droits de l'homme
La violence faite aux femmes
La voix de Julieta Venegas résonne dans la grande salle du Théâtre National. Elle monte vers les hauteurs et plonge au fond de votre âme. Je suis dans un fauteuil, dans la pénombre, lorsque résonnent les premiers accords.
La voix de Julieta Venegas résonne dans la grande salle du Théâtre National. Elle monte vers les hauteurs et plonge au fond de votre âme. Je suis dans un fauteuil, dans la pénombre, lorsque résonnent les premiers accords. Le regard fixé sur la scène. Pour arriver jusqu’ici depuis mon appartement, j’ai traversé le quartier de La Timba ; des chiens aboyaient aux coins des rues et des femmes vêtues de loques se penchaient aux fenêtres. Je suis arrivée ici avec mes doutes, ma progestérone, mes ongles si courts qu’ils pourraient être sur les mains d’un adolescent, mes vêtements sans féminité, mes cheveux qui résistent au peigne, ma maternité, ma sauvagerie. Me voilà, avec mes ovaires, horloge de ma fécondité et un fils qui un jour prochain fera de moi une aïeule… autant se préparer à la fugacité de la vie.
J’essaie donc de capter le rythme des chansons de Venegas, de répéter un refrain et de claquer des doigts pour marquer le rythme. La lutte contre la violence domestique qu’elle endosse me touche de près, même si je n’ai jamais vécu de ma propre chair les tensions familiales ou matrimoniales. Je connais bien ces visages bas, taciturnes, violacés, que je rencontre à chaque pas. Dans l’ascenseur, dans la file d’attente de l’autobus, dans cette ville, où malgré la taille on finit par retomber sur les mêmes personnes. Je vois ces yeux qui ne vous regardent plus en face, de honte et par crainte que l’homme qui les abuse ne découvre qu’elles appellent à l’aide, mais chaque centimètre de leur peau ; chaque morceau de leurs vêtements dit : « Sauvez-moi ! tirez-moi de cette situation ! ». Je vois la jeune fille aux vêtements serrés que le proxénète ne lâche pas d’un pas, la matrone aux seins gonflés par les multiples accouchements sur laquelle le mari lance son assiette par dessus la table en criant « et c’est tout ce qu’il y a à manger ? », la secrétaire qui se maquille devant son miroir en pensant que si elle plait à son chef elle aura un kilo de poulet et quelques savons à la fin du mois. A la ballerine qui transforme sa moue dégoûtée en un geste de plaisir, après le baiser du hiérarque décrépit qui lui promet une vie meilleure.
Et je vois, je revois entre deux chansons de Julieta Venegas le président de la Fédération des Etudiants Universitaires (FEU) de la faculté d’économie. Le même qui le samedi précédent, dans l’amphithéâtre Manuel Sanguily de l’Université de la Havane souhaitait la bienvenue aux nouveaux étudiants potentiels. Pour les convaincre de s’inscrire dans cette spécialité ce garçon disait : « Nous avons beaucoup d’activités, les jeux sportifs, les fêtes au club nautique de la FEU et aussi … les actions contre les Dames en Blanc ». Et moi j’étais là dans cet amphithéâtre, envahie d’une tristesse incroyable pour ce jeune homme à qui cela semblait presque un divertissement d’aller insulter des femmes, de les empêcher de sortir de chez elles, de leur crier toutes sortes d’insanités. Deux jours plus tard je me trouve dans le fauteuil rembourré du théâtre National, découvrant comment le même discours officiel peut inciter à et condamner la barbarie, inviter une artiste talentueuse pour qu’elle dénonce la violence domestique et, en même temps, faire taire le chant de libertés de tellement de femmes.
Traduit par Jean-Claude Marouby
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La violence faite aux femmes
droits de l'homme
L’organisation internationale contre la torture lance une « intervention d’urgence » pour José Daniel Ferrer
MIAMI, États-Unis.- L’Observatoire pour la protection des défenseurs des droits humains (OPDDH), a lancé ce vendredi une campagne d' »Interventions urgentes » en faveur du prisonnier politique et de conscience cubain José Daniel Ferrer García, leader de l’Union patriotique de Cuba (UNPACU), selon une note de Radio Televisión Martí.
droits de l'homme
Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?
New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio) Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries. They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the « packets » of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes
New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio)
Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries.
They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the « packets » of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes. Some nights they would connect through routers and play strategy video games that made them feel powerful and free. Whoever wants to know them should know that they’ve had « emerging teachers » since elementary school and were taught grammar, math and ideology via television screens. However, they ended up being the least ideological of the Cubans who today inhabit this Island, the most cosmopolitan and with the greatest vision of the future.
On arriving at junior high school they played at throwing around around the obligatory snack of bread while their parents furtively passed their lunches through the school gate. They have a special physical ability, an adaptation that has allowed them to survive the environment; they don’t hear what doesn’t interest them, they close their ears to the harangues of morning assemblies and politicians. They seem lazier than other generations and in reality they are, but in their case this apathy acts like an evolutionary advantage. They’re better than us and will live in a country that has nothing to do with what we were promised.
A few months ago, these same young people, starred in the best known case of school fraud uncovered publicly. Some of those hoping to earn a place in higher education bought the answers to an admissions test. They were used to paying for approval, because they had to turn to private tutors to teach them what they should have learned in the classroom. Many of those who recently enrolled in the university had private teachers starting in elementary school. They are the children of a new emerging class that has used its resources so that their children can reach a desk at the right hand — or the left — of the alma mater.
These young people dressed in uniforms in their earlier grades, but they struggled to differentiate themselves through the length of a shirt, a fringe of bleached hair, or through pants sagging below their hips. They are the children of those who barely had a change of underwear in the nineties, so their parents tried to make sure they didn’t « go through the same thing, » and turned to the black market for their clothes and shoes. They mock the false austerity and, not wanting to look like militants, they love bright shiny colors and name brand outfits.
Yesterday, with the start of the school year, they received a lecture about the attempts of « imperialism to undermine the revolution through its youth. » It was like a faint drizzle running over an impervious surface. The government is right to be worried; these young people who have entered the university will never become good soldiers or fanatics. The clay from which they are made cannot be molded.
Excerpt from:
Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?
droits de l'homme
A Caricature of a Cuban Woman
Woman drinking (14ymedio) 14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband « helps » her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a « Federated man, » an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness
14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband « helps » her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a « Federated man, » an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness. Instead of the urgent demands they should mention, all I hear is this appreciation directed to a power as manly as it is deaf.
It’s not about « helping » to wash a plate or watch the kids, nor tiny illusory gender quotas that hide so much discrimination like a slap. The problem is that economic and political power remains mainly in masculine hands. What percentage of car owners are women? How many acres of land are owned or leased by women. How many Cuban ambassadors on missions abroad wear skirts? Can anyone recite the number of men who request paternity leave to take care of their newborns? How many young men are stopped by the police each day to warn them they can’t walk with a tourist? Who mostly attends the parent meetings at the schools?
Please, don’t try to « put us to sleep » with figures in the style of, « 65 percent of our cadres and 50 percent of our grassroots leaders are women. » The only thing this statistic means is that more responsibility falls on our shoulders, which means neither a high decision-making level nor greater rights. At least such a triumphalist phrase clarifies that there are « grassroots leaders, » because we know that decisions at the highest level are made by men who grew up under the precepts that we women are beautiful ornaments to have at hand… always and as long as we keep our mouths shut.
I feel sorry for the docile and timid feminist movement that exists in my country. Ashamed for those ladies with their ridiculous necklaces and abundant makeup who appear in the official media to tell us that « the Cuban woman has been the greatest ally of the Revolution. » Words spoken at the same moment when a company director is sexually harassing his secretary, when a beaten woman can’t get a restraining order against her abusive husband, when a policeman tells the victim of a sexual assault, « Well, with that skirt you’re wearing… » and the government recruits shock troops for an act of repudiation against the Ladies in White.
Women are the sector of the population that has the most reason to shout their displeasure. Because half a century after the founding of the caricature of an organization that is the Federation of Cuban Women, we are neither more free, nor more powerful, nor even more independent.
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A Caricature of a Cuban Woman
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