droits de l'homme
Monday the Hated Exit Permit Disappears, Cubans Prepare to Leave
Photo: Yoani Sanchez All four sleep in the same bed. Under the mattress there is a pair of suitcases and in the corner of the room a hanger with just a few clothes. Every day they buy pizzas or snacks because they don’t have anything to cook with, no dishes, no spoons. They’ve sold everything, or almost everything. The house, the car from the fifties, and the home appliances they once had
Photo: Yoani Sanchez
All four sleep in the same bed. Under the mattress there is a pair of suitcases and in the corner of the room a hanger with just a few clothes. Every day they buy pizzas or snacks because they don’t have anything to cook with, no dishes, no spoons. They’ve sold everything, or almost everything. The house, the car from the fifties, and the home appliances they once had. They even got rid of the family vault in the cemetery, the porcelain vases and a post-office box – at the neighborhood post office – which they barely used. They gave their relatives in the countryside everything no one wanted to buy, the used clothes, the faded toys and the old sewing machine. Then they rented the little room where they are now, waiting for this coming Monday when the immigration reform goes into effect.
Like so many Cubans, this couple has waited for years to be able to emigrate with their two minor children. Only when the new flexibilizations go into effect will travel finally be permitted for those under 18. It seems like a trivial detail, but I know many parents who are tied to this land because they can’t leave their children behind. People who have had to choose between living anywhere else on the planet, alone, or staying here, accompanied but frustrated. For decades the only children who managed to travel were those few privileged ones whose parents served on official missions, or – on the contrary – who left « definitively, » with no return. There was no middle ground when it came to children.
So, like eager runners at the starting line, many are waiting for the signal to head toward the airport, their children in tow. Meanwhile, they live in rented rooms and try to change their convertible pesos into a currency that will work abroad. From last October, when Decree-Law 302 was published, this fever to escape has swelled. No sooner was the notice published than digital sites started to fill with classified ads offering houses and other property for sale. Part of the capital to pay for the tickets and start a new life somewhere else is obtained through liquidating assets in the national territory. Getting rid of everything to leave, dismantling oneself to exist. A trend that started with the authorization to buy and sell houses at the end of 2011, but that now has intensified.
Despite various embassies strengthening the requirements to get a visa, we should not underestimate the ingenuity and the thousand and one tricks Cubans can boast of. Including circulating a list of nations that don’t demand a visa from those whose passports bear the shield with a solitary palm. Although, sadly, there are no direct flights to most of these destinations, and so permission is needed from the country where the plane touches down en route. But this is not enough of a reason to discourage those who want to emigrate. They have patiently waited for this moment and no obstacle is going to destroy the illusion. Counting the days, vegetating at half speed, January 14th could be the start of a new life for them. Will they reach it?
Translating Cuba is a compilation blog with Yoani and other Cuban bloggers in English.
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Monday the Hated Exit Permit Disappears, Cubans Prepare to Leave
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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