Memorias de un Ciudadano

 

Por Juan Santiago Nieves

Nota
Este es el prólogo de la nueva edición electrónica (ebook) de Memorias de un ciudadano,  que pronto estará disponible  y podrán comprar en www.juanmaribras.org.
 

“El Movimiento Pro Independencia de Puerto Rico se constituye para luchar por la liberación de Puerto Rico: liberación política, por la vía de la independencia y la democracia; liberación económica, mediante el establecimiento de un sistema eficaz de producción y de participación equitativa en la riqueza; liberación social, luchando por eliminar todo prejuicio y fomentando la más completa fraternidad de la familia puertorriqueña; y liberación cultural, procurando sincronizar el desarrollo de nuestra cultura con los más sólidos aportes de la cultuta universal”.
Memorias de un Ciudadano, pág. 148.

Fundado en el Tratado de París, el gobierno norteamericano determinó, unilateralmente, cuáles serían los “derechos civiles” de los habitantes de Puerto Rico:

“…respecto a los naturales, su condición y sus derechos civiles se reservan al congreso, quien hará las leyes para gobernar los territorios cedidos…”.

Y los tribunales norteamericanos conceptualizaron, a finales de siglo XIX, este “nuevo poder” del soberano en los siguientes términos:  
       
“El poder del Congreso sobre los territorios… es general y pleno … surge y deriva … del poder otorgado por la Constitución para establecer todas las reglas y reglamentos necesarios … El poder de adquirir territorio por conquista, por tratado y por cesión es un corolario de la soberanía nacional.”

La recreación de este proceso histórico nos permite entender el esquema de dominio implantado en nuestro territorio. La pretensión norteamericana de que Puerto Rico y su población “le pertenecen” ha estado en vigor desde entonces. Se trata nada menos que la concepción de un discurso que atribuye la condición de mercancía –propiedad– a los seres humanos en el tráfico y comercio de las naciones. He ahí la coordenada de la relación colonial. La metrópolis es “soberana”, y ejerce los poderes, como estado nacional, en el territorio ocupado o conquistado.

La población civil “adquirida” disfruta la condición de siervos –súbditos– del gobierno central que le impone, a su vez, una constitución y leyes. Todo este proceso de esclavitud en masa –colonialismo– se da a contrapelo de las luchas internas libradas en las naciones en el siglo XIX para

Juan Mari Bras a la carga

abandonar la organización económica fundada en la esclavitud, que dio paso al trabajo asalariado.

Así, la lucha por la independencia de Puerto Rico ha estado matizada por la soledad y el sacrificio. Decenios de opresión, de humillación, de  esclavitud y servidumbre han marcado la historia de nuestro régimen colonial que ya ha alcanzado la edad de los siglos.  La historia oficial  excluye al movimiento de independencia y lo condena al ostracismo de las masas mediatizadas por el espectro del colonialismo.

Multiplicidad de sacrificios, incomprensión, martirio, exilio, persecución, penurias y profunda soledad caracterizan la ruta.

¹Como alzar la voz y  articular las acciones para contrarrestar esta ofensiva de la metrópolis ha sido un reto inmenso a lo largo del tiempo.  El amor a nuestro pueblo ha sido el norte de la lucha. Se trata de un amor inconmensurable que nos vincula aun bajo el espectro del silencio.  Nuestro pueblo respeta, aunque ello no se traduzca aún en una clara conciencia política, a nuestros luchadores y luchadoras por la independencia, a quienes distingue por su honestidad, verticalidad y voluntad de sacrificio. Juan Mari Brás es uno de ellos.

Enfrentar con sensibilidad la fuerza bruta de los imperios, sin deshumanizarnos, ha constituído un gran desafío. Hemos tenido que crecer y evolucionar para preservar nuestra humanidad frente a los que violentan la paz de nuestro espacio nacional. ¡Qué riqueza de seres humanos hemos producido!

---

NOTAS

1.  “Esta de pie… no le arredó el silencio… no le duele la herida”.  Memorias… págs 133-134 de la primera edición.

“Man can be destroyed, but not defeated”

 

This past summer AE Hotchner published an essay on Ernest Hemingway in The New York Times   . Today is not an anniversary of any kind, it is just another day, in which for no special reason I decided to re-read the piece and reflect on all that it entails. Cuba and the US are so closely tied together it goes beyond politics and war; we share cultural icons, we are tied together on so many levels the rope is simply too brawny to ever break.  MAP.

“EARLY one morning, 50 years ago today, while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life.

There were many differing explanations at the time: that he had terminal cancer or money problems, that it was an accident, that he’d quarreled with Mary. None were true. As his friends knew, he’d been suffering from depression and paranoia for the last year of his life.

Ernest and I were friends for 14 years. I dramatized many of his stories and novels for television specials and film, and we shared adventures in France, Italy, Cuba and Spain, where, as a pretend matador with Ernest as my manager, I participated in a Ciudad Real bullfight. Ernest’s zest for life was infectious.

In 1959 Ernest had a contract with Life magazine to write about Spain’s reigning matadors, the brothers-in-law Antonio Ordóñez and Luis Miguel Dominguín. He cabled me, urging me to join him for the tour. It was a glorious summer, and we celebrated Ernest’s 60th birthday with a party that lasted two days.

But I remember it now as the last of the good times.

In May 1960, Ernest phoned me from Cuba. He was uncharacteristically perturbed that the unfinished Life article had reached 92,453 words. The contract was for 40,000; he was having nightmares.

A month later he called again. He had cut only 530 words, he was exhausted and would it be an imposition to ask me to come to Cuba to help him?

I did, and over the next nine days I submitted list upon list of suggested cuts. At first he rejected them: “What I’ve written is Proustian in its cumulative effect, and if we eliminate detail we destroy that effect.” But eventually he grudgingly consented to cutting 54,916 words. He was resigned, surrendering, and said he would leave it to Life to cut the rest.

I got on the plane back to New York knowing my friend was “bone-tired and very beat-up,” but thinking he simply needed rest and would soon be his old dominating self again.

In November I went out West for our annual pheasant shoot and realized how wrong I was. When Ernest and our friend Duke MacMullen met my train at Shoshone, Idaho, for the drive to Ketchum, we did not stop at the bar opposite the station as we usually did because Ernest was anxious to get on the road. I asked why the hurry.

“The feds.”

“What?”

“They tailed us all the way. Ask Duke.”

“Well … there was a car back of us out of Hailey.”

“Why are F.B.I. agents pursuing you?” I asked.

“It’s the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They’ve bugged everything. That’s why we’re using Duke’s car. Mine’s bugged. Everything’s bugged. Can’t use the phone. Mail intercepted.”

We rode for miles in silence. As we turned into Ketchum, Ernest said quietly: “Duke, pull over. Cut your lights.” He peered across the street at a bank. Two men were working inside. “What is it?” I asked.

“Auditors. The F.B.I.’s got them going over my account.”

“But how do you know?”

“Why would two auditors be working in the middle of the night? Of course it’s my account.”

All his friends were worried: he had changed; he was depressed; he wouldn’t hunt; he looked bad.

Ernest, Mary and I went to dinner the night before I left. Halfway through the meal Ernest said we had to leave immediately. Mary asked what was wrong.

“Those two F.B.I. agents at the bar, that’s what’s wrong.”

The next day Mary had a private talk with me. She was terribly distraught. Ernest spent hours every day with the manuscript of his Paris sketches — published as “A Moveable Feast” after his death — trying to write but unable to do more than turn its pages. He often spoke of destroying himself and would sometimes stand at the gun rack, holding one of the guns, staring out the window.

On Nov. 30 he was registered under an assumed name in the psychiatric section of St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minn., where, during December, he was given 11 electric shock treatments.

In January he called me from outside his room. He sounded in control, but his voice held a heartiness that didn’t belong there and his delusions had not changed or diminished. His room was bugged, and the phone was tapped. He suspected that one of the interns was a fed.

During a short release he twice attempted suicide with a gun from the vestibule rack. And on a flight to the Mayo Clinic, though heavily sedated, he tried to jump from the plane. When it stopped in Casper, Wyo., for repairs, he tried to walk into the moving propeller.

I visited him in June. He had been given a new series of shock treatments, but it was as before: the car bugged, his room bugged. I said it very gently: “Papa, why do you want to kill yourself?”

“What do you think happens to a man going on 62 when he realizes that he can never write the books and stories he promised himself? Or do any of the other things he promised himself in the good days?”

“But how can you say that? You have written a beautiful book about Paris, as beautiful as anyone can hope to write.”

“The best of that I wrote before. And now I can’t finish it.”

I told him to relax or even retire.

“Retire?” he said. “Unlike your baseball player and your prizefighter and your matador, how does a writer retire? No one accepts that his legs are shot or the whiplash gone from his reflexes. Everywhere he goes, he hears the same damn question: what are you working on?”

I told him he never cared about those dumb questions.

“What does a man care about? Staying healthy. Working good. Eating and drinking with his friends. Enjoying himself in bed. I haven’t any of them. You understand, goddamn it? None of them.” Then he turned on me. I was just like the others, pumping him for information and selling him out to the feds. After that day, I never saw him again.

This man, who had stood his ground against charging water buffaloes, who had flown missions over Germany, who had refused to accept the prevailing style of writing but, enduring rejection and poverty, had insisted on writing in his own unique way, this man, my deepest friend, was afraid — afraid that the F.B.I. was after him, that his body was disintegrating, that his friends had turned on him, that living was no longer an option.

Decades later, in response to a Freedom of Information petition, the F.B.I. released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his room was tapped after all.

In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide.

I was in Rome the day he died.

I did not go to Ketchum for the funeral. Instead I went to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, one of his favorite churches, and said goodbye to him there. I recalled a favorite dictum of his: man can be destroyed, but not defeated.”

A. E. Hotchner is the author of “Papa Hemingway” and “Hemingway and His World.”

Kindergarten Cuba

 

By Shelly Yedlin

I was in Kindergarten in a small town outside of New York City during the “Cuban Missile Crisis.” Like the rest of the schools in the nation at that time, we had daily air raid drills. At the blaring sound of each alarm, the entire student body had to trek down to the cafeteria to “duck and cover,” under the lunch tables. My passionately progressive parents were bemused and outraged about the message and futility of the air raid drills in the cafeteria for several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that the place was the only ALL GLASS room in the building. Since the house I grew up in was also mostly glass, it took me a long time to let go of the worry that the world would come to a crashing end via flying shards of broken window pane. Gratefully, however, and unlike my teachers, my peers and their parents, I never developed or held on to the notion of Russia or Cuba as an enemy, nor, any semblance of fear of Fidel.

Fast forward to September 11, 2001. I am in another small town outside of New York City, but this time it is in New Jersey. My teen-age sons are sitting in their respective middle and high school classes. News of the country under attack is given to them at school. Their confusion and fear are palpable when they return home that day. They expect me to reassure and comfort them, I know, but it is hard. Looking into my sons eyes that day brought back waves of my five year-old self, wondering what the next few minutes would bring. Planes in the sky are suddenly terrifying!

Like my parents before me, I was unable to share with my sons the kinds of reactions that were so prevalent in those around us. Five families in our small town lost a father, a son or loved one that day, and grief turned quickly to anger and revenge. There was also a strong feeling of incredulity–how DARE a foreign country attack the United States? This too, was a familiar refrain during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Somehow I managed to help my sons relax that day, but I was also truthful with them. I shared with them some of the troubling questions I had that this awful event had stirred up: when will we as a nation begin to examine our behavior and the effect it has on the rest of the world? When will we learn to soften our sense of entitlement and end our self-serving manipulation? And finally, will the people in this country ever realize that acting in the interests of others is almost always the best way to fulfill our own needs? I’m pretty sure that is precisely what I was learning those days in Kindergarten before the air raid alarms went off.

The Avocados of Today

Margarita Alarcón Perea

Avocados are a delicious and nutritious food, commonly consumed in Latin America and the rest of the world. For some it is a vegetable and for others a fruit. Because of this particular characteristic, for some Cubans when an individual or a specific thing doesn’t quite fit into a certain genre it is also known as an “avocado”. This is my case. I belong to a particular group of people known as “avocados”, we belong neither here nor there but somehow we manage to co-exist.

When I was contemplating higher education I filled out a form customary in those years for high school graduates in Cuba, whereby we would jot down in order of preference what it was that we hoping   to matriculate in college. On my list of 10 possible aspirations, I wrote down, industrial design, architecture, law, medicine, biology and another five I really don’t remember now. After a lot of time spent in the University (Cuba, East Germany, Cuba, and more Cuba) I finally graduated ten years later as an English major. Language majors or philologists in any language are what are known as an “avocado” by my peers.   Our greatest weakness becomes in the end our greatest strength; we know a bit about everything and not all that much about any one topic in particular, but we can function in practically any field of the working world.  

Thanks to this, one of the things I have had the possibility of doing is teaching and it has been a joy to this day. During my years at Casa de las Americas, said cultural institution began organizing academic courses for college students from the United States interested in Latin America and Cuba. It was because of this that I have had the opportunity since the year 2000 to lecture (for lack of a better word) to students from many schools of excellence from the US. One of these has been UC Davis.

For anyone with a teaching carrier behind them, it is an accepted maxim that we as teachers tend to forget the run of the mill students and will always remember the worst and the best. UC Davis has never been run of the mill. The students that go to Davis tend to be both the best and the worst as far as a teacher is concerned. They are inquisitive and attentive. They challenge the person standing at the helm of the class room. In short, they are a delight, at least the members of the groups that I have had the opportunity to work with since the year 2000 up until 2009. I seriously doubt that those that are on campus now are any different.

California has a grand history with its student movement going back to Berkeley in the 60´s. When I was there during my last trip to the US I remember you could feel the energy that was still alive. What has happened over the weekend at UC Davis unfortunately reminded me of the history of Berkeley and other Universities in the US during the protest movement against the Viet Nam war and in favor of the Civil Rights movement. Students are by nature, the way they should be, rebellious, they are the final stage of ground-breaking spunk that we all have before we become content and accepting of what we have left in our lives. I think it is in part because of this that I spent a decade in college; I simply didn’t want to stop being an adolescent.

The students over at Davis probably have a lot to learn about how to proceed in the future and how to express their desires and demands, but one thing I am certain of is that pepper spraying them using brutal force is not the way to help them grow. They are part of the future of their country and if they have made mistakes, and if they have not abided by the rules the way they are expected to then maybe the rules should be double checked and maybe what some consider mistakes are simply a reaction to actions that are being taken or not being taken in order to help them secure the future for themselves.

 

…el amor en tiempos de colera…

Por  Alain Darcout Rodríguez para CENESEX

Lisandra y Lisbet son una pareja de lesbianas de más de ocho años de relación estable, los sentimientos que las unen quedan fuera de toda duda, toda vez que decidieron celebrar públicamente su amor en una ceremonia que simulaba el ofrecimiento mutuo de sus votos, o más concretamente, unas nupcias simbólicas, (1) idea que fue apoyada inmediatamente por el grupo FENIX, red social que agrupa a las mujeres lesbianas, bisexuales y heterosexuales que deciden luchar por la diversidad sexual en Cienfuegos.

Pretendían con ello celebrar los avances que en el plano legislativo representa que las modificaciones al Código de Familia, donde finalmente se reconozca la unión legal entre personas del mismo sexo, este ya en manos del Ministerio de Justicia, casi listo para presentar el proyecto de ley ante el pleno de la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular, y también, la políticamente muy relevante mención que el Documento Base para la 1ra Conferencia Nacional del Partido Comunista de Cuba, hace de forma explícita a la necesidad de enfrentar los prejuicios […] ante [la] orientación sexual […] que puedan originar cualquier forma de discriminación o limitar el ejercicio de los derechos de las personas…

Pero sus deseos sufrieron un pertinaz desengaño, primero, aunque se cercioraron con autoridades jurídicas del territorio que podían realizar la representación varias instituciones se negaron a prestarle el servicio de alquiler del local a pesar de estar incluido dentro de su objeto social, y solo el Grupo Empresarial Palmares de Cienfuegos apoyó la iniciativa y extendió un contrato para dicha celebración; pero a pesar de que la pareja actuó de buena fe declarando sus intensiones a la gerencia, pocos minutos antes de iniciarse la actividad, altos funcionarios de Palmares se personaron en el lugar para delimitar algunas exigencias sobre su ejecución, las cuales no realizaron cuando se firmó el contrato y cobraron el dinero en cuestión.

Dichas exigencias, si bien algunas no dejaban de ser lógicas preocupaciones (canalizadas en el momento más inadecuado) como que ellos eran una entidad estatal y no podían consentir que se hablara de matrimonio, boda, o cualquier otro sinónimo, entre personas del mismo sexo, toda vez que no estaba aprobado por las leyes y no podían cometer una ilegalidad, de pronto, empezaron a extenderse sin límites las proscripciones y mutilaron el guión del espectáculo eliminando desde una simbólica Marcha Nupcial hasta una inofensiva Ave Maria, llegando al punto de prohibir la utilización de cualquier palabra que hiciera alusión a la naturaleza de la bella relación de pareja de Lisandra y Lisbet… total, que al final resultaron ser dos “amigas” (aunque vestidas de novias) celebrando el amor, sí, el abstracto amor del cual todos somos  depositarios y ninguna de las personas LGBT concretos hacedores (lamentablemente aun para muchos que no comprenden esta realidad).

Ante los cuestionamientos del que suscribe esta crónica, Coordinador de la Redes Sociales por la Diversidad en el territorio y Presidente de la Comisión Provincial de Educación Sexual, sencillamente respondieron que eran indicaciones que tenían sin aclarar de quien o donde estaban plasmadas, y más, personalmente me acotaron que incluso si las veían muy “echadas” una encima de la otra ellos tendrían que sacarlas, todo lo cual tuvo una serena pero enérgica respuesta basados en la legalidad y el más elemental respeto a los derechos humanos, a lo que replicaron con una petición que puede resumirse en que al final si se toma lo acontecido como tema (es decir, si trasciende) la soga se romperá por la parte más débil (ellos) pues los demás negarían tal indicación, revelando la doble moral evidente en el discurso de algunos decisores.

Pero lo contraproducente ocurrió más tarde cuando ante el despliegue de la bandera del arcoíris para realizarse unas fotos recibimos la orden de guardarla, o peor, cuando ante el beso inocente de otra pareja, un custodio señaló que podían ser expulsadas del lugar por ese hecho; y otra vez, ante los requerimientos acerca de la justificación de tal proceder, un funcionario de Palmares replicó sin más: yo me acojo al derecho de admisión.

Me pregunto entonces si no es una ilegalidad precisamente que una entidad pretenda establecer normas internas que contravengan las propias leyes del país, porque en Cuba desde las modificaciones al Código Penal a fines de los años 90, la homosexualidad dejó de ser penada por la ley; entonces, como entender que una pareja del mismo sexo pueda expresarse su afecto mutuo, incluso con un beso, delante de un agente del orden (PNR) quien no puede detenerlos por eso pues no violan ley alguna y si puedan los custodios de una entidad de Palmares expulsarlos de un centro recreativo por la misma razón (¿?)

¿A que leyes se acoge Palmares cuando, según su sacrosanto derecho de admisión, pueden expulsar a una pareja del mismo sexo que este bailando “muy juntas” o tengan alguna muestra “inadecuada” de afectos o pueden negarle la entrada a una pareja del mismo sexo (sobre todo hombres, con las mujeres aplican una mirada discrecional, en mi apreciación personal) porque la entrada es por parejas “normales” o pueden negarle la entrada a un trasgénero cualquiera solo por vestir acorde a su identidad sexual?(2).

¿Se rige Palmares por regulaciones legales propias? ¿Ignoran que en nuestro país, como política de estado, se desarrollan históricas jornadas por la libre y responsable orientación sexual e identidad de género desde hace 5 años; se batalla por conquistar toda la justicia social posible, por cambiar todo lo que deba ser cambiado, lo cual tendrá expresión jurídica y tiene ya concreción política expresa? ¿No han discutido aun el Documento Base del PCC para su 1ra Conferencia Nacional?… ¿hasta cuando  tendremos que soportar humillaciones como estas?

Al final, estas libres interpretaciones acerca de la igualdad de derechos consagrados en la Constitución de la República, solo confirman la necesidad de proteger jurídicamente de forma expresa y positiva los derechos de las minorías sexuales.

(1)       Las parejas del mismo sexo no disfrutan las garantías jurídicas que pueda ofrecerles el Estado, entre otras muchas, por ejemplo, sobre el patrimonio construido conjuntamente, pues aun no existe ninguna legislación al respecto en Cuba.

(2)       En verdad, estas disposiciones discriminatorias ocurren en la mayoría de los centros recreativos, estableciéndose, cuando más, días específicos destinados para esta población o solo lugares determinados, política que continúa segregando y no favorece la inte

Against the Privatization of Education and Everything Else…

 

Posted on November 19, 2011 by crank

 

18 November 2011

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi,

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

You are not.

I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

3) to demand your immediate resignation

Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday—a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.

What happened next?

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened. You are responsible for it.

You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt. One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O’Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton. These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported.

One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way—linking arms and holding their ground—police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.

You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.

On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, “it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students.” You write, “while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis.”

I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to “a safe and inviting space for all our students” or “a safe, welcoming environment” at UC Davis: 1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? or 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating “a safe and inviting space?” Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to “a safe, welcoming environment?”

I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience—including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students. And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our “Principles of Community” and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.

I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately.

Sincerely,

Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis

Dejemos las cosas claras

Margarita Alarcón Perea

La fotografía es una de mis pasiones.  De preferencia en blanco y negro; no ha sido hasta hace poco que comienzo a descubrirle algo a las imágenes a color. La intensidad del claro oscuro me provoca una paz intensa que supongo es en sí un tanto paradójico. Este fin de semana pasado estaba hojeando el libro Las Fotos del Siglo de Marie-Monique Robin y entre el deleite de imágenes de Robert Capa y Korda, me topé en la pagina 42 con una imagen que tenía como copy write CIA. La foto se titula La Crisis de los Misiles y la fecha de referencia es el año 1962.

Una de las imagenes que ayudó a salvar al mundo.

Mientras leía el contexto histórico de repente caí en la cuenta de que es precisamente por la Crisis de los Misiles que tantas personas confunden los momentos históricos y el establecimiento del embargo de los EEUU contra Cuba. El 22 de octubre de 1962 Kennedy impuso un bloqueo contra Cuba: “Tenemos pruebas de que hay misiles nucleares Rusos en la isla”, declaró el Presidente de los Estados Unidos. Todo esto es realidad irrefutable de la historia del siglo XX. Lo único que faltaría seria el calificador al termino “bloqueo”. Efectivamente, el presidente impuso un bloqueo y fue por la presencia de los misiles que el gobierno de la URSS había puesto en la isla y la fotografía es real y para nada adulterada, lo que falta es la aclaración de que fue, en ese momento y por esas razones especificas, un bloqueo naval. Es decir, durante esos trece días, nada podía ni entrar ni salir de la isla y los barcos de la naviera del ejercito de los EEUU se veían estacionados frente a las costas de la Capital, de hecho se veían desde la ventana donde ahora escribo esto frente al mar.  

Luego del fin de la crisis y de la retirada afortunada de los misiles del territorio cubano, los barcos norteamericanos se retiraron y uno se imaginaria que ahí habría terminado todo, pero no fue así.

El bloqueo sobre el cual Cuba se pasa año tras año vociferando a la par del resto de las naciones del mundo salvo do (Israel y los EEUU), no tiene nada que ver con la Crisis de los Misiles. El bloqueo al cual se refiere esta nación es uno que fue impuesto de manera paulatina por el Presidente Dwight D Eisenhower justo al comienzo del triunfo de la revolución liderada por Fidel Castro.  

Cuba contaba con una economía mono productora. La caña de azúcar era su único bien ganancial y el 70% de la producción anual era adquirida por los Estados Unidos, distribuida entre las diferentes compañías que operaban en esa nación norteña. Con el triunfo en 1959 en el mes de abril de ese año Fidel Castro hace su primer viaje a los Estados Unidos a reunirse con el presidente Eisenhower. Lamentablemente este no lo recibió y prefirió dejarlo en manos de su vicepresidente Richard M. Nixon e irse a jugar al golf.  Poco después de esto Eisenhower le quitó la condición de nación preferencial a la isla de manera que llevaba con esto a la economía del país a la ruina segura. Su objetivo era “aniquilar al pueblo de Cuba por hambre y enfermedad tal de provocar que se revelaran contra el régimen revolucionario”.  Ese y solo ese fue el primer paso en lo que se ha convertido en el bloqueo económico, cultural, social y político contra la isla. Primero con la eliminación de a posibilidad de compra y venta, luego siguieron fomentar la subversión dentro de la isla a través del apoyo, financiamiento y entrenamiento de grupos contrarrevolucionarios dentro y fuera de la isla con el fin de derrocar al gobierno. La infame Escuela de las Américas fue creada en Honduras por la CIA, entres otras, con el fin de entrenar grupos paramilitares que luego forman las escuadras de los que invadieron a la isla durante Bahía de Cochinos (el Ataque a Playa Girón como se le conoce en Cuba) en Abril de 1961. Anterior a eso, un buque francés con una carga de armamentos adquiridos en Bélgica sufrió dos explosiones a su arribo a la Bahía de la Habana. La explosión del buque La Coubre causó 80 muertos y 200 heridos. Documentos desclasificados de la CIA muestran que este ataque a la isla fue orquestado por la CIA. La guerra bacteriológica fue el siguiente paso y a esto se sumaron numerosos “incendios” inexplicable en un país con un índice anual del 97% de humedad. En materia más directamente dirigida a desestabilizar a la población cubana, a principios de 1961 con la ayuda de miembros de la Iglesia católica en la Florida y bajo el auspicio de la CIA se falsificaron documentos legales en Cuba donde aparecía que el gobierno iba a eliminar la patria potestad y que todos los niños iban a ser enviado a la Unión Soviética. Dicha operación fue bautizada como “Operación Peter Pan”. Catorce mil niños entre los 2 y los 17 años fueron separados de sus familiares y enviados a los EEUU. La mayoría se reunió con sus padres pero el trauma del hecho es algo con lo cual bregan las victimas hasta nuestros días.

Cuba se convertía lentamente en la victima de agresiones constantes. Luego fue que vino 1962. Los misiles y el presidente Kruschev aceptando retirarlas de Cuba siempre y cuando los Estados Unidos estuvieran de acuerdo con la siguiente condición: no podían volver a tocar a Cuba. Queda claro que el término “volver a tocar” es bastante subjetivo dado que efectivamente después de la Invasión de Bahía de Cochinos es cierto que los EEUU no han invadido directamente a la isla sino que se han dedicado a un lento pero aplastante esfuerzo por socavar a este gobierno hasta el día de hoy.

Por tanto, para dejar las cosas claras: el bloqueo o embargo no fue instaurado por el Presidente Kennedy (aunque este nunca hizo nada para evitar la animosidad entre ambas naciones…o no le habrán dado tiempo), comenzó mucho antes cuando este aun era Senador.  

Y volviendo al principio de esta diatriba, que comenzó con la fotografía, Dino Brugioni dijo al referirse a la foto que le sirvió de prueba a Kennedy en 1962: “La fotografía determinó el curso de la Crisis de los Misiles”.  Creo que ya va siendo hora de que alguien tenga ocasión de apretar el obturador y registrar para la posteridad el momento en que otro presidente de los EEUU ponga fin a este curso retrograda por el cual transitan los Estados Unidos y Cuba.

Cuba Showdown on the Senate Minibus

 The Havana Note

By Anya Landau French.

Wonk-out alert: For those who missed the action on the Senate floor yesterday, The Hill reports that Senator Reid’s “Minibus” appropriations bill nearly crashed over Cuba provisions contained in the bill. Those provisions were 1) a provision passed in FY 09, FY10 and FY11 that defines the term “cash in advance” for the purpose of complying with a 2000 law that authorized cash in advance food exports to the island, and 2) a provision that would have blocked enforcement funds for a prohibition on Cuban buyers routing their payments for U.S. purchases directly, rather than through a third country bank.

 The former provision was in the original Financial Services Appropriations bill when it was considered by the full Appropriations Committee in September. The latter provision, championed by Senators Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Ben Nelson (D-NE), was attached to the bill by a vote of 20 to 10 in that committee. The vote was significant – for Cuban watchers, anyway – because the Chairs of the Intelligence and Banking Committees, and the chair of the Financial Services Appropriations Subcommittee, spoke in favor of the amendment, and because 6 Republicans, including the Ranking Member of the full committee, joined 14 Democrats in voting for it.

These provisions aren’t exactly huge chunks of the U.S. embargo. What they would do is inch a bit closer towards reasonable and reliable terms of export (you can’t really call one-way transactions “trade”, can you?), something which the agriculture export community in the U.S. has been pushing for since a 2005 Bush administration rule made cash-in-advance sales impossible to transact. The sales, though they dropped and continue to drop, have continued because the law also allowed for foreign letters of credit in payment, something larger exporters are quite used to and comfortable with. Taken together, the two rules added cost and volatility to the sales. Small bore though they may be, the agriculture export provisions give embargo supporters like Senators Rubio, Menenedez and Nelson (of Florida) heartburn because better export terms means more exports and better ties between Cuba and an influencial sector here in the U.S., which in turn could lead to further dismantling of the embargo.

 What I can’t yet explain is why the provisions were vulnerable to the Senate rule against authorizing or legislating policy on a spending bill. The Moran provision that came out of Committee was simply a prohibition on funding, and shouldn’t have fallen upon such a challenge. The cash-in-advance fix, on the other hand, was written differently, and perhaps no one “Rule XVI’ed” it in previous years because of the larger priority at stake: passing the underlying bill to keep much bigger chunks of the government funded than this “minibus” would do. But newcomer Senator Marco Rubio has no allegiance to Senate Majority Leader Reid’s agenda, and perhaps his arrival to the chamber changed the game. Of course, the same applies to Mr. Moran, a freshman Republican who favors engagement with Cuba . After Rubio and company* took down his Cuba provisions, forcing Reid to bring up an amended bill without the Cuba language, Moran (who voted against the Financial Services spending bill in committee, by the way) objected to considering that bill, which wasn’t the version that came out of committee.

The Financial Services Appropriations bill had bigger, more partisan problems ahead of it than Cuba. Chances are this fight moves to bicameral conference-type negotiations over whatever vehicle will be used to continue funding the agencies and functions the bill covers. And in that scenario, provisions attached by pro-embargo Representative Mario Diaz-Balart in the House (which drew a veto threat) to block the Obama administration’s more open travel rules will be pitted against the Senate’s agriculture export provisions. And that, dear readers, is about the biggest showdown we’re likely to see on Cuba policy before November 6, 2012.

 *Update: I’ve seen another report that says Senator Menendez is the one who raised the objection to the Cuba language. As soon as I can get further confirmation, I’ll post here.

Setting the record straight

on alternate side of reality....

Margarita Alarcón Perea

Photography is one of my passions. Black and white. I have only just recently found a certain something in color shots. The intensity of the chiaro oscuro has always provoked a certain feeling of intense peace which is, I guess, a paradox. Over the weekend and coffee I was enjoying the book The Photos of the Century, Marie-Monique Robin and amidst Robert Capa and Korda, on page 42 of the book, I found one with the copy write CIA. The photo is entitled The Cuban Missile Crisis and the historical timeline refers to the year 1962.

While reading the historical context it hit me that the reasons so many people confuse the time frame and establishment of the US Embargo against Cuba is precisely because of the Missile Crisis. On October 22 of 1962, Kennedy imposed a blockade on Cuba: “We have evidence that Soviet nuclear missiles are stationed there”, declared the President of the United States. This is all factual to the “t”. The only thing missing from the statement is a qualifier to the term “blockade”. The president did in fact impose a blockade and it was because of the stationing of the missiles by the USSR on the island and the photograph is real and not altered, the only thing missing is that the blockade was a navel one. This is to say, nothing could enter or leave the island and the US naval ships circumscribing the Capitol were visible from where the window I sit beside today, faces the ocean.

After the crisis concluded and the missiles were mercifully retired from Cuban soil, the US war ships retreated and that was the end of that, right? Nope.

The Blockade Cuba raves about year in and year out along with the rest of the world save for two nations (the US and Israel), has nothing to do with The Cuban Missile Crisis. The blockade the country refers to is one that was slowly put in place initially by President Eisenhower at the onset of the triumph of the revolution led by Fidel Castro.

Cuba was a mono-productive economy. Sugar cane was the sole strong commodity and 70% of its yearly production was bought by the US, distributed among the different companies in the nation. Upon the triumph of 1959 and shortly after Fidel’s visit in April of that same year to the US to speak to the president who blew him off to go play golf and left Fidel to meet with then VP Richard Nixon, Eisenhower cut our preferential sales status pretty much bringing the islands economy to its knees. His objective was to “annihilate the Cuban people by hunger and disease till they revolted against the revolutionary regime”. THAT and only that was the first step in what has become over 50 years the Economic, Cultural, Social and Political Embargo against the island. First came eliminating the sales status, then came the subversion and support of subversion on the island through the fomenting of counterrevolutionary groups inside and out of the island. The infamous School of the Americas was created in Honduras by the CIA to train paramilitary groups which later formed part of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April of 1961. Before that, a French cargo ship loaded with weapons bought by Cuba from Belgium was blown up in the Havana Port causing the death of 80 people and wounding 200. Declassified documents have shown that the explosion was orchestrated by the CIA. Bacteriological warfare followed and joined in with the subsequent explosions, bombings, “sudden” and “inexplicable” fires in a country with a year round humidity level over 97%. More directly affecting the people on the island, in early 1961 a plan was devised with the help of members of the Catholic Church in Florida and the CIA whereby a legal document on the island was falsified stating that the government was going to eliminate parental rights and the state was going to send all the children to the Soviet Union. Said operation was baptized “Operation Peter Pan”. Fourteen thousand children ranging in ages 2 to 17 were sent off on their own to the US after having been granted a visa waiver by the State Department. Most were reunited with their families but the trauma of the act is something that the victims are dealing with till this very day.

Cuba was slowly becoming a victim of constant aggression. Then, came 1962. Then came the missiles and then came Khrushchev agreeing to retreat from the island but under a very clear condition: the US could not touch Cuba. Obviously, this “touch” was let’s say very “touch & go” given that after Bay of Pigs they never have actually invaded openly but continued hampering the economy and undermining the nation in general.

So, setting the record straight, the embargo or blockade was not President Kennedy’s idea (although he never did anything to eliminate the animosity between both nations), it began way before his time when he was still a Senator.

Going back to the beginning of this diatribe which began with photography, Dino Brugioni said referring to the photograph that backed Kenndy: “Photography determined the course of the entire Missile Crisis”. We need someone to snap a shot of the current president determining the end of the backward course between Cuba and the US.

Letter to the Editor, JTA, re: Alan Gross

Israelis holding up signs in support of the prisoner exchange.

jta.org Nov 09 2011

To the Editor:

My father and his parents lived in Cuba during World War II. They couldn’t come directly to the United States, and were compelled to wait in Cuba for years before finally receiving permission to enter the US in 1942. This was because of the restrictive quota on Jewish immigration which was strictly enforced by the Roosevelt administration. My life-long interest in Cuba is rooted in that family history. My father is referenced in Robert Levine’s TROPICAL DIASPORA.

Thanks for sharing Judy Gross’s appeal for support. Mr. Gross’s arrest and imprisonment in Cuba had nothing to do with his being Jewish. It was all about the political work Mr. Gross was doing while on the island of Cuba. In the time he’s been in custody, his wife has visited him, as have US diplomatic representatives, who were also able to attend his trial.

Mr. Gross has had plenty of time to reflect on the circumstances which got him where he is today, and he recently shared some of his conclusions with his Rabbi, David Shneyer. Here are excerpts from Rabbi Shneyer’s report to his congregation on what Alan Gross told him:

“Having learned about the recent swap of Gilad Shalit for more than 1000 imprisoned Palestinians, he felt that the US and Cuba could do the same for him and the Cuban Five, five Cubans convicted of spying and serving sentences in the US from 15 years to life. Alan saw a photo of the September vigil coordinated by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington in a Mexican newspaper. He hoped that future vigils would focus on the humanitarian aspects of his release.

“Alan was convicted and sentenced to a fifteen year term not so much for giving electronic equipment to some Jewish Cubans but because he was working for a company under a USAID contract, under a program designed to help undermine the Cuban government.”

The Palestinians included armed combatants who’d launched rockets and bombs at the state of Israel while the Cuban Five were completely non-violent intelligence gatherers. They probably never got a traffic citation while in the United States. In their thirteen years of incarceration, they’ve been model prisoners who’ve never had a disciplinary infraction.

Israel subsequently traded 25 Egyptians for one Israeli-American. And let’s not forgot those ten Russian agents caught last year. Within ONE WEEK they were traded with Russia for four Russians being held by the Russian government having been charged with being US agents.

Why can’t Washington trade five Cubans for Alan Gross?

Thank you,

Walter Lippmann

Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews

Los Angeles, California