A “Clandestine” Meeting with Ernesto Londoño

A "Clandestine" Meeting with Ernesto Londoño / Miriam Celaya
Posted on December 10, 2014

Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, HAVANA, Cuba, 2 December 2014 — Young journalist
Ernesto Londoño should feel very gratified professionally: he has not
only managed to raise a bitter media controversy in recent weeks,
stemming from his uncharacteristic editorial which appeared in the New
York Times (NYT), in favor of bringing closer the governments of the US
and Cuba and the lifting of the embargo, among other proposals, in line
with the Cuban official discourse; but these days he has taken a
"business trip" to the Island and has held several meetings with some
media, including the most official media of all, the newspaper Granma,
at whose headquarters he was cordially received on Monday, November 24th
by the editorial team headed by its director. Londoño published several
photographs of the occasion on his Twitter account.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the 25th, the magazine OnCuba welcomed him at its
headquarters in Havana, where "he talked, asked and responded to our
concerns" according to an interview published by that journal, which
states that Londoño is conducting research that will allow further
development of the Cuba issue at the NYT. The page overflowed with
photographs that testify to the meeting, depicting a smiling and relaxed
Londoño.

And indeed, it appears that Londoño's intention and that of his
editorial bosses is to gather as much information as possible from
diverse opinion sectors in this controversial trip. Or at least, that is
what his phone call on Friday the 28th to the director of 14ymedio,
Yoani Sánchez, evidenced. During that call, he requested to meet with
her, and she agreed to conduct a meeting which should also involve other
team members, including 14ymedio's editor-in-chief Reinaldo Escobar,
reporters Luzbely Escobar and Victor Ariel González, Rachel Vazquez, in
charge of the cultural section, columnists Eliecer Avila and this
writer, Miriam Celaya. The urgency of the meeting precluded the presence
of provincial correspondents.

The Hotel Saratoga, a "Neutral" Venue?

On Saturday, November 29th, at 11 am according to our previous
agreement, we met with Ernesto Londoño at a "neutral" venue as the
mezzanine of the hotel where he was a guest, the Saratoga, located on
Prado and Dragones Sts., right across from La Fuente de la India and
adjacent to the Parque de la Fraternidad and the Capitol, where some of
us connect to the Internet at the astronomical price of 12 CUC per hour,
and to put up with the anguish of slow service and full of "blockades".
In fact, coincidentally, during our close to three-hour conversation,
there was no connection.

All around us, the ill-concealed movement of the agents of the political
police in their ridiculous disguises as 'guests', employees or clients
of the cafeteria, reminded us that, under totalitarian regimes,
neutrality is always a chimera. In all that time, not even one of the
waitresses came near us to see if we wanted to order at least a coffee,
something remarkable in a country where Cuban born citizens cannot
remain sitting, occupying a table if we are not "consuming".

Anyway, all that police deployment was a useless waste: we, the
disobedient ones, did not go there to share secrets or to make
compromises, but to express ourselves as freely as we usually do in our
writings, so we didn't even take the trouble to lower our voices.

The first impression, after the introductions with the
journalist-revelation of the moment, was disappointing: Londoño could
not answer the questions that each of us had prepared for him because
"he must ask for the approval" of his NYT bosses. The essential
requirement was for us to submit the questions in writing and wait for
his answers. We also could not photograph him during the meeting. Any
opinion he expressed personally at that meeting could not be published
by us.

Suddenly, what we thought would be a meeting between colleagues in two
different media, at which we would exchange views and discuss topics of
crucial interest for Cubans, was turning into a "clandestine" date, with
a certain tinge of adultery, a sort of media conspiracy designed to feed
and diversify knowledge (his) about the Cuban reality, but without our
ability to disclose his view points, his motives about our country or
where his interests were headed.

In stark contrast to his stay at Granma newspaper, the meeting would
have a restraint (embargo?) imposed precisely from the anti-embargo
defender, the NYT. Live and learn!

Nevertheless, the representatives of 14ymedio present at that meeting
agreed to offer Londoño our opinions about anything he was interested to
know about our country, but we would be free to publish whatever we
stated on our own… because such are the advantages of those who don't
need permission to express themselves.

A Gift for the NYT

Thus, based on rigorous ethical issues and honoring the commitment we
agreed to, I will only present here a summary of my impressions and
commentaries about the meeting and, at no time, the questions and
opinions of the foreign visitor.

It is impossible to summarize in only a few words the variety of topics
of conversation on that Saturday evening; although I would dare say that
Londoño must have been surprised to discover such a diverse group of
ages, professions and opinions grouped in the same project. Undoubtedly,
he must have noticed the absence of the monotonous "choirs" of unanimous
agreements or hesitation among cronies, and he certainly must not have
noticed in other meetings the flow of ideas as critical, free and
spontaneous: there was no agenda or orders to speak one's opinion, or
taboo subjects. Nobody lead the meeting, nobody moderated, and nobody
censured. A real present for a visitor who tries to get close to a
reality where entrenched, social auto-censorship reigns.

Politics, economics, society, history, law, Cuba-US relations; new laws;
myths and realities of Raúl's "reforms" and their results so far;
necessary steps for real changes in Cuba, which we would like see
reflected in the editorials of the NYT; what kind of journalism we
Cubans want and what we recommend to foreign researchers if they really
want to know Cuba were several of the countless of topics not yet
exhausted, but that surely marked the difference between what we are and
what they had told Ernesto Londoño we were.

At any rate, despite the limitations and how dreadful what he has
written so far in his quasi-perverse editorials, about which I offered
my sincere opinion, expressed in several articles published in Cubanet,
I'm glad this young journalist has had, so far, the opportunity to
listen to opinions from positions and commitments so different as those
of the barricades of the official press or the free spontaneity of at
least a portion of the voices of the independent press. We hope he will
learn to feel the pulse of the Cubans at the bottom rungs, those who
subsist in neighborhoods near his expensive lodgings. I hope that, going
forward, he is more responsible, or at least that he assumes the
consequences of his writings.

I am glad that he has also been in the company of the makers of
"critical" publications so light that they enjoy the privilege to work
in legal offices in Havana, another reform miracle that betrays the type
of changes that the Cuban government has implemented and that
constitutes a clear signal of the long road that we Cubans must travel
in order to defend our interests, so different from the long Cuban
dictatorship and from those that Ernesto Londoño himself has defended
with as much ignorance as vehemence from the biased NYT editorials.

Translated by Norma Whiting

Source: A "Clandestine" Meeting with Ernesto Londoño / Miriam Celaya |
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/a-clandestine-meeting-with-ernesto-londono-miriam-celaya/