droits de l'homme
Cuban Airports: The Chokepoint
José Martí International Airport tower People crowd together in the suffocating heat, some are holding signs with names printed on them. The flight from Madrid just landed at José Martí International Airport, bringing tourists and many nationals now living in Spain. Each person must wait forty minutes to an hour — at least — before finally passing through the exit door. Havana is one of the world’s slowest airports, the worst lit, and with the fewest services for the traveler. In a country that receives almost three million tourists a year, updating its airport facilities is vital for the economy.
José Martí International Airport tower
People crowd together in the suffocating heat, some are holding signs with names printed on them. The flight from Madrid just landed at José Martí International Airport, bringing tourists and many nationals now living in Spain. Each person must wait forty minutes to an hour — at least — before finally passing through the exit door. Havana is one of the world’s slowest airports, the worst lit, and with the fewest services for the traveler.
In a country that receives almost three million tourists a year, updating its airport facilities is vital for the economy. If these places don’t meet international standards, it’s unlikely that the island — in the short or medium term — can play host to more visitors.
Aware of its major shortcomings, ECASA (Cuban Airports and Aeronautical Services S.A.) has begun a process of remodeling some of its arrival and departure lounges, but the problem requires more than adjustments and redesign. Its principal limitations are not only material, but also its excessive controls, the lack of comfort, and the attitudes of its employees.
Departure lounges, restrictions and inadequacies
Alina has arrived at the Havana airport three hours early, but it may not be enough. She can check in only at the airline counter, as there are no machines to perform the procedures independently. This limitation lengthens the lines, slows the whole process of obtaining a boarding pass, and feeds the image of an always crowded lounge that characterizes José Martí Airport.
A frequent traveler to Spain, thanks to her new EU passport, Alina has come prepared for a cramped and awkward process. She flies through Terminal 2 because Terminal 3 — larger and more modern — is being remodeled and recently experienced a fire. In her bag she carries a snack made at home, because she knows the prices there are stratospheric and the offerings are very limited.
Poor signage completes the picture. For ten minutes the frustrated customer looks for a bathroom but the directional signs are scarce and not very visible. Few of the ceiling lights are on, which makes the various areas of the lounge dark. Still, every passenger must pay the airport tax. In the line to hand over 25 convertible pesos ($28 US), one hears the tourists complaining about the tenuous relationship between the price and the quality of the facilities. Cuban passengers, however, remain silent, not wanting to cause problems for themselves just when they’re about to leave the island.
Without a Wi-Fi network to access the Internet, any modern airport falls several points on the scale of quality. With regards to communication, no embarkation point in Cuba is competitive, not even Varadero. The few public phones and the lack of a wireless network diminish the chances to communicate. To this is added the TVs buzzing away with their tired tourist announcements or overly ideological programs like Cubavision’s Roundtable. Nor is there a stand selling magazines or newspapers, just some souvenir kiosks where they sell the works of Ernesto Guevara and the speeches of Fidel Castro.
Alina is also prepared to avoid boredom while waiting, and has brought some headphones to listen to music on her phone. She waits at the exit doors — there are only two: A and B — until an employee shouts out that her flight is already checking in.
Arrivals and the collision with reality
Humberto arrives after a trip to the United States. This was his first trip abroad, so he’s still stunned by the size of the Miami airport. On the plane back to Cuba he’s filled out the Customs form and in his pocket he has a copy of the boarding pass he got at the exit. He joins the long line for immigration and next will have to answer a brief medical questionnaire which he will also have to sign. A few steps away the luggage waits, the slowest point in the entry to Cuban territory. Every suitcase will be put through a scanner to investigate its contents.
After analyzing each bag or suitcase, they will attach « markers » to those that need to be inspected. A small red strip tied to the handle may mean it contains some home appliance or computer. If instead, it contains an external hard disk, then they write some initials on the paper strip that identifies the flight. There is no way to avoid this process. The customs officers are trained to keep out a long list of objects.
Humberto’s granddaughters, born in Coral Gables, have given him a laptop and a smartphone. So he must go to the table where they open his suitcase and minutely search everything. They take the computer to an office, where they probably inspect its files or make a copy of them. He’s already waited an hour and a half since the plane touched down and will probably wait a little longer.
While they search his belonging they tell him he can’t make calls on his cellphone. « Welcome to Cuba, » he tells himself when an officer asks what those « bullet-shaped » pressed cotton things are. « Tampons for my daughter, » he responds grumpily.
Two hours after arriving in his own country, Humberto passes through the gate in Terminal 2. At the same time, Alina is already seated on her flight to cross the Atlantic. Looking out the window she whispers, « Goodbye Havana airport, I hope I don’t see you for a long time! »
Yoani’s English Language blog is here, and her posts also appear in TranslatingCuba.com here, along with those of over 100 independent voices writing from the Island. You can help translate Cuban bloggers at HemosOido.com here.
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Cuban Airports: The Chokepoint
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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