo and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo (pictured above with Sánchez), that “la calle es de Fidel” – even if he hasn’t been seen on it in more than three years.

This was all capped off by Sánchez’s coup of scoring a one-on-one Q&A with President Obama, published on her blog as “Siete Preguntas” on Thursday morning, November 19.

However, over the course of the following week, more articles critical and dismissive of Sánchez have appeared in the official Cuban on-line press (and, according to AFP, it seems also in the print version of the Spanish language edition of Granma Internacional) than had appeared there in all of the previous two-and-a-half-years.

Achy Obejas: In These Times - Worth Reading (II)

You know something about Cuba is "worth reading" when you get recommendations for it from both the strident critic of the Cuban government Ernesto Hernandez Busto at his blog Penultimos Dias, and from the self-described American-Cuban (para no decir Cubano-Americano) and passionate defender of the revolution, Walter Lippmann, who runs the CubaNews Yahoo news group. (Still, Val Prieto over at Babalu doesn't seem too thrilled about it - but what else is new!)

Enter Achy Obejas and "Inside Cuba: Voices from the Island."

Going "live" next week on its website (though some articles are available on-line now) is the special December "Cuba" edition of the alternative monthly magazine, In these Times. (I went to three different magazine kiosks here in Manhattan yesterday and still haven't yet found a hard copy - I guess it's tough times for independent meida both in Cuba and the U.S. - remember A.J. Leibling's wise words: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.")

Leonardo Padura: Worth Reading (I)

The pull quotes:

Padura on his new novel: "I would like my novel to really generate a debate within Cuba. There will surely be those who disagree with points of view I sustain in the book or even outside of it, but I think that is necessary too." Cubans have lost "the ability for polemics, for real debate," but that is one of the "most important" lessons the country needs to learn. (Cuba Encuentro)

Padura on Obama and the embargo: "Can this president who so loves to lower tensions seriously believe that the same Cuban embargo condemned by nearly the whole world, including countries most critical of the Cuban system, is going to force Havana to make changes rather than provoke its deeper entrenchment? What's more, is this intelligent man not capable of deducing that the lifting of the embargo could be exactly the thing that induces the arrival of changes in Cuba?" (Progreso Weekly)

Between 1996 and 2002, I did graduate work at Tulane University's Stone Center for Latin American Studies where I specialized in Cuban Studies. Having previously done relief work with Cuban balseros, then just released from the now infamous Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, I was eager to learn more about the history and reality of the country these people had fled - a place they continued to love dearly and where they had left behind many of their most cherished memories and gente mas querida.

As I moved tentatively forward on my path to becoming a full-time "Cubanologo," I had the good fortune of meeting and learning about Cuba from a long succession of Cuban professors who were in New Orleans, at Tulane, on academic visas. The long list of these visiting writers, scholars, and artists included Pedro Monreal, Julio Carranza, Wilfredo Cancio Isla (now an intrepid reporter for the Nuevo Herald), Aurelio Alonso, Rafael Hernandez, and the sometime journalist and now full time novelist Leonardo Padura.

Thankfully, that era of people-to-people, academic, and cultural exchanges seems to be slowly resuming under the Obama administration, what with the recent announcements that the Cuban super group Los Van Van will do 70 shows in the U.S. next year while none other than Kool and the Gang will be performing in Cuba in the coming weeks! Can somebody say, "Celebration!"?

All this is a long winded way of introducing Leonardo Padura's work, as well as his latest novel, El hombre que amaba a los perros ("The Man Who Loved Dogs," Tusquets, 2009), to readers of El Yuma.

Padura is best known for his ongoing series of literary detective novels all featuring the Inspector Mario Conde (translated to English as Havana Red, Havana Black, Havana Blue, Havana Gold, Havana Fever, and Adios Hemingway).

In fact, Cuba Encuentro recently reported that Padura's next project will focus once again on Conde, in a plot line that will mix the history of Havana's Polish Jews (I have a friend, neighbor, and former landlord here in New York by the name of Isidoro Ptachewich, proud to be 100% Juban) with that of the city's many "urban tribes" of today. Can't wait for that one!

From the early reviews I've been able to find (here and here), however, it seems that El hombre que amaba a los perros, is more of a political/historical novel in the tradition of Padura's highly acclaimed (if still untranslated) La novela de mi vida (Tusquets, 2002), than a "whodunit?" detective novel - even if the new book is built around one of the most grizzly and notorious political assassinations of the 20th century: that of Leon Trotsky by Ramón Mercader.

• Trotsky, the Damned: A synopsis of the novel, Tusquets (my translation)
  "The novel's plot follows Ivan, a Cuban veterinarian and aspiring writer who, after the death of his wife in 2004, turns back the clock to a mysterious episode from his youth in 1977 when he met an enigmatic foreign man who would often walk his gorgeous Russian hounds on the Cuban beach. After running into one another a few times, 'The man who loved dogs' began to open up to Ivan, sharing vivid details about his 'friend's' life (that is Mercader's life) and his assassination of Trotsky in Mexico years earlier.
  
  "The Pandora's Box that this elderly stranger opens for Ivan acquaints him with all the sordid and chilling details of the internecine struggles on the international left long erased from Soviet (and therefore Cuban) history. However, all this new information becomes perhaps too disturbing for Ivan as Mercader's story simultaneously raises questions about the many intellectual, cultural, and political discontents that face contemporary Cuba."

• Obama, Cuba, and Lost Hopes?: An op-ed from Padura, Progreso Weekly (my re-translation)
  "In April 2009 at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, Obama began his presidency with the promise of a rapprochement towards Latin America. He listened patiently to calls from almost every nation in the Hemisphere to lift the embargo and begin normalizing relations with Cuba. As a result, the hopes of many on the island grew. At that time, the President had already decided to eliminate restrictions that made it difficult for Cuban-Americans to visit their country or send remittances to family members there. Also, academic and cultural contacts were on the path to recuperation and there were talks of a possible reestablishment of direct mail or allowing Cuban access to the North American fiber-optic network.
  
  "That is why, when on Oct. 28, the U.S. government declared before the world at the General Assembly of the United Nations that it would not alter the embargo and justified it with the same arguments that eight previous U.S. administrations had used since 1962, hopes faded and many asked: Is a man who decides to sustain the policy of isolation over Cuba, the same young, charismatic man who, promising change, rose to power a year ago? Is the man who accepts a policy aimed at defeating a country through hunger, the same person who won a Nobel Peace Prize? Can this president who so loves to lower tensions, seriously believe that the same Cuban embargo condemned by nearly the whole world, including countries most critical of the Cuban system, is going to force Havana to make changes rather than provoke its deeper entrenchment? What's more, is this intelligent man not capable of deducing that the lifting of the embargo could be exactly the thing that induces the arrival of changes in Cuba?"