Cuba: Interview with Reinaldo Escobar, An Independent Citizen

By Yusimi Rodriguez

HAVANA TIMES — For months I had wanted to interview Reinaldo Escobar – the blogger and moderator of an audiovisual panel discussion project called Razones Ciudadanas. He’s also the husband of blogger Yoani Sanchez, who is currently on an international tour.

We met up at a cafe in the upscale Miramar district and before I could pose the first question, he summarized his life.

Reinaldo Escobar: I was born in Camaguey in 1947, I graduated in journalism and I took five post-graduate courses in Marxism.

HT: Marxist?

RE: Marxologist.

At the end of my studies they wanted to kick me out of school for being smug, hyper-critical, immature, and having literary tendencies. The punishment was to send me to the Centennial Youth Column in Camagüey – not as a cane cutter though, but as a journalist. I stayed there for eighteen months.

Later I worked for the magazine Cuba Internacional, and afterwards at the Juventud Rebelde newspaper. After a year and a half, on December 18, 1988, I was told in a meeting that I couldn’t continue there or work in the field of journalism any more in Cuba. I was transferred to the National Library, where, along with others, I requested a meeting to discuss the agreements of the Fourth Party Congress. We were met with a “repudiation meeting” and I decided to leave.

Then I was an elevator mechanic and a librarian at a technological institute until 1994. That was my last government job. Then I taught Spanish to foreigners. In 2004, I founded, with other friends, the magazine Consenso, which evolved into the digital portal Desdecuba. There I learned digital journalism with Yoani, and I started my blog.

This man, who as a child recited complete speeches of Fidel Castro, in dreams, and can still recite several by memory, is proud of writings such as “Que fue el fidelismo?” (What was Fidelismo), “Es muy facil prohibir,” (It’s easy to forbid) “El argumento secreto” (The secret argument) and ideas about the need to decriminalize political dissent.

HT: Are you and your wife on the voter registration list?   

RE: Yes, our son Teo too. In the vote [last October] for the delegates at the constituency level, we attended the polls to support a campaign by Pedro Campos, which consisted of writing “D” (for democracy) on the ballot. We didn’t participate in the recent election of members of parliament.

Independent journalism is not a homogeneous group or a political party. Everyone writes what they want. There’s no editorial policy. I’ve written about the US blockade, as has Yoani Sanchez and others.

I believe in institutions and that Cuba should have a parliament in which people are represented in their diversity. In Cuba there’s diversity by race, age, occupation and gender, but not by politics. Therefore it’s a false diversity.

The proof is that the votes, the vast majority, are unanimous. In over thirty years, they haven’t turned down any proposed law. The parliament is selected by a nomination committee consisting of the mass organizations, which are pulleys for the transmission of power.

Most of the top leaders of these organizations are members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. You can bet that the statutes of these organizations require them to be faithful to the Party, the revolution and Fidel.

What’s worse is that voters don’t know the thinking of the local candidates or the parliamentary candidates because the Electoral Act prohibits campaigning. They don’t know how that person will vote in parliament on issues like gay marriage, the expansion of self-employment, etc. I’m not talking about socialism or capitalism.

The voter doesn’t know how the person who represents them in parliament thinks. That’s why I didn’t vote. Teo also decided not to go.

HT: Has being your son and the son of Yoani Sanchez brought any negative impacts on the life of Teo?

RE: Not at all. He’s a good student and I attend all parent meetings. Once, some anonymous messages were sent in his classroom for Valentine’s Day. The teacher received the papers and read them aloud. There was one for Teo that she didn’t want to read, because it was this question: Why is your mother a “Lady in White”? Teo regretted that she had’t read it aloud, to clarify that his mother wasn’t a Lady in White – though if she were, he would have been proud.

A good friend, a member of the Party, asked me once if I wasn’t scared about anything happening to my son. I replied that she must think worse of the country’s leaders than I did.

HT: In your blog, you describe your firing from Juventud Rebelde as the event that made you a free person. What happened?

RE: Like I mentioned, I worked at the Cuba Internacional magazine, for many years. It was devoted to sweetening the situation in Cuba, but I got bored with that. What’s more, the process of perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union made me excited about the idea of something similar happening in Cuba. I left that magazine and went to Juventud Rebelde to practice journalism that was more critical and freer.

I managed to publish some highly critical articles, of which I’m proud, especially “Es muy facil prohibir” (It’s very easy to forbid) about dress codes against boys from wearing long hair at school. They had assigned me to do an article about the start of school year, so I went to the parking lot at Ciudad Deportiva, where the buses assembled that carried students to their high schools in the countryside.

I saw that the principal didn’t let the kids with long hair on the bus. I identified myself as a journalist from Juventud Rebelde and I questioned the director about his policy. He said the prohibition was in the school rules. That afternoon I checked in the library of the Ministry of Education, and to my horror I discovered that the word “hair” didn’t appear anywhere. I wrote an article that exposed this, and it created a scandal.

At Ciudad Libertad high school, the students put the article up on the bulletin board, but the principal took it down told them they couldn’t put it up again – so the students wrote excerpts from my article on the street with chalk. That was the nicest thing that ever happened in my career as a journalist. The Ministry of Education sent a letter to the newspaper saying that journalists like me were conspiring, etc.

The editor asked me to write an article about the 30th anniversary of the Revolution, to help me “clean up my act.” I know he wanted to help me, and I appreciated it. I wrote an article entitled “Treinta años despues, ¿de que se quejan los jovenes en Cuba?” (Thirty years on, What do young people in Cuba complain about?). It wasn’t published, of course.

A few days later I was called into the meeting I mentioned earlier. They accused me of writing articles with hidden meanings and that instigated young people. I wrote an appeal but it didn’t work.

For a long time I was depressed. A lot of people [at the newspaper] gave me moral support, but all of them raised their hands at the meeting to expel me – except for Jose Antonio Evora, who lost his UJC membership card for supporting me. Now he’s in Miami.

Over time I realized that they had effectively freed me. Had I continued there, I would have ended up like many former colleagues who I run into on the street and think they are doing something great by writing that the potato harvest is insufficient, or mentioning Fidel Castro without saying “commander-in-chief.” I would feel ridiculous if I was doing that.

HT: A college student who has been able to read some “independent journalism” told me that they couldn’t accuse you bloggers of lying. But they could point to you for showing solely the worse parts of Cuban life. Do you think that “independent journalism” is as ideological as official journalism?

RE: If it’s true that official journalism is ideologically based, it’s fully justifiable for there to be a counterpart. If we try to be balanced, to reflect the bad and the good, we wouldn’t be doing our duty to balance national journalism. In a division of labor that no one has ordered, official journalism sweetens reality and the alternative exposes it.

HT: A few months ago I was talking with a friend who’s physically handicapped and can’t get an essential medicine because of the US blockade. Cuba’s government uses the blockade to explain everything, but I feel that “independent journalism” ignores it or downplays its effect on the country’s situation.

RE: Independent journalism is not a homogeneous group or a political party. Everyone writes what they want. There’s no editorial policy. I’ve written about the blockade, as has Yoani Sanchez and others.

I believe in institutions and that Cuba should have a parliament in which people are represented in their diversity. In Cuba there’s diversity by race, age, occupation and gender, but not by politics. Therefore it’s a false diversity.

The actual weight of the problem is another matter. I’ve discussed it with US officials and have said that the blockade is an aberration that should disappear. I do this not just because your friend doesn’t have the medicine she needs, but because it gives the government the real justification that we’re a place that’s under siege and therefore dissent is treason.

When I was a teenager, Fidel Castro said we would achieve a bright future despite the blockade. This [the blockade] was enacted [by the US government] because it seemed right to the revolutionary government to confiscate property held by some Americans. I understand that this wasn’t to harm the American owners, but to benefit the Cuban people. That’s not what happened though. Instead we were blockaded. And the consequences are what we know.

It’s said here that with I don’t know how many hours of blockade one could buy I don’t know how many violin strings. They have done these calculations that I don’t understand, but somehow these are true. The only country that produces violin strings is the United States. Neither China nor Russia produces them. I suppose that the medicine your friend needs isn’t produced by another country.

I believe this government should assume the blockade with dignity, because it was earned with its revolutionary attitude. Did they think that Washington would applaud the confiscation of Americans property? The Cuban government bet on the horse that lost, which was the socialist camp, and history proved that that was a mistake. I don’t blame them for not being fortunetellers, but for not being consistent with their attitudes.

I was in that plaza where Fidel Castro lost his voice reading the list of Cuban properties owned by US interests and people shouted “se llamaba” (they were). I was hoarse too. I was willing to take the consequences. I joined the literacy campaign and I voluntarily joined the military — before the draft existed — because Fidel called for anti-aircraft troops. They told me that a bright future was coming and I believed it. What came was a failure, because it was the result of voluntarism and the lust for power.

I hate the blockade, though I understand why it was enacted.

HT: I have problems defining you. Should I say dissident or opposition member?

RE: I’m an independent citizen.

(To be continued…)