Contra toda esperanza

Even though I know I’m running the risk to repeat myself, there is not other way to say that I’m still in shock, after finishing reading Armando Valladares' book, Contra toda esperanza.

His testimonies about the realities of the Isla de Pinos prison, las tapiadas de la cárcel de Boniato, La Cabaña, el Combinado del Este, at some point are strong enough to leave you speechless.

For me it’s still really hard to process all that information. Not because I don’t believe it, but because sometimes it's hard to believe the reality of the society I grew up in is such a cruel one. Unfortunately, that's the real one.

Now more than ever I feel that those men and women deserve our highest honors for daring to opposed castro’s scheme since day one, and for still being there, speaking up against the regimen.

I just wish I would have known earlier…(and there I go again, with my cantaleta about how robbed and fooled I feel for being born and raised in that “hombre nuevo” generation. What a crap!)

Anyway, through Valladares book, I found really amazing how a man can learn to dominate the fear trusting his strength to God. But, on top of all that, I discovered a love story. A love story that you don’t quite find often in this live of ours.

However, there is a reaction deep in mind that I’ve been noticing while reading this book and the others that I have included in my re-education program.

With “Against all hope” it’s been really stronger, because I still have some blurred memories in my mind of when the regimen broadcasted the footage of Valladares in the hospital (or jail, I can’t remember the details).

I was a kid, I think that in elementary school, but I do remember that the message was to let us know he was a liar and that he was just pretending to be unable to walk. Obviously, the regimen was portraying itself as being super fair and benevolent for providing him with medical care.

I wondered who this man was and why those footage were filmed with hidden cameras. They were in black and white (as our tv at home) and the images were pretty bad. Then, as usual with castro’s campaigns, everything vanished and there were no more words about him.

And there is also the reaction of thinking that I lived in Alamar, in a zone that is basically across the street form el Combinado del Este. It terrifies me to think how many horrors where taking place so close to my house, my entire family, my neighborhood.

It is also shocking to learn about the murders and tortures in La Cabaña, the place where I used to work while until a left Cuba. It’s a weird thing. A very weird feeling.

There you are, reading the description of the physical places in the book and, as an involuntary reflex, you are trying to map out in your mind where that place is, or if you were ever close to it while you were working in La Divina Pastora, totally clueless about all the blood that was shed between those ancient walls.

You read about the little bridge and the arms deposit and I can’t help to think in El Polvorín, that was a bar when I used to work there.

I read about the paredón and I can’t help to think if may be I was in that place, during that celebration when I was like 11 or 12 years old. It took place not in the side where the restaurants are, but in the side that back then only the military has access to it.

A group of outstanding students from my school –destacados, were invited to this military ceremony or parade. I don’t even remember exactly what it was for. It was in an open space inside the military part of the fortress, surrounded by ancient and thick walls. Far away in one side, there were things that now I supposed are las galeras. All that was being repaired to become a museum.

I was selected to read a proclamation at the beginning of the ceremony and everyone was pretty nervous, running here and there, speculating if fidel or raúl would arrive at the very last minute. (Man, we were so naïve back then!). I went up there and read it and when I turned to my side, there he was, raúl with su cara de curda. Go figure!

The ceremony ended, we (the kids) all were fed a very nice merienda and shipped back to our school. Borrón y cuenta nueva and everybody was very happy.

Those are the things that clogg my mind when I read these testimonies.

I’m glad that I now leave in a free society where I can read all the sides of any given story, and make my own conclusions. Sometimes is sad to see clearly how I was fooled and lied to, but I’m thankful to God, the Providence or whoever is up there for having opened my eyes about to the truth of the revolution after I graduated from high school.

I just wish I would have done it earlier; but again, someone up there is designing your path, and there is nothing that you can do to avoid it.

Just found you can download a condensed version of the book, in pdf, here. Now, a different though as a closing note: what a useless and hypocrite organization the UN is! –but that’s a topic for another post.

Why everytime I have to fill the tank I'm borderline to suffer a patatú: a very brief explanation

I've written before about some confusions I've been suffering lately. Too frequently, I would said.

And one of them is the sight of the numbers rolling in the pump every time I have to fill the tank.

MDH and I have to commute 45 min, ida y vuelta, to go to work every day. We live in a budget. Every time I go groceries shopping, the bill is bigger, bigger and bigger. I am the type of woman that clips coupons for everything and hold tight to my list. I rarely buy anything that is on full price. We have a kiddo that wears Pampers and whose gallons of milk last day and a half. In this country, having and driving a car is a need, not a luxury. MDH and I both work full time and hold another part-time teaching job because we don't want to inherit Nicolás with a bunch of credit card debts. For Christ's sake! We even switched the cars because I am the one that drives more; I'm now with the Caliber ortopédico and MDH is with the Tucson.

Therefore, when I put together all the thoughts that I've stated above, I can't help to wonder (and yes, feel confused about) why do I have to keep paying the rising costs of gas. Where is the final cap? Caballeros, hasta cuándo y hasta dónde vamos a llegar?

Then I find the most complete, detailed and hilarious explanation --vía Babalú Blog-- in the words of Pepe Peña, a character that I never met in the original TV series, but that I'm now gladly discovering.

His explanations of the rising gas prices and the global warming stuff are... priceless.

Not being enough, he now brings some stats, you know, for those that need numbers to support statements. (And for those of us that need those numbers to repel some statements)

What can I tell you?
I'm just a rookie citizen trying to learn in order to reduce the confusion, and to survive every time I head to the gas station.

Lo que menos necesito en estos momentos es que me de un patatú.
I have a child to raise...
I have to keep it cool...
Hummmmm (I might need to learn some yoga to cope)

H/T to Babalú Blog

Cómo llegó la noche

Today is also coincidence's day.

While putting together some thoughts to post about my latest reading, "Cómo llegó la noche", by Huber Matos, I stompped with this interview Juan Gonzáles Febles did with him, for Cubanet.

And I've been amused, one more time, by his testimony. There is no way to tell you the things I've discovered reading his memoirs.

Amid people who say bad and good things about him --I still haven't met someone that, one way or the other, hasn't been fooled by the castro's machine... lucky those who opened their eyes one time and escaped alive to tell their stories-- after reading the book I was left with a feeling of having met someone consecuente con sus principios, con todas las de la ley.

As a young child, I lived in Camaguey. And, among some blurred memories from my surroundings and the people back there, I remember his name was pronounced as a whisper. I had no idea why or whom they were talking about. Now I know. Now I understand the whispering.

I don't know if this Cuba's re-education program is gonna make me any good, or if it's going to make it worse. But when you read stories like this, you reach a dimension where you really realize the evil and terror that Cuba has suffered for half a century. And how your family, your relatives, your friends and yourself have been just un grupo de peones en la mesa de ajedrez.

It is unavoidable, for a person like me, from the generation of "el hombre nuevo", the process of going back and re-examine everything you were taught, everything you were told, everything you've always heard.

It is also unavoidable the sense of being robbed. The feeling that a bunch of scumbags stole you entire life, twisting the reality you've know since you were born.

And it is a lesson. A cold turkey lesson of the prisons in Cuba, of the terror story of El Presidio Modelo, a macabre lesson of the evil that lies behind the royal pieces of the so called Cuban revolution.

This book is a must. And I am extremely glad to know that is been circulating in the island. People need to know. The Cuban people needs to read zillion of testimonies like this.

Para no perder la costumbre, I'm now reading "Against all hope", by Armando Valladares.

Brokeback Mountain, no more!

The new reformer heir of the Cuban animal farm, I mean, government, has authorized the sex reassignment surgeries for transsexuals. You've guessed it! For free.

They have to be evaluated by the Cenesex first. Not your doctor of choice, but the organization under the government's ruling --and leaded by raúl's daugther-- that takes care of those issues.

Hasta ahora el Cenesex ha diagnosticado transexuales a 27 personas y tiene en estudio a otras 57. De las primeras, 13 cambiaron su carnet de identidad oficial y siete lo están tramitando. Una de las diagnosticadas fue operada en 1988, bajo una autorización especial, y vive como mujer.

Que alguien me diga...
Can someone, please, explain me why the surgeries were not authorized before?

And, entre col y col, could someone also throw some info on why individuals with a sexual orientation different from heterosexuals were hunted down? Why castro's inc established the UMAP? Who gave them the righ to define what type of sex life Cubans should follow?

Oh, God, those confusions of mine!

H/T Penúltimos Días

Fridays are good days

I love them.
Especially, when someone does to you a huge favor, adivinando tus pensamientos and writing about them, so you don't have to work it all from the scratch. (Am I becoming a lousy blogger? Well, may it's just that it's Friday and I am in need of some Happy Hours)

The favor comes from Babalú Blog, as we hear that Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez said in a interview that she's for Obama.

I totally agree she is free to think, and said and support whoever she wants --even though when that "free-thinking" is usually a chimera when you live in Cuba. (That's why we are here in the first place!)

But Val's reflexions at this post are the ones that struck me the most, since they summarize most of the thoughts that have been clogging the mind of this "less than expert-citizen-in-election-year".

I do want changes, but not that type of change. And no matter what, I'll admire Yoani's courage unless she proves me wrong. Because respecting differences is what makes a democracy.

Now, all of the sudden, I feel I am a little bit less confused.

Have I told you, lately...

how confusing some things are to me?
Like this:

An independent coalition of Cuban farmers is asking the government for an agrarian reform. Didn’t this happened –according to what I was taught in school back in Cuba, during the wonderful first five years of the “revolution”? Boy, there is something really whacked in the (version of) history I’ve learned. I guess I’ll need to re-educate myself, pronto.

Then, I read that the International Republican Institute conducted a clandestine survey in Cuba and The New York Times goes over it. The majority said their biggest concerns were in the range of economics and dealing with a grueling stomach. And there are people surprised that only a 10% mentioned the lack of political freedom as the main problem facing the country.
Is the NYT surprised? I'm not.

Dude, have you read lately what happens to those who dare to speak against the regimen under raúl, the munificent reformer? With all the secrecy of the survey, do you really think people didn’t run risks by answering while being closely watched by el comité and who knows how many more ñángaras?

But, what struck me the most is that they call the study “rare”. I guess I need to deepen on the concept of rare. Can someone, please. shed me some light on this?

Last but not least, I am deeply concerned with my debut in my the presidential elections in November. I’ve said before it was not what I have in mind. At. All.

In the past few days, I’ve been under the impression that all these images of… ejem… (clear my throat) Obama, are looking way too familiar. Eureka! Michelle Malkin got it for me.

Not that I am surprised at all with the similitude. But you’ve heard the saying, “If looks red, smells like red, looks like Che and is endorsed by barbatruco, then it’s more surely a commie tapiñao”.

Pero eso no es todo. No, qué va! There is more to be added to my confused state of mind: che "the butcher of La Cabaña" heirs, after living la vida como Rockefeller, are asking respect for their father's image and talking against its commercial use.

Excuse me??!!
Would you, please, give the heads-up to the useful idiots, including Hollywood & Co.?

H/T to Penúltimos Días, Uncommon Sense and Michelle Malkin.

UPDATE: Montaner-Yoani-Berrido saga

Carlos Alberto Montaner explains por dónde le entra el agua al coco of Barredo's request to extradite him and how they are trying to throw Yoani Sánchez en el potaje.

Montaner comments on Mega TV are here and here.

In his latest column, Montaner give us details on how and why Barredo wants more blood.

I wonder what would be Yoani's response; or more interesting, when did she even heard of Montaner for the first time.