1 00:00:00,100 --> 00:00:03,327 14 July 2011 2 00:00:05,573 --> 00:00:10,377 To me, personally, the future. That is, I don’t see much today. 3 00:00:10,377 --> 00:00:16,149 When I write, better that I’m thinking that Cuba will be different in 7 to 10 years. 4 00:00:16,149 --> 00:00:28,362 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. 5 00:00:28,362 --> 00:00:38,940 About the hookers, the losers, little things, I’m not so pretentious as to think that with a story I can reflect Cuban reality. 6 00:00:38,940 --> 00:00:49,279 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. 7 00:00:49,586 --> 00:00:53,137 Q: How many years total have you been a journalist? 8 00:00:53,522 --> 00:00:59,629 I started out in independent journalism in December 1996, it would be 15 years. 9 00:00:59,629 --> 00:01:02,926 No, in December 1995, so 16 years now. 10 00:01:02,926 --> 00:01:09,703 In an agency -- Cuba Press -- founded by Raul Rivero, a poet and journalist still living, who lives in Madrid. 11 00:01:09,703 --> 00:01:15,909 I did that until 2003 and since then I do journalism on my own. 12 00:01:15,909 --> 00:01:21,966 Above all I think the biggest challenge is the lack of information you have. 13 00:01:21,966 --> 00:01:31,959 That is, the journalist in Cuba generally has no access to government sources, you have to rely on feature stories or opinion articles. 14 00:01:31,959 --> 00:01:41,471 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. 15 00:01:41,471 --> 00:01:47,741 And the other is ... not in my case… but for independent journalists it’s the problem of money. 16 00:01:47,741 --> 00:01:54,881 Most are very poorly paid and have a lot of problems accessing the Internet. 17 00:01:54,881 --> 00:02:00,047 They have to go to embassies, to the United States Interest Section here in Havana. 18 00:02:00,047 --> 00:02:04,692 I think those are the great challenges of independent journalism in Cuba. 19 00:02:04,923 --> 00:02:15,802 In particular I don’t think that a government, whether it’s the United States or Tonga, has the right to intervene… 20 00:02:15,802 --> 00:02:28,181 … 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. 21 00:02:28,181 --> 00:02:38,158 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? 22 00:02:38,158 --> 00:02:40,589 Napoleon said it: money and more money. 23 00:02:40,589 --> 00:02:47,501 And so the United States publicly supports dissident groups with money to promote the transition… 24 00:02:47,501 --> 00:02:51,340 … and then those dissident groups in Cuba have to take that into account… 25 00:02:51,340 --> 00:02:58,910 … above all they have to be more transparent with their own co-religionists, their followers, people who are in that party. 26 00:02:58,910 --> 00:03:08,889 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. 27 00:03:08,889 --> 00:03:15,860 I’m being optimistic if 5 million comes in, in equipment and things like that. 28 00:03:15,860 --> 00:03:22,292 Also I would like to ask the U.S. government how 15 or 20 million can bring us democracy… 29 00:03:22,292 --> 00:03:28,097 … because then who needs wars, a few million and you bring democracy to the distant countries that don’t have it. 30 00:03:28,097 --> 00:03:33,090 Because if there is a point of agreement between me and the U.S. administrations it is that there is no democracy in Cuba. 31 00:03:33,090 --> 00:03:39,882 But I don’t see how they can be effective with books, radios, laptops, how this is going to bring democracy. 32 00:03:39,882 --> 00:03:46,736 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. 33 00:03:46,736 --> 00:03:52,362 But I’m not sure where that money ends up. 34 00:03:52,362 --> 00:04:00,607 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. 35 00:04:00,607 --> 00:04:08,348 I am among those who think they shouldn’t accept money, any money, not covert money from any government. 36 00:04:08,348 --> 00:04:15,141 I simply prefer, at least if it’s needed, I know journalism is expensive, especially you need a laptop… 37 00:04:15,141 --> 00:04:20,249 … a camera, that obviously you can’t buy with your salary… 38 00:04:20,249 --> 00:04:32,504 …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.” 39 00:04:32,873 --> 00:04:37,060 Look, I don’t have all the elements, to judge the policy of USAID. 40 00:04:37,060 --> 00:04:44,584 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. 41 00:04:44,584 --> 00:04:53,293 I’ll tell you what has been shown to me… but no, that takes years, it would take 20 years or something like that. 42 00:04:53,293 --> 00:05:03,137 That distinct, different administrations of the United States, award credit, or cash money, to groups like USAID, or even foundations. 43 00:05:03,137 --> 00:05:12,512 The point of the money – which the government also handles… it know that of the opponents or dissidents, really, none are rich… 44 00:05:12,512 --> 00:05:24,291 … 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… 45 00:05:24,291 --> 00:05:31,952 What effectiveness? I don’t see it; 15 or 20 years, I don’t see… that the result is something good, no? 46 00:05:31,952 --> 00:05:40,985 I think it’s only served for propaganda for the government, against the opposition groups that receive it. 47 00:05:40,985 --> 00:05:47,324 My question is, if the U.S. government didn’t give them money, would the opposition in Cuba disappear? 48 00:05:47,324 --> 00:05:54,721 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. 49 00:05:54,721 --> 00:06:01,256 Because here in Cuba you can buy everything from information equipment to California apples… in hard currency. 50 00:06:01,256 --> 00:06:06,032 The end of the embargo would benefit the government of Fidel Castro the most… 51 00:06:06,032 --> 00:06:10,173 …when there is no Cuban economy it’s not going flourish, it’s not going to be like the Bahamas. 52 00:06:10,173 --> 00:06:16,338 But then there is the vice versa: when there’s no money, credit won’t be granted to the Cuban dissidence... 53 00:06:16,354 --> 00:06:19,546 ...and I think that even so the dissidence would continue to exist. 54 00:06:19,546 --> 00:06:22,017 That’s my point of view, perhaps a little naïve. 55 00:06:23,583 --> 00:06:26,589 It worries me, good question. 56 00:06:26,589 --> 00:06:32,949 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… 57 00:06:32,949 --> 00:06:40,869 … 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? 58 00:06:40,869 --> 00:06:50,459 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. 59 00:06:50,459 --> 00:06:56,160 With an opposition that for me lacks a real reason for being, I always call it the banana dissidence… 60 00:06:56,160 --> 00:07:02,322 … in the sense that it is directed more to the exterior than to the problems here, of their community, of their neighborhood. 61 00:07:02,322 --> 00:07:08,002 They have to do the work of proselytizing more with the neighbor next door to them, than to some press conference … 62 00:07:08,002 --> 00:07:12,648 … and projects that are more directed to the outside, they need to know their own country more. 63 00:07:12,648 --> 00:07:14,878 Honestly, I don't think it looks good. 64 00:07:15,482 --> 00:07:21,667 And also to the dissidence I tell them that politically they are talking with political cadavers… 65 00:07:21,667 --> 00:07:24,267 …through a series of things that have come out in Wikileaks about corruption… 66 00:07:24,267 --> 00:07:30,142 … about nepotism and the “strong-man” leadership that there is in some of the opposition groups. 67 00:07:30,142 --> 00:07:41,624 I don’t think the future of Cuba… obviously for me… it simply looks bad. 68 00:07:42,147 --> 00:07:47,580 What motivates me most is that I was born in a poor neighborhood, I was born in what was the Cerro neighborhood in Havana. 69 00:07:47,580 --> 00:07:54,128 Today it’s Pilar Atare, which is probably one of the most marginal neighborhoods in the city. 70 00:07:54,128 --> 00:07:56,643 Now I live in Vibora, which is not a marginal neighborhood… 71 00:07:56,643 --> 00:08:02,749 … but where I move in the world is at the margins with people who have no options. 72 00:08:02,749 --> 00:08:06,586 Or they haven’t known how to take advantage of them or they haven’t wanted to take advantage of them… 73 00:08:06,586 --> 00:08:13,494 … [the world] of hookers, all the illegal businesses there are in Cuba, like [illegal satellite] antennas, like many things. 74 00:08:13,494 --> 00:08:19,555 Of corrupt people… in short, I prefer to write about the losers, or about the winners when they start to lose. 75 00:08:21,239 --> 00:08:25,568 That was the root of the Black Spring of 2003. 76 00:08:25,568 --> 00:08:31,211 My mother was… or still is… at that time one of the most critical among the independent journalists. 77 00:08:31,211 --> 00:08:43,656 Even Fidel Castro gave a hint some days before mentioning a number of people who had been to some kind of meeting… 78 00:08:43,656 --> 00:08:46,721 … or some embassy reception, I think of the United States… 79 00:08:46,721 --> 00:08:52,699 … in the house of the ambassador of the U.S. in Havana, and some days later it happened… 80 00:08:52,699 --> 00:08:59,446 The raid against opponents and independent journalists started on March 18, and it seemed to me [my mother] should leave the country. 81 00:08:59,446 --> 00:09:08,873 Obviously her days could have been numbered. And then we opened a map, a world map, and the country she liked was Switzerland. 82 00:09:08,873 --> 00:09:13,239 She didn’t like anything about Miami, she wanted to be far from Cuba… the United States… 83 00:09:13,239 --> 00:09:20,181 There were three women in this case. My mother was almost 60 then. 84 00:09:20,181 --> 00:09:27,403 My sister who is not an opponent at all – she worked here like a normal person -- and my niece who was 8. 85 00:09:27,403 --> 00:09:33,022 And they decided on Switzerland for the whole set of laws they have that support women, 86 00:09:33,022 --> 00:09:40,824 …the welfare state that it is, a country more prudish but less violent perhaps, or less stressful, no? 87 00:09:40,824 --> 00:09:44,484 As the United States could be, and is. 88 00:09:44,484 --> 00:09:47,070 Neither good nor bad, just far from her country. 89 00:09:47,070 --> 00:09:55,728 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. 90 00:09:55,728 --> 00:09:59,741 Or on that side of the Florida Straits. 91 00:10:00,141 --> 00:10:02,140 Q: And how old is your mother now? 92 00:10:02,140 --> 00:10:04,704 This year she will turn 69. 93 00:10:04,704 --> 00:10:07,140 Yes, yes, she is much more active than me. 94 00:10:07,140 --> 00:10:11,753 She writes much more, she writes for a lot of sites and of course you know… 95 00:10:11,753 --> 00:10:16,536 … one’s homeland is not a disposable object you can throw out like some thing. 96 00:10:16,536 --> 00:10:21,154 And I think she is still sleeping with the Malecon, and with black beans, that can’t be taken from her. 97 00:10:21,154 --> 00:10:29,762 Because she’s been there nine years in Switzerland, this November it will be nine years but she’s still not fluent in German… 98 00:10:29,762 --> 00:10:37,403 … that is clearly she continues to live in Havana, really she never left it. 99 00:10:37,403 --> 00:10:44,210 Mainly what she does is ... I send all my [articles] to her, I have no [Internet] time ... as it’s journalism. 100 00:10:44,210 --> 00:10:48,603 I send a package of articles and she goes to the distinct sites where she publishes them… 101 00:10:48,603 --> 00:10:54,338 … the newspaper El Mundo of Spain, Diario de Cuba, the sites. 102 00:10:54,338 --> 00:10:58,239 She proposes them and they choose the ones that interest them. 103 00:10:58,239 --> 00:11:01,188 So that’s what she does with my work. Sometimes she puts the photos in… 104 00:11:01,188 --> 00:11:08,521 Sometimes I tell her: Look, put some video, or she can change the title… she does some editing. 105 00:11:08,521 --> 00:11:13,106 No, no, no. What influences me is the journalism… 106 00:11:13,106 --> 00:11:19,114 … because my mother was a journalist in Cuba … official, working for the government for 40 years doing journalism. 107 00:11:19,114 --> 00:11:26,753 She worked for the magazine Bohemia which is the only media that didn’t disappear in Cuba, after the Revolution. 108 00:11:26,753 --> 00:11:32,698 All the periodicals were nationalized or Fidel Castro expropriated them but the magazine Bohemia continued to exist. 109 00:11:32,698 --> 00:11:37,551 She worked on that magazine when, in its time, it had the cream of the crop of Cuba journalism: 110 00:11:37,551 --> 00:11:43,170 Enrique de la Osa, Enrique Capetillo, Mario Cuchilang, in short it was a school. 111 00:11:43,170 --> 00:11:48,474 And I grew up there, because I was such a clown she had to take me with her to work. 112 00:11:48,474 --> 00:11:53,713 When she had to work or report around the whole country… the journalism came to me through her, I had to, no? 113 00:11:53,713 --> 00:12:00,074 I had to because if I’m a journalist it’s because of her, because I grew up well with her. 114 00:12:00,074 --> 00:12:04,184 When I was about 12 or 13 so I wouldn’t get bored or when I was being punished... 115 00:12:04,184 --> 00:12:07,574 ...she’d put me to transcribing things, tape recordings, which is very heavy. 116 00:12:07,574 --> 00:12:12,102 And she told me: Take the typewriter and learn to use it and put a recording there to transcribe. 117 00:12:12,102 --> 00:12:16,836 So by the time I was 15 I knew how to type. 118 00:12:16,836 --> 00:12:28,565 The journalism… opinions, that is politics, we agree more than 70 percent of the time, but we do have disagreements. 119 00:12:28,565 --> 00:12:31,499 You know, children reflect their times, not their parents, right. 120 00:12:32,837 --> 00:12:37,190 A very good question, I haven’t situated myself on the map of the Cuban blogosphere. 121 00:12:37,190 --> 00:12:40,593 I see myself as someone pretty independent and pretty honest with myself. 122 00:12:40,593 --> 00:12:50,136 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. 123 00:12:50,136 --> 00:12:58,612 And also I’ve done work that the government is very critical of, but those are my points of view. 124 00:12:58,612 --> 00:13:03,488 And I place myself in… well I don’t belong to any portal, I don’t belong to any group… 125 00:13:03,488 --> 00:13:06,454 I’m an independent blogger and I’m also an independent journalist. 126 00:13:06,454 --> 00:13:08,612 I work on my own, I prefer to go my own way. 127 00:13:08,758 --> 00:13:11,224 Yes, terribly fractured. 128 00:13:11,224 --> 00:13:21,409 And what pisses me off is not the divide over political issues, if not many times divided by purely material things. 129 00:13:21,409 --> 00:13:24,242 To see who’s in favor with the U.S. government.. 130 00:13:24,242 --> 00:13:28,271 … to see who can pass the hat, collect more money from the European Union or the U.S. 131 00:13:28,271 --> 00:13:34,553 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. 132 00:13:34,553 --> 00:13:38,097 For me, it's my opinion, the things we agree on are many. 133 00:13:38,097 --> 00:13:45,124 People want, many people would like a democratic Cuba, or to make a number of improvements within the country to drive a common project. 134 00:13:45,124 --> 00:13:53,852 If one doesn’t get in on the racket, the discrediting, the politics of pimping, of gossip. 135 00:13:53,852 --> 00:14:02,908 It doesn't make a real lobby, a politics to try to find a way out for Cuba. 136 00:14:02,908 --> 00:14:07,759 Because they all propose changes but no one has a project. What changes? How can this change come about? 137 00:14:07,759 --> 00:14:10,254 How can there be this change? 138 00:14:10,254 --> 00:14:15,503 Because if you put it on Tracey from a point of view there are many more things we agree on… 139 00:14:15,503 --> 00:14:19,394 …the ideology we have, opponents, Marxists, communists, than things that separate us. 140 00:14:19,394 --> 00:14:24,154 Because of we all have suffered with cojones (I like to say curse words) with the bad transport… 141 00:14:24,154 --> 00:14:29,285 With how 60% of the water is lost and never reaches the houses… 142 00:14:29,285 --> 00:14:35,408 … 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… 143 00:14:35,408 --> 00:14:41,940 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. 144 00:14:41,940 --> 00:14:48,117 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… 145 00:14:48,117 --> 00:14:52,158 … instead of allowing them to compete on their own… and even putting a tax on it. 146 00:14:52,158 --> 00:15:06,465 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. 147 00:15:06,973 --> 00:15:13,148 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]. 148 00:15:13,148 --> 00:15:17,950 I remember that in 15 years I only went once to a reception and I went because because I wanted to eat something. 149 00:15:17,950 --> 00:15:21,487 I said, well, a good day to drink or eat something, that they always have there. 150 00:15:21,487 --> 00:15:24,061 And Raul said to me: “Coño, look how the other half lives.” 151 00:15:24,061 --> 00:15:27,827 But I’ve never had contacts with USIS, I barely have relations, or I don’t have, in fact… 152 00:15:27,827 --> 00:15:33,117 … with the cultural attaché here in the press of the Interest Office in Havana. 153 00:15:33,117 --> 00:15:36,461 This subject, I can’t tell you anything about it. 154 00:15:36,461 --> 00:15:41,421 From friends who are independent journalists and they do go once a week to USIS to surf the Internet... 155 00:15:41,421 --> 00:15:45,563 ...they say they are treated very respectfully and professionally. 156 00:15:45,563 --> 00:15:50,068 But there have been very big differences with Bush and now Obama. 157 00:15:50,068 --> 00:15:56,489 I think I’ll stick with Obama, he’s a guy I personally admire greatly, especially for how well he writes. 158 00:15:56,489 --> 00:16:06,275 I read his two books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father, which he wrote. More is expected, no? 159 00:16:06,275 --> 00:16:12,138 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. 160 00:16:12,138 --> 00:16:17,862 That is, he removed all those absurd things implemented by George W. Bush… 161 00:16:17,862 --> 00:16:22,138 … who for me was the worst president the U.S. had in the 20th century... 162 00:16:22,138 --> 00:16:26,586 ...and a little more but you have to see that Obama is threatened by a bestial crisis… 163 00:16:26,586 --> 00:16:30,795 … that the pockets of U.S. consumers are paralyzed… 164 00:16:30,795 --> 00:16:40,032 …with serious problems you already know, in the Middle East, North Africa, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan… 165 00:16:40,032 --> 00:16:43,359 I think Cuba is on his agenda, decidedly. 166 00:16:44,837 --> 00:16:55,084 Well, I read Andrew Sullivan, I read you, Yuma of Ted Henken I also read, but I like the American press the most. 167 00:16:55,084 --> 00:17:00,319 That is, from the United States what I read most is the press, because it’s journalism that motivates me. 168 00:17:00,319 --> 00:17:11,941 Especially Time magazine, New Juice in Spanish, I read when I can. The New York Times that every journalist takes his hat off to. 169 00:17:11,941 --> 00:17:17,978 I don’t know, Gary Taylor, The New York Times, the Washington Post. 170 00:17:17,978 --> 00:17:20,695 Yes, yes, it’s a paradigm for me. 171 00:17:20,695 --> 00:17:25,595 I’m trying to do journalism, bridging the gap, because I know in this business you learn something every day. 172 00:17:25,595 --> 00:17:29,658 The journalism I admire is American journalism. 173 00:17:29,658 --> 00:17:39,759 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. 174 00:17:39,759 --> 00:17:46,948 I’m a follower of that kind of journalism, Although there are things I don’t like but really, I greatly admire it.