Carta de Cuba, la escritura de la libertad

Havana – The ¨Juan Bruno Zayas¨ Health and Human Rights Center, a nongubernmental organization directed by dissident physician  Dr. Darsi Ferrer, is planning to celebrate independent health workshops in the central and eastern parts of Cuba. The first of such activities, corresponding to the western part, recently took place in the Cuban capital, in spite of the harassment of the paramilitary forces and organized mobs that prevented various delegates to reach the site of the meeting, which was the very home of Dr. Ferrer. In a communiqué sent from Havana, the ¨Juan Bruno Zayas¨ Health and Human Rights Center declared that it will continue doing their work, in spite of the harassment and the material difficulties they are suffering, and stating their disposition to accept any type of help to facilitate this purpose, fundamentally medicines, medical equipment and other resources to alleviate the population’s needs, by means of offering primary attention services at the Cuban communities. 

Havana – More than 12,000 hectares of woods have been consumed by the forest fires in Cuba, during the year, as recognized by the official press itself. An article published in the weekly Juventud Rebelde admits that 367 forest fires have already taken place during the year 2005, with $14 million dollars worth of damage to the economy. The information assigns the causes of these fires to ¨recklessness or negligence¨, although according to sources related to the island’s Forest Rangers Corps, numerous interior ordinances directed to their officers, were warning on the possibilities of intentionally provoked fires. Of more than 12,000 affected areas, 54 per cent correspond to natural forests, but the damage is not limited to the economic aspect exclusively, since important biodiversity losses have also been observed in those places, as well as the soil erosion and the air & water pollution in the affected areas. 

Havana – The medical attention given to three prisoners of conscience hospitalized in the National Inmates Hospital of Havana’s ¨Combinado del Este¨ prison, contradicts the exact words of ruler Fidel Castro Ruz. Independent journalists 55-year old Ricardo González Alfonso and 61-year old Julio César Gálvez Rodríguez, who were imprisoned during the year 2003 repressive wave, as well as 52-year old Francisco Chaviano González, have refused the most recent delivery of hospital linen, which they found dirty and with secretion stains. In spite of the hygiene that is supposedly indispensable in such institution, the prisoners are forced to remain for more than three weeks with soiled bed clothes, a situation that is not nearly solved in spite of whatever measures taken by the medical personnel in the center and by one of the officers assisting them. González Alfonso, who suffers from abdominal granuloma and is serving a 20-year sentence, is forced to sleep over a shirt and a pullover, while his two comrades have to do it over the prison’s bed sheets, in order to avoid sleeping directly on top of the hospital’s mattresses.

San Miguel del Padrón – Human rights activists, together with members of the ¨With the Poor of the Earth¨ Foundation and the ¨Juan Bruno Zayas¨ Health Center, took some relief supplies to the needy and the sick at the ¨Cambute¨ transit community (a shelter for homeless people) as well to those living in the illegal huts area known as the ¨llega-y-pon¨ (shantytown) of the Diezmero neighborhood. Both settlings are located in the San Miguel del Padrón municipality, outside the Cuban capital. Two cradles, childrenware, two maternity robes, some medicines, colored pencils and several toys have been donated. The ¨Cambute¨ transit Community, at the 4.1/2 Km. of the Santa María del Rosario highway, has 300 cubicles where some 2,000 persons heap up. Each cubicle measures approximately 5 meters long x 6 meters wide, and in such space live the members of a family nucleus, generally 5, 6 or more persons of all ages and sexes. When building these lodgings, the Cuban government declared that they were to ¨temporarily¨ shelter those whose homes may have collapsed, but never a definite solution has been given to the problem. Unofficial figures estimate in a million units the housing deficit in Cuba. The shantytown of the Diezmero neighborhood shows similar lack of proper living conditions, with improvised huts, and the aggravating circumstances that, being an illegal settling, their inhabitants do not legally exist and thus have no access to provisions by the ration book.- Jaime Legonier

Morón, Ciego de Avila – With its installations still on repair and only half of the male bedrooms in operation, the school term at the ¨Eulogio Fernández¨ High School, in this territory, finally began. This educational center, which is being repaired for more than a year now, had to start the school year without actually being ready, something which causes great discomforts to professors and pupils, alike. The bedrooms at the 3^rd and 4^th floors, in the male sector, don’t have any windows, and for this reason, pupils are piled up together in the other two floors, without any space to place their lockers. But this situation is not new at the center. In the past term, the repairs corresponded to the female living quarters, with the builders working thorough the day at the center, which severely limited the girls’ privacy during their resting period at noon.- Antonio Fernández

Morón – For some time now, the workers at the ¨Enrique Varona¨ railroad workshop, in this city, have been claiming for better working conditions, to no avail. These workers don’t understand neither the bad quality food, nor the shortage of proper clothes and shoes for such strong labor and much less, the payment system applied in some specialties. -¨We were given the task to repair 20 very old locomotives, but some times you dismount them and then you have to wait for the proper spare part to appear and the equipment to be ready, for them to pay you…¨, explained a worker who asked not to be identified. According to official data, 27 locomotives were assigned to the Ciego de Avila province, to be repaired there, during the present year, but the specialists affirm that such task is impossible to fulfill due to the spare parts deficit, the delays in supplies and the constant interruptions in electric power. At the Morón railroad shops, there exists a mechanics’ union which is unique in this country, and for their experience, they have been in charge of getting in shape the old General Motors locomotives, whose equipment dates from the 50s’ decade in the last century.- José Manuel Caraballo Bravo

Arriba (up)