« The newspaper was talking about you… » sings the voice of Joaquín Sabina, while I read the newspaper Granma. On the cover, as usual, there’s some event. A tribute to a figure from the past, a reminder, a phrase someone said forty or fifty years ago. All the pages have this rancid stink of journalism that doesn’t dare to address the present, that avoids the here and now.

The Cuban official press can’t reform itself because to do so would be committing suicide. To report on the national reality it would have to renounce its role as ideological propaganda. It’s not enough to change the design of its digital sites, add new signatures to its articles, or keep the readers’ letters complaining about bureaucrats and corruption. It must go further and shed its political commitments and take on the truth as its only obligation. But this… this we know it cannot do.

I expect more from the press that will emerge, or consolidate, than a « new official journalism. » But I am also aware that the work of reporting from civil society, precarious and illegal, has to improve. Information is not trench warfare and it is not a weapon. Events should not be reported from the point of view of what we want to have happened, but from what did happen.

For its part, thematic variety is not contrary to the defense of freedom and human rights. There are many ways of speaking, and of speaking beautifully. We must search, then, for ways of reporting that bring us closer to ordinary readers. Creativity, daring and diverse points of view help us to be better professionals of the press. Going down that path is worth it.

For my part, I’m taking the first steps. The countdown to the digital media I’ve been working on for four years has begun. A new professional challenge approaches, but I will not be alone; rather I will be accompanied by a team of talented people who want to do journalism with a capital J.

In the coming weeks this personal blog will be transformed–right in front of your eyes–into a media of the PRESS. Words of encouragement are welcome!

My blog, GENERATION Y, has moved: READ IT HERE.

And here is a link to my blog IN OTHER LANGUAGES.

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The Countdown to an Independent Newspaper in Cuba Has Begun

Genesis Carmona, college student and local beauty pageant winner shot in the head during the protests, being rushed to the hospital, where she died. Photo from runrun.es

They say no one learns a lesson through someone else’s head, that we repeat the mistakes of others and stumble, over and over, on the same stone. Skeptics assure us that people forget, close their eyes to the past and commit identical mistakes. Venezuela, however, has begun to disprove that inevitability. Amid a reality marked by insecurity, shortages and inflation, Venezuelans are trying to amend a mistake that has lasted too long.

Taken over by Cuban intelligence, monitored from the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, and ruled by a man who incites violence against those who are different, this South American nation now finds itself facing the most important dilemma of its contemporary history. Totalitarianism or democracy, those are the options. What is being decided in its streets is not only Nicolás Maduro’s permanence in power, but the very existence of an axis of authoritarianism and personal ambition that spans all of Latin America. A system that disguises itself with empty words in the style of « socialism of the 21st century, » « a revolution of the humble, » « the dreams of Simon Bolívar » and « the new left, » whose fundamental characteristics are its leaders’ lust for power, economic inefficiency, and the curtailing of freedoms.

But Venezuelan students have given Chavismo a dose of its own medicine. Young people and college students have been the driving force of the protests this time. Which proves that Miraflores has lost the most rebellious and dynamic part of society. Although the headlines in the government controlled press speak of conspiracies fomented from abroad, it’s enough to look at the images of the police and the armed commandos beating the protestors to understand where the violence comes from.

Venezuela is going through difficult times, like all awakenings. The oligarchs in red will not give up power voluntarily and Raul Castro will not let them so easily snatch away the goose that lays the golden egg. But at least we already know that Venezuelans will not walk the same road they imposed on us in Cuba. Meekness, fear, complicity, and escape as the only way out… those have been our mistakes. Venezuela doesn’t want to repeat them, it can’t repeat them.

My blog, GENERATION Y, has moved: READ IT HERE.

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Venezuela, With Eyes Wide Open

Backside of the Cuban Identify Card with a box for « Skin »

It’s just been born and in a few hours they will register the baby with its brand new name. A few days will pass before the parents get the birth certificate and then the so-called « minor card. » Without an identification card you can’t receive products from the ration market, enroll in school, get a job, travel on an inter-provincial bus, or put your belongings in a bag-check at a shop. Every day of your life you need this document, which at the top carries a unique combination of eleven digits. On the little piece of cardboard your temporal and geographic data is registered… and also certain physical details.

It looks just like a letter on the back of the identity card, but it is an initial that describes the color of our skin. This consonant classifies us as one race or another, divides us into one group or another. Amid repeated institutional calls to end discrimination, the Cuban Civil Registry still maintains a racial category for every citizen. Along with the date of our birth, and our address, it specifies if we are white, mixed or black. The assignment of a « B, » « M » or « N, » (Blanco-white, Mestizo-mixed, Negro-black), in a nation with so much race mixing, is often the result of a functionary’s subjective judgement.

Amid so many priorities, so many rights to demand and injustices to end, it might seem trivial to demand the withdrawal of a letter on our identify card. However, its small presence doesn’t diminish its gravity. Especially when the document itself already has a photo of its holder, where you can see his or her physical features.

No citizen should be evaluated by the color of their skin, nor placed in a category according to the amount of pigment they carry in their epidermis. Such bureaucratic backwardness speaks more to prison files than civil registries. It’s not a question of melanin, but of principles.

My blog, GENERATION Y, has moved: READ IT HERE.

And here is a link to my blog IN OTHER LANGUAGES.

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Race and Identity in Cuba

Our apologies, we do not have subtitles for this video. Article 53 of the Cuban Constitution (referenced in the video) reads:

ARTICLE 53. Citizens have freedom of speech and of the press in keeping with the objectives of socialist society. Material conditions for the exercise of that right are provided by the fact that the press, radio, television, cinema, and other mass media are state or social property and can never be private property. This assures their use at exclusive service of the working people and in the interests of society.

Reinaldo speaks little of his time as an official journalist. When he does, it is with a mixture of frustration and relief. The first from his responsibility for the fabrication of so many stereotypes, and the second because by expelling him from the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) they turned him into a free man. Cuba International Magazine holds a prominent place in his memories, as he worked there for almost fifteen years.

In our house we have created an entire category of news with the name of this publication. When a provincial correspondent speaks on TV of the marvels of a battery factory — without mentioning how many are actually being produced — we watch, laugh, and say to ourselves: « This is in the worst style of Cuba Magazine. » If there is an article in the press presenting the life of a small provincial town through rose-colored glasses, we connect this, as well, with the editorial approach that has done and is doing so much damage.

Mayerín, unlike Reinaldo, just graduated from the Faculty of Social Communication. Sometimes he calls from a public pay phone to tell me about his latest article on a digital site he collaborates on. « Did you see, » he asks me, « what I managed to slip in in the third line of the second paragraph? » So I go check my reporter friend’s daring and find that instead of writing « our beloved and invincible Commander-in-Chief, » he has simply put « Fidel Castro. » Keep up your daring work!

Several generations of information professionals have had to approach their work through censorship, ideological propaganda and the applause of power. Sugarcoating reality, using national media as a showcase for false achievements and filling newspapers with a doctored and distorted Cuba, these are some of the evils of our national press. If these deformations leave a sour taste the mouths of readers and television viewers, the effect is even worse on the journalists themselves.

The informants end up prostituting their words to stay out of trouble or to earn certain privileges, and the social prestige of the reporter plummets and the press becomes an instrument of political domination. For this informant, who as a child dreamed of uncovering some scandal or investigating an event to its ultimate consequences, all he is left with is folding or breaking down the door, continuing to put make-up on reality, or being declared a « non-journalist » by the government.

My blog, GENERATION Y, has moved: READ IT HERE.

And here is a link to my blog IN OTHER LANGUAGES.

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Being a Journalist in Cuba: Success Is Measured By Your Ability To Make Things Up