Il y a à peine trois semaines nous étions plusieurs activistes cubains en visite à Stockholm pour participer au Forum Internet Freedom. Les  meilleurs moments de notre séjour là-bas n’ont pas seulement été les sessions des rencontres technologiques, mais aussi les activités parallèles en marge du programme. Particulièrement intéressante a été la visite de l’ONG ECPAT qui se focalise sur le combat contre la pornographie, la prostitution et le trafic d’enfants. Comme souvent, la présentation de ses travaux nous a conduits à nous interroger également sur l’occurrence de faits aussi condamnables dans le contexte cubain. La première chose qui nous a sauté aux yeux est l’absence sur cette île d’une entité ou ONG dédiée à ce sujet. Tout au moins autant que nous sachions, même si cela ne fait pas de doute, lors de l’Examen Périodique Universel de l’ONU, aucun groupe officiel ne s’est revendiqué défenseur des victimes des prédateurs sexuels.

Si le mur du Malecon pouvait parler…il nous raconterait l’histoire de tous ces jeunes entre 16 et 18 ans qui offrent leur corps aux touristes pour quelques dollars. Bien que certains soient encore plus jeunes dans le commerce de la chair, c’est dans cette tranche d’âge que l’absence de protection judiciaire est totale car la loi en vigueur à Cuba les considère comme adultes. Ils restent ainsi en marge de toute statistique et des programmes de prévention et de protection que proposent en réponse les organismes internationaux comme l’UNICEF. Les cas d’adolescents violentés sexuellement par leur beau-père, leur frère aîné ou un parent proche abondent dans les villages cubains. Une fille de douze, treize ou quatorze ans, enceinte d’un adulte, est considérée comme quelque chose de normal, particulièrement dans les zones rurales du pays. Sans parler des relations charnelles entre professeurs et élèves de première et terminale qui font désormais partie de la norme de notre existence.

Récemment le canadien  Jaime McTurk a été condamné à Toronto pour divers délits sexuels envers des enfants cubains, dont certains âgés de trois ans. L’histoire n’a pas été relatée dans les media nationaux même si le prédateur a été présent à 31 reprises dans notre pays entre2009 et 2012. Il n’est donc pas crédible que des autorités migratoires, aussi habiles à détecter si un cubain peut entrer ou non dans son propre pays et des officiers de douane entraînés à repérer un ordinateur ou un téléphone portables dans une valise, ne se soient pas rendu compte que quelque chose n’allait pas avec ce monsieur. Triste également que ceci étant un des maux qui minent notre société, on ne permette même pas aux parents inquiets de former un groupe de dénonciation citoyenne contre les pédophiles et d’apporter aussi un appui solidaire aux victimes de ces criminels. Parmi tous les sujets sociaux qu’aborde la société civile naissante de cette île, comme la dualité monétaire, les bas salaires, la nécessité de réformes politiques et partisanes, il est aussi urgent que nous nous saisissions aussi d’un problème aussi sensible. « Pas avec nos enfants ! » faut-il dire à tous ces prédateurs étrangers et nationaux.

Traduit par Jean-Claude Marouby

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Pas avec nos enfants !

Photo: « Paradise »

They’re no longer dressed in blue uniforms and some boys even show off their rebellious manes. Hair that no teacher will demand they cut — at least for the next few weeks — hair that will ultimately fall to the razor of Obligatory Military Service. They still look like students, but very soon many of them will be marching with rifles slung over their shoulders. They are young men who just, days ago, finished their school days at different high schools all over Cuba. The college entrance exams are long past and this week they’ve learned who will have a place in higher education.

Just outside the schools, the lists of the accepted and unaccepted speak for themselves. José Miguel Pérez High school — in the Plaza of the Revolution municipality — could be a good example to explain the situation. This educational center is one of the best performing high schools in the capital. A situation partly due to the professional and economic composition of the neighborhood, which means many parents can afford after-school tutors (we refer to these as « dishtowels » — they clean things up). Despite these advantages, the end-of-year statistics for this school are more alarming than satisfying.

Of 233 12th grade students in this high school, 222 took the entrance exams and only 162 managed to pass all tests. The rest will have to go to a second round, or content themselves with failure. The highest number of low marks was in Math, in which only 51 students achieved a score of between 90 and 100 points. In the applications for careers, teaching specialties are repeatedly put down as a back-up choice; « To guarantee getting a place, even if the tests don’t go well, » these potential teachers of tomorrow say, with a certain indecency.

Statistics from José Miguel Pérez High School

Categories L to R: Total Students in Grade 12; Passed All Subjects; Failed One or More Subjects; Did Not Appear

The beginning and end (?) of a mistake

The young people who completed secondary school this year are the products of the educational experiments led off by the so-called Battle of Ideas. They are 17 and 18 today, so they started junior high as the « Emergent Teachers » program was gaining strength, a program that put hastily trained young people barely out of their teens — if that — at the front of the classroom. Today’s graduates were educated in classrooms where television and VCRs were the protagonists, for lack of sufficiently trained teachers. At the most difficult times they could count on receiving at least 60 percent of their classes from a screen. They also went through puberty at a time of rising ideological indoctrination. While it is true that this has always been inherent in teaching in Cuba over the past five decades in, its climax came after the Elian Gonzalez case. Fidel Castro took advantage of that event in the late nineties to impart a twist to the political discourse in all aspects of national life.

Those who graduated from the twelfth grade a few weeks ago, are the first batch who did not have to go to boarding schools in the countryside. Encouraging news for the young people themselves and especially for their parents. However, the readjustment for teachers caused by the change forced many of them to rethink careers based on study, books and binders. The teachers who came from these schools in the countryside had to adapt to new conditions. Despite the difficulties of the former regime of internment, for the teachers these countryside schools were sites of direct contact with the farmers who sold or traded for agricultural products. One of the few incentives for working in such a place was being able to take some bananas, taro, pork or fruit to the city at a much cheaper price than in the markets of Havana. The loss of that little privilege discouraged some teachers from continuing on the path of teaching.

Memorize or question?

The countless hours lost in the classroom to teacher absenteeism is another of the hallmarks of recent graduates. To this we have to add the decline of the investigative character of science instruction, due to the deterioration or absence of chemistry, physics and biology labs. In many high schools chemistry experiments were practically canceled due to the shortages and fear that students would have access to the chemicals. Physical education, computer science and English were the biggest losers in the exodus of teachers to other areas of employment. High school education emphasized rote learning of dates, names, events, without progress in creating their own opinions, a spirit of asking questions, or the capacity of discernment. Graduates can hold in their heads the years and important days of our country’s history, but fail to form their own opinion about what it all means.

The quality of handwriting, spelling and the correct use of Spanish also fell short as educational objectives. This coming September, university classrooms will see students with serious deficiencies in all three areas. But that does not mean that they will be faced with excessive demands or be unable to complete their programs of study. They will attend a University whose quality of teaching is far from that once exhibited in Cuba. In the 2013 ranking of Latin American universities, the University of Havana fell from position 54 to 81, another sign pointing to the urgent need to review the entire educational model. The educational level of the new entrants to higher education, has forced them to lower the bar.

The tinkering with the alchemy of learning, the successive experiments marked more by the voluntarism than scientific analysis, the excessive presence of ideology in every subject, the encouragement of docile, rather than questioning, minds, students’ limited access to updated materials (read internet) and the educational fraud that flourishes where ethics is absent, are all undermining one of the main pillars of national identity: that which consists of knowledge, academics and teaching. But a problem can not be remedied unless we confess that it exists. So while they continue speaking in a triumphalist tone about Cuban education, it will continue to sink into mediocrity, into material and pedagogical deterioration.

Excerpt from:
Entrance Exams: An Assessment of Education in Cuba

Photo: I was able to access El Pais newspaper from a Nauta cybercafé

In 1993 Fidel Castro found himself on the ropes with the economic crisis and accepted the circulation of the dollar in Cuban territory. Until then, possessing foreign currency could cost you several years in prison. « The enemy’s money » came to stay, although years later it would be replaced by substitute called the « convertible peso » or CUC. Among the most notable details of the decree that authorized the dual currency — the CUC and the Cuban peso — were the motives for doing so. The Official Gazette recognized that this measure « contributes positively to reducing the number of incidents characterized as punishable which will relieve and support the work of the police and the courts. That is, it would save work for prosecutors and judges if people were allowed to carry dollars. However, the key lay in the date chosen for the new law to take effect: August 13, the birthday of the Maximum Leader.

Two decades have passed since that time and Cuban society is still gripped by monetary schizophrenia. Fidel Castro no longer holds the post of president but it seems that his brother is also given to mixing legal relaxations with the family calendar. On June 3 he commemorated not only the 82 years of his life, but he also put an end to a strategy of excessive control of Internet access. Just a few hours from the end of this day, the 118 cybercafés with public connections to the web opened. A somewhat bitter birthday gift for the General, who had been delaying however possible the conversion of Cubans into internauts. Most likely this small step toward information flexibility will also happen with the legalization of the dollar: it will not be reversed.

Since this morning, Tuesday, the new public Internet sites began to operate with Internet and Intranet service. At a cost of 4.50 convertible pesos, a little more than $4.50 US, the user can access cyberspace for one hour. You can also choose to surf the national intranet for 0.60 CUC, or access « .cu » email only for 1.50 CUC an hour. In various tests performed — undetected, so far — none of the pages considered political were censored. With a minimum connection speed of 512 KBPS, the interface that welcomes the user as soon as the computer is turned on is called Nauta. Although all the workings and installed programs run on Microsoft Windows.

On opening day Internet portals accessible from the new locations included those such as El Nuevo Herald, news sites in the style of Diario de Cuba, and several blogs critical of the government written from the Island. The high cost of the service, in a country where the average monthly wage is around 17 dollars, seems to be the key constraint. This contradicts the deputy minister of communications who recently declared that « it will not be the market that regulates access to knowledge in our country. » To date, those who have hard currency — authorized to circulate by the former president — will be able to afford entry to social networks, to classified ad sites, and the tempting employment or scholarship sites where you can register to try to emigrate.

Curiously both measures — the legalization of the dollar and this timid opening to the Internet — have been the fruit more of pressure than the government’s desire for openness. To allow Cubans to possess convertible currency was a decision taken in the face of evidence that in the informal market the so-called « greens » circulated every day more strongly at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties. A similar situation happens now with the information that flows from the vast World Wide Web. Pirate connections to the web on one side and the advance of the clandestine webs of audiovisual distribution on the other, confirm the futility of stemming the tide of kilobytes.

The first users who tried the cybercafés this morning were surprised at the speed of the connection, but lamented the excessive costs. Several official reporters hovered around the tables of a local center in the Vedado neighborhood trying to capture snapshots of Havanans throwing themselves en masse on the keyboards. Instead, they found a few cautious clients sizing up the limits of the new service. Each one had to show their ID card and sign a contract before seating themselves in front of a computer screen. A contract that clarified that the service should not be used for « actions that can be considered (…) harmful or detrimental to public security. » A sword of Damocles that could be interpreted also from political and ideological considerations.

From birthday to birthday, so go changes in Cuba. Twenty years ago it was the dollar… today the Internet.

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20 Years Later: From the Dollar to the Internet