An Open Letter to Castro and The Cardinal

By Luis Eligio D’Omni and Amaury Pacheco D’Omni: (Artists currently on tour in the United States of America)

1- On The 13th of April, Hector Riscart Mustelier (El Ñaño), the leader of Cuban alternativity, musician for and director of the band Herencia [Heritage], and Bobo Shanti Leader in Cuba, will be tried behind closed doors, without witnesses, and without defense counsel, for a cause constructed by special police agents.

He is being tried despite the silence those of us who are worried about his situation have sustained, expecting that justice would come from the highest levels of government, and avoiding by all costs to turn Ñaño’s case into a political campaign. To this aim we have sent letters to the president of the Communist Party and of the Cuban government, Raul Castro Ruz, to the President of the Parliament, Ricardo Alarcón Quezada, and lastly, to a high Catholic Church figure, cardinal Jaime Ortega, given that Ñaño’s case is that of a religious artist.

Today, Bob Marley would raise his voice in a song of glory for Ñaño, would they prohibit it in our television?

Next, we will publish the letter we sent to Raul Castro and to the rest. But before, we want to make a note that Ñaño was already sent to prison unjustly many years ago. A search was performed in his house and no proof was found. They found, behind a trash can, a small piece of paper, smaller than a tear, and said it was marihuana. He was then accused of drug trafficking and was incarcerated. Back then Ñaño’s wife was intimidated by State Security so that she would remain silent.

To those friends who are unconditionally in support of everything being fine with Cuba’s system, we say that we speak with the Truth.

Today, the answer has remained the same. Those officials who met with Ñaño’s wife and with his mother, supposedly representing the president, offended them with rude words, and referred to Ñaño in the worst of manners.

We want to say, given so much insistence into turning Cuban artists who courageously express their realities into politicians or members of the opposition, in order to keep us tied to the Machiavellian repressive machinery in Cuba (to those within and outside of Cuba who don’t believe this because of their unconditional love to the Revolution, and to the impeccable and glorious record of Cuban State Security: we assure them that it does exist), and with the aim of exiling us or locking us up in prisons as in the case of Hector Riscart, that we think the Cuban government ignores this situation, and that this is part of a strategy of independent State Security agents to hide away political corruption. We do not think it is possible for a ruler to be behind a situation of this sort, and it is evident that the letter never reached him.

We hope Hector Riscart is placed in entire liberty this Friday the 13th, after five months without any legal guarantees, and of being treated as a common criminal…

In the case of Hector Riscart, they are applying all the weight of a law lacking any mercy and are failing to take into account the light this person contributes…but we know very well what happens with drugs at many levels in Cuba. Since always, since the times of our grandparents’ stories, or the guerrilla, up to this very day, marihuana has been a natural plant used in all of Cuba every day, and in every city we have crossed. We have proved it, its prohibition is nothing but a big business. Its legality would dismantle a great business, like the medicine with which so many humans drug themselves daily, like the alcohol and the tobacco that are main, legal causes of the death of other millions.

We already know that they pretend that our Art be constantly reacting to the repression of the government or of the institutions…..and that today’s youth live behind and wait in silence for the ideas of those who behind their desks don’t walk the streets or suffer what the common man suffers.

But our art is way beyond that, our Art is action, and original action contains the forces of the Universe. We hope the tragedy that surrounds Hector Riscart and his family comes to an end, for the sake of love, FOR LOVE…

This Friday the 13th we will walk together to the tribunal of Carmen and Juan Delgado (in the city of Santo Suarez), family, friends, artists, and activists committed to the truth. Those of us who are outside of Cuba will walk there with our minds, our hearts, and our spirits…

2 – Letter sent to the President of the Republic of Cuba, Raul Castro Ruz, with copies sent to Ricardo Alarcón and to the Cardinal Jaime Ortega: 

INJUSTICE AND VIOLENCE AGAINST RASTAFARIAN ARTIST IN TODAY’S CUBA. A PLEAD TO THE POWER OF LIGHT AND TRUTH.

By family members, artists, and friends of Hector Riscart Mustelier (El Ñaño).

THE TRUTH ALWAYS FIRST, THE TRUTH BEFORE, THE TRUTH AFTER, THE TRUTH WITH LOVE..

President of the Republic of Cuba and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Raul Castro Ruz:
We hope love and the highest intelligence guide you in your reading of this letter, so that we can receive from you courteous attention.

In the midst of so many changes surrounding Cuba (whether some believe it or not, whether many think they are slow, or whether many others think it’s a lie), changes that are being called for by you, from the presidency of the republic, and from everyone at every social level, within and outside the island…and despite the fact that every day the official press publishes news of new economic and civil apertures, and articles that denounce discrimination, we do not yet see mechanisms that function efficiently and urgently before the power abuses and the injustices of citizens with police and state authority against civilians, although we are all Cubans, with the very same rights.

Last November 15th, something deplorable occurred, and we believe we are before an act of discrimination that extends into an act of injustice with grave consequences.

The artist Hector Riscart (El Ñaño): one of the first Rastafarians in Cuba, a scholar of the religious spirituality BoboShanti, director of the Reggae Band, Herencia (Heritage) – a very respected musical group that is committed to the spiritual growth of the youth – was searched by the Police while exiting his concert in the National Cabaret among other members of his group, in the corner of the Capitol, in front of the Payret Cinema.

Ñaño found this humiliating and asked to be led to a police unite, so that he could be searched there, and so that he wouldn’t have to face humiliation in the middle of the street.

The police officers did not comply, and when Ñaño tried to defend his rights, he was attacked with much violence from the part of the police, and was treated as the most despicable criminal.

Already in the Police Station, he had to suffer further offenses and insults, and before the amazement of the officer on duty who witnessed such brutality, listen, along with another detained brother, to the plans of fabricating a false accusation of drug trafficking: “you, who belong to the party, accuse him, because no one will doubt your word”.

The law will doubt this official much less, since he took so much care in boasting, during the violent detention, of having found an important artist of this country with hard drugs. Some days later, without any official records or accusations, Ñaño was sent to a provisional prison (where he currently is), where they cut his dreadlocks (long pieces of hair tangled or weaved), the most sacred thing for a Rastafarian.

Every established legal procedure was violated: declaration of false investigations, denial of a comparison between the accounts of witnesses, and failure to allow a lawyer to assist him. Furthermore, they shamelessly manipulated his wife so that she wouldn’t defend Ñaño publicly, and multiple visits were paid to the Cabaret’s manger to ask with exaggerated lies the expulsion of the musical group from their job, this is the situation as of today.

It is only after almost two months of this sad event, that Ñaño was able to see a lawyer, who is very scared and does not know how to defend this case, saying it is impossible to go against the word of the police. At this moment Hector Riscart is without a lawyer, because we can not find one that is willing to defend the case honestly. All of this occurred within our dear Cuba, under the surveillance cameras of the Payret Cinema. The images taken by the camera were first said to have disappeared, and then said to be pointing elsewhere. That is what we were told when we asked to show them as proof. Why did these images disappear, or why were they looking elsewhere when an act of violence was happening under them? The police instructors sent to the prosecutor a file fabricated with lies and incoherence, where it says that Ñaño has no witnesses. The situation has been denounced in two occasions before the Central Committee of the State Council (Attention the citizenry), but no progress has been shown in two months.

(The situation of his wife and his children isn’t the best; we won’t describe here his mother’s suffering).

Hector Riscart, connected to his Biblical belief in God, does not eat any type of artificial or animal products, whether they fly, crawl, run, or live under the sea. His situation, besides being completely unjust, is grave, because he has been eating only rice for two months, and they do not allow for any other animal product to reach him. He has lost weight in a manner similar to someone who is fasting or doing a hunger strike.

The situation is even more grave, given that he suffers from four gastrointestinal chronic diseases. We are very afraid that his health worsens to the point of a tragedy in our lives. I say “our” lives because we are talking about a spiritual brother, a natural leader, and a very inspirational artist. His death or a sudden aggravation of his health would be a great tragedy for us.

Many brothers feel greatly moved by this situation, and are waiting in profound silence for a solution. But their silence hasn’t been respected either and it is no longer a solution.

Why the determination to keep such a dear and noble artist imprisoned, one who contributes messages of spiritual liberation and whose endeavors are known by everyone? Why is his status being ignored, treating him like a criminal?

According to declarations from our brother Zenén (the other detainee from that day, sound technician for the band), who saw him for the last time in the unit, Hector Riscart was already convinced that they would condemn him with all negative premeditation. “Look after my children, I can only think about them”, was the only thing he said.

Zenén shed many tears in the unit before the harsh officer who tortured him psychologically so that he would give a false declaration; in that moment a very young woman entered, who had been with them all the time in the National Cabaret, during their concert, pretending to be a prostitute. It is evident that the accusation against this leader of alternative Cuban art was already being schemed.

Why was this trap laid out to accuse him of a crime he did not commit? Was it because he is black, because he is a conscious Rastafarian, because he is a committed artist, or is it simply police brutality protected by officers and detectives whose job is to protect the truth, a common situation to any citizen?

Why are they choosing to ignore that we can work for the social and spiritual well-being of Cubans in today’s Cuba, from the point of view of philosophies, beliefs, and life paths that are very positive, and that have become a salvation for many, but that aren’t precisely within the communist discourse?

(On that subject and as a parenthesis we want to tell you that we know many Cubans of great dignity and integrity, that contribute and can contribute even more to this nation because of their intelligence and ethics, that are treated with disdain every day. Some have died, others have been thrown out of their work centers or repressed in many ways, disrespected by the police, or auto-exiled because of frustration since they do not fit into our Homeland for not preaching the Government discourse or for believing in the autonomy and individual independence of thought and action).

There are many grave precedents, that aren’t told in the book Rastafarians in Cuba, whose presentation was advertised in only one occasion last year on the TV news, and was presented in only one library. This book should be re-edited and distributed among the police units and study centers of the country. Artists of the New Protest Hip Hop Song have denounced in several occasions the deliberate abuse against them and others, in their songs. The internet is full with fabrications, but also with audio-visual documents that shine light on the abuse of power at a police and state level.

Fear is also natural, one that is founded in repeated and current precedent, where police witnesses have withdrawn their accusations and admitted to being pressured and intimidated to declare falsely against the accused, and despite this, the accused is condemned. We can deduce conditioning and a previously elaborated scheme. This scares us terribly, and suggests judicial corruption. The Government, in its presidency, should tend to all of these facts, and feel strongly worried for the sake of justice.

We have plenty of testimonies of cases that could prove what we here state.

Hector Riscart himself was a victim of this in a court in the year 2003, where he was condemned to a long prison term without any proof, and his wife (signatory to this letter), was intimidated by agents of State Security so that she would remain silent. At that moment the conscience and innocence of both of them was different with respect to justice. Hector, who was put in liberty two years later, was harassed by an anti-narcotics agent so that he would work for him, and this agent promised him vengeance.

This agent reappeared at this time and described el Ñaño described it well in a fragment of his last statement:

“I made it clear to this officer that I would never work for him. He said in 2005, that one day I would regret it and he would retaliate. I didn’t make a case of his threats and I never heard from him. Now he got angry, saying by way of derision (I quote) “So you took to drugs! You can make a fuckin’ lot of money with drugs… ” What a phrase worthy of a chief national anti-drug department.
“Sure you have every luxury at home,” he said. Everyone knows how we live humbly at home with my mom and my wife. This officer wanted to provoke me. I just opened my mouth to say: “LIAR, you say that because I never worked with you.”

“Then they took me to the station where I was assigned an “instructor”(investigator/interrogator) named Yordanis, who insisted for days that I make my statement, fooling me saying he would investigate the matter well. I told him I had evidence to disprove all the police farce and that was when I stated this in my own hand.

“We now know, all that is on file 826/11, they have set a trap, using my declaration, adapting it to the police, with all their lies so well-organized. The cost of my statement has been the loss of the only visual evidence in my favor, disappeared.

“Now the file is back to the station with the sole intention of “fixing” pretty much everything, or leaving out details that were inconsistent, so that they are perfect.”

Now several different artists have dedicated works, especially music, to el Ñaño.

Maybe his arrest can open a debate about the use of drugs in Cuba. The most consumed are 1) alcohol, 2) tobacco, 3) marijuana (unlike many other countries here even its consumption is condemned), 4) crack cocaine, 5) meth, 6) paco (cocaine residue, industrial solvents and rat poison) and 7) ketamine.

These last three are medical industrial products. Those that generate the greatest death and violence are the first two, both legal in Cuba, of course.
There is a very great negative prejudice associated with marijuana and Rastafarians. But we must listen to the Rasta fundamentals and attend to the truth of the behavior in reality at all levels.

(We take advantage of this opportunity to say that in the streets of Cuban the reality is very different from that expressed in the national media. There is a growing dissatisfaction these days because ordinary people are not represented, and because the freedoms which should be ours from birth are not in our own hands, and continue being in the hands of a vertical power, although they present it as a horizontal process._

We imagine that you know of a singer named Bob Marley, his songs of redemption and freedom that are a global inspiration. This is the same artistic and spiritual energy proposed by el Ñaño and the Real Rastafarians in Cuba. (Real Rastafari is conscience, heart and life, unlike many who just are Rastafarians in appearance).

There are many members of this movement who are being accosted, imprisoned, and the injustice is in the whole country, especially when it comes to making use of the new economic civil rights and rights of association. Some have also criticized the Central Committee of the Council of State without solutions.

Before the impossibility of receiving prompt justice, and because the seriousness of it (which grows, we know that they will continue to fabricate changes and that el Ñaño faces trial without any solid defense, and without the right to bail which would cost him his life because of the food in prison), almost two months later we have to make the public understand his situation.

What do we hope for?

For Hector Riscart to be released immediately and restored to its home with his children, his wife, his family and friends.

To let him return to incorporating his spiritual quest and his work as director of his musical group.

That his group can work in peace.

That he be freed from all the charges he is accused of: a man devoted to art and spirituality, who lives with humility, and preaches the social good that can not engage in a business as dark as drug trafficking.

We hope not to be harassed or punished in any way, so say we here. And we hope this happens because we are often subtle and silent.

We expect to receive Light. LIGHT. LIGHT …

PEACE
JUSTICE
NON-DISCRIMINATION

April 14 2012

HERENCIA, HECTOR RISCART’S CUBAN REGGAE BAND

Photos of the Cuban Reggae band, Herencia, whose leader, the priest Bobo Shanti Hector Riscart (El Ñaño, Tingo Fari), is in prison awaiting sentencing after a violent police arrest and an unusual incrimination for trafficking in Cannabis. Please show your solidarity with his desperate wife Zuraima via text message or by calling her cell hone in Cuba: +53-52519247.

April 23 2012

ZURAIMA SINGS WITH HERENCIA, HECTOR RISCART’S BAND

The Cuban reggae band Herencia (Heritage) is directed by the Cuban Rastafarian, Hector Riscart, known as El Ñaño, today in prison and awaiting his sentence for the very unusual charge of trafficking in Cannabis. His wife Zuraima sings with the band in this video; today she is desperate with their two sons.

April 16 2012

Praying to Ratzinger Behind the Bars of the Revolution

Photo: Jirí Havrda / San Lazaro's Day

The prison guards had a radio on. It was a small transistor radio – an obsolete thing like everything else in the Police Station of La Regla, a town across the Havana bay.

The interrogation offices were decorated in an antiquated style typical for Soviet-like political propaganda: Pictures of the assault on the Moncada Barracks, of the Granma yacht landing, of Che Guevara’s bandaged arm, of the wide-brimmed hat of the disappeared Comandante Camilo… all the icons of the beginning of the Revolution, and all of them bearing Fidel Castro’s quotes.

The walls of the prison glowed with a fresh coat of paint. In a way, it seemed as if they painted the prison in my honour, which filled me with horror. Down in the barred basement, behind the giant padlocks, I got an inconsolable feeling of loneliness. I had no criminal record and this was the first time I was put to jail. In fact, they caught me like a wild animal in a hunt. I was arrested in the street but there no criminal charges were made against me. The task force that took me in did not identify themselves, they didn’t inform my family or friends, they had no legal authorization to detain me and keep me in prison for two days – the two days that Pope Benedict XVI spent on a visit to Havana – a bizarre event of beatitude and barbarism mixed together. Or, if you like, downright Kafkaesque reality on the shores of the Caribbean Sea.

On Tuesday morning, March 29, the day of the Pope’s mass in the Plaza de la Revolucion, the Cuban capital woke up to a nightmare: The whole city was under control of agents and officers, both uniformed and in civilian clothes. They caused traffic jam. They intimidated and arbitrarily detained countless independent journalists, human rights activists, political opponents, as well as beggars and vendors without licenses. And they did all of this before the very eyes of international press correspondents, who were concentrating all their attention on the figure of Joseph Ratzinger, standing in front of his altar, and on facial expressions that the President Raul Castro made at each word of subtle meaning in the Pope’s homily.

Days before that, state telephone companies, ETECSA and CUBACEL, participated in the operation, which was unofficially called “Vote of Silence”, by blocking thousands of telephone lines – without any technical reason, without prior notice and with no right to compensation. Even the highly limited internet services, which are available in Cuba only to two privileged groups – foreigners and elite officials, were cut.

From the very beginning of my imprisonment, I stopped eating and drinking water. I also tried not to pay much attention to the provocation of a State Security attorney, who reminded me of a character from Minority Report. To fill up the time before the Pope takes off to Vatican, he accused me of an alleged “subversive activity” and “public scandal”, for which he didn’t need any proof. H. G. Wells’s time machine kept by the Cuban counter-intelligence organization in the Museum of the Cold War has apparently retained all its functions intact. I wonder why they don’t rename the organization to “Cuban counter-citizen forces”.

Thus, only the small battery-operated radio from the socialist times kept me in touch with the rest of the world beyond the bars of the modern catacombs in which I was imprisoned. Radio broadcasting was the only way I could learn about the passing of time during my imprisonment, which turned to something like the longest dawn in my life. I already started to feel weakness in the muscles and lack of glucose in the brain, when I finally heard the liturgical songs sung during the only hijacked Mass in the history of Catholicism.

It was a sad scene. The Mass was attended by atheist workers, Marxist-Leninist or rather Stalinist labour unionists, not to mention State Security members disguised as Red Cross staff or, who knows, maybe even altar boys. The parishes were denied the right to freely decide which parishioners would go to the Mass as there were “black lists” of people and if anybody’s name was on this list, the person would be instantly dropped off the official bus – the only means of accessing the Plaza de la Revolucion, where the Mass was celebrated. The famous square, whose podium has so many times in history turned to a tribunal of blind masses led by their supreme leader (whom the Catholic Church excommunicated dozens of years ago), hysterically chanting “Death to traitors.”

The Mass served by Benedict XVI seemed endless. By instinct, I knelt and prayed. It was my first time in prison and I didn’t pray to God, but to Joseph Ratzinger himself. I implored him to make his speech shorter, to skip the formalities of the Eucharistic liturgy, I begged that he wouldn’t extend the meeting between the Catholic Church and the Communist Party prescribed by the diplomatic protocol, I prayed that he wouldn’t return the victimizing smiles of the Cardinal de Cuba, I wished that the Pope-mobile could speed him off directly from the altar to the Havana international airport and, if it’s not heresy, I also prayed that the Holy Father would never again accept an invitation that would lead to suppression of poor people in this or any other country-prison.

Note: This article was translated by and originally published in Cubalog.EU.

12 April 2012

WAITING FOR THE RELEASE OF HECTOR RISCART

La esposa y el nino del Hector Riscart El Nano from Fresa Chocolate on Vimeo.

April 14 2012

Green I Love You Green

April 14 2012

Solidarity with Zuraima, Wife of the Rastifarian Priest Imprisoned in Cuba: +53-52519247

To whom it may concern:

I, Hector Riscart Mustelier, declare in writing what really happened on Wednesday, November 16, 2011.

We left the “National Cabaret” where we were working — the Herencia group — a reggae band of which I am the director. We were Adrian (props), Daniel (drummer), Zenén (sound engineer) and myself; we crossed the corner of Prado and San Jose, when we were stopped by an officer with badge number 44777 who asked for our ID cards.

We went along Planta, where they told us we couldn’t continue, but Zenén didn’t have his ID, and then we began to explain that we are musicians, we were coming out of la Peña, we worked there every Tuesday, and then comes another officer called Duruti stopping us from behind. As I was carrying a bag with a DVD, the officer 44777 asked to search us, and went through everything, the bag, pockets, everything.

He tells us that we can continue. We are preparing to leave when another comes along, # 45717, and he wants to see our IDs and search us again. We explained that the other officer had searched us and everything else, but he was a little aggressive. He said to put our hands open on our heads.

I started to tell him that the public was still coming out of this show and we didn’t want them to pass us on the street, and he put me in handcuffs and took me to the station, what was a violation, they can’t search you on the street of the person detained doesn’t agree to it, the Constitution doesn’t say they can do that, and he, violating everyone,  assaulted me, taking me by the neck and hitting me from behind, he ripped my shirt and, as I was lying on the ground he put on the handcuffs.

And my white turban was on the ground, it fell off in the struggle. He lifts me up and at that moment the patrol car came. I was very insulted, like my colleagues, who would not allow such abuse and also scuffled with police and that is why they also put Zenén in the car. While in the patrol car, I see Duruti and 44777 speaking separately. Then 44777 comes to the car and says something to the driver which I could not hear because we were still talking to 45717.

When we got to the Dragones Station, they tool my bag and soon three officers came who were talking softly with the Duty Officer. We were sitting on the bench.

Seeing the delay I thought it was a problem with the DVD, but when we paid attention, we heard the Duty Officer telling 45717, “You accuse them, you’re in the Party, and no one will doubt you.” So they were plotting right in everyone’s face.

Suddenly, they begin to accuse us of having drugs, and we began to argue with them about them seeing they were lying, and it begin with the story they told of my hair. It’s a lie, but a very big lie, because the whole world say when my turban fell of and there was nothing in it, and they approached it and didn’t pick up anything, not on the floor, not on my head, there are witnesses to that, by God …!

They didn’t even pick up the turban, there was a brother and witness who picked it up and gave it to me in the patrol car, and this must be clearly seen in the security cameras that were filming the place. I demand that these films, that should serve the security of citizens, appear. There can be no confusion, all my clothes were white, easy to see at night, every movement must be recorded.

To continue, they continued with their offenses and there was an official with no badge with black skin showing a lump of something wrapped in nylon and he said it was drugs, accusing me and making all officers believe that it was mine.

Soon came the experts and they took me up, I was very upset to see the trap and the injustice. I knew things were happening in this country, but I had never lived something like this. I did not speak another word. I knew I needed a lawyer from this point, they kept laughing at me and accusing me to make it a reality.

After a while, an official of the rank of Major woke up, dressed in dark green and he starts to accuse me of the same, even says that the proof is that the drugs were in the group’s papers, and that’s when I realize that bag they had, that they had asked me for, had some promotional invitations of the group’s DVD, which they obviously manipulated (this must have been down in the folder, before the arrival of the experts) and they continued to accuse me, but I kept quiet, I just said I wanted to testify in the presence of an attorney.

Every minute that passed the plot grew. Soon, the official from DNA came, we talked and he left. Later the man from the San Miguel del Padron DNA comes, with whom I had a discussion. Before, years ago, he worked in Central Havana and wanted me to work for him, and he even gave me his phone number. I gave him some pamphlets to learn about our way of life and philosophy and  African cultural philosophy, clarifying that our idea is the unification of our race, spiritual prosperity, peace and love in everything and for all, but the police and government vision is that we are only blacks, difficult and drug addicts, and we are always persecuted and repressed by the police elements of this country.

To this official called (I think) Yoandris, it became clear that I would never work for him, he told me that in 2005 one day I would regret it and he would retaliate, but I didn’t pay attention to his threats and I never saw him again. Now he comes angry, and saying, as if it’s a joke (I quote), “So you took drugs. There’s a shitload of money in drugs…!”

What kind of thing is that for the chief of the national anti-drug department to say?! He said, “Surely you have every luxury at home.” The whole world knows how we live, my mother and my wife in the same house. He was accusing me and provoking me. I just opened my mouth to say, “Liar, you’re saying that because I wouldn’t work for you guys.”

Then they took me to the Picota Station where I was assigned an official named Yordanis as an investigator/interrogator. He urged me for days to testify, trying to fool me by saying he was going to investigate the matter carefully. I told him I had evidence to disprove the police, and that when I stated this in my own hand.

Today we know, from all that is in the file 826/11, that they have set a trap: they used my statement to accommodate the police, all well-organized lies, and today, for having made a statement, it cost me the only visual evidence I had in my favor.

Now the file has returned to the Station with the sole vision of arranging pretty much everything, that is, pointing out details that don’t fit to make it all perfect. They used my Mom to sign a receipt for the DVD that was never looked at, because they were so preoccupied in Dragones organizing their lies, they didn’t have any idea of looking at the DVD. They falsified the investigations with the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). We have letters from the compañeros of the CDR where they say they didn’t verify anything, neither there in Cerro nor in Central Havana. They are also willing to testify in court.

Just because of the type of people we are, in the false investigation they say the worst things that can be said about a person. I know hardly anyone with cars or motorbikes, only a few and visit us very little. The motorbikes that come to visit my hallway come to see the two police investigators who are our neighbors.

The compañero who appears now states, after the P4 that the prosecutor (called Ernesto) sent, suddenly he says that someone says I was selling at the Nacional, but in his initial declaration he said he had seen me “smoking.” They have perfected everything to incriminate me unfairly with the crime of trafficking, which I did not do, they are committing illegalities that not even the lawyer is brave enough to denounce.

Back in 2003 they made me serve an unjust sentence for trafficking that was reported, but nothing happened about it. Now it turns out that I am running a grow op and we are all asking: Where is it? What’s happening? Why? Is it happening here in Cuba? Or are they going to deny inventing everything? Or is it better, before being fair and truthful, they are going to judge someone who has not committed any crime, who didn’t have any help but was still injured, because it is not for this that the security of the country is enabled. Of if they do, then there is injustice in Cuba, illegalities, corruption, manipulation, deceit, violation of human rights, abuse of power, discrimination and racism.

That’s all for now.

Rastafari.

April 2 2012

A 2nd Colloquium on Reggaeton and Problematic Social Situations in Cuba

Reggaeton: a love story; Better bayuti[1] than dictatuti

In real time, it’s illegible but the Cuban press has come to be very creative if it is read with a five year lag time, “chabacaneria”[2], luxury, lechery, lamentation, vice, consumption of toxicity, banality, corny-ness, trinket shops, flamboyant attires, cheesy bargains, and an ecetera half ethical and half ethnical. The self-titled “Cuban Youth Daily” put forward its best effort in the beginning to frame the coordinated condemnations of reggaeton, even if a bit late, with the  flow of time and money, and has attempted several baby steps towards tolerance.

Why would the Cuban intellectual have to think or at least give some weight to reggaeton? Why isn’t it reggaeton that intrudes on the theory chorus of the cultural realm? To think is to possess. We want to put all phenomenon in the civil waistline of power. We can’t stand to be stuck outside the the flow of sense that, for its part, is a source of capital. We know that we can legitimize or stigmatize a genre of music that, while the more it goes along with a big mouth and sticks to people, the more voiceless and vulnerable it seems facing the Institution that is always a bit inquisitorial. for the moment we fool along (we make ourselves the fools). It’s still early to be passing judgement and maybe it was our turn before for a good piece of cake.

Reggaeton as a form of linguistic violence has always captivated me as a distortion of the Cuban norm (unconscious Cabrera infantilisms or translated captions something like the movie La Naranja Mecánica [The Mechanical Orange]). Any break-out or emptying of the language fascinates me, even when it closes upon itself and doesn’t blow up in the face of the social consensus.

In terms of textual terrorism, the territorial reggaeton slang in truth promised much more than it produced, but in Cuba this inefficacy far from being a sin, at these heights already, should be a constitutional preamble. We don’t come to any libertarian limits. We cross the line, yes, but only from a heavy conservatism, never out of fashion. Cuba as commodity.

The strange family sagas of the first texts that I have a poor memory of, with their twisted Oedipus-isms and certain common, criminal-esque places, soon were dissolving in the friendly media of the caricature. The themes ended before being completely explored, even before turning out to be interesting for our most restless intellectuality (worthy oxymoron).

There remain then the eternal twitches of Cubanity, the alpha macho uprooted or predatory, the mean and voracious girl, the consuming at an open bar (the CUC [3] as the measure of all things, the almighty buck as the only real event to be remembered in anniversaries) complete forgetting of those who died needlessly, hedonism before historicism, a certain “sexual promiscuity” and a lot of “moral relativism” (that still generates panic in the chorus line of our insular churches), and all the other aesthetics that pass for icons, brand name clothing, tattoos, glitzy jewelry, luxury cars, purebred pets, the mass orgy as a substitute for the organization of the masses, in the end, a final assault on all those delicate distractions that the ideological elite hid for decades by the frugal instinct of self-conservation.

When it’s allowed (with some possible exceptions) to be aired in official media, reggaeton pays homage to the popularity they charge for it under the table [4]; and pardon me those of you present here from the left, this bad metaphor, the announcers and radio producers, among other new actors of the Cuban post-socialism of the 21st century). The Quinquenio de Oro of this class does not stain its fingers with the ink of the “best pens of the Republic” as have been called its songwriters a bit in the style of “the best minds of my generation” of Allen Ginsburg, howled a lot but seldom criticized. More like attendance records and prohibitive prices for their spectacular spectacles not like the cock fighting rings but like vaudeville. No-one loses. Not even those who lose their heads only to lose their clothes in public in a corporal climax of the corporate show (there was even someone who involved their skin in the first comandante-esque tattoo in five discursive decades of the Revolution).

Precisely then, after the first putative death of Fidel, it was the Cuban state that began to find itself outside the game, victimized budgetarily, reggaeton-icized by an emerging industry much better than its functionaries. Tickets were running somewhere between the corrupt and the legal, between the clandestine disc burners and the video clips of national television (contaminating the increasingly professional artists and technicians) between the Makumba and Miami (it’s only an example) and the power doesn’t know how to boycott this short cut direct to the future, no, to the extreme future.

The little dogs, who knows if from the political police (it’s only another example), gave a hand to the ministerial marionettes. Here or there in every six months there rises some brilliant conference that rebukes reggaeton in the sacred name of the little people, that fascist totalitarian defect of the disguised demagogue of pedagogy. When the Premier of Culture  himself appeared on the Mesa Redonda [5] of Cubavision Internacional (which is our de facto Parliament before the world) a fake head was chosen and it was so simple to deconstruct the remains of a slang that was barely mumbling genital syllables.

Case closed, comical circus , semantical of semen cyclical: chabacaneria, luxury, lust, lamentable, vice consumption of toxics, banality, corny, trinket shop, flamboyant attire, cheesy bargains (put on the hot underwear-uty, take down the wild par-uty, spit all-uty out the mouth-uty because the dictator-uty is here to order you to stop-uty [6]).

To the new class of non-consumers of Reggaeton, you’re within your right to defend the status quo of your governance ad infinitum. For lack of rash intellectual attempts, the transition in Cuba could have well been able to slip into the background of the neighborhood of the last tam-tam[7]. A lesson is necessary in order to expose the lack of solidarity of the trade (not even a single collection of signatures against the censorship) and the shunning by steps of its most successful leaders .

Now in the second stage of the rhetorical recruiting of Reggaeton as state lever, for sure a mutual pact in terms of taxes and resolutions against the delinquency of debt and infractions, ethical codes and sanctions including even for reasons of grammar, symbolic management salaries and permits in passports in order to allow departure from and return to the country with money, more so the customary community signboards, clearly, and perhaps these colloquiums or lectures where, to legitimize or stigmatize this idiot son of the post-modernity that, meanwhile the more lap dancing, bumping and grinding gets more promiscuity to the people, the more mute and defenseless it leaves us in the face of our own inquisition that’s always a bit institutional. We fool around for the moment (we make ourselves the fools ). It’s never too late to pass sentence and I believe it will be our turn before that nice slice of cake.

Translator’s notes:

[1] The word “bayu” in Cuban Spanish means a wild, orgiastic party. Adding a syllable to the end of that word enables reggaeton to rhyme the word bayu-ti with “dictadura” (dictatorship) which has the same syllable added to it to make dicatu-ti

[2] “Chabacaneria”: crass , loud , mannerisms of the street including vulgar sexual talk.

[3] Cuba has two currencies. There is the traditional CUP (Cuban peso, also known as “moneda nacional” or national money), and then there is the coveted CUC – Cuban Convertible Peso, the value of which is tied 1:1 to the American dollar. CUC enables the holder to purchase goods at government stores that sell goods from overseas, quality foods, luxury items in addition to anything that CUP can buy as well as purchasing or selling such items between private parties.

[4] the expression “under the table” in English is rendered as “by the left” in Spanish which is why the writer apologizes for the use of the metaphor.

[5] Mesa Redonda or Round Table is a nightly show on Cuban television where prominent academics and members of the government discuss matters of national and international importance.

[6] A satirical change of lyrics from a reggaeton song by Osmani Garcia about the joys of oral sex. The song can be heard at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIsCs4g3maM.

[7] Drum circle or a drum of African origins.

Translated by: William Fitzhugh

February 25 2012

ZURAIMA AND HER RASTAFARIAN HUSBAND ASK FOR WORLD SOLIDARITY: +53-52519247

INJUSTICE, BRUTALITY AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST RASTAFARIANS IN CUBA 2012.  CUBAN RASTAFARIANS UNDER THE NEGATIVE POWER

ASKING FOR HELP FROM THE POWER OF LIGHT AND TRUTH.

By: Family, artists and friends of Hector Riscart

TRUTH ALWAYS IN FRONT, THE TRUTH BEFORE, THE TRUTH AFTER, THE TRUTH WITH LOVE …

Amid the profound changes taking place in Cuba (which some create or not, which seem slow to others, or a deception to so many), changes that are demanded by the President of the Republic and for all at all social levels, inside and outside the island, and although each day are new openings in the economic and civil are published in the official press and articles appear denouncing discrimination, there are still mechanisms that operate efficiently and urgently before the abuse of power and the injustice for citizens with police authority over civilians, Cubans all equal, everyone with the same rights.

On November 15, 2011, something very unfortunate happened. The artist Hector Riscart (El Ñaño), one of the first Rastafarians in Cuba, director of the Reggae Band Herencia, the musical group most committed to the spiritual growth of our youth, respected by the emerging alternative Cuban art, left his concert at the National Cabaret, and was searched by the police along with other members of his group on the corner of the Capitol across from the Payret cinema.

To El Nano, this seemed humiliating and he asked them, please, to take him to the police station and search him there and not humiliate him right there in the street. The police didn’t listen and when El nano defended his rights, he was attacked with great violence by the officers and treated worse than the most despicable criminal. Then at the Police Station, he had to suffer insults and slurs and, to the astonishment of the Duty Officer before the evident brutality, her heard, along with another brother detained, plans to fabricate a false accusation of drug trafficking: “You, when you’re in the Communist Party and accuse someone, no one will doubt your word.”

Much less would they doubt it, because this same officer boasted during the violent arrest of having found important artists in the country with hard drugs. During the following days they violated all the established legal procedures, without making any records or charges, with declarations of false investigations, refusing a line-up before witnesses, without allowing him the help of an attorney, and blatantly brainwashing his wife Zurainma not to act in the public defense of El Nana. In addition, the authorities visited the manager of the National Cabaret to ask him, with exaggerated lies, to fire the group Herencia from their jobs.

So, El Nano was sent to a provisional prison where they cut off his dreadlocks, which are most sacred to a Rastafarian.

Many brothers were moved by this, waiting in silence for a solution. Only about two months later could El Nano see his lawyer, who was very afraid and didn’t know how to defend this case and said it was impossible to go against the word of the National Revolutionary Police.

All this happened under the surveillance cameras of the Payret Cinema, but these images disappeared. The police investigators send the Prosecutor a file completely full of lies and incoherencies, where they said El Nano had no witnesses. The situation has been reported twice to the Central Committee of the Council of State (Citizen Matters), but nothing has happened and Hector Riscart, connected to his biblical belief in God, is no longer willing to eat any kind of food or liquids.

Why this effort to keep in prison such a noble and beloved artist, who brings messages of spiritual liberation, and who everyone knows where and how he works?

There is a history of much gravity that is not told in the book Cuban Rastafarians, whose presentation was promoted last year on national television. This book should be re-printed and distributed to police stations and schools in the country. Artists of new protest HipHop have denounced them over and over in their songs. The Internet is full of fabrications, but also the audiovisual documentaries have not given space to the abuse of police power.

In December 2011 several of El Nano’s songs of commitment had already seen the light.

According to statements from the brother Zenen (soundman for the Herencia group, also detained that day), when he saw him the last time at the police station, Hector Riscart was already convinced they were going to condemn him with completely negative premeditation. “Look after my children, that’s all I care about,” he said.

Zenen shed tears in the Police Station before the hard official who tortured her psychologically by lying. Just then a very young girl came in, who was with them at the cabaret during the whole concert of the Herencia group, working as a prostitute. It’s clear that the weaving of an offense by the leader of Cuban alternative art already included her.

Perhaps, with regards to this arrest, one can open a debate about the use of drugs in Cuba. The most consumed are 1) alcohol, 2) tobacco, 3) marijuana (unlike many other countries here even its consumption is condemned), 4) crack cocaine, 5) meth, 6) paco (cocaine residue, industrial solvents and rat poison) and 7) ketamine.

These last three are medical industrial products. Those that generate the greatest death and violence are the first two, both legal in Cuba, of course. There is a very great negative prejudice associated with marijuana and Rastafarians. But we must listen to the Rasta fundamentals and attend to the truth of the behavior in reality at all levels.

The fear based on repeated history is also natural, where police witnesses retract and admit in open court they have been pressured and intimidated to make false accusations against the accused, yet despite this, the court condemns the accused, so it follows that the jury was already prepped with a false ruling beforehand. This gives us great fear, and suggests judicial corruption. Our government should look at this data and feel deeply concerned for the love of justice.

Other members of the Rasta movement are suffering harassment, imprisonment and injustice around the country, especially when trying to use the new economic and civil rights of association. Some have also complained to the Central Committee of the State Council, but without solution.

Faced with the impossibility of receiving justice promptly, and by the seriousness (which grows, as we know they continue to manufacture a way of judging to the Nano, with no guarantee of a solid defense), almost five months later we have to let the public know of this situation, waiting for the light.

LIGHT. LIGHT…

April 2 2012

Del Llano flames out with "Veni Vidi Vinci"

In “Vinci” the episodic film on the life of Leonardo, Eduardo Del Llano borders on indigence.

“Don’t fool yourselves; my film is “buenisima” as its screenwriter and director Eduardo del Llano rebukes us in his eponymous blog.

The sentence could not be more precise. That something is buenisima is said in Cuba in television adventures as they approach the final, definitive conflict. And it is not that the unique location of the film Vinci(2011) has room for many heroes or much action. It’s that by its duration and visual splendor this work could well aspire to be the final chapter of one of those “historic” series that routinely occur at La Cabaña[1] (There’s no art direction that can manage to conceal the truth about this jail in Havana that is nowadays portrayed so festively). And, as in any self-respecting final chapter, in Vinci everything is a bit sudden and brought on by the really long hair of an almost pre-pubescent Leonardo.

Enveloped in a little war of e-mails without any real consequence in the realm of Cuban culture, Vinci finally debuted in January on the Island and did so with nothing less than a monster-ography that bragged publicly that it was by the same author of the censored short film Monte Rouge,a canonical little work that put Eduardo del Llano between the La Jiribilla[2] and the CIA, between the dissidents and the G2[3] (wake me up if we are not already in that transition!).

This time, as was customary in each independent audiovisual of his Decalogue of Nicanor (Sex Machine Productions) it was not necessary to clarify in the captions that exhibition of the film was prohibited in the United States. Perhaps Del Llano intuited that, from coast to coast of the lands of the exile, that on no “channel of the enemy” would they be interested in pirating and conducting an “anti-Cuban campaign” with this, his most recent “buenisima” film.

Vinci is, with all and for the bluff of all, in spite of the resume of its director, the film of a beginner and those involved in it should know it, beyond the protest signs or solidarity in reaction to its exclusion from the competitive round of the 2011 Havana Festival of New Latin American Cinema. A first class crew including the director of photography Raúl Pérez Ureta and the Argentinian composer Osvaldo Montes who preferred to lower expectations of the movie to “a good film”, is no guarantee of a graceful coming out of Veni-Vidi-Vinci.

Praxis vs art, truth vs lies, acting vs lecturing, desire vs reason, who knows if also capitalism vs utopia: thematically the Renaissance was that, a magister ludi’s hat where it is possible to pull the rabbit out of any conflict. Better that we don’t make a game of the erudite exegetes of this Golgotha with a happy ending (Vinci as acronym of INRI).

More than with Mick Jagger, there’s a lot of marvelous affectation in the Diego of Jorge Perugorría in the Leonardo of Héctor Medina accused of sodomy (although this kiss of the woman doesn’t “spider” like that of the Brazilian director Héctor Babenco[4]).

Be it collective unconscious, or evolutionary convergence, there’s much of the dim and noble David from Senel Paz’s script for the film Strawberry and Chocolate,in the two common prisoners who share a cell with the more political Da Vinci who, “determined” in the opposite, demands, like a servile Piñerian serf, to wear the robe of the underclass. One of his lascivious compañeros, the illustrious and fatherly serial killer (Manuel Romero) plays the seemingly inexcusable in the style of the maniacal mimicry of the Cuban poet Delfin Prats in the documentary Extravagant Beings. The other, a pickpocket with a chicken mind and rotten teeth (Carlos Gonzalvo) is a cut-and-paste version of the humor of the Cuban TV show Kicking the Can that is the only social critique even barely allowed on our national television: the idiot as the hypostasis of the intellectual.

Right at the halfway point of Vinci, a glimpse of lucidity is sighted in the false Florence of 1476 which doesn’t escape from its cubicle at the Havana Book Fair. After seeing the placing of the immaculately clean feet of Leonardo (was he floating over the filth of the props that were his cell?) there then, literally, occurs an animation between the bars; a bird flying that no critic dares to cite in order to not commit the sin of intertextual ignorance. But if it had been conceived the other way around; an hour of animated cartoons and only a few seconds of realistic filming, (for example the rats of the CENPALAB[5] breed) the Tomas Piard[6] type ballets of Vinci and its overacted dialogues would be pardoned now as a cult piece.

“Is it that you would have had to create a native Da Vinci?”, is the question in the more rigorous Eduardo del Llano interviews. Worse, impossible. Everything in this opera primais an indigenous-ism on the verge of indigence. Without mentioning the fatality of the fauna of a Fabelo[7] that is too fabelesque to be believable. On top of that, a cameo appearance by the director at the very end falls into the ridiculous; Eduardo del Llano in museum armor straight out of the adventures of Asterix and Obelix.

Vinci is the type of aesthetic tragedy caused by being within the church and in an institution. For years now the ICAIC[8] has been a straitjacket for Eduardo del Llano and both sides know it without saying it. The author of Monte Rouge shouldn’t use his microphones with such mediocrity. Ready to speak, we can only speak until State Security separates us as in the German drama The Lives of Others. Del Llano runs the risk of boring the agents who “attend” him and he makes them suspect that he is up to something more intense than just the second season of a Nicanor. Anyway he’s already a lost case for whom they will never let down their guard, in as much as he defends the “ideal of a democratic socialism that still doesn’t exist.”

or precisely because of it!

---

[1] The fortress of La Cabaña is posed dramatically on a bluff overlooking the entrance to Havana harbor. It was built by Spain in 1763 and has been the scene of many turns in the history of Cuba as a military installation. Captured by the forces of Che Guevara in the final hours of the Cuban Revolution, La Cabaña became a grim prison and the location of Revolutionary tribunals that ordered the execution of many of the former regime’s operatives. Today it is a tourist destination. The hour of nine ‘o clock is marked every evening by “cañonazo“, the firing of a cannon by men dressed as Spanish colonial soldiers. It is an easy choice as a setting for historical dramas.

[2] A reference to the official magazine of Cuban culture La Jiribilla.

[3] TheG2is Cuba’s intelligence service known for watching over, and arresting, dissidents.

[4] Hector Babenco is the director of the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman”(1985).

[5] CENPALAB is the Spanish acronym of the National Center for Laboratory Animal Production, a personal project of Fidel Castro that carried out arcane experiments in milk production using at times, cattle breeds imported from Canada at great expense during the sixties and seventies.

[6] Tomas Piard is a director and producer of many films and television shows shown in several countries and has taught in both Spain and Cuba at university levels . Born in Havana in 1948, he has been awarded the Order of Artistic Merit by the Cuban Ministry of Culture.

[7] Roberto Fabelo Cuban painter and illustrator (b. 1951 Camaguey) of international renown , illustrator of Gabriel Marquez’s100 Years of Solitude,whose work sought by collectors, is on display at the Cuban National Museum of Fine Arts.

[8] ICAIC is the Instituto de Arte y Industria Cinematográficos (Institute of the Art and Industry Filmmaking) formed by the Cuban government in the earliest days of the revolution to promote non-commercial cinema that often carried overtly political themes.

Translated by William Fitzhugh

February 10 2012