Young Communist is Expelled from the Communist Youth Organization (UJC)

Two or three days after the events I’m kind of recovered from the initial shock and I go to see my friend; the one with the camera and zoom lens. I ask him to see the pictures. He says that he didn’t take any. I’m looking at him in disbelieve. He has a telescopic lens and truth to be told he wasn’t standing few yards from me but a whole street block away. He could have easily taken pictures with the aid of his zoom lens without even being noticed. But he froze in fear, scared that the police was going to decommission not only his camera but also the dark room equipment he has purchased recently. He had everything a good photographer need, except balls. I’m furious at him, we had been together in many parties having fun, but he has failed in this moment of truth. I have staged one of the best performance events of the whole decade and he hasn’t taken any picture of it. My trust on him is gone.

I walk to the place where the mural is in order to take some pictures if not of the performance at least of the painting. But Alas, the painting is gone too. They have covered it with paint. Somebody tells me that few minutes after I was taken by the police some people came in a truck and covered the painting with a water base compound; in front of the eyes of the astonished crowd. But the oil painting bleed through the water based layer and they have to put a second and a third oil based layers in order to cover my work.

(Some months later I’m reading an interview to the vice-minister of culture Fernando Rojas in Casa de Las Americas magazine. In it vice-minister Rojas states that “we cannot allow another 1980’s generation to take form, under any circumstances”. I realize that the reason why my mural was shot down is that the cultural policies of the government didn’t allow room for any kind of public art manifestation; not even flowers.)

After seeing that the whole mural has been covered by several layers of a grey, thick, oil paint, I walk back home filled with rage and impotence. A few days later I receive a notice from the local base committee of the Communist Youth Union, to which I belonged. I have to go for a meeting in which they are going to analyze my behavior and they are going to determine if I’m still fit to be Young Communist member of the organization.

The next day I arrive to the building where the Communist Youth Organization, known in Spanish as Union de Jovenes Communists or UJC, has the base where I belong. It is in the police headquarters in Havana. How I came to belong to that base committee in that building is a long story, which I’m saving for another moment. So I go the 8^th floor and enter the conference room where the young communists are waiting for me. They ask me to seat at a huge conference table. I seat in the last chair of the row next to the door. In front of me there is another row with about six or seven youth. There are about twenty people in the room in total; all of them dressed in police uniforms. At one end of the table, to my left, the president of the base committee is seated. By looking at her features you can tell that she is an authentic folk of the people, of peasant origins. She has a long straight nose similar to a Venus de Milo, a marble skin, long dark eyebrows never plucked off roofing her dark eyes. Her obsidian hair rolls down in waves from her shoulders to her waist like she has never had a haircut. You can tell that she is a true Cuban Valkyrie. With deep voice she announces the motive of our gathering which is no other than to determine if my behavior can be considered counter-revolutionary or simply criminal, and if I’m still fit to belong to the organization.

Next to the lady president seats a man of about 35 years old, tall and slender with short dark hair and glasses. He launchs a diatribe against my actions. He also produces several pictures of the mural. There is a scream of joy inside of me after realizing that there is some documented record of it. That my friend didn’t take pictures but the state security department did. Voila, the state security department is keeping a record of Cuban art for the future generations. The guy with dark short hair and glasses, which is a first lieutenant pass the pictures around. Another lieutenant, this one a blond guy, joins the indictment against me in earnest voice, followed by another short dark hair lieutenant, this one of a rather complex constitution and without glasses.  They all are charging against me in every possible way. To their merit, the whole place looks like a fashion event from a Nazi Hollywood movie. I respond that when I was taken into the police precinct and I got beaten I said to the guards “the one that is not with me is against me”. A dark tanned girl with an athletic body seated in front of me sighs with an expression of disbelief, mixed with affection, in her beautiful face.

Next to me and at the other end of the table there is a high-ranking officer who has been in silence and who is going to remain in silence for the whole duration of the show while taking notes on a paper and observing everyone else. The president asks me an explanation of the meaning of the painting. I know that if they prove me as a counter-revolutionary artist I’m going to be in big trouble. And if they prove my actions not as counter-revolutionary but as criminal, I’m going to be in trouble too. So, I have to be careful in what I say not to give more ammunition to the three lieutenants who have taken upon themselves to be my prosecutors. I explain to them that my intention was to produce a mural to reach the confused youth of my generation regarding the recent events in the Soviet Union. The president says, “But the words Fidel and Hitler are next to each other and both are in black. Are you going to deny that you are tracing a similarity between both of them?”. I respond that the word Fidel was written with olive green paint while the word Hitler was painted in black. One of the lieutenants, the one of muscular complexion, says that they look the same in the picture. I respond that the pictures are in black and white. The blond lieutenant remarks that they looked similar from across the street. I say that I wasn’t aware of it. Having solved this point I realized that there is no way they can prove my actions as counter-revolutionary. But the criminal part is still open up for discussion. They tell me that in order to paint a street mural in Havana you need a permit from the police. I answer that I didn’t know what the rule was and that if I knew I would have asked for a permit. I also tell them that there was a police officer there from the first day I started the painting. That he wrote my name and address down and also took some notes. That he was there every day since I started and that he never said to me that what I was doing was illegal.  That if he has told me I would have stopped. At this point they know that they cannot find me guilty of violating the criminal code. The only resource left to them is to expel me from the communist youth organization. The president asks everybody if my actions could be considered appropriate for a young communist or if I have rather violated the young communist code of conduct. They all agree that I have violated the young communist code of righteous conduct and they all vote for expelling me from the organization. I feel sad and ashamed but there is nothing I can do about this one. The president writes down that I’m formally not a young communist anymore. The meeting is over and we leave in silence.

All the way home I’m thinking what to tell my mother. She had so many aspirations with me and about my future. By telling her that I have been expelled from the communist youth organization I’m not only telling her that I’m not a young communist anymore; I’m also telling her that I have no future. That all her plans and hopes about me have come to a crushing end. I feel destroyed inside, having disappointed her and so many people along the way. I know that all my dreams and aspirations are over, that I don’t have a place in Cuban society anymore.

I spend the next weeks debating myself what to do with my life. I’m so young and after all there has to be something that I can do. I’m replaying in my mind the recent events and I realize that there is so much to improve concerning drawing, color and composition. I realize that I have to practice my drawing in order to get into the competition to be accepted in San Alejandro fine art school. I have also realized that is not only the Soviet Union that has collapsed in the past few weeks; the Cuban  Revolution has collapsed too, at least  in my mind.
 Epilog:

Two or three weeks later I’m cited again to a meeting at the base committee of the Communist Youth organization. I wonder what this time is all about. I thought the whole thing to be over. Turns out two of the three lieutenants, the blond one and the one with a fair complexion are on trial for selling influences. I discovered that they are lawyers and that they have been selling prison time sentences to common criminals and other stuff like that. They cannot look at my eyes while the high-ranking officer, the one that was seated next to me in silence at the end of the table, lays down the facts. They are in real trouble and they are fit for prison time.

Young Communist Makes Street Art

It was the year 1988 and I was a restless young Communist in Havana; a Che Guevara worshiper and a Fidel Castro follower, formed in the trenches of ideological conditioning as any other good Hottanovich* twin member was in those years. The soviet block of socialist countries were under great turmoil at the time. The USRR was collapsing and the Eastern satellites countries were disintegrating. Cuba was entering a so called “rectification process” followed by a “special period”.  My worldview was shattered. My psyche couldn’t take no more that the believe system I grew in, which included a vision of a world of communist perfection, was a huge lie.  Not knowing what to do; I had no resource but to let my disappointment and frustration come out in the form of a street painting.

 I armed my self with a bucket and several oil paint tubes, turpentine and brushes. Walked to 26^th street at the intersection with 11^th and set myself to paint a huge mural, about 7 feet tall by 25 meters long, In that part of El Vedado neighborhood in Havana, 26^th street runs into an old iron bridge that cross the Almendares river and that is used by scores of young people to reach the rocky beaches of Miramar; famous among them La Playita de 16 and Cristino Naranjo club. In the hot summer days that I started my work on the huge wall I was positioned in the most appropriate way to reach them.

The mural was divided in three sections, in the first one I painted a pair of legs wearing some sort of fatigue pants and boots trying to raise up from the ground; in the middle section the legs are walking from left to right and in the last one the legs are falling again. This was a metaphor for the history of the Revolution and Socialism in general. I littered the background of each section with names of heroes and personalities of the independence wars against Spain; names of Cuban and world thinkers; politicians and historical figures.

Some hours after I started painting a cop came to me and asked me what I was doing. I answered that we were in a period of political turmoil because of the events in the Soviet Union and that I was trying to address my confused generation and infuse them with a cry of faith in the Cuban Revolution. Some sort of speech like that I gave to that cop, who accepted my answer, wrote some notes on a paper along with my name and address and left. By the second day the cop was there again, asking more questions, all of which I passed successfully. Also, a beautiful girl that was coming from the beach approached me in the afternoon and started a conversation, something that made me very happy since I realized that my art could have been useful for more than political things; but I was too busy to keep giving my attention to her; she left and I was glad since she could also have been an informant for the state security apparatus.

By the third day the mural was almost over and I have to put the final touches on it. I went to a friend of mine who lived nearby and had a camera with a zoom. He has been following my whereabouts for the last days and I told him that the mural was almost over, except for a final performance that I was going to stage. I asked him to help me by taking some pictures, something that he could easily do with his unique telescopic lens. I knew this person for years and I trusted him. After that I went to my apartment and got dressed in white overalls, the kind that mechanics wear, with suspenders that go across the shoulder and are bracketed at the level of the chest; with nothing under but my underwear and a pair of boots. I walked from my apartment to the mural, happy that that day was the last day of my efforts. Once I got there I started writing some final words. I wrote Fidel in olive green, next to it, in another section of the mural the name of Adolf Hitler in black. I realized that by this time a crowd of hundreds of people has been gathered around to watch the mural . The police are also there, but this time not just one cop but several police cars. My friend is few yards away with the camera. I have to put the final word, which for a young Cuban Communist cannot be any other than Che, the symbol of authenticity against the Soviet block. But now I’m surrounded by several cops and there is a huge crowd around me eager to watch the unfolding events. I got kind of nervous, mixed with my outrage to the collapse of the USRR and my worldview. I took off my boots, wearing only my white overall and bare footed I drew a razor blade from my pocket and cut my fingers, three of four of them, and with blood wrote the word Che on the wall. Right after that a civilian clothed officer, a boss at the security state department I’m sure, ordered the cops to grab me. They handcuffed me and threw me in the back of a police car. Not without me being able to stain the clothes of several of them with blood.

They take me to the police precinct at calle Zapata and O. After some hours there some sort of specialist arrives and check my overall clothing. It is stained with paint and he suspects that the colors could be some kind of chemical trap. I tell him that is only paint. They take me into the basement, where the jail guards are waiting for me. I see two of them, one saying to the other that I’m a counter- revolutionary element, a contra.  He asks me to undress which I dutifully do. They request to lift my arms, show my armpits, pass my hands through my hair, turn around and touch my toes. I realized that he wants to see my asshole in order to see if I have a hidden weapon or something in it. I feel too embarrassed and I said that I’m not going to do so. After three times of asking and me saying no, the one at the right, who looked like he was from the Eastern part of the island, like all cops in Havana are, jumps in the air, Bruce Lee style and land a stern kick of his boot on my face. I fell to the floor and the martial arts movie is now a sequel when both start beating me and kick me all around. Then they lift me and draw me into a small cell full of common criminals. All the while me yelling to them that they, the cops, are the real counter revolutionaries.

The cell is too small, certainly for so many people in it, about twelve. Mostly of my newly acquaintances are black. I remember particularly one of them, a skinny guy with long unruly hair that looked like a disheveled palm tree after a hurricane. He was somebody who must has been there for weeks or months without even been taken into court. We are seated on the floor next to each other. The one with the unruly hair, who seem to be the boss, is laying on a stone naked bed at my right. I’m by the door, seated on the floor leaning my back against the iron bars. A very young guy, a child about 12^th years old ask me what was the reason I was there. I said that I was painting a revolutionary mural on the street.

Like about midnight a prison guard opens the door and ask me to follow him. I go upstairs and see my mother, who hugs me and tells me that she has been the whole day crying and making phone calls asking for my release.  Apparently she has convinced the authorities that I haven’t done anything wrong and that I should be freed. So I’m granted freedom and my mother tells me that I have to get my brushes and oil tubes back from the cops that decommissioned them. I say to her: mom, forget about the brushes and lets go home.

To be continued…

* I’m referring here to the Bokanovich process that Aldous Huxley so wonderfully describes in his “Brave New World”.

( To be continued….)

Cuban Dog Asks for Permission to Travel to Cuba

Is winter in New York and the streets are covered with snow. It has been like this for the last few weeks. Snow, rain –worst than acid rain to my mind-, cloudy days that give way to darkness at 4:30 pm. 24 hours after the beautiful white flakes stopped falling from the sky the urban landscape turns ugly. The streets covered by a browny soup of mud that comes from taxi tires and truck fenders waste. Even the dogs of Madison Avenue are wearing leather boots to save their feet from cold dirt.

I want to be in Havana. I have money in my pocket to go right now. Also, my mother has been begging me for a long time to visit her, nagging me and admonishing me for not doing so for the last five years. Not that I didn't want to do so or that I haven't tried, but I haven't been able because I have  been busy working or studying or simply didn't have the money. The reasons why I haven’t visited her for so long are several, but all of them have to do with a Cuban government permit that would allow me, a Cuban, to enter my country.

The permit to enter my own country has to be renewed every two years. It cost me about USD 200.00 and about three months of waiting. I usually send my Cuban passport through a travel agency to Cuba, were the Cuban Immigration Department review it and stamp it with a notice of authorization to get in. Even after that, when I get into Havana’s Jose Marti airport a functionary will check a list of blacklisted persons by the Ministry of Interior; people that were called “too repugnant to enter Cuba” by one of the destitute servants of the Cuban government. In order to be too repugnant to enter Cuba, or to leave it, is enough to publish something that the government doesn’t like, or to make a film, a painting, or take a picture not seen with good eyes by the Communist Party.

So I’ve been talking to my mother on a monthly base for the last five years paying USD 1.15 dollars a minute in Skype, which is more than three times as expensive as calling to Congo, USD 39.8 cents a minute. Airplane tickets from New York to Havana, if you can find a flight, are around USD 800.00 round trip, while flying to Dominican Republic is only around USD 400.00. Flying to Havana from New York City costs almost as much as flying to Johannesburg, South Africa.

I have the money, the will and the anxiety to flight. No that I really want to go to Cuba but I haven’t seen my mother, and my brother for five years. But my permit to enter the country expires in few days, exactly after February 1^st 2011, and I will have to pay another USD 200.00 and wait another three months in order to get permission to enter my own country. By doing so I will have paid more than USD 600.00 in the last five years; without being there even once. That if I’m not yet blacklisted by the Ministry of Interior as a “too repugnant person to enter Cuba”.

 I’m sick, tired and angry that the generation that governs Cuban keeps passing the baton of their failures and errors to my generation and newer generations. They, the government still in power, took these immigration measures after some situations that they themselves created or helped to create and that were situated in the context of the Cold War Era. They, the old generations in Cuba, are passing the tab of their own expenses to me and to my generation --like we don’t have already enough of our own. It is way time for them to realize once and for all that their problems are not our problems. We were born after the Revolution and we live in a different world that the one that they were born and lived into. There is no Cold War; there hasn’t been one for the last 20 years. What is out there is terrorism at a global scale. Domodedovo airport; in Russia, has been bombed by radical fanatics. The world is different and the conflicts and immigration problems between Cuba on one side, and the USA and rest of the world on the other doesn’t make any sense anymore –if they ever had.

But I still have to suffer the humiliations of being regarded as a sub-citizen by the Cuban government. Being cheated and robed; 20% of the money I have sent to my mother in Cuba for the last 5 years has been pocketed by the Cuban government. Like it wasn’t enough that she was going to expend it all in state owned shopping centers, the only shopping centers that exist in Cuba. She would have died without my help, so too the mothers and fathers of thousand of Cubans in the USA who sent billions of dollars to Cuba every year to support a parasitic society. Instead of being celebrated and receive a good treatment for our actions we are vexated and humiliated, as any Cuban who has been in the Cuban consulate in Washington asking for a travel permit can testify. I’m still want to go to Cuba; what a whore I’m. And how stupid the Cuban government is that they don’t realize –or do they after all? that if we can go without need to ask a permit we would fly more often and that means more money entering the country, helping not only to support the parasites but also investing in business so that they would change their way of life for one way of life really productive.

They, the government, argue that if they lift the permit to leave Cuba there will be a massive exodus. That is convenient to them too for two reasons, the first one being that by releasing the pressure created by more than a million lay-offs that are going to occur in the next months they would avoid a social explosion, another revolution. The other one is that if the Cubans that go out of Cuba are able to find jobs and make money they more likely will send most of it back and invest it in Cuba.The mentality of the immigrant is to succeed abroad in order to live better at home; get that Cuban government,

Lift the annoying, disgusting, humiliating policy of permits to travel to Cuba by Cubans, right now. Unconditionally. And please, don’t start with the so worn out argument of the embargo. The old generation has created the problem of the embargo. Is has never been the problem of my generation and I’m not willing to keep paying the high cost of the problems and conflicts that the old generation has created. After all, that is why we need a new government in Cuba, a government of young people representing the interests, needs and desires of the new generations. We need a new country.

The “Killer Eyes” and the Eyes of a Killer.

I watched the cover of the Daily News and the New York Post today. Also the NY Times and TV coverage of the Tucson, AZ shooting; and I felt an urge to regurgitate what they were feeding me. I detest the way the portrait of that shooter is being used to stereotype mental illness. The fact is – and I’m here repeating the words of a forensic psychiatric I heard today in CNN- the vast majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent. The effort of stereotyping by the media is not helping the mentally ill but quite the opposite.

I have friends who suffer a wide spectrum of mental illnesses, from the mild manic-depressive manifestations to the more excruciating schizophrenic experiences of delusion. I have known them for decades and none of them have ever committed a meaningful act of violence but quite the opposite, the ones that I know who suffer severe schizophrenia have spent most of their lifetime in isolation, afraid of society, and if they have exerted violence it has been often directed toward themselves.

Usually what defines a schizophrenic is withdrawal, an unwillingness to deal with people or to engage in social relations. This is because they feel in danger while in groups or in crowded spaces, having fantasies of persecution and afraid of being hurt, which is a symptom commonly associated with paranoid schizophrenia. Other symptoms I have witnessed are delusions of grandeur, but usually they go in a positive direction since the ones who have them fantasize about having the power to save the ones around or to bring great wealth and the like.

It is a distortion of reality to see the severe mentally ill as synonymous with danger. To look at them in that way further depletes the lack of resources this people have and which they so badly need in order to engage in social relations. The more society and mass media try to exclude them using arguments of un-reasonable fear the worst becomes the situation.

Some years ago I was taking a series of pictures of homeless people in the streets of NYC. I would approach them walking down the street. Some of them were involved in a soliloquy which I interrupted as soon I started a conversation asking to pose for the camera. I realized that as soon as I engaged them in conversation these people were capable of snapping out of their fantasies, talk and think like any other human being with a sense of reality. I’m aware that communication is not enough to save somebody from mental illness but it helps, at least helps much more, both the patient and society, than isolation.

The obvious thing that strikes more about Jared picture is his eyes and smile. This picture has been footed with slogans such as “Face of Evil” and “Mad Eyes of a Killer” by the printed media. With one of NYC prominent newspapers featuring an article with the title ”Psycho with a “Killer Smile”. What we see in this picture is an expression of euphoria. Now, there are different ways to come to feelings of euphoria. Erich Fromm said somewhere that each human being has the option of choosing evil or good in life. An echo of what Freud termed the Eros and Thanatos impulses. I have seen many people with the same expression of euphoria in their eyes after accomplishing a difficult task or reaching a wonderful goal. The guy in the newspaper today chose the path of death and thus reached a negative sensation of euphoria by his destructive accomplishment. But we need to be careful to think that expressions of euphoria always come from people in the path of destruction. Quite the opposite, they usually come from people who are bent on bringing good, beautiful things to the world and society. The sensation of euphoria comes from the chemical activity in the brain of the one who feel enormous satisfaction and pleasure by the result of his activity. Anyone who has worked intensively for hours doing meaningful work could feel the same sensation, like I have felt many times after finishing a laborious piece of work. It is not the same the euphoria that comes from someone’s “killer eyes” than the one that comes from the eyes of a killer. It is thus counter productive to build and succumb to stereotypes of mental illness and guns and the like. Just put the phrase “ Cancer survivor beats death” next to the euphoric expression in the picture and you will see how its meaning change.

Another thing is the relation between political discourse and violence. The question “Does political speech lead to acts of political violence?” was posted in the Room for Debate section of the NYTimes, online edition. It is quite difficult if not impossible to prove a connection between inflammatory rhetoric and acts of violence; unless rhetoric is consciously directed at creating acts of violence such as it was by the radio during Rwanda’s genocide. In this case we cannot talk of rhetoric but of propaganda, a premeditated campaign to give the form of organized crime to crystallized hate. But if there is no connection between inflammatory speech and acts of violence in a direct way, we can see that certain speeches can provide the context for an act of violence to occur. This mean that while some speeches does not call directly for execution of violence they provide a platform from which would be murderers can rationalize that the heinous act will be approved by acolytes. The logical conclusion is that some kind of social responsibility needs to be exerted by media people.