A Million Fines for May Day?

A Million Fines for May Day?
April 18, 2015
Alejandro Rodriguez Rodriguez*

HAVANA TIMES — Cuba's Comprehensive Supervision Department (DIS) seems
to be repeating the refrain of an old song by Carlos Puebla: "If anyone
so much as sticks their heads out, cut 'em off!" It is almost as though
it has set out to apply the record-breaking figure of one million fines
before May 1st, the date in which Cubans gather at Havana's Revolution
Square to express their support and to condemn whatever they are told to
support and condemn.

Many DIS fines are applied by virtue of "Urban Planning" decrees.

Urban planning has nothing to do with the forced coupling of pretty men
and women or the sterilization of the ugly, the lame and the insane in
an effort to purify the race. Luckily, we haven't gone down that road.
Here, we limit eugenic efforts to keeping defective ideologies at bay,
by vilifying dissidents and treating non-enthusiasts as dissidents.

Hunting Down Offenders

Urban planning refers, rather, to the State institution responsible for
enforcing compliance with urban regulations. In other words, it is the
institution responsible for making life miserable for anyone who dares
place anything outside their home, be it a ladder, an awning or an
advertisement poster.

In the hunt for such offenders undertaken by the body of government
inspectors under the DIS, the self-employed are the ones who stand to
lose the most, for they are the most likely to operate without proper
authorization and to offer the juiciest bribes.

Small, private businesses in Cuba don't have many means of advertising
themselves. What they have, rather, are many obstacles in their way. The
legislation that applies to them appears to have been designed to hide
the explosion of this new economic actor from the public sight.

In the country's capital, people tend to take the risk of printing
flyers and posting them on walls and electrical posts, but, in cities in
Cuba's interior, locals fear that their ads will be taken for
counterrevolutionary propaganda.

There are also no walls or billboards that are rented out for the
purposes of advertising. All banners are already taken up by
announcements reminding people that saving is the country's main source
of income, and that the genocidal blockade prevents the import of
banners that could be used to condemn the genocidal blockade.

Putting Up An Advertising Sign

The process of setting up an advertising sign at the entrance to one's
business is extremely complicated. One is required to present seals,
property titles, a schematic drawing of the house in question, letters
of request, an approval signed by the owner of the house, the stamp of
approval from the Office of the Historian and any other bullshit
required by the bureaucrat on duty. Then, you have to renew your permit
every year, standing in line at the municipal Urban Planning Office, on
one of the two days of the week they renew licenses on.

Supposing the officials are actually there, that you don't show up when
they're fumigating the building, that you've arrived early enough and
that your documents are in order, you will be allowed to post a single
sign to the building's main facade. Perpendicular signs and any kind of
creativity are forbidden.

One goes away feeling that adopting a child is probably simpler.

The Yellow Page section of ETECSA's phone book offers a space for ads,
but, being an ETECSA offer, it has an ETECSA price. Those who don't have
the background should know that ETECSA, the sole telecommunications
operator in Cuba, charges the equivalent of US $ 4.50 for an hour of
Internet use (currently there is a 50 % discount) and sells mobile phone
lines at around US $ 40.00.

The National Information Agency (AIN) recently launched an ads service
for the self-employed, something which would be grandiose if it weren't
for the fact that the agency has very little impact on the public life
of the country.

In this context of physical difficulties, the digital is gaining more
and more ground and, today, in a Cuba deprived of Internet access, we
are seeing restaurants without signs that have their own web pages and
spots in the tolerated weekly film and TV series package many people buy.
—–
* Cuban journalist residing in Camaguey. Author of the blog Alejo3399

Source: A Million Fines for May Day? - Havana Times.org -
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=110700