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