I Love Cuba
I was born in a poor neighborhood of Havana where one day my parents, natives from the east of the country, came in search of better luck. I grew up not believing and any religion or trusting in god and his saints, or in promises, or in the destination. I only had sighs and impossible dreams, waiting in my future.
My mom told me I would have better luck because I could study, and with study, I would have everything. I graduated from high school from the best school in the country, got my degree at the University of Havana, and my reality was different.
I had a college degree, but with it my dreams were still impossible. Now heavier with a son in my arms, and accompanied every day by dissatisfaction, powerless and pessimism. At night depression overcame me, and tears.
Thinking, I looked in vain for a way to reach my dreams, and I soon concluded that the only way to achieved my dreams was outside my island. The same resolution as so many of my friends, who now reside in distant and cold countries. The only one left, who didn’t have the slightest choice to make plans, the most insignificant details of her life.
I started to dream again, not of imaginary foreign lands. I was leaving work with the toys for Three Kings Day hidden in my bag, opened the door and on tiptoe, entered my little boy’s room and put the gift under his bed.
I dreamed so many things and my eyes opened.The sight of those empty streets, clear, always very quiet in the twilight. Everything was different from the rowdy avenues of my old Havana. Then, inside my dreams, I, in that strange land, thought of my mother and my brothers, then of my neighbors and my neighborhood. I missed them, and when I awoke from my reverie I had tears in my eyes.
I discovered that I like Cuba, I love Cuba, the land where I took my first step, which received the first drop of my blood, where I was hurt in my first fall, which absorbed my tears of grief, which heard my first laugh.
I realized that I would be the most unhappy being, if one day they didn’t allow me to try other horizons, as my parents did in their time, or did not let me return, to the place that inspired my first breath.
January 27 2012
The Inviolability of the Home
Yaremis Flores
Orisel, her father, annoyed, opens the door and is surprised to see the Sector Chief, with a document in his hands authorizing him to search their home. Scarcely giving an opportunity to verify the paper, two other officers enter, hunting like hungry wolves after prey.
“But what are you looking for” Orisel asks.
“Something of illicit origin,” replies the officer in charge.
It turns out that, with a frightening superficiality, Orisel has been classified by his Sector Chief in the categories of ”offender,” “suspect,” and “dangerous.” Although it seems like a scene from a novel, sequences like this happen often, constituting a clear violation of the constitutional guarantee of the inviolability of the home.
That afternoon, the police seized little Paula’s money-box, as well as a computer, for not having the certificate of ownership.
As regulated in the Criminal Procedure Act, the object of a search warrant must be specific, and not just the usual boilerplate “possession of illegally obtained goods.” Moreover, the mere fact of possessing an object without having its title certificate does not constitute a crime.
The authorities bear the burden of proving that the item in question is of illicit origin, such as the result of another crime, burglary for instance. Otherwise it is presumed that the possessor is the lawful owner.
January 25 2012
What is the Job of an Attorney in Cuba?
I have been asked this and other questions. I do not know what the work of a lawyer in Cuba is, however there are some aspects that are noteworthy:
“The bullet entered the body of Izquierdo Medina in the left buttock. It destroyed the femoral vein crossed to reach the kidney and lung. Death was almost instantaneous. The funeral home gave the family a death certificate that certified cause of death, acute anemia. Despite the demands, Legal Medicine never gave the autopsy report to the family.”
Known: the existence of the shot and its lethal effect, so the death certificate is a falsehood.
So I ask the following questions: 1. Is there a crime of falsifying documents in Cuba? 2. If so, is there a judicial procedure to process to the funeral home?
“To date, the whereabouts of the former official are unknown.”
It is clear that, an innocent person having nothing to hide, his flight betrays him.
1. Could his flight be incriminating evidence at his trial?
“The mother of the victim, Raiza Medina, believes they want to exclude her from the trial of the murderer of her son.”
1. Is there no lawyer representing the mother?
2. Does the mother have the right to be assisted by counsel at the trial. Or to ask the same question in another way: would the mother be represented by a lawyer at the trial if she were an important person?
We mustn’t forget that Cuba is a socialist state. I understand perfectly that Laritza Diversent cannot answer the questions, because of her difficult internet connection. However, the questions have been posed.
First: Even I do not know the mission of a lawyer in Cuba. I was with the family of the teenager, they wanted me to be their lawyer of course, but I was there as a mere spectator, looking on and without the power to say anything. You can not imagine how frustrating it was for me to be in that courtroom as a spectator, not only trying to pass unnoticed, but to witness it all and I have to admit, I can do more as a journalist than as a lawyer.
Second: There is a crime of forgery in Cuba. The problem is that the funeral home did not give a false opinion. I was present at the trial. I heard the coroner address the court and affirm death as caused by acute anemia. Then explain that the bullet entered the body of the teenager in the lumbar region, crossed the left kidney, the aorta, the right lung and exited the right shoulder.
Like you, I can not relate the acute anemia with a murder, that opinion is not related to a gun shot, it seems that this is the diagnosis of a chronic disease, what’s more you can relate it to a hemorrhage, but if you look at all the vital organs that the missile destroyed it is beyond all doubt that the teen had died from loss of blood, in fact the death was almost instantaneous.
Third: In Cuba, the victims are supposedly represented by the prosecutor, or, and it’s the same thing, the State. They do not need a lawyer’s representation at trial nor to appear assisted by one. If they are not satisfied with the sanction they have the right to make appeals or to appeal through the prosecutor.
In the case of Raiza, the teen’s mother, she was not invited to trial, the prosecution barely notified her of the decision, in which case it will be very difficult for her to appeal the court’s decision.
Angel Izquierdo’s family is unhappy with the prosecutor’s request, 17 years in prison for a crime that has a standard sentence of between 15 and 30 years. The State asks for more if you kill a cow. They protested at the same trial. Of the whole spectacle, what touched me most was the anger of mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, all cried tears of helplessness. They asked me if they could appeal. I told the truth. We must await the decision of the court, however it is unlikely that the prosecution would seek a penalty greater than what it asked for in its own petition.
You asked more questions, I think with these comments I have responded to them all.
Translated by: Hank
January 19 2012
Cuban Justice Forsakes the Marginalized
For 15 days I participated as a spectator in two trials held in the Havana Court, both pursued for the crime of murder. The first, on November 28th, I was counsel for the family of the accused, six poor people from Mantilla — a bad neighborhood of Arroyo Naranjo where I was born, grew up and live today.
They were judged for the homicide of a jeweler. The principal pieces of evidence? Traces of odor found in the ropes with which they tied the victims. Although there were only two attackers, the prosecution asked for 18 to 30 years of deprivation of liberty for all.
The goldsmith died after their aggressors fled with jewels and money. His wife gave him two pills, which he swallowed, despite a fracture in the toroid cartilage (Adam’s apple). The forensic examiner didn’t attend the trial, but in his report he certified that the victim had been violently strangled.
Those ‘insignificant’ details weren’t called to the attention of the bench. On the contrary, the bench showed special interest in the criminal histories of the accused. None had killed before, but with this criminal history, surely they were likely to have done it, which is equivalent to calling them guilty.
The other was heard on December 13th. On that occasion, I was counsel for the family of the victim – also from Mantilla. Amado Interian, an ex-police officer, shot Angel Isquierdo Medina, a 14-year-old boy, a crime that shocked the community. Four witnesses were present when the trigger was pulled. Even so, the prosecution asked for a 17 year prison sentence for the victim.
“This was no murder, it was manslaughter”, said his defense attorney. An easy thing to prove with the legal death certificate. The projectile entered through the left buttock, crossed the kidney, the aortic artery, the left lung, and exited through the shoulder; but the cause of death was acute anemia.
Again the bench placed special interest in the history of the accused. 30 years of service performed by an ex-officer on the police force diminished the fact that he fired at three black adolescents, on top of a honeyberry tree.
Angel’s family members asked me if they could appeal. The decision depended on the prosecution, who supposedly represented the victim. They are right and it’s very sad; cows have more protection from the State than does a person.
“What more can we do?”, the mothers of those six imprisoned men and the family of the adolescent asked me. Have faith and patience. We keep cheering for the lady with the blindfolded eyes, with the scales in one hand and a sword in the other.
I will probably be a hypocrite, I told myself, “to ask those mothers to have faith when I lost it some time ago”. It was then that I felt ashamed of being an attorney. I understood that sometimes I cry from powerlessness and others I cannot sleep.
It’s difficult for me to say that the luck of leaving the courtroom acquitted or convicted depends on whether you live in a bad neighborhood, if you’re black and poor, if you have powerful friends or convertible pesos to pay a lawyer, but not a defender, a learned one who might manage the benevolence of the prosecutor and the bench.
Those two trials left me with a bad taste and the certitude that everyone in this country runs risks. You don’t have to be a dissident. Whatever is exposed to judicial proceedings where the most minimal guarantees of due process are not respected.
Translated by: JT
January 20 2012
The Odyssey of Reporting a Crime in Cuba
Yaremis Flores.
Gabriel got up in the morning. He was shocked to find that when going to shower water was not coming through the rusty pipes of his modest home. It seemed to him that something wasn’t right. He went out onto the patio and followed the course of the piping until he saw the cut in the adjoining house.
His neighbor, with whom he had legal problems about the patio boundaries, had cut the pipe. He stated that he was within his rights to do so. Gabriel went early on to the nearest police station with the aim of reporting his neighbor. There the torturous process began.
Upon arriving, a mother was making a fuss because she didn’t know to which police station her detained son had been moved to. After a while the police, neither willing nor able to give her an answer, took her to an office. Once they were away from the civilians present, they began to give support to the exasperated woman.
By then it was eleven in the morning. The plan to get to work for the evening shift had disintegrated. “I got out of the chair, thinking that the official in charge of the case had forgotten about me. The official hardly raised his eyes from his papers and told me to wait,” Gabriel remarked.
There he stayed seated for three hours, though it almost seemed like centuries. Then came his turn. The young official started to prepare the criminal complaint form when he suspended the act and left the office. Impatient with the delay, Gabriel went over to the file once more. Behind his desk the agent looked up the crime in the Penal Code that the claim could be based on.
The reporting party suggested a crime category: arbitrary exercise of rights. The policeman, offended, claimed he would not file a report because there had been no crime. Unsatisfied, the reporting party asked to speak with his superior. After much insistence he succeeded in filing the complaint. Gabriel returned home exhausted, disappointed, and in a bad mood.
Stories like this are told more often than one would like. As a result, when people are victims of a crime, instead of filing a report they say to themselves with certainty, “Why bother? I’d just lose the whole day doing it and nothing would get resolved.” So says Caridad, victim of a robbery at her house a year ago. Her items have not been recovered.
This rude behavior violates the penal legislation in force regarding criminal complaint filing procedure and the behavior of the police when they have knowledge of a crime. The lack of human sensitivity of the uniformed officers and their poor judicial training stand in the way on the road to justice. Thus, more and more each day, the public loses confidence in the authorities.
Translated by: Adam Cooper
January 6 2012
Trial of a Former Policeman Who Shot a Black Teenager
The trial of Amado Interian was held on the afternoon of December 13th in Courtroom Number 7 of the Havana Court. He is a former police officer who shot a 14-year-old teenager named Angel Izquierdo. The trial had been suspended on December 9th due to a nonappearance by the defendant.
Amado Interian was dressed like an inmate, but it was not possible to find out in which prison he was being held pending trial. The former policeman exercised his right to testify but he did not answer any questions.
The former policeman, in open court, cried and testified that he did not intend to kill anyone and he asked the victim’s family for forgiveness. He also showed the court all of the injuries he received while serving in the police force.
The hearing began at 1:00 pm when the defense attorney arrived. It lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes, with disorder and commotion in the courtroom. The teenager’s family showed their disagreement with the trial and the charges brought by the prosecution and the way they tried to reduce his liability.
In its report, the prosecution acknowledged that Amado had no reason to fire his weapon at these helpless kids and kill one of them. However, they only asked for a sentence of 17 years in prison for murder, a crime which is punishable by a sentence of 15-30 years in prison, or death.
Interian, who is 54 years old, underwent a psychiatric examination and was determined to be mentally fit and that at the time of these events, he had the capacity to understand the measure and extent of his actions. However, there was no explanation during the hearing as to why he still had a license to carry a firearm even though he retired five years ago.
The police officer lives and works in the Montecito estate, in the village of Lajas in the Mantilla district of the municipal capital Arroyo Naranjo, where the events took place. In the trial it was said that the estate belonged to him yet no reference was made to a deed which authorized his right to the property.
Nevertheless, it was made clear that the fruit tree was some distance from the residence of the accused and that the victim was up the tree when he was shot. Marzo, as one of the witnesses identified themselves, owner of the estate neighbouring the ex-soldier’s and who witnessed the events, did not see when Interian fired his Colt, the murder weapon.
The witness told the court that on the afternoon of 15th July 2011 he went towards Interian’s house looking for his livestock. He heard some voices. He went running, machete in hand, and the ex policeman put on his shoes, shirt and took his weapon.
Interian’s neighbour first arrived at the bush where Ismael, 17 years of age, Angel and Yandi, both 14, were climbing. All boys were of black ethnicity. He ordered them to climb down when he heard the first shot.
Whilst the boys got down he heard the ex-policeman uttering profanities and asking his neighbours to ‘kill a black boy and f*** them up’. Marzo heard the second shot and one of the teenagers groaning. Angel became tangled in a branch and fell upon the impact of the bullet.
The medical expert testified in court and reasserted that the cause of death was acute anemia caused by the impact of the projectile. The bullet entered the victim’s body in the lumbar region, went through the left kidney, the aorta and the right lung before exiting the shoulder.
The defence lawyer insisted that it was a simple case of homicide, that he was anticipating a sentence of 7 to 15 years, and that the court took into account the previous good conduct of the ex-policeman. He also presented the medals that Interian had received during his 30 years of service in the National Revolutionary Police Force. Maria Caridad Jiminez Medina, first cousin of the victim, exploded with rage as the defence gave its closing statement.
Immediately after, Lacadio Izquierdo, Angel’s uncle, stood up to block the ex-soldier who moved away, guarded by more than a dozen uniformed officials of the Prisons Service of the Department of the Interior. The officials, on more than one occasion, prevented relatives from reaching the accused.
The ex-policeman was chief of the area where the victim lived and is described as a violent and abusive man. ’In this country you get 20 to 25 for killing a cow and for killing a child this man got 17′, said Nidia Medina, aunt of the murdered teenager. ’We’re not going to resolve anything here, here there is no justice’ said others trying to calm the most upset. The protest paralyzed the trial and continued in the street.
Translated by: Hank, Sian Creely
January 5 2012
Friends
I was a little busy at the end of the year, but I did not forget you, and I want to take advantage of the first post of 2012 to wish everyone the best for this year – health, prosperity and happiness – and especially to all Cubans who follow my post, I hope we achieve the freedom we so much desire.
I also want to thank you for the strength and encouragement you give me in your comments. You have allowed me to see different points of view. Even though I can’t exchange comments with you, I like them, although I’ve never seen your faces or heard your voices. Thank you very much.
Translated by Regina Anavy
January 5 2012
The Havana Tribunal will judge a former military man today who shot a teenager
Various witnesses were called by the Havana Tribunal to participate in a murder trial which began this morning, December 9th, against Amado Interian, a retired police officer who is accused of shooting a black, 14-year-old teenager on July 15th of this year. The teenager’s name was Alain Izquierdo.
According to Ismael Suarez Herce, a 17-year-old cousin of the victim who is an eyewitness to what happened, Interian (also known as ”El Pinto”) caught the two of them climbing a mamoncillio tree on a farm. The approximately 60-year-old man got mad and said to them ”Hey, negro, you’ll see what’s going to happen to you,” and then he shot his 45 caliber revolver. At the time of these acts, the former military man had a license to carry firearms.
The bullet entered Izquierdo’s body through his left buttock. It destroyed his femoral artery, passed through his kidney and reached his lung. Death was almost instantaneous. The funeral parlor gave the family a death certificate stating that the cause of death was acute anemia. Despite the demands of the family, the coroner never gave them any autopsy information.
The farm where this happened is located in Las Lajas, in Mantilla, a marginal neighborhood with a predominantly black population of low means which is relatively dangerous. Suarez Herce said that they dared to go there in order to jump into the Abelardo dam in Calvario to swim.
The former policeman, Amado Interian, was the head of the police sector in various localities in Arroyo Naranjo, the poorest and most violent municipality in the Cuban capital. Neighbors and family of the victim describe Interian as an angry man who was trigger happy. As a retired military man, he will be tried under the civil penal code which provides a penalty for the crime of murder of up to 15 to 30 years of incarceration.
The current location of the former official is unknown. He was being held in Valle Grande, the same place where the older brother of his victim was, awaiting trial. Prisoners residing in the Mantilla zone are sure that he is not there or in Combinado del Este, the maximum security prison located in Havana.
The victim’s mother, Raiza Medina, believes that they want to exclude her from participating in the trial of the man accused of killing her son. She has not received any summons as an affected party. An official named Aiza, who attends to victims at 100 and Aldabo, told her that affected parties are not summoned. She recommended that Raiza contact the official in charge of the case. As of today, no one in the criminal investigation division has responded to her calls.
Translated by: Hank
December 9 2011
Tomorrow the Havana Tribunal will try the former military man who shot a teenager
Tomorrow, December 9th, the Havana Tribunal will hear the case against a former military man named Amado Interian who is accused of having used his 45 caliber pistol to shoot a teenager named Alain Izquierdo Medina — a black 14-year-old who was coming down from a tree in Mamamoncillo.
Translated by Hank
December 8 2011
“That Old Newspaper Yellowed With Age“
Yaremis Flores Marín
A few days ago I read in Granma, the official mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the Party, an article about the end of the debate by the Parliamentary Commission, in whose mind they had analyzed among other things, the effectiveness of the economic model.
What they were saying to the population was “we are working for…, we are analyzing…, we are satisfactorily completing…”
To summarize, all of the Commissions inflated in one way or another, efficiency; and those that did not meet some parameter, they justified with those empty slogans which we have become accustomed to — that they work to achieve the development of the country and the satisfaction of the people.
A few days ago, dusting off memories, my grandmother found an edition of Granma dated Wednesday, July 12, 1989. It was yellow with age. She had saved it as though it were a relic. I was just a girl back then.
The first thing that surprised me about that old edition of Granma was the size of the publication (twice what it is today). Aside from that, on its first page it talked about the subjects that were to be debated during the 5th National Assembly. From that day forth the subjects of construction, public services and worker protections were all on the table.
Moving forward to the present, the failure is evident. The housing situation is precarious; the shortage of building materials; public services in decline; and don’t even talk about the protection of the workers, when today we’re all threatened by the era of “availability”, which is simply a word that tries to put lipstick on what I prefer to call “unemployment.”
So I ask myself, do I have to wait another 20 years to read another edition of Granma which will capture the same thing?
Translated by: Hank
December 6 2011
Laritza Diversent
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