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An Adolescent is Killed for Trying to Eat Genips* in Havana

by Laritza Diversent (Cuban blooger)
July 19, 2011

On the afternoon of July 15, 2011, the town of Mantilla, on Havana’s outskirts, was shocked by the death of Angel Izquierdo Medina, a 14-year-old black teenager, who died from a gunshot to the femoral artery by Amado Interian, a retired police Major. According to the victim’s family members, three boys, including Angel, entered the property of the ex-police officer, to take genips, also known Spanish limes, from a tree. When the ex-cop caught them in the act, he fired two shots from his pistol. Before retiring, Interian had been a police chief in the area. The child’s body was laid out in the Mauline funeral home, at the entrance of Santa Amalia residential neighborhood. More than 500 people attended the viewing, most of them fellow students, in shock from the news, and also teachers and neighbors.

“Oh my God he was the same age as my son, because a mischief, that only can be done by an extremist”, said one of the spectators sobbing, while passing by the coffin. Agents of the State Security Forces dressed in civil clothes took over the funeral home because the mourners had been threatening to protest. Around midnight there were incidents reported at the site, without arrests being made. The burial was on Saturday July 16, 2011, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, in the Christopher Columbus cemetery.

Mantilla is a Havana suburb, with a low income population and high levels of dangerousness. It belongs to the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, the most violent and poor of the capital city. So far, we don’t know if the ex-police officer will be prosecuted because of the adolescent’s death. As is usual in Cuba, when things of this nature happen, the official media prefers to keep silent and not to report what happened.


Mamoncillos. With its sweet flesh, it is one of the most preferred fruits in Cuba. But as with so many fruits, after 1959 they were scarce in the market and could still be consumed only by those who have a tree of Melicoccus bijugatus (its scientific name) in the backyard. The genip along with the sugar apple, soursop, custard apple, cashew, canistel, loquat, plum and apple banana, is listed as one of the extinct fruits after Castros took power. Years after this barbaric event — one of the tasks of the ‘famous’ Che Guevara’s invasion brigade was to uproot fruit trees from the fields where it passed by — little by little the fruits started to reappear again — mangoes, guavas , mamey and avocados — among others fruits that have been always been greatly eaten by Cubans. With the only difference that before the bearded men, with 10 or 20 cents you could buy a mamey or an avocado and now days you cannot find them for less than 10 or 20 cuban pesos. (Tania Quintero)

*Translator’s note: Melicoccus bijugatus, commonly called Spanish lime, genip, genipe, quenepa, mamoncillo, limoncillo, it is a one-inch, round fruit with a green leathery skin at maturity. Each fruit has a large seed inside, the same ovoid shape as the fruit itself , the seeds have a fleshy tan-coloured edible sweet and juicy seed coat.

Cuba: Cables Reveal Government Sees Bloggers as “Most Serious Challenge”

From "Global Voices"

Like Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil, Cuba was one of the Latin American countries most frequently referenced in the trove of diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks. Cables confirmed much of what is already known about the diplomatic impasse that has stifled relations between Cuba and the USA for over fifty years. But they also revealed the Cuban government’s deep concern about the political impact of independent bloggers on the island.

Cables sent from the US Interest Section [1] (USINT) in Havana in 2009 (the most explicit of which can be found at El País) indicate that, in the eyes of USINT, the Cuban government does not see the traditional dissident community as a serious threat to political stability on the island, and that the movement has limited resonance within the general population.

An April 15 cable described the dissident movement in Cuba as, “as old and as out of touch with the lives of ordinary Cubans as the regime itself.” The dissidents mentioned here include leaders and groups such as Oswaldo Payá and Agenda para la Transición, who represent part of the island’s small, decades-old dissident community that receives considerable support from USINT and struggles to evade repression by the Cuban government.

On April 15, 2009, Jonathan Farrar of USINT wrote:

…we see very little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among ordinary Cubans. Informal polls we have carried out among visa and refugee applicants have shown virtually no awareness of dissident personalities or agendas.

Given that USINT surveyed visa and refugee applicants, a group that opposes the Raúl Castro government in greater proportions than the general population, this information should be particularly disconcerting to dissident leaders. Ironically, Farrar also wrote that “…dissidents have, and will continue to perform, a key role in acting as the conscience of Cuba and deserve our support in that role.” He did not elaborate on how these groups could represent the “conscience of Cuba” if they were, as mentioned earlier, “out of touch with the lives of ordinary Cubans.”

A cable sent on December 20, 2009 indicated that the Cuban government sees bloggers as “its most serious challenge” within the realm of civil society.

Another cable also described “[y]ounger individuals, including bloggers, musicians, and performing and plastic artists” as being “much better [than traditional dissidents] at taking “rebellious” stands with greater popular appeal.”

The December 2009 cable read:

The bloggers' mushrooming international popularity and their ability to stay one tech-step ahead of the authorities are causing serious headaches in the regime. The attention that the United States bestowed on XXXXXXXXXXXX, first by publicly complaining when she was detained and roughed up and later by having the President respond to her questions, further fanned the fears that the blogger problem had gotten out of control.

The name redacted here unquestionably belongs to renowned Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, who was abducted and beaten in November of 2009 and conducted an email interview with US President Barack Obama shortly thereafter. In September of 2009, a USINT cable described a meeting between Sánchez and US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bisa Williams in Havana, in which Sánchez told Williams that “[a]n improvement in relations with the United States is absolutely necessary for democracy to emerge [in Cuba.]”

Collectively, these and other cables suggest that for USINT, certain bloggers may come to represent a “next generation” of government critics and activists that the US government will likely seek to support, if it is not doing so already.

Rogelio M. Díaz at Bubusopía [es] wrote that he was glad that the US had recognized that Cuba’s future lies in the hands of Cuban youth, and not that of the “old guard” dissident community.

[Es] cierto que no nos sentimos para nada identificados con los fósiles de la contrarrevolución, los que venden al país por treinta monedas… [mientras] siguen apoyando el bloqueo…

[It’s] true that we do not at all identify with the fossils of the counterrevolution, those that are willing to sell their country for thirty coins… [who at the same time] continue to support the blockade…

But he was wary of the cables’ inference that bloggers could somehow replace, or serve the same purpose (however futile) as, traditional dissidents.

Jóvenes como yo, entonces, preferimos como ídolos…aquellos que…repelieron la vileza mercenaria con las armas en la mano…[y] continuaron trabajando y luchando con sus manos, su intelecto y su amor por construir un futuro mejor…

Young people like myself, then, prefer as idols…those who…fought off mercenary turpitude [2] with arms in hand…[and] continued working and fighting with their hands, their intellect, and their love to construct a better future…

It is important to understand that these cables refer only to bloggers who are critical of the Castro government; the island’s very small independent blogging community represents a wide range of political positions, many of which support Cuban socialism and hope for positive change that will face challenges and strengthen the system as it stands. Blogs like Bubusopía represent an important part of this community. If they are truly interested in understanding the “conscience of Cuba,” it would behoove USINT officials to read all of these blogs in earnest, and to incorporate the significant diversity of opinions that they represent into their diplomatic discussions.
[1]: A historically controversial institution, USINT is seen by most as a center for information gathering, and as a source of (unauthorized) support for dissidents, and of pro-US propaganda dissemination.

[2]: Díaz's mention of “mercenary turpitude” refers to forces of capitalism.
By Ellery Biddle · Posted 28 December 2010

Can the internet bring change to Cuba?

Daniel Wilkinson
The New York Review of Books
July 6, 2010

Cuban blogger Reinaldo Escobar (center) and other dissidents, being harrassed by pro-government supporters during a protest march, Havana, November 20, 2009

For decades, the Castro government has been very effective in repressing dissent in Cuba by, among other things, preventing its critics from publishing or broadcasting their views on the island. Yet in recent years the blogosphere has created an outlet for a new kind of political criticism that is harder to control. Can it make a difference?

There are more than 100 unauthorized bloggers in Cuba, including at least two dozen that are openly critical of the government. The best-known blog, Generation Y, gets more than a million visitors a month and is translated into 18 languages. Its author, thirty-four-year-old Yoani Sánchez, has won major journalism awards in the US and Europe and in 2008 Time Magazine named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Sánchez has set up a “blogger academy” in her apartment, and she helped found the Web site, Voces Cubanas, which hosts the work of thirty independent bloggers.

Like other government critics, these bloggers face reprisals. Last November, for example, Sánchez reported being detained and beaten by Cuban security agents. Weeks later, her husband and fellow blogger, Reinaldo Escobar, was subject to an “act of repudiation” by an angry mob of government supporters on a Havana street. Such public harassment, as Nik Steinberg and I reported in our recent New York Review piece is commonly used against “dissidents” on the island, along with police surveillance, loss of employment, and restrictions on travel. (The Cuban government requires its citizens to obtain permission to leave the island, and those marked as “counterrevolutionaries” are generally denied it.) And then there is the perennial fear of the “knock on the door”—as Sánchez puts it—announcing the beginning of an ordeal that has been endured by countless critics: arrest, a sham trial, and years of “re-education” in prison. Cuba has more journalists locked up than any other country in the world, except China and Iran.

Policing the Internet, however, is not so easy. The Cuban government controls the island’s Internet servers, just as it controls the printing presses and broadcasting transmitters. But the inherent porousness of the Web means that anyone with an Internet connection can disseminate new material without prior approval. The government can block the sites it does not like (as it blocks Generation Y in Cuba, for instance), but it cannot stop other sites from springing up to replace them.

The biggest challenge for Cuban bloggers isn’t outright censorship. It’s simply finding a way to get online. To set up a private connection requires permission from the government, which is rarely granted. Public access is available only in a few government-run cybercafés and tourist hotels, where it costs approximately five US dollars an hour, or one-third of monthly wage of an average Cuban. As a result, bloggers often write their posts on home computers, save them on memory sticks, and pass them to friends who have Internet access and can upload them—for example workers in hotels and government offices. Others dictate their posts by phone to friends abroad, who then upload them through servers off the island.

No amount of resourcefulness, however, can change the fact that most people in Cuba are unable to access even the unblocked blogs. Indeed, the bloggers themselves are not always able to read their posts online. Some have never even seen their own sites.

Still, by reaching large audiences abroad, the critical blogs pose a threat to the Cuban government’s international image—which explains why the government and its supporters have reacted so virulently, attempting to discredit the bloggers as pawns or even paid mercenaries in the service of US imperialism. Granma, the official state news organ, published an article in its international edition dismissing Generation Y as “an example of media manipulation and interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation.” The editor of the pro-government blog Cubadebate, put it this way: “the United States has been waging economic and political warfare against [Cuba] for the past 50 years. And this is just the latest form of that warfare.”

Yoani Sánchez herself, when asked by another blogger about the “external factors” that had contributed to Generation Y’s popularity, acknowledged that attention by The Wall Street Journal and other foreign publications had helped bring new visitors to her site. “But,” she went on, “what happened was the readers came and they stayed. Users could have come once and not come back. Press coverage doesn’t make a site.”

So why do the readers come back?

I asked the Cuban novelist José Manuel Prieto what the bloggers’ appeal was for Cuban exiles like himself. “First, it’s their moderation,” he said. “They criticize the Cuban government without calling for its overthrow.” Indeed, Sánchez, Escobar, and others are unequivocal in their condemnation of the US embargo toward Cuba, a position that until recently was taboo within much of the exile community. In late May, for example, a group of Cubans, including Sanchez, Escobar, and several other bloggers from Voces Cubanas, signed a public letter to the US Congress, urging support for a bill to lift travel restrictions to Cuba.

But more than their politics, Prieto said, what’s appealing is their measured tone. Sánchez herself puts it this way: “I have never used verbal violence in my writings. I have not insulted or attacked anyone, never used an incendiary adjective, and that restraint may have garnered the attention and sympathy of many people.” Ironically, the bloggers’ moderation may be their most subversive quality. It makes it harder for the Castro government and its supporters to dismiss them as right-wing ideologues.

If these blogs are to serve as a catalyst for change, however, it will not be by influencing Castro sympathizers, who are less likely to read them anyway. Instead it will be their growing audience within the exile community, whose leaders have largely shaped US policy toward Cuba. Like the Cuban leaders, the anti-Castro hardliners have sought to discredit opposing views by questioning the motives and allegiances of those who hold them. They accuse critics of the US embargo of ignoring the Castros’ repressive policies. But this charge does not work with the independent bloggers in Cuba who question US policy. For not only are these writers themselves victims of the repression, they are today among its most credible witnesses.

Whether the bloggers can ultimately influence US policy is an open question. In any case, their objectives appear to be more modest—and more profound. They are not polemicists or pundits so much as poets and storytellers. They are less concerned with proposing new policies than chronicling the costs to ordinary people of the repressive policies already in place. The bloggers’ ability to evoke the realities of daily life in Cuba, Prieto says, is another principal source of their appeal.

Here is Sánchez describing one of Havana’s many sex workers:

With a tight sweater and gel-smeared hair, he offers his body for only twenty convertible pesos a night. His face, with its high cheekbones and slanted eyes, is common among those from the East of the country. He constantly moves his arms, a mixture of lasciviousness and innocence that at times provokes pity, at others desire. He is a part of the vast group of Cubans who earn a living from the sweat of their pelvis, who market their sex to foreigners and locals. An industry of quick love, of brief caresses, that has grown considerably on this Island in the last twenty years.

Here she recounts the daily chore of getting water:

I still remember how annoyed my grandmother was when I told her I couldn’t take it anymore, having to use the bathroom when there was nothing to flush with. Then we had to pull up the bucket on a rope from the floor below, helped by a pulley installed years before on the balcony. This up-and-down ritual has continued to multiply until it has become standard practice for thousands of families. In their busy daily routine they set aside time to look for water, load it and carry it, knowing that they cannot trust what comes out of the taps.

Another blogger, the forty-year-old novelist, Ángel Santiesteban, records the struggle over scarce bread outside a bakery:

When the bread comes out of the oven, the mobilization starts, disorganized shoving…. Everyone shouts, offended if someone tries to join an acquaintance in the line or tries to sneak into a possible gap with the objective of cutting in; but the violators don’t listen, the insults don’t matter, hunger is worse than shame, and they keep on pushing.

Claudia Cadelo, the twenty-seven-year-old author of the blog Octavo Cerco, begins a post with this account:

I met him when I was eighteen: intelligent, tall, good looking, mulatto, bilingual and a liar. He said he was an Arab and that was a lie, he told me he had traveled and that was a lie, he told me he had a “yuma” girlfriend who was going to get him out of the country, and that too was a lie. But I liked him anyway, I like dreamers. We became friends.

Then life took us on two different paths: I got tired of waiting for a way to leave the country [after having been refused permission to do so]; while he chose the infinite wait. Once or twice a year we see each other, every time we are further apart: I deeply enmeshed in the thick of things, he waiting and waiting.

The post then takes us up to the present. The friend, now fifty, is still waiting, his old lies exposed, his charm long gone.

He is not alone, the “infinite waiting” has claimed almost all of my friends—the petition, visa, permit to leave, permit to live abroad, permit to travel or scholarship—everyone is waiting for that paper that will take them far away, very far from The Land of No-Time…I have come to define it as a physical and spiritual state: you haven’t gone, but you are not here.

Sánchez tells the story of a man who made his living repairing damaged books. One day the man opened a large volume that had been sent for restoration and discovered inside a “detailed inventory of all the reports that the employees of a company had made against their colleagues.” It was, Sánchez writes, a “testimony, on paper, of betrayals.”

As in the plot of Dangerous Liaisons, in one part it could be read that Alberto, the chief of personnel, had been accused of taking raw material for his house. A few pages later it was the denounced himself who was relaying the “counterrevolutionary” expressions used by the cleaning assistant in the dining room. The murmurs overlapped, producing a real and abominable spectacle in which everyone spied on everyone. Maricusa, the accountant—as witnessed by her office mate—was selling cigars at retail from her desk, but when she wasn’t involved in this illegal work she turned her attention to reporting that the administrator left some hours before closing. The mechanic appeared several times, mentioned for having extramarital relations with a woman in the union, while several reports against the cook were signed in his own hand.

Some of the most telling posts probe the bloggers’ own reactions to the limits the government has placed on their freedoms. In one, Sánchez describes how she was unable to obtain copies of her own book, a compilation of her blog postings published in Chile, which she had hoped to distribute among her friends on the island. Instead, she received a note from the customs office explaining that the shipment of books had been confiscated on the grounds that the “content goes against the general interests of the nation.” In the post, she imagines what might have gone through the minds of the agents who confiscated the books and concludes:

If three years of publishing in cyberspace would serve to bring my voice only to these grim censors, I would have sufficient reason to be satisfied. Something of me would remain inside them, Just as their repressive presence has marked my blog, pushing it to leap toward freedom.

Here Cadelo reflects on her failed effort to obtain a visa to travel abroad:

Today I look at my refusal of permission to travel and it gives me peace: I was not hurt, not surprised. It is the long line that I have been drawing of my path, it’s the certainty that I wasn’t wrong, it’s the proof that the Cuban government has taken the trouble to tell me so I will know—despite the Party and its State, the security forces and their impunity—that I have managed to live as a free woman.

The paradoxical satisfaction both bloggers describe reflects a sense of vindication: The government’s confiscation of Sanchez’s book and denial of a visa for Cadelo confirms their work—not only the truth of what they write but the fact that, in the government’s own estimation, their blogs matter.

Yet there appears to be something even more basic here: the satisfaction of discerning the value of things as perhaps only someone who is deprived of them can. To a large extent this is what these blogs are: chronicles of deprivation. What appears to affect these bloggers most acutely is being deprived of ways to discuss and disagree about their country’s problems. When they manage to initiate such debate—even if it takes place in a forum that is inaccessible to most Cubans—their enthusiasm is palpable.

The bloggers of Voces Cubanas. Many Cubans are unable to access their own blogs.

Here is Sanchez’s answer to the question of why readers of her blog keep coming back:

[T]hey feel that Generation Y is a public place or a neighborhood where they can sit and talk or argue with a friend. And they have stayed there, right up to today. In this very moment my blog is alive, while I am sitting here, talking to you. People are recounting, narrating, publishing, and that is the most important kind of wealth there is.

Indeed, the posts on Generation Y routinely elicit thousands of comments from readers, most of them abroad. Some are angry diatribes. Some display the familiar intolerance of ideologues insisting on adherence to their beliefs. Most, however, are from people eager to contribute their own observations and commentary—and their own stories and vignettes—to this new “public place.” This open dialogue is a historic achievement for Cuba, and it is only possible thanks to the Internet. Yet the bloggers themselves have only limited access to this conversation, and most other Cubans on the island still have none.

One of the more moving passages I’ve come across in Generation Y over the past few months follows an interview with a Spanish journalist. Here is Sánchez, one of the world’s more influential bloggers, describing what appears to be her first encounter with the iPhone earlier this year. The passage conveys the playfulness and yearning that make her voice of moderation so appealing:

Between the walls of this house, which had heard dozens of Cubans talk of the Internet as if it were a mythical and difficult-to-reach place, this little technological gadget gave us a piece of cyberspace. We, who throughout the Blogger Academy, work on a local server that simulates the web, were suddenly able to feel the kilobytes run across the palms of our hands. I had the desperate desire to grab [the Spanish journalist’s] iPhone and run off with it to hide in my room and surf all the sites blocked on the national networks. For a second, I wanted to keep it so I could enter my own blog, which is still censored in the hotels and cybercafés. But I returned it, a bit disconsolate I confess.

For a while on that Monday, the little flag on the door of my apartment asking for “Internet for Everyone” did not seem so unrealistic.

July 6, 2010 2:15 p.m.

Cuba's blogosphere has developed a sharper edge

Nov. 09, 2009
BY JUAN O. TAMAYOjtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, speaks during a interview with AFP in Havana, on May 6, 2008. Sanchez won the Ortega y Gasset prize in Spain for digital journalism for her critical Internet blog on Cuban reality. Cuban authorities have refused to give a travel visa to Sanchez so she can receive one of Spain's top journalism awards in Madrid on Wednesday, said Spanish newspaper El Pais which hands out the awards annually. When a dozen Cuban bloggers wanted to stage a protest last month, they simultaneously tweeted, texted and posted messages like ``Freedom.''

One later used a blond wig to sneak into a government building and complain against censorship of the Internet. And the next day, she posted a video of her complaint on her blog. Carefully, but with daring determination, some Cubans whose blogs once focused largely on the frustrations of daily life are moving toward sharp-edged commentaries and activities that some fear will eventually lead to a crackdown by the communist government. ``We do not have a common position . . . but yes, some people have been doing actions that go beyond the click and the keyboard and try to exercise the rights of a free person,'' said Reynaldo Escobar of the Havana blog Desde Aquí (From Here). Some bloggers indeed have become ``more assertive, more confrontational, more pushing the limits -- and pushing their luck,'' said Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor who is writing a paper on the social implications of the Cuban blogosphere's growth.

In fact, on Friday the best known of the Cuban bloggers, Yoani Sánchez, reported that she and another blogger were detained and beaten severely by state security agents, apparently to keep them from joining a peaceful march in Havana organized by young musicians. Cuba's blogosphere is tiny for an island of 11.5 million people. About 200 blogs have official approval and 100 don't, among them dissident journalists and human rights activists, according to a recent report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. But about 15 bloggers have captured widespread attention at home and abroad -- sometimes becoming better known than political dissidents -- with posts that challenge the government and break its monopoly on information entering and leaving the island. While human rights activists report ``the sufferings on the island, which are indeed tragic,'' said Henken, the usually younger bloggers tend to use more humor and nonpolitical language to connect with young Cubans and foreigners. ``They appeal to a new generation that speaks their language, the language of social networks'' like blogs and Facebook, he added. ``They appeal to people like my students, who have no politics.''

Escobar said some of the bloggers -- sometimes called alternative bloggers to differentiate them from government-approved and dissident writers -- have now decided ``their purpose is not just to be on the Web but to express their individual will to come together in a place, on an issue.'' They have arranged three ``virtual protests'' since May, but their largest came on Oct. 20, the anniversary of the day the Cuban national anthem was first sung, when a dozen Cuban bloggers and about 100 other sites coordinated their posts, text messages, tweets and other Web activities for Blogacción -- Blog Action. Escobar wrote that if he had a microphone for only two seconds he would ask for ``freedom.'' Myriam Celaya blogged demanding Internet access for all. Claudia Cadelo wrote that she dreamed of the release of blogger Pablo Pacheco, who has been jailed since 2003 but dictates his post to Cadelo, who then arranges to have them posted on Voz Tras Las Rejas -- Voice from behind Bars.

``It's a matter of trying to grease the machinery for online protests,'' Sánchez, 34, wrote about the Oct. 20 event in her blog Generación Y. The total number of participants is unknown, but Google reported 22,000 searches for the words ``Blogacción'' and ``Cuba.'' Six days later, Escobar and Sánchez, who are married, hosted the first session of the Bloggers Academy of Cuba, a series of training sessions for some 30 would-be bloggers in their Havana apartment that includes technology, photography, ethics and the legalities of the Internet. And three days after that, Sánchez sneaked into a government-run cultural center that was hosting a discussion on the Internet. While other cyberactivists were barred from entering, Sánchez took off her wig and launched a withering critique of the government's ``ideological filter'' on the Internet. A video of her comments -- and the thin applause she received -- was posted on her blog hours later. The government has long tried to control Cubans' access to the Internet, putting restrictions on computers and subscriptions, keeping prices high and blocking access to unfriendly sites, including most alternative blogs. It also has assigned university students of computer sciences to post comments supporting the government and attacking its critics.
But Cubans have found myriad ways to get around the roadblocks: Passwords for Internet access sell on the black market for $10 a month. People with access download information to CDs and USB thumb drives and pass them on to others, who then copy the data and pass it further on. One file being passed around instructs cybernauts on how to get around government blocks on the unfriendly blogs and other websites. Yosvani Anzardo, a young engineer from the eastern province of Holguín, even established the digital newspaper Covadonga and an private e-mail system called Red Libertad -- Liberty Net -- by reprogramming his laptop to work as a much more powerful server. Then there's Bluetooth, which allows the rapid transfer of files such as forbidden books, songs and foreign news reports between cellphones that are near each other, without going through telephone or computer lines. Security agents probably don't realize the impact of Bluetooth, Escobar said. ``Those people studied in the KGB and maybe now they are studying in China, but their knowledge is antiquated,'' he said in a telephone interview from Havana.
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