You spend your life wishing for the dessert you see through the glass and when they invite you in to offer you the slice you want, it turns out you’ve lost your appetite.  Permission to hold more than one job has ceased to be a popular demand among us for many years, because it was assumed to be impossible.  Its authorization has come at a time in which it is difficult to determine if it’s a step forward or a gesture of desperation.

Throughout the text of the Official Notice published in the newspaper Granma, I was pleasantly surprised to see that students at the middle and senior level are permitted to look for work while still qualifying as students.  Five years in which you couldn’t work and earn a salary has led many to forgo entering the university because they don’t have a family that can afford clothes, food and transport during their student years.  I know well what I’m talking about because while studying Philology—and being a mother—I had to work illegally as a city guide to support myself.  Only then could I obtain the title I keep in the bottom drawer of the dresser.  I know of many who until yesterday had to do the same, driven by economic reasons to skirt the laws or drop out.

The acceptance of moonlighting, however, has come late—even though it’s welcome—and has as its main obstacle the low level of wages.  To have two occupations will not mean that we live doubly well, nor even a quarter part more comfortably.  What the baker receives for working at night as a guard will not be enough to save his family from the black market, the diversion of resources or from emigration.  The question isn’t the authorization to get a job in various labor centers, but what products  can we buy with the devalued national money.  The days would have to have some thirty hours, because only then would moonlighting provide us the necessities of life.

Nine years have passed since I wrote the last lines of a thesis on the figure of the dictator in Latin American literature. Although my study pointed out the existence, still, of several caudillos who served as magnificent references for writing novels, in the end I thought it was an endangered species. Shortly afterwards I began to doubt if the tyrants weren’t in incubation, to reappear on our American lands. For some time now I have left my doubts behind: the dictators, or those aspiring to be, are here, although now they wear jeans, guayaberas or red shirts.

Nor has that other danger been extinguished: the military that takes the law into their own hands; the uniformed who impose their will by force of arms. We continue to rush into the arms of one or the other because a tradition of personalities and demagogues is not so easily eradicated. Right now in Honduras a whole nation can wrap itself in the prickly coat of the soldiers or be mesmerized by the “triumphal” return—á la Chavez—of one who has been deposed by force. In this dilemma, the citizens rarely come out well.

I like neither military coups nor presidents who seek infinite reelection. I have the same distrust of one who comes down from a mountain bearing arms, as I do of one who is elected at the ballot box and administers his country as if it were a hacienda, or as if it were his parents’ old plantation. And so I am worried about Honduras. I fear what happened will pave the way for the emergence of another figure invested with full powers. Beware! In the broad range encompassing satraps, the worst combination is when the figure of the caudillo and the armed thug converge in a single person.

A television personality has lent his name to an amusing adornment in the shape of a dog that is placed inside cars.  Always agreeing has caused this host to be compared to the bobble-head animals who nod with every rattle of the car, as if to say “yes”.  Said gentleman always approves what his bosses say, so much so that his neck turns into a spring when he presents one of the programs with the fewest viewers on Cuban television.

A Mexican friend gave me this turtle who says “no”, which reminds me of the negatives that citizens have never been able to express in public.  To the rhythm of this nice chelonian, I would like to emphasize everything that I disapprove of but that I’m not permitted to decide through the ballot box.  Moving your head from side to side when you don’t agree implies a greater share of value than agreeing or consenting all the time.  The sport of saying “yes” has cost my generation, which suffers the consequences of agreements and commitments made by our parents, to lose too much.

We could start by saying no to centralization, bureaucracy, the cult of personality and the absurd prohibitions of the gerontocracy.  As a fan that turns from right to left, so would I move if someone consulted me on the management of the current government.  “No” is the first word that springs to mind when people ask me if the Cuba of today resembles that which I was promised as a girl.  They will not broadcast my disapproval on TV, nor will it earn me obliging pats on the head from some boss, but at least it’s not automatic like the “yes” of the little plastic dog who looks out through the windshield.

The last domestic appliance distributed through the merit system was a Chinese Panda brand television.  In my building there was a meeting to give away ten brand new ones within a community of more than three hundred people.  Some neighbors nearly came to blows during the discussion to get the equipment, for which they had to pay four thousand Cuban pesos*.  Among those who took home the color TVs were, coincidentally, the most combative and ideologically inflexible.

Those who didn’t catch the evasive Panda satisfied themselves with thinking there would be a second round in which they’d have a greater chance.  But the Asian giant didn’t send new televisions to feed the meritocracy, nor even spare parts to fix the existing ones.  Being on duty for the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) or going to the criticism meetings have lost their attraction because it doesn’t appear that the reward will be the allocation of a washing machine, a telephone line or a portable radio.

Those who made it to the last round of the appliances allocation aren’t very happy either, let us say.  A good share of them haven’t been able to meet the payment deadlines, as the Panda purchase left them with a monthly payment equaling a third of their salary.  I know an elderly woman, for example, who bought the fought-over television only because she was convinced that she would die before she finished paying for it.

Among those who thought they’d received a benefit, worries are now surfacing about the enormous monetary debt contracted with the State.  They were those who believed themselves beneficiaries of a privilege, without noticing they were just paying tribute to an error.  The mechanism that favored them then is the same one that today prevents us from buying an appliance without showing convertible currency, or without relying on a certain political trajectory.

Translator’s note:  4,000 Cuban pesos is roughly $160 U.S. or about $180 Canadian (exchange rates as of today’s date).  The average state salary in Cuba is about 350-400 Cuban pesos per month; the average state pension is less than half that.  At these rates, the TV would be paid off in about three years.

We’ve gone from one extreme to the other.  Three years ago we had a president who spoke for long hours in front of the microphones and now we rely on another who doesn’t send a single word our way.  I confess I prefer the restrained style, but there are a lot of explanations outstanding which, in the face of so much discontent, are urgent.  Someone has to stand up and explain why the wage reform failed, the reason for delaying the handover of the so critical supply of land, and the reasons that prevented them from reducing the gap between the Cuban peso and the convertible currency.

A face must show itself to give us an account of what stopped the elimination of the need for permission to travel outside Cuba, what happened with the repeated slogan of reducing imports, or what path was taken by the so-called business improvement program.  The same voice that in 2007 declared that hopefully there would be “a glass of milk within reach of everyone” needs to reveal to us now why it has become so difficult to put the precious liquid into the mouths of our children.  This man who reignited the illusions of many of my compatriots, must now express himself and confess his failure or at least tell us of his limitations.

I am waiting for a clarification about why he hasn’t accepted Obama’s proposal for U.S. telecommunications companies to provide Internet to the Cuban people.  I demand, like many around me, a convincing argument for why we are not going to join the OAS, or the reasons for not implementing, still, the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The list of unanswered questions is long and to hide from so many questions is not going to solve the problems.  Please, let somebody—with answers—show his face soon.

The victims of the last hurricane have ceased to be newsworthy; they are only numbers in the statistics of those who have lost their homes.  The politicians no longer travel to the disaster zones to have their photos taken next to the injured, and the materials to rebuild are lost in the machinery of the bureaucracy.  A few towns have been lucky enough to be showcases for the reconstruction, but others—small and unknown—are still filled with abandoned houses.

Near Cienfuegos, a sheltered family suspects the cement and iron to raise their walls have been stopped by the hands of others who can pay more.  Those who have grown tired of waiting for the rebirth of their home villages come to the outskirts of Havana to build their houses out of tin and cardboard.  They don’t want to be the victims of the next cyclone because these natural disasters, like Ike and Gustav, only throw light on the other disaster, the disaster of unproductivity and inertia that affects us all.

It will soon be a year since thousands of homes came to have only the sky for a roof.  Caletone, a town near Gibara that doesn’t even appear in the Atlas of Cuba, is still deep in destruction.  Its inhabitants know that with the current economic crisis it would be a miracle if the necessary resources reach their hands.  They have fallen into that no man’s land caused by indifference, the triumphalism of the press and the winds—not of hurricane force, but of waiting.

Music of Ernesto Lecuona: “Noche Azul” (Blue Night)

An uncertain summer awaits us, where they announce power cuts, higher prices and where there is even a prediction of an emigration stampede. Many Cubans, however, faced with the dilemma of solving their daily problems or trying to change something, prefer to concentrate on personal survival. They organize an escape from the national borders, evade the laws or, what amounts to the same thing, turn to crime. There are not only those who climb through the window of a warehouse at night or grab the backpack of an innocent tourist, but also the warehouseman who alters invoices or the custodian who breaks the seal of the container he is protecting. There is a socially accepted way of breaking the law that consists of stealing from the State. It includes the waiter who adds to the prices or introduces goods into the restaurant that he purchased himself to sell as if they were “of the house” and the shopkeeper who changes the list of customers at the ration market so he will have leftover goods.

The line of illegality also extends to the hotel desk clerk who, in cahoots with the manager, rents a room off the register, the taxi driver who makes a trip without turning on the meter, or the lathe operator who produces a piece “outside” the production plan. The customs officer who lets prohibited objects through, the police who don’t impose a fine, the housing official who speeds up an application, the teacher who raises a grade, and the inspector who becomes blind to the violations he should report.

The walls of the bubble that protect the speeches are strengthened by the profits from these “misdeeds,” but they also discourage public protest. The fruits of so many illegalities end up on the counters of foreign currency shops, they are exchanged for the rechargeable lamps that will light some houses this summer. Meanwhile, outside, who cares that the blackout reigns.

San Lázaro is the saint of sores and dogs; his saint’s day is December 17. His name has been given to a long street in Central Havana, filled with scars and abandoned animals. It doesn’t have the magic of the avenue that borders the Malecón along the waterfront and between its peeling facades flow the lives of thousands of people. For some years it was the street most commonly used to go to Vedado, and so enjoys the affection of a well-known place. To traverse it is to see the real Havana, that which the tourist ads show in different colors.

A few weeks ago I made the video I’m showing you today, because I have a premonition that a day will come when everything will look different in this street. My prediction doesn’t come—this time—from pessimism, nor from the belief that half the houses will fall down before repairs start. San Lázaro will heal and shrug off the ochre colors you now see. I will be there with my camera, to show it to you then.

* Music from the CD “Libre” of Boris Larramendi.

What is happening in Iran and its dissemination through the Internet is a lesson for Cuban bloggers.   The authoritarians of the court also must be taking note of what great dangers result from—in these events—Twitter, Facebook, and mobile phones.  Seeing those young Iranians use all the technology to denounce the injustice, I notice everything that we lack to support those who maintain blogs from the island.  The acid test of our incipient virtual community has not yet arrived, but maybe it will surprise us tomorrow… with the aggravation of low connectivity.

In our blogger meetings, which we hold every week, we watched a small video about the Iranian cybernauts.  I watched it again today in lieu of the images of the demonstrations that our official television refuses to show.  I haven’t contemplated the faces painted green, nor heard any announcer speak of the seven dead, but with this brief animated short I can imagine everything.  I visualize an entire generation weary of old structures that it wants to change, a people—like me—who has ceased to believe in enlightened leaders who lead us like cattle.  In the midst of all this, to our satisfaction, are the bytes and screens modifying the form of protest.

On days like this I greatly regret not being able to be online; I feel like I’m choking having to wait to hear all the news.  If there’s still time for me to extend my solidarity to the Iranian bloggers, then here is a post to tell them: “Today it’s you, tomorrow it could well be us.”

A news release has delighted some and annoyed others: spelling will once again be taken into account in the assessments of Cuban schools.  The reign of the missing accents and of “s” replaced by “c” is about to end, according to an announcement made on TV a few weeks ago.  Students could fail an exam or even have to repeat the school year if they don’t master the rules of spelling the complex and beautiful language that is Spanish.  We linguists, as expected, are giddy with relief.

I had already become accustomed to deciphering strange words composed according to the personal tastes of each writer.  Even on the blackboards, written by the teachers themselves, the terminology of a new language appeared, adhering to no rules or standards.   Not even my self-assured phonetics, where the “h” has always seemed unnecessary, could remain calm in the face of five-letter words with four errors.  I’m not exaggerating; once I reviewed a history exam where someone had written “sibir” for “civil”.  Of course in that case they were talking about a concept little known in a society like this one, where citizens are considered soldiers, not entities with rights.

One day I got a major fright, however, when I was dictating to the amusing students at a secondary school in Zanja Street.  I happened to come across, on the list of words, the title of the greatest classic of Hispanic letters.  It was a way of reviewing the figure of Cervantes without overloading the test with complicated words such as “shortages” or “proposition.”  The truth is that on reviewing the sheets from that day I found at least a couple of students who had spelled “Quixote” with a “K”.  I could not believe that someone would use a letter with such a small presence in the Spanish dictionaries to write the symbol of our Spanish heritage.

Since that day I understood that spelling is the expression of a general culture that has its basis in reading and books.  How can one ask them to use the appropriate consonants if they don’t even know the meaning and history and certain words?  The officials of the Ministry of Education sensed the same thing when they chose to remove spelling from the evaluations.  Hence, Sancho came to be called “Zancho” and Rocinante… well… who can venture to say what they turned Rocinante into.