14 July 2011
To me, personally, the future. That is, I don’t see much today.
When I write, better that I’m thinking that Cuba will be different in 7 to 10 years.
As for specific stories, what I like most is to write chronicles of the street, especially in the slums… I was born in a slum.
About the hookers, the losers, little things, I’m not so pretentious as to think that with a story I can reflect Cuban reality.
Instead I try to reflect what I see, or a part of reality, above all Havana’s reality. That’s what I mostly write, it’s where I live.
Q: How many years total have you been a journalist?
I started out in independent journalism in December 1996, it would be 15 years.
No, in December 1995, so 16 years now.
In an agency -- Cuba Press -- founded by Raul Rivero, a poet and journalist still living, who lives in Madrid.
I did that until 2003 and since then I do journalism on my own.
Above all I think the biggest challenge is the lack of information you have.
That is, the journalist in Cuba generally has no access to government sources, you have to rely on feature stories or opinion articles.
You can’t do a big story because there’s no balance… so you have to fall back on feature stories, testimonials and articles of opinion.
And the other is ... not in my case… but for independent journalists it’s the problem of money.
Most are very poorly paid and have a lot of problems accessing the Internet.
They have to go to embassies, to the United States Interest Section here in Havana.
I think those are the great challenges of independent journalism in Cuba.
In particular I don’t think that a government, whether it’s the United States or Tonga, has the right to intervene…
… with the greatest reason in the world, to transplant democracy in Cuba, in the internal issues of a country. Personally I don’t think it’s right.
Now, from the point of view… trying to be as objective as possible, I think a political party or a group or any movement needs money, right?
Napoleon said it: money and more money.
And so the United States publicly supports dissident groups with money to promote the transition…
… and then those dissident groups in Cuba have to take that into account…
… above all they have to be more transparent with their own co-religionists, their followers, people who are in that party.
Because I imagine there are a lot of shady deals with 20 million, I suppose in the future when they have control of the public purse, they will plunder it, for sure.
I’m being optimistic if 5 million comes in, in equipment and things like that.
Also I would like to ask the U.S. government how 15 or 20 million can bring us democracy…
… because then who needs wars, a few million and you bring democracy to the distant countries that don’t have it.
Because if there is a point of agreement between me and the U.S. administrations it is that there is no democracy in Cuba.
But I don’t see how they can be effective with books, radios, laptops, how this is going to bring democracy.
I don’t know, I think that looking at it from their angle they think that they can help the work of a number of people here.
But I’m not sure where that money ends up.
Yes, there are many people who believe you shouldn’t accept money, any money, there are others who think it doesn’t matter, it’s their right.
I am among those who think they shouldn’t accept money, any money, not covert money from any government.
I simply prefer, at least if it’s needed, I know journalism is expensive, especially you need a laptop…
… a camera, that obviously you can’t buy with your salary…
…support from some foundation in the end, I don’t know, another way that it’s not openly money of a State, and especially that the State isn’t called “The United States.”
Look, I don’t have all the elements, to judge the policy of USAID.
Cuba is one of the many countries that USAID gives money to. I think there’s a list, I don’t know how many there could be.
I’ll tell you what has been shown to me… but no, that takes years, it would take 20 years or something like that.
That distinct, different administrations of the United States, award credit, or cash money, to groups like USAID, or even foundations.
The point of the money – which the government also handles… it know that of the opponents or dissidents, really, none are rich…
… independent journalists much less so. As I see it, it’s not effective. I don’t see why receiving more or less money can bring…
What effectiveness? I don’t see it; 15 or 20 years, I don’t see… that the result is something good, no?
I think it’s only served for propaganda for the government, against the opposition groups that receive it.
My question is, if the U.S. government didn’t give them money, would the opposition in Cuba disappear?
I don’t think so. And the government also argues against the embargo, which I don’t agree with, with the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
Because here in Cuba you can buy everything from information equipment to California apples… in hard currency.
The end of the embargo would benefit the government of Fidel Castro the most…
…when there is no Cuban economy it’s not going flourish, it’s not going to be like the Bahamas.
But then there is the vice versa: when there’s no money, credit won’t be granted to the Cuban dissidence...
...and I think that even so the dissidence would continue to exist.
That’s my point of view, perhaps a little naïve.
It worries me, good question.
That is how I see it, perhaps if you’d asked me 25 years ago, perhaps I would have spoken very prettily about when there would be freedom for all…
… but today I am a little pessimistic, I think about the future of Cuba and it looks like Russia: State capitalism that is the worst version, no?
I see there are a number of military companies that are monopolizing all the businesses that exist here in Cuba, the few businesses that profit.
With an opposition that for me lacks a real reason for being, I always call it the banana dissidence…
… in the sense that it is directed more to the exterior than to the problems here, of their community, of their neighborhood.
They have to do the work of proselytizing more with the neighbor next door to them, than to some press conference …
… and projects that are more directed to the outside, they need to know their own country more.
Honestly, I don't think it looks good.
And also to the dissidence I tell them that politically they are talking with political cadavers…
…through a series of things that have come out in Wikileaks about corruption…
… about nepotism and the “strong-man” leadership that there is in some of the opposition groups.
I don’t think the future of Cuba… obviously for me… it simply looks bad.
What motivates me most is that I was born in a poor neighborhood, I was born in what was the Cerro neighborhood in Havana.
Today it’s Pilar Atare, which is probably one of the most marginal neighborhoods in the city.
Now I live in Vibora, which is not a marginal neighborhood…
… but where I move in the world is at the margins with people who have no options.
Or they haven’t known how to take advantage of them or they haven’t wanted to take advantage of them…
… [the world] of hookers, all the illegal businesses there are in Cuba, like [illegal satellite] antennas, like many things.
Of corrupt people… in short, I prefer to write about the losers, or about the winners when they start to lose.
That was the root of the Black Spring of 2003.
My mother was… or still is… at that time one of the most critical among the independent journalists.
Even Fidel Castro gave a hint some days before mentioning a number of people who had been to some kind of meeting…
… or some embassy reception, I think of the United States…
… in the house of the ambassador of the U.S. in Havana, and some days later it happened…
The raid against opponents and independent journalists started on March 18, and it seemed to me [my mother] should leave the country.
Obviously her days could have been numbered. And then we opened a map, a world map, and the country she liked was Switzerland.
She didn’t like anything about Miami, she wanted to be far from Cuba… the United States…
There were three women in this case. My mother was almost 60 then.
My sister who is not an opponent at all – she worked here like a normal person -- and my niece who was 8.
And they decided on Switzerland for the whole set of laws they have that support women,
…the welfare state that it is, a country more prudish but less violent perhaps, or less stressful, no?
As the United States could be, and is.
Neither good nor bad, just far from her country.
Something that I think doesn’t affect just me alone, there are something like 6 or 7 million Cubans who have someone on the other side of the river.
Or on that side of the Florida Straits.
Q: And how old is your mother now?
This year she will turn 69.
Yes, yes, she is much more active than me.
She writes much more, she writes for a lot of sites and of course you know…
… one’s homeland is not a disposable object you can throw out like some thing.
And I think she is still sleeping with the Malecon, and with black beans, that can’t be taken from her.
Because she’s been there nine years in Switzerland, this November it will be nine years but she’s still not fluent in German…
… that is clearly she continues to live in Havana, really she never left it.
Mainly what she does is ... I send all my [articles] to her, I have no [Internet] time ... as it’s journalism.
I send a package of articles and she goes to the distinct sites where she publishes them…
… the newspaper El Mundo of Spain, Diario de Cuba, the sites.
She proposes them and they choose the ones that interest them.
So that’s what she does with my work. Sometimes she puts the photos in…
Sometimes I tell her: Look, put some video, or she can change the title… she does some editing.
No, no, no. What influences me is the journalism…
… because my mother was a journalist in Cuba … official, working for the government for 40 years doing journalism.
She worked for the magazine Bohemia which is the only media that didn’t disappear in Cuba, after the Revolution.
All the periodicals were nationalized or Fidel Castro expropriated them but the magazine Bohemia continued to exist.
She worked on that magazine when, in its time, it had the cream of the crop of Cuba journalism:
Enrique de la Osa, Enrique Capetillo, Mario Cuchilang, in short it was a school.
And I grew up there, because I was such a clown she had to take me with her to work.
When she had to work or report around the whole country… the journalism came to me through her, I had to, no?
I had to because if I’m a journalist it’s because of her, because I grew up well with her.
When I was about 12 or 13 so I wouldn’t get bored or when I was being punished...
...she’d put me to transcribing things, tape recordings, which is very heavy.
And she told me: Take the typewriter and learn to use it and put a recording there to transcribe.
So by the time I was 15 I knew how to type.
The journalism… opinions, that is politics, we agree more than 70 percent of the time, but we do have disagreements.
You know, children reflect their times, not their parents, right.
A very good question, I haven’t situated myself on the map of the Cuban blogosphere.
I see myself as someone pretty independent and pretty honest with myself.
That is I don’t fool around with a whole series of… I say what I think. And of course that has brought me problems with the Cuban dissidence.
And also I’ve done work that the government is very critical of, but those are my points of view.
And I place myself in… well I don’t belong to any portal, I don’t belong to any group…
I’m an independent blogger and I’m also an independent journalist.
I work on my own, I prefer to go my own way.
Yes, terribly fractured.
And what pisses me off is not the divide over political issues, if not many times divided by purely material things.
To see who’s in favor with the U.S. government..
… to see who can pass the hat, collect more money from the European Union or the U.S.
That's what pisses me off, there's no... and there is, in, fact and they don't know how to take advantage of it.
For me, it's my opinion, the things we agree on are many.
People want, many people would like a democratic Cuba, or to make a number of improvements within the country to drive a common project.
If one doesn’t get in on the racket, the discrediting, the politics of pimping, of gossip.
It doesn't make a real lobby, a politics to try to find a way out for Cuba.
Because they all propose changes but no one has a project. What changes? How can this change come about?
How can there be this change?
Because if you put it on Tracey from a point of view there are many more things we agree on…
…the ideology we have, opponents, Marxists, communists, than things that separate us.
Because of we all have suffered with cojones (I like to say curse words) with the bad transport…
With how 60% of the water is lost and never reaches the houses…
… with the state of housing, that 65% is in fair to poor condition, with the bad job the government has made of the economic plan…
I think this affects us all, how the quality of public health has declined, which was one of the prides of Fidel Castro’s Revolution.
Even sports, because how… what I wonder is how the government can be so stupid as to allow them to desert after training them for 15 years…
… instead of allowing them to compete on their own… and even putting a tax on it.
There’s a whole range of things that I think the dissidents and those loyal to the government, more or less think the same thing.
And I don’t think the dissidence takes advantage of this. Look, I don’t have any relationship with the U.S. Interest Section [USIS].
I remember that in 15 years I only went once to a reception and I went because because I wanted to eat something.
I said, well, a good day to drink or eat something, that they always have there.
And Raul said to me: “Coño, look how the other half lives.”
But I’ve never had contacts with USIS, I barely have relations, or I don’t have, in fact…
… with the cultural attaché here in the press of the Interest Office in Havana.
This subject, I can’t tell you anything about it.
From friends who are independent journalists and they do go once a week to USIS to surf the Internet...
...they say they are treated very respectfully and professionally.
But there have been very big differences with Bush and now Obama.
I think I’ll stick with Obama, he’s a guy I personally admire greatly, especially for how well he writes.
I read his two books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father, which he wrote. More is expected, no?
I’m not just looking at it from the point of view of Cuba, I think, for me, he’s done enough, or what he promised.
That is, he removed all those absurd things implemented by George W. Bush…
… who for me was the worst president the U.S. had in the 20th century...
...and a little more but you have to see that Obama is threatened by a bestial crisis…
… that the pockets of U.S. consumers are paralyzed…
…with serious problems you already know, in the Middle East, North Africa, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan…
I think Cuba is on his agenda, decidedly.
Well, I read Andrew Sullivan, I read you, Yuma of Ted Henken I also read, but I like the American press the most.
That is, from the United States what I read most is the press, because it’s journalism that motivates me.
Especially Time magazine, New Juice in Spanish, I read when I can. The New York Times that every journalist takes his hat off to.
I don’t know, Gary Taylor, The New York Times, the Washington Post.
Yes, yes, it’s a paradigm for me.
I’m trying to do journalism, bridging the gap, because I know in this business you learn something every day.
The journalism I admire is American journalism.
Short sentences, trying to get the ideas as clear as possible… it has always been the journalism that to me, personally, I’m a fan.
I’m a follower of that kind of journalism, Although there are things I don’t like but really, I greatly admire it.