Journalism in the street

Journalism in the street / Ivan Garcia
Posted on August 10, 2013

Owing to the lack of statistics and figures, independent Cuban reporters
have to reinvent certain rules when providing information. We don't have
access to government press conferences and no minister gives interviews
or comments.

Nor can we rival the foreign agencies accredited in Havana. Not having
technology, 24-hour internet access, being unable to cover official
events, it is impossible to compete with the speed of the foreign press.

There are certain types of news which an independent journalist can put
out faster than a correspondent from the BBC, EFE, or AP. Above all in
relation to the world of opposition: a dissident's hunger strike, an
eviction, or one of the Ladies in White being beaten up.

But that's not the best side of the field to be playing on. Cuba is an
area full of stories that the regime tries to ignore. In the streets and
shanty towns, chatting to ordinary folk, we always find good reports.

We have something to thank the poor work of the state journalists for.
If Granma and Juventud Rebelde were in the habit of providing
information about marginalization, ruinous infrastructure, or how Cubans
manage to survive inside the socialist madhouse, there would not be much
reason for independent journalism to exist.

We would limit ourselves to writing boring opinion pieces. Or cover
opposition meetings. The official journalists have left the battle-field
and left it open to the dissident journalists.

It was a major error not to provide information about day-to-day life,
nor about the ills that afflict society, like drugs, prostitution and
corruption at all levels.

The ideological Taliban like to sell their account of how the island is
different from the rest of the poor capitalist nations of the American
continent.

At one time it was. There wasn't freedom of expression or of
association, but the state, supported by the inflow of millions of
Soviet rubles, guaranteed a grey kind of life with health and free
education.

In return, we were supposed to be "Revolutionaries". To applaud speeches
about the "Maximum Leader" and condemn Yankee Imperialism. That was the
deal. Political disagreements were restricted to our living rooms.

It was prohibited to ventilate them in public. Any criticism, we were
told, had to be "constructive". You were allowed to complain about poor
food service or inefficient officials.

What you could never do was indicate that Fidel Castro was responsible
for the economic disaster and the failure of a social project. The
Comandante was like Zeus. God of gods. Untouchable.

The independent journalists crushed that myth. Not to be seen as heroes.
Or martyrs. Just that one morning we crossed the borderline of what we
were supposed to talk about or say laid down by the government.

And we know what enormous courage was required and that there is a price
to pay. From libel to jail. But here we are. Telling the stories of the
man in the street. Everyday I talk to workmen, kids, the old and the
marginalized, the tired and those disillusioned by 54 years of autocracy.

I am not writing about the human misery experienced by some of the
people in order to damage the image exported by the government.
Describing the lives of the losers, the ignored and forgotten is part of
the commitment of a free journalist.

If the mandarins who control the media consider that "disseminating
human misery helps the enemy", that's their problem.

It's up to me to relate what happens in the place where I live and in
the city where I was born. To give a voice to citizens who don't exist
as far as the official press is concerned, And they are there. You only
have to go out into the street.

Fat Antonio said "I'm fed up with it."

(This anecdote was published 14 September 2009 in the blog Desde Havana.)

Antonio Mateo, felt he was about to go mad. Monday August 3, 2009 he
woke up early, took his usual sip of bitter coffee and decided that on
that Monday he would do something different. He wrote an open letter
telling about his boring life and the bad state of his home.

Antonio, 46 years old, and 280 pounds, living next to Malecón 655, had
had enough. The long-drawn-out bureaucratic processes for dealing with
his problems were now just too much. For years he wanted to do an
exchange — trade his home for someone else's — but the rigid and absurd
laws applied by the Housing Institute did not permit people to exchange
in certain neighbourhoods.

Not even if they own their own houses, as in Antonio's case. He knows
very well that in Cuba the word proprietor is a bad joke. People who own
their own homes, lose their rights if they decide to leave the country
and have to go through long processes when they decide they want to
exchange it. Selling the house to someone else is prohibited by the
anachronistic Soviet-style statutes which still exist in Cuba.

Desperate, Antonio decided to cut things short. He moved his old bed
into the middle of the public street and deposited his 280 pounds in it.
It was his way of protesting. The fearless police were there for three
hours, trying to find a way out of the conflict, unused to these signs
of rebelliousness in a population that was generally very peaceful.

Of course, he was taken off to the police station. It is not known what
sanction or fine was imposed. In one part of his letter, with a dose of
anguish and anger Antonio says: "I address myself to you to set out my
problem, in view of the fact that I have applied to other levels and had
no reply. I live in a room, which I own, and when the Malecon Plan
started, the zone was frozen, and I can't move, or carry out
maintenance, or have a wife and children living with me. I have realized
that everything is an argument with lies and more lies. I don't want a
palace, I only ask that they come up with a solution. I am a sick man
who needs peace and a place where I can live with my loved ones who
could look after me and help me."

Simple people, like Fat Antonio or Pánfilo, famous for exploding with
anger a few months ago in front of the foreign press cameras, and as far
as we knew, have been sentenced to two years in jail for the crime of
"being dangerous", show that something is changing in some people's
mentality in Cuba. For the moment, Fat Antonio says "I'm fed up with it".

Translated by GH

14 July 2013

Source: "CUBA Journalism in the street / Ivan Garcia | Translating Cuba"
- http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-journalism-in-the-street/