Cubanet

The Two Marielas / Cubanet, Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello

L, An ordinary Cuban woman looking out a bus window; R, Mariela Castro

Cubanet, Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, Havana, 14 February 2017 – The story I want to relate has two parts, one is true and the other is fiction. The real one is an event I was involved in at the Carlos III market while in line to buy yogurt, one of the products in shortest supply in this country – despite the fact that it is sold in hard currency – and in this case with a price of 0.70 Cuban convertible pesos (CUC), although there are other yogurts sold in different containers for as much as 5 CUC (1 CUC is roughly equal to $1 US).

In front of me, while we were waiting, was a young woman of around 30 something, but I could see she’d had a pretty rough life. She had the money in her hand, some of it in 5 and 10 centavo coins in CUC and a note for 5 Cuban pesos (CUP) – because, as you know, now the stores have to accept both currencies. All of a sudden she dropped a 10 centavo coin and to her great misfortune it rolled under one of the display cases and although the woman made a great effort to retrieve it, she could not.

She turned to leave the line and I asked, “Are you leaving?” and she said, “Yes, I had the exact amount of money and I dropped 10 centavos under that case.” Without thinking twice I said, “No, don’t leave, take the ten centavos.” continue reading

She accepted with the happiest look on her face and told me, “You have no idea how grateful I am, because my older daughter is sick and she doesn’t want to eat anything.”

From that moment, with the facility a Cuban has to establish communication with another person, even if they don’t know them, we spent the next thirty minutes while we continued to wait in line talking to each other.

She explained that she worked as a teaching assistant at an elementary school, but often had to be the teacher because there aren’t enough educators. She is divorced and the monthly support she receives from the children’s father is 50 Cuban pesos (roughly $2 US). That plus her own salary is not enough to live on and she has to “invent” and go begging to her mother. She told me, literally, “You have no idea what I have to do to be able to feed my kids.”

Like any good Cuban, she lives in a building considered uninhabitable, but she won’t accept going to a shelter because she knows other people who live in those conditions and it is dangerous for the girls, now that they are becoming young ladies. Because her apartment is on the second floor and nothing works, she has no running water and every other day has to carry up 10 or 12 buckets of water to meet highest priority needs, although she says she is grateful to her mother who washes and irons the girls school uniforms.

“Imagine. My mother was a member of the Party (Communist) and worked in the Federation of Cuban Women and as for my my father, may he rest in peace, his surname was Castro, so it occurred to her to name me Mariela [after Raul Castro’s daughter]. Now she regrets it.”

Then she said that she did not listen to her mother and married a man who drank a lot, and when he came home he beat her. It took a lot of work to get out of that torture and now she regrets not having listened to her mother’s advice.

He left them that disastrous apartment where they live in Centro Habana, and now she is stuck because her sister is married and has two children and also lives in the divided living room, which doubles as a room for both her and her sister’s families in the home of their parents.

She confessed to me that she had been so distressed that she takes her daughters and walks along the Malecon. And she said the girls understand the whole situation and do not ask for anything. But they’re growing up and they have to have shoes and school uniforms and something to eat for a snack at school, which is almost always a piece of bread, because at breakfast they eat half of her daily quota (on the ration book).

I think she had a great need for someone to listen to all her problems and saw the opportunity to vent.

With a little imagination, while I was on my way to my house, I began to think about how the other Mariela might live, the one her mother named her after.

At the entrance, everyone can see that other Mariela’s super residence in the Miramar neighborhood even has a pool, always filled with water. There are several cars and they and the house are all beautifully maintained. This is something that you don’t have to imagine, and it is not fiction.

But surely that Mariela Castro does not line up to buy yogurt at 70 cents CUC and much less would she be sad if she dropped a coin, as all her food problems are taken care of without her even having to leave the house.

When she gets up for breakfast she does not “donate” her bread to the children. A maid prepares the food, certainly with ham, milk, bread, juices, etc. She is assured of coffee every day, very likely imported, she probably gets the most desirable brands brought in from Miami.

She doesn’t have to worry about what time the bus will come to take her to work; in the first place because she doesn’t have to mark a timecard and in the second because she has a modern car to take her to work without having to get all sweaty and push her way onto the bus with all the other people.

I could continue imagining things that we all know are part of the standard of living of the high government hierarchy, but I leave it to the reader so we can all share in this fictional (?) part of the story.

Too Young for the Party and Too Old for the Communist Youth / Cubanet, Luis Cino Alvarez

Cubanet, Luis Cino Alvarez, Havana, 9 February 2017 — Try as I might—to avoid being a bore and accused of holding a grudge against the boy—I cannot leave Harold Cárdenas, the ineffable blogger at La Joven Cuba, in peace, I just can’t. And the fault is his own, because the narrative he makes out of his adventures defending his beloved Castro regime, and his loyal candor, strikes one as a kind of masochism worse than that of Anastasia Steele, the yielding girl in Fifty Shades of Grey.

In a post on 19 January, Harold Cardenas complained of the terrible limbo, for a communist, in which he finds himself (not to mention that it would be the envy of many militants who accepted the red card because they had no other option): Harold, being past the requisite age, was removed from the Union of Young Communists (UJC), but he is not accepted into the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) because, they explain, he is still too young. continue reading

His situation reminds me of a 1976 song by the British rock band Jethro Tull (which Harold probably doesn’t know, because of his age, and because I can’t imagine him listening to any music other than that of Silvio, Buena Fe and Calle 13). The song tells the story of the disconsolate and hairy motorcyclist and failed suicide, Ray, who was “too old to rock and roll, too young to die.”

Harold Cárdenas rightly intuits, given the entrenchment recently being displayed by the regime, that he has been given the boot—or the bat, as his contemporaries say—from both organizations because of his publications “in other media.” And so he knocks himself out with explanations, challenges his punishers to find one counterrevolutionary line in his writings, “but without taking a line or a post out of its context—conducting a serious search through the totality of the content.”

As if these guys needed to go to so much trouble to suspect someone and consider him an enemy!

The blogger, with his foolish sincerity and wild innocence (Ay, Julio Iglesias!) has annoyed the stony big shots and their subordinate “hard-core” little shots—always so unsympathetic towards those who, even while remaining within the Revolution, dare to think with their own heads and give too many opinions. This is why they consider him undisciplined, hypercritical, and irresponsible, why they don’t want him in the UJC nor the PCC.

Overall, he came out all right, because in other times, not too long ago, who knows what the punishment might have been…

Harold Cárdenas, with his faith intact through it all, assures us that he does not have a single complaint about the Party, although, as he says, it hurts him “how some dogmatists detract from the collective intelligence of the organization.”

As far as Harold is concerned, his punishers do not answer to an official policy, but rather are dogmatic extremists who think themselves more leftist than Stalin. He warns: “We must take care not to confuse sectarian procedures with State or Party politics, even if they try to disguise themselves as such. The individuals who apply them, although they might try to justify their actions as being taken in the name of the Revolution or some institution, are doing it for themselves. They are trying to preserve the status quo of the known, motivated by fear, ignorance or other interests.”

Harold Cárdenas, who seems to believe himself the reincarnation of Julio Antonio Mella (who, by the way, seems to have been assassinated by order of his comrades and not the dictator Machado, due to his Trotskyite connections) believes that what is happening is a “tactical struggle among revolutionary sectors” of which he has been a victim. But he does not despair. With the patience of a red Job, having been warned that “it is very difficult to fight for a better society outside of the movement that must lead the construction,” Cárdenas says that he will join the Party when he will not have to “subordinate the political struggle to a vertical discipline… when they give me a way, there will be a will.”

And one, faced with such resigned masochism, does not know whether to pity Harold in his wait for the blessed little red card, or give him up as incorrigible, and let him continue to self-flagellate. May Lenin Be With Him!

Author’s email: luicino2012@gmail.com

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Books Banned at Cuba’s Book Fair / Cubanet, Roberto Quinones

How Night Fell, Huber Matos – banned in Cuba

Cubanet, Roberto Jesus Quinones Haces, Guantanamo, 10 February 2017 – The Havana International Book fair and its provincial offshoots would be more important events if there were debates where all Cuban intellectuals could participate without exclusions. But they are walled prosceniums where there is only room for writers who never raise their voices against any internal injustices. The discriminated and persecuted find solidarity in other parts of the world; here, no.

So it is not news – nor will be – that these uncomfortable writers are excluded from debates and even the Fair itself, if they do not fit the established molds for “docile wage earners of official thought,” a phrase from the Argentine guerrilla with a happy trigger finger and fierce hatreds. continue reading

Beyond the characteristics of the Fair, where there are more people eating and getting drunk than buying books and participating in cultural activities, I want to dwell on the intolerance of Cuban publishing policy.

“We do not tell the people to believe, we say read”

This phrase is from Fidel Castro and belongs to the earliest days of his totalitarian state. When the National Printing Company of Cuba issued a massive printing of “Don Quixote,” our country inaugurated a luminous time for culture by making available to readers, at very cheap prices, innumerable classics of universal literature. That effort, which is maintained, was and is praiseworthy, although it has also been marked by prohibitions and notorious absences.

Disciplines such as Philosophy, Sociology, Law, Politics and History did not receive the same attention as literature, and today, after 58 years of Castroism, authors and works of international prestige still have not yet been published because the censors are the ones who decide what we can read, and what is published must be consistent with the policy imposed by the regime. To this is added the justification that Cuba cannot pay copyright fees to the affected writers.

Among these, are the Chileans Roberto Bolaño and Isabel Allende, while Nobel laureates Octavio Paz and Mario Vargas Llosa, have been published very little, although perhaps the exclusion of the latter is due to his criticism of Castroism. Gabriele D’Annunzio, Aldous Huxley, Milan Kundera, Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsin also appear in the waiting circle. William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury,” Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Attributes” and Vasili Grossman’s “Life and Destiny” have also not been published and still unknown in Cuban are Karl May, Enid Blyton, Albert Camus and Heinrich von Kleist while other authors are being re-published to exhaustion. And don’t even talk about contemporary European and American literature. I am writing from my declining memory, for if I consulted a book on the history of universal literature, the list would be immense.

Authors and texts with a strong democratic vocation remain unpublished here, although historical developments have proved them right. Within that extensive group are Simone Weil, Nikola Tesla and Wendell Berry. After little tirades made in 1960, not published again in Cuba are “The Great Scam” by Eudocio Ravines, “Anatomy of a Myth” by Arthur Koestler and “The New Class” by Milovan Djilas.

The New Class, Milovan Djilas – Banned in Cuba

An extraordinary book, “The Man in Search of Sense” by Viktor Frankl, remains unpublished. The list is joined by Erich Fromm, Ortega y Gasset and even socialists such as Leon Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci and Ernst Fischer. To this we can add “Thirteen days” by Robert Kennedy, “Gabo And Fidel, The Landscape Of A Friendship,” by Ángel Esteban and Stéphanie Panichelli and “God Entered Havana” by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán. “The End of History and the Last Man,” published in Spanish by Planeta 25 years ago remains beyond the reach of Cubans and only last year, more than forty years after its initial publication, “The Great Transformation” by Karl Polanyi was published and that topped those of universal literature by Ferdydurke and Witold Gombrowicz, while Borges remains almost unheard of.

Cuban authors who have written objective analyzes of Castroism or unauthorized memoirs are also blacklisted. I can cite here Carlos Franqui, Dariel Alarcon the “Benigno” of Che’s guerilla), Juan F. Benemelis with “The Secret Wars of Fidel Castro,” Juan Clark with his extraordinary book “Cuba: Myth and Reality,” Norberto Fuentes with “Sweet Cuban Warriors” and Commander Huber Matos with “How Night Fell.” Antonio Benítez Rojo, Zoé Valdés, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, Manuel Granados remain proscribed along with Eliseo Alberto Diego, with the great majority of Cubans not knowing his shocking testimony “Report Against Myself.”

That these books and authors are not published belies the much vaunted tolerance for diversity that the main representatives of the regime claim to the unsuspecting and others who are always ready to believe them. And saying that these books are not published because they can’t pay the authors for the copyright is a half-truth.

If they didn’t print so many insignificant books and allocated resources to truly relevant works, the panorama would be different. The bland books do not make you think and their destination is on the dusty shelves of bookstores, or their pages torn out to make cones to sell peanuts in, or to use for personal cleansing. The significant books are always dangerous and that is well known by the censors.

We are very afraid / Cubanet, Augusto Cesar San Martin and Rudy Cabrera

Cubanet, Augusto Cesar San Martin and Rudy Cabrera, Havana, 23 January 2017 – In 2014, Cuban doctor Nelson Cabrera Quinta, his wife and two teenage children were declared illegal occupants of his home located at No. 1705 – 200^th Street in the Havana neighborhood of Siboney. The house has been part of the family patrimony for 40 years and they have been been permanently residing in it for 12 years.

Six months after Dr. Cabrera left on an official Cuban medical mission in Saudi Arabia, his wife Bisaida Azahares received a notification from the Ministry of Construction to evacuate the house immediately. continue reading

“In the resolution it says: Leave the house [and go to] to your place of origin. We do not have options and much less a place to go… We are afraid, we have been told so many things about the eviction, that they are very violent people who open the doors, they break them down, they come in and they just put you out and that’s it. Imagine yourself, alone with two children,” says Bisaida.

Dr. Cabrera was warned that when he traveled abroad as a health worker, that they were going to evict his family from the house. For a long time that was the reason he rejected the chance to serve on several collaboration missions, and continued to direct one of the polyclinics in the Playa municipality. The doctor lowered his guard when the municipal president of the People’s Power assured him that while he was on a government mission, there would be no “forced extraction” at his house.

The right to reside in a garage

The resolution of “forced extraction”, the Cuban “neo-eviction,” is the result of a claim filed five years ago by the University of Medical Sciences of Havana (UCMH) against Nelson Cabrera Quintana and his family. According to the institution, the family lives in one of the 17 houses owned by the school in the residential division of Siboney, considered a “frozen zone,” which means the family registered as living in the residence must be “officially verified.”

The Cabrera family resides in the garage of a mansion, divided into three units. One-third of the house was granted in 1979 to the grandfather Gilberto Falcón Darriba, because of his work; he was a founder of UCMH, then the Institute of Medical Sciences of Havana, where he worked for more than 40 years.

Falcón lacked the mental and physical health to claim his property rights when he arrived at the end of 15 years residing in the garage. According to the provisions of the Ministry of Public Health, the houses are granted after having been leased for 15 years, giving the property to the lessee. Librada Arancibia, Falcon’s wife was on the verge of gaining title after her husband died in the United States, afflicted with Parkinson’s Disease.

“My grandmother was not recognized as the owner even though she initiated the process. I have documents from various UCMH lawyers who explicitly say that they were being deprived of the house they lived in for more than 20 years, and that they had paid the bank for in full,” says Nelson.

However, UCMH recognized the right of the elderly woman to live until the last day of her life in the residence transformed into a fortress.

Siboney, residential enclave

Each third of the residence has a different history, tied to its being property of the UCMH. On the main floor of the house, lived Dr. Caridad Dovale, retired from the UCMH, who emigrated to the United States in 2012. According to a document from the university center, her husband stayed in Cuba, managing to obtain the right to the property. In 2016 Dovales returned to Cuba, was repatriated and regained ownership of the house, as a university doctor.

The so-called “part behind,” belonging to the third, was claimed by the educational institution in 2013. Nelson affirms that Armando Hart Dávalos (former Minister of Education and Culture) and his wife interceded for those residents, and managed to get the eviction process cancelled.

The Cabrera family asks: Why if Falcón emigrated to the US, his wife did not get the benefit of housing, like the neighbors above? What has more value in Cuba, citizen rights or a good godfather in the government?

The answer is clear in the Siboney area, a neighborhood full of mansions built before 1959 by the so-called “bourgeoisie,” but which today is dominated by the government upper class.

One More Lie About Che Guevara / Cubanet, Tania Diaz Castro

Cubanet, Tania Diaz Castro, Havana, 3 January 2017 — In the Cuban national press there are many stories of the Castro dictatorship that are very rarely told. Unfortunately the official journalists do not investigate before they write and repeat like parrots the official script.

One of these stories is about the armored train of Santa Clara and what happened between the last two days of 1958 and January 1, 1959. Despite being wrapped in a blanket of badly connected lies, the story is still used by the national press, and by the government’s own version of a Cuban wikipedia, Ecured, for the chronologies of the regime, and it supported above all by the Cuban History Institute.

Just a few days ago, Nelson Garcia Santos, correspondent for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth), wrote an article about the battle of Santa Clara and the armored train, highlighting the version of Luis Alfonso Zayas, today a general. Zayas said, “The guards, holed up on Capiro Hill, opened fire. The crew of the armored train, when they saw things going badly, retired to the box cars. There, they were personally liquidated by the forces of Ramon Pardo Guerra.” continue reading

The general’s false testimony is as false as were Fidel Castro’s statements, when he described it as a “… bold attack by Che on the city of Santa Clara, with 300 fighters, when they faced an armored train on the outskirts of the city, they intervened on the path between the train and the main headquarters, derailed it, took the train, made everyone surrender and seized all the arms.”

In reality, the armored train did not carry shock troops, but rather dozens of engineers who were intending to repair the bridges and roads destroyed by the rebels. Derailing it was certainly part of the plan for a skirmish, but by the time the train arrived on Capiro Hill it had been sold to Che Guevara by Batista’s military forces, in the person of Colonel Florentino Rosell, for 350 thousand dollars.

Initially, the buyer was to be Commander Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, as it appears in his Memoirs and, being a great friend of mine, he told me this before he died, but Che, cunningly, got ahead of him.

Also in the memoirs of Fulgencio Batista, printed in Miami in 1960, under the title of Response, he says that: “… the armored train had not been ambushed by Che, but delivered and sold by Rosell, who with the money from the sale, about 350 thousand dollars, fled to Miami in the first days of January of 1959.”

And finally, there is a letter from Che Guevara, written on the same date to Enrique Oltuski Ozacki, the top leader of Las Villas, which has never been reprinted in Cuba, whose contents also explains this story because, in it, Che reproached combatant Oltuski, who refused to rob a bank to obtain the money he needed.

The purchase of the armored train was so hidden by the leadership of the new regime that even impartial historians of those years barely mentioned it, although without noting that since mid-1958, Batista’s troops were tired of the war, corrupted and in the process of negotiating with Fidel Castro.

The One Who Left Ashes / Miriam Leiva

Poster of Fidel Castro in a Havana window (AP)

Cubanet, Miriam Leiva, Havana, November 29, 2016 – Fidel Castro died on November 25 at 10:29 p.m. and, according to his own will, his remains will be cremated, according to the brief statement read by Raúl Castro on Cuban television. at midnight.

As a deceased person, the former president deserves respect. Surely he expired on a soft bed, surrounded by his closest family members; perhaps he left directions for his funeral. Jose Marti, the man Cubans call the Apostle of Cuba, will welcome him in his monument in the Plaza of the Revolution and in the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. continue reading

The government decreed nine days of official mourning and a journey of the funeral cortege from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, following in reverse the route of the “Freedom Caravan” of the guerrilla chief in January of 1959. The Comandante bequeathes his predilection for symbolism in dates: his death coincided with the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolution with the departure of the yacht Granma from Mexico in 1956, and the burial on December 4th will coincide with the day of Saint Barbara, Shangó in the syncretic religion, a day venerated with great offerings. The drumming and all the rituals that begin in the early hours of the morning will be suspended on this solemn occasion, to the disgust of thousands of believers.

Most Cubans within the archipelago reacted with silence, no comment, without grief. The outcome had long been expected. The cheerful, humorous, jovial and bustling Cuban protects himself in the shell when he feels it dangerous to think differently from the official line, fears the consequences in his life, and disenchanted with the unfulfilled promises, is careful of his weak status or he looks the horizon to jump abroad.

Respectful relief floats in the environment, because the Comandante will allow everyone to rest, not fearing his interference in the essential changes. Every photo and every writing was overwhelming. The impressive olive green presence and thunderous voice became pitiful and the phrases delirious. He asserted, “history will absolve me,” at the conclusion of his trial for the attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. Much accumulated for 63 years, and there will be a delay in the objective writing of his until the secrets of all the parties involved are known. However, it is impossible to exempt him from the precarious present state of Cuba, because for 47 years he decided and prohibited everything.

In 1959, Fidel Castro liquidated a bloody dictatorship, he was Cuba’s most popular politician of all time and came to power with the false promises of democracy and a commitment to the religion. He will be remembered for dismembering families and sending their children to schools in the countryside, the exodus of more than two million Cubans, the hardships of a people overshadowed and disposed to immense sacrifices.

From the initial dispossession of the great owners, he continued with the small ones during the Revolutionary Offensive of 1968. Among his immense unproductive works: the failed Ten Ton Sugar Harvest of 1970, the destruction of the sugar industry that forged the Cuban nationality and of all agriculture with the uprooting of the peasants. For the waste of resources from the Soviet Union and the socialist camp. For not having invested Hugo Chavez’s petrodollars in the capitalization of the destroyed or antiquated industry.

Fidel Castro curtailed rights, credited the state with granting universal education and healthcare, when in fact this was paid for with the contributions of all workers. He left a weak economy, misery-level salaries and pensions, a dual monetary system, large debts accumulated since 1986, and a social fabric devoid of high ethical and moral values, a pride of the Cubans for centuries.

Fidel Castro will be remembered for the executions and long prison sentences. For punishing those who thought differently from the official opinions with agricultural work and expulsion from their jobs. For the surveillance and stalking by State Security, the informants and the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. By the impossibility of attending a university because the universities were “only for the revolutionaries.”

Time will not forget that he was about to provoke a nuclear conflagration in October 1962, his support of guerrillas in Latin America and wars abroad, his persecution of homosexuals, his ban on miniskirts and the Beatles until the end of the 1980s, and on the practice of religion and tourism until 1992.

Raúl Castro inherited the ruins that he helped create. He mentioned the need for structural changes and concepts in 2007, which he reduced to the updating of the failing economic and social system. But he acknowledged that “the fundamental obstacle we have faced, as we predicted, is the burden of an outdated mentality, which forms an attitude of inertia, or lack of confidence in the future,” in his Report to the Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in April 16, 2016.

Ten years after the inevitable abandonment of absolute power, outside the Cuban archipelago, Fidel Castro is credited with the positive collaboration of doctors, teachers and technicians abroad. With the high rates of healthcare and education, achieved with the sacrifice and low quality of life of Cubans for 57 years.

The worn-out old man is kindly visualized, thanks to the process of cleaning up his nefarious image undertaken by Raúl Castro with the opportunities offered by the international community, the popes and eminences of various religions, the relationship with the United States, collaboration with the European Union, and the cancellation of debts. Economic interests have played an important role, but also the general president has the space to open up citizen participation in decision making.

Raul’s actions after Fidel’s death in compelling Cubans to sign an Oath to the Commander’s Words could strengthen the stagnation, or he could use them to reverse it: “Revolution is a sense of the historical moment. It is changing everything that must be changed. It is full equality and freedom. Is to be treated and to treat others as human beings,” Fidel said in his speech of May 1, 2000.

The high attendance of the population to the extensive and pompous funeral rites is a sign of the usual compulsion of students, workers, peasants and members of the so-called organizations of the masses and civil society, as well as the mobilization of the hundreds of thousands of party members and Youth communists, military agencies, ex-combatants and people who really did admire him.

However, the authorities should recognize the real feelings of the majority of Cubans and undertake radical changes.

The Ubiquitous Dictator / Cubanet, Miriam Leiva

Cubanet, Miriam Leiva, Havana, 6 December 2016 — Raul Castro wants Cubans to commit their support to major economic restrictions in 2017, during the complex period of the transfer of power from the so-called historic generation, through the signing of an oath to the definition of the Revolution and Socialism promulgated by the deceased leader, using the slogans “the permanent teaching of Fidel is that yes we can,” and “life continues.”

Fidel Castro prevented his physical permanence after death. The body was cremated. His tomb, apparently modest, in a rock from the Sierra Maestra, is a representation of strength and durability. There will be no monuments, statues, plazas nor allegorical streets, according to the Commander’s own decision. continue reading

Raul Castro announced that he will present proposed legislation for this for approval by the next session of the National Assembly. However, Fidel Castro will be omnipresent through the recurrence of his phrases and actions in discourse and in posters. During the days since his death on 25 November he has been mentioned in the media at the same level as José Martí, [the national hero whom Cubans of all stripes call] “the Apostle” of Cuba, and invoked as Father of the Fatherland, displacing Carlos Manuel de Cespedes.

Raul Castro deftly focused his farewell speech, given at Antonio Maceo Plaza in Santiago de Cuba on 3 December, on “yes we can,” based on the determination of Fidel to bring his proposals to fruition, to infect his followers, to find solutions and to overcome great obstacles.

Fidel spoke the words sworn by the participants in the funeral rites, placed next to his tomb, and that will be invoked permanently by the authorities, on 1 May 2000, when the Special Period had been ongoing for nearly a year, and a few months after Hugo Chavez assumed the presidency of Venezuela.

He had had time to work with his soulmate on help for the Cuban economy and expansion through Latin America and the Caribbean, but achieving this would possibly require changes in the concepts expressed to date and the methods utilized so far.

So the crisis provoked then, by the loss of the subsidies from the Soviet Union and the Socialist Camp, now comes from the loss of aid from Venezuela, both the result of the waste of resources on mega-plans rather then economic needs.

Fidel left Raul his words to confront the economic situation, the hidden intentions of the hardliners, and the disgust of a population exhausted by privations and unmet promises. His major legacy is that “socialism is irrevocable” according to the Constitution. As Fidel explained in May of 2002, Bush demanded that Cuba change its political and social system, and in response there were two months of large demonstrations, the National Assembly approved amending the constitutions, and eight million Cubans signed their names to it, through different mass organizations.

Fidel did not mention it as a cause of the expansion of the peaceful opposition movement throughout the country, in organizations of journalists, librarians, doctors, independent educators and the Varela Project, which was repressed in March of 2003, with 75 prisoners of conscience condemned to long prison terms, in a process that came to be known as The Black Spring.

Fidel acknowledged that everything is revocable, but being part of the Constitution, it can only be revoked by the National Assembly of People’s Power. They decided to declare the socialist character of the Revolution irrevocable, which means “that to revoke the socialist character there has to be a revolution, or rather a counterrevolution… including a legal takeover of the government by the enemies of the Revolution, leaving them a theoretical clause: go to the Assembly and being the majority… and then doing the same, collect the millions of signatures, which they can never do, and declare by decree, revoking by decree, socialism.” (from One Hundred Hours With Fidel, Conversations with Ignacio Ramonet).

Achieving a National Assembly majority would face the challenge that the electoral system in Cuba makes it impossible for people to be candidates without the recommendation of the Communist Party.*

Raúl Castro, who has stated his plan to retire in 2017, will have to resolve the obstacles posed by the hardline leaders at the same time he deals with his replacement in the Councils of State and of Ministers in 2018. As the first secretary of the Communist Party, surrounded by his military, he will maintain the maximum power to direct and support the handing off of power to those who will not have the aura of having fought in the Revolution. He could use Fidel’s words that “revolution is to change everything that needs to be changed” to promote his limited reforms, apparently obstructed by the conservatives.

The general will have to reformulate the “updating of the economic and social model” with relaxation of the tight controls through real changes to free up agriculture and self-employment, to streamline the management of state enterprises, and to simplify legislation and decision making at all levels, with an emphasis on rapid approval of foreign investments.

Before the end of the 2016 concluding session of the National Assembly, where the general-president reports on the failure to achieve the 2% GDP growth planned, and even the 1% later projected in July, perhaps there will be new measures to cope with the recession in 2017, and the demand for renewed “heroism” following the spirit of Fidel.

The policy followed by the new US president, Donald Trump, could stimulate the hard line leaders if he reverses the measures taken by Barack Obama and obstructs the advance of reformist elements. The just demand for respect for human rights and space for the opposition could have counterproductive effects, if hardliners remain in positions of strength as they have during the previous 55 years of failures.

*Translator’s note: In fact, candidates can propose themselves for election without Party support, but the Party prepares all the election materials. Campaigning is illegal and candidates are presented entirely by officially prepared single page biographies, posted in windows. For two 2015 candidates, this meant biographies that stated they were “counterrevolutionaries.” They both lost, but one received 19% of the votes in his polling place, to the winning candidate’s 28% (in first round elections).

Cuban State Security Interrogates And Threatens Young LGBTI Leader / Cubanet, Alejandro Tur Valladares

Cubanet, Alejandro Tur Valladares, Havana, 12 December 2016 – Dr. Nelson Gandulla Diaz, a national delegate to the Cuban Foundation for LGBTI Rights, headquartered in Cienfuegos, was interrogated by Cuban State Security officials after being cited to appear at the offices of Emigration and Aliens on 10 December.

Gandulla said that the interrogation began at 9:00 in the morning and continued to 11:30 AM. He was questions by an official who called herself Patricia, and Captains Ihosvani and Angel.

According to the activist, the agents wanted to investigate his numerous work trips outside the country and whether some NGO financed his activities and who he met with. Particular emphasis was given to asking about his presumed ties to the Colombian organization Affirmative Caribbean and the Czech organization People in Need.

The doctor said that one of those present told him that the organizations that he works for, according to his interrogator, use their discourse to attack the official National Center of Sex Education and its director, Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuba’s current ruler.

After confirming that Gandulla was not a “collaborator” with the purposed of the political commissars who were questioning him, the conversation changed in tone. “They threatened me, they told me that continuing my activities on behalf of the Cuban LGBTI community was not consistent with what could happen to me and to my family.”

According to Gandulla, a leader of the Foundation, the threats included prohibitions on holding activities in his home, under penalty of going to prison.

Mariela Castro’s Disrespect in New York / Cubanet, Jorge Angel Perez

Cubanet, Jorge Ángel Pérez, Havana, 1 December 2016 — A cable from the Cuban press agency Prensa Latina, written by Waldo Mendiluza, warned me that the sexologist, parliamentarian, and daughter of Raul Castro, was in New York.

According to the cable, the director of Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) spoke to the United nations about the social justice that distinguished the Revolution that triumphed in 1959, and also the way in which this “generous politician” was dealing with the rights of Cuba’s LGBTI community. continue reading

According to the cable, Mariela praised the transformations on the island, at all levels, during the nearly six decades of the “Revolution” in power, and added that these developments contributed to the Cuban population being much more open to an understanding of social justice, facilitating this kind of work against homophobia and other prejudices.

The assertion that “this scenario means that, even when there are problems, they are not expressed through violence, with exceptions, as happens in other countries with major advances in legislation in the matter of the rights of the LGBTI community,” is odd.

And the oddity is that again, this official discourse is more interested in defending things, that is the “Revolution,” rather than persons, when it should be the exact opposition, and it seems disrespectful to me. No object deserves more respect than a person.

As we have known for a long time, respect is one of man’s greatest virtues. No wonder Zeus sent his son Hermes to teach men respect and justice, and this is what the homosexual community in Cuba most needs: respect and justice.

It is thoughtless to say that violence against homosexuals is less in Cuba than in the rest of the world. To forget that homosexuals have suffered from violence is thoughtless. To forget that homosexuals have been been victims of institutional homophobia is thoughtless. It is impolitic not to recognize that the “Revolution” did not care for the integrity and dignity of lesbians, gays and transexuals. We need to talk about this every day and name those responsible.

It is insolent to once again try to care for institutions, things, instead of protecting those men and women who prefer, each one of those days, those like themselves. Nothing can advance if praising the “goodness” of a “revolution” marginalizes homosexuals.

It is counterproductive to defend the politics of a revolution that created concentration camps for homosexuals, that expelled them from the universities, and called them “deviant.” It is odd that the voice singing of this “policy of vindication” is a heterosexual woman who doesn’t know the suffering of those she “represents” and “defends.”

In Cuba there is violence against homosexuals and to deny it is embarrassing. In this country they continue to be repressed, and hate crimes are not solved. In Cuba, the moral judgment of its institutions remains opposed to freedom. I, for one, have not seen the documentary “Mariela Castro’s March: Cuba LGBTI,” which was presented at the United Nations on 17 November in the presence of the director of CENESEX, and broadcast on HBO on 28 November.

It would be fair to put it on Cuban television in primetime. It was presented at the last Festival of New Latin American Cinema, albeit with some discretion, and could not be expected to act otherwise if the testimonies of some homosexuals who were offended by the homophobic policies of the “Cuban revolution” appear on the tape.

That is not, apparently, the fate of “Santa and Andres,” a film whose main subject, according to its director, is “freedom, freedom, freedom”; that’s disrespectful, as is the fact that Mariela Castro will use her visit to New York to do some shopping.

That day a friend wrote telling me he had seen her at The Home Depot where apparently she was trying to buy lightbulbs, I guess to light her home. And I wonder if she decided to buy the same energy saving bulbs I am forced to buy.

Mariella Castro buys lightbulbs in Manhattan, despite the fact that in an interview on Cuban television conducted by the journalist Cristina Escobar, she assured the viewers that her salary doesn’t last her to the end of the month.

The Golden Dream of A Prostitute / Cubanet, Gladys Linares

prostitucion_malecon-1
Cubanet, Gladys Linares, Havana, 5 December 2016 — I don’t remember exactly how much time had passed since I’d seen Cristina, but it must have been more than three years, because today, when I saw her at the home of a mutual friend and asked about her daughter, who had caused her so many headaches, she responded, very content, “She’s good, calm, married and has a son who is about to turn two.”

When Cristina turned 16 and was studying in high school, she started to change radically. At first she made up the story that she was studying with some classmates, and was late or that she slept over at some girlfriend’s house. And so, little by little, until she stopped showing up some night at all, although she continued in high school and some teachers said she was a good student.

Then she left school and started to disappear more often, sometimes even for a week. Desperate, her mother went out looking for her and tried everything to discipline her, from persuasion to violence, but without results. According to a friend, the young woman said she didn’t continue her studies because even if she graduated she would not be able to meet her basic economic needs, and that what she needed was “a yuma [foreigner] to be able to live well.” continue reading

Among her clients was a Spaniard three times her age. This gentleman wanted to meet her mom and came to collect her at home. The girl ended up pregnant. The Spaniard repaired the house, which was in very bad conditions. When the child was born he married her and came by even more often. He took her to live in Spain for a time, but she couldn’t adapt. His family lived there, his kids, his grandkids — some of them older than she was — and she didn’t feel comfortable among them.

Then, he bought her a mansion in La Vibora, on Santa Catalina Avenue. It had land with fruit trees, a swimming pool, servants and it was peaceful. The Spaniard even bought a car for when he was in Cuba, and when her husband was gone she had a chauffeur.

Although I can’t think that this is what Cristina as a mother would have wanted for her daughter, the truth is that at least the young woman is not spending her nights in the streets looking for clients, being extorted by pimps or police or risking going to jail at any moment.

This story of the life of a prostitute is not the happiest, but in today’s Cuba, this has become the golden dream of a prostitute. Nor is it the exception: many young women come to the oldest profession to escape the poverty and the homelessness our population faces.

For years, Fidel Castro thundered that the Revolution had ended gambling and prostitution, “the evils of the capitalist society,” although later he was forced to publicly recognize its existence: “Our prostitutes are the healthiest and best educated in the world,” said Castro, which is also a lie.

And with the economic crisis that began in the ’90s, the so-called “special period in times of peace,” prostitution spreads like wildfire. Today, thousands and thousands of young people throughout the country turn to this practice to satisfy their economic needs and/or their anxiousness to emigrate. Surprisingly, the hookers are not looked badly on by a broad sector of the population, but in many cases are admired, because in general they display a higher standard of living that is possible in Cuba on the salary of a job.

Independent Reporters Arrested Are Threatened With Trial / Cubanet

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Cubanet, Vladimir Turró Páez, Havana, 3 December 2016 — The independent journalists Manuel Guerra Pérez and Lisbey Lora, arrested this last Monday by the United Territorial Investigations of the San Jose Police in the province of Mayabeque, have been threatened with going to trial, according to information from their families.

The two reporters were arrested by State Security when they made a tour of the town of San Jose, searching for stories to publish in the “Mayabeque Cimarron” bulletin, which they work for. continue reading

Paula Perez Leiva, Manuel’s mother, said that her son told her during a ten-minute visit to the police station that they would be brought to court for exercising their work as reporters.

“He told me, that the authorities, in addition to wanting to send them to prison, are demanding they turn over the laptop and printer they use to produce the bulletin,” said Perez Leiva.

Manuel and Lisbey are the principle managers of the independent bulletin, “Mayabeque Cimarron,” supported by the Cuban Institute for the Freedom of Expression and the Press (ICLEP). The bulletin is distributed free in the province, in a four-page format, with stories about the events of the place.

The journalist Rosa Aviles, who accompanied Manuel Guerra’s mother on the visit, said that the two arrestees are very pale because they are kept locked in a cell without any drinkable water and no sunlight.

The reporter warned that the ICLEP correspondents were well known by the town officials and had already been arrested previously on several occasions for distributing the newsletter in the area.

“This is the third time they arrested them, and in particular Manuel, whom they even wanted to beat up,” she explained.

Did He Disappear, Or Was He Gotten Rid Of? / Cubanet, Jose Daniel Ferrer

Cubanet, Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, Santiago do Cuba, 29 October 2016 — The top headline in the nightly news on the Castro family’s private television — the only television permitted in our country – on October 28^th this year, was: “Cubans are paying tribute to Camilo Cienfuegos on the 57^th anniversary of his physical disappearance.” Then we see leaders, the military, workers and students, all of them in the service of the family who own the television and who also own everything in Cuba, – when a few people own everything, the rest don’t even own their own lives – scatter flowers in the sea or in rivers in homage to the brave and much-loved guerilla. Lázaro Expósito, Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in the province of Santiago de Cuba, and his entourage, distributed their flowers in the contaminated Santiago Bay.

Was Camilo lost at sea? Or, did Fidel Castro make him disappear? For most Cubans, the second possibility seems more likely. My father, Daniel Ferrer, fought in Column 9 under the command of Huber Matos, and, with me still in primary school, he told me that Camilo hadn’t fallen into the sea, that that was just a story. He never explained to us why he said that. Since I was a kid I have never wanted to be deceived or used. From the 5^th grade on, I never again “threw flowers for Camilo.” They haven’t found any trace of the light aircraft which, supposedly, crashed into the sea. Will we need a diver like the one who discovered the wreckage of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s plane? continue reading

If Camilo was, and I think it is true, a brave, intelligent and sincere man who fought for the restoration of democracy to the Cuban people – the great majority of Cubans who fought against Batista thought that they were fighting to restore the 1940 constitution, never imagining that they were fighting for one family to become owners of the whole nation – it is logical to think that, when he saw the disastrous road along which Castro was leading the Revolution, he would have expressed his disagreement, or, at the very least, Fidel and Raúl would have imagined that it would not be easy to manipulate him and, in either case, would have decided to get rid of him. And if that is what happened, he certainly does deserve flowers, respect, admiration and justice. But not that we should participate in the Castros’ farce of casting flowers on the sea.

If, on the other hand – and I don’t think it’s true – Camilo was another docile instrument in the hands of the Stalin of Birán (Fidel Castro’s birthplace), always ready to obey orders, even though the orders converted his country into a nation of slaves, and he really disappeared in an airplane accident over the sea, after Huber Matos’ arrest, then it’s the best thing that could have happened to him. In that way, he died clean, without having on his shoulders the weight of the tyranny’s subsequent grave and continuous crimes And, if that’s how it was, he deserves neither flowers nor admiration.

But, I do think that he deserves flowers, respect, admiration, and justice. And for that, I do not throw flowers into the sea. One day, we will know where his remains are. I don’t know why, but whenever they speak of Camilo, or of other friends and victims of the Castros, even inluding the Argentinian communist who executed so many Cubans in Havana’s La Cabaña fortress, I remember Lev Trotsky, Sergei Kirov, Lev Kámenev and Gregory Zinoviev, among other victims of Joseph Stalin’s purges.

They say there is no proof that Stalin ordered Kirov’s assassination, or that Castro got rid of Camilo. But what we do know is that Stalin did not like to be upstaged by anyone, and that the Castros even stick people away and out of sight if they seem to be the slightest bit “difficult.” Kirov and Camilo seemed to be malcontents. Those who want to have everything, do everything to control everything, and then they tell whatever whoppers suit them. But, in Stalin’s time, there was no internet.

Translated by GH

Why Do We Cubans Put Up With All This? / Cubanet, Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces

Cuban protester arrested by State Security officials, December 10th, 2014. (AP)

Cubanet, Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces, Guantanamo, Cuba, 3 November 2016 — In talking to fellow countrymen and foreigners, the question comes up: Why do we Cubans have put up with so much abuse from the Castros?

The question is raised because of the discrimination to which we have been, and are still subject, to the existence of a dual currency system, excessive prices for goods and services, and the indiscriminate repression at the slightest sign of dissidence.

But those who ask this question are forgetting inescapable historic circumstances, because the anthropological damage caused to the Cuban people by the Castros has its origins in the Sierra Maestra guerilla warfare and in secrecy. We also should not forget that the Cuban Revolution enjoyed the overwhelming sympathy and support of the people because its political and economic programme was backed up by the restoration of democracy. Measures which, with obvious popular impact in a country where the people, up until then, had been seen as an entelechy, guaranteed an extraordinary level of support for Castroism. Taking advantage of that, it was able to convert the slightest criticism into a counter-revolutionary act, thus legitimising repression “in the name of the people” although those who are repressed are a part of the people. continue reading

In April 1961, a group of excited militiamen accepted Fidel Castro’s proclamation of a socialist revolution, “in the name of and on behalf of the Cuban people”, without which nobody would have conceded that right, on the corner of 23rd and 12th (opposite the cemetery in Vedado, Havana). A typical example of manipulation of the masses.

Absolute control of education and the media, subjugating everyone to surveillance, ranging from telephones and correspondence, up to their private lives, making all family or individual advancement indissolubly linked to loyalty to the regime, was, among other practices, sufficient to establish Castro’s rigid control of society. When, in October 1965, the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party was created, another leftist dictatorship was politically formalized, which had, de facto, existed since 1959.

Those who dare to stand up to the totalitarian regime pay for it by death in combat, being lined up and shot, thrown in jail, sent into exile, or ostracized.

In the 70’s, the advance guard of a peaceful opposition made itself felt. It began to knit together a new awareness and, although the regime continued to enjoy popular support, the discontent was evident, as was demonstrated at the Mariel embassy and what happened afterwards. (The April 1980 occupation of the Peruvian embassy, the confrontation with the Castro government, and the subsequent mass exodus from the port of Mariel of some 125,000 Cubans to Miami.)

The Special Period was another turning point. (the extended economic crisis from 1989, through the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union). Progress in the independent civil society was still going slowly, although more visibly. Its protagonists contributed to the revealing of another Cuba, which did not exist in the Cuban official media. Radio Martí, broadcast from the United States, made an enormous contribution to that.

Fidel Castro’s posture, which was to refuse to admit the de facto failure of socialism, which he was faithfully copying, and which was going hand in hand with shortages, the exodus from the country of important cultural, sporting and political figures, the strengthening of the mass exodus of the Cuban people, the emergence of marked social differences and phenomena such as tourist apartheid, decriminalization of the dollar and prostitution, increased popular discontent.

From then on, the civil society began to grow rapidly. The ground they had gained was thanks to their courage and persistence. Repression increased, but because of that, the people know that the police beat up and lock up men and women whose sole offence is to peacefully demand the observance of the human rights, which the Castro regime repeatedly violates on a massive scale.

All of this occurs with the complicity of the State Prosecutor’s Office and the tribunals. The Cuban opposition lacks any rights. Along with the complicity of the state institutions, can be added the no less shameful connivance of numerous governments whose latest cynical act has been to approve Cuban membership of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Some ask, how much longer? Forgetting that to be a peaceful opposition requires a large dose of humility and courage. Anyone can shoot a policeman in the back, as did the members of Castro’s 26^th of July movement, dedicated to overthrowing Batista, or place a bomb in a cinema or public place. If the peaceful opposition started to do that, if they took up arms – if they obtained them even though one of the first measures of the dictatorship was to eliminate arms factories – then Castro and his inevitable front men would go crying to their accomplices in the UN to denounce the “terrorists” and put an end to them with the consent of the governments who praise democracy while they support Castroism.

But it’s just one day at a time. In spite of the defamatory campaigns, the discrimination and abuse, the people are watching. It’s a long-term struggle, but at least the opponents don’t have the death of any other Cuban on their consciences. Their achievement is that they are fighting peacefully, even for the cowards who hit them, discriminate against them, and penalize them.

Translated by GH

Opponents of the Cuban Regime React to the Election of Trump / Cubanet, Ernesto Perez Chang

Clockwise from top left: Eliecer Avila, Antonio Rodiles, Martha Beatriz Roque, Laritza Diversent, Jose Daniel Ferrer, Berta Soler

Cubanet, Ernesto Perez Chang, Havana, 9 November 2016 – The elections in the United States, with the victory of the Republican Donald Trump and the defeat of the Democrat Hillary Clinton, contrary to the predictions of most polls, has captured the attention of the world’s public opinion in recent hours due to the decisive nature of United States policy in the international arena.

The normalization of relations between the governments of Cuba and the United States and the diverse opinions generated by the lengthy diplomatic process and packages of measures aimed at easing the embargo, implemented by current US president Barack Obama, have given rise to a broad spectrum of opinions within Cuban civil society, such that some of the main opposition leaders on the island have expressed their views to CubaNet to the election results announced at dawn on Wednesday.

Antonio Rodiles, coordinator of Estado de Sats (State of Sats) and organizer of the We All March campaign, says: “We expect consistency of those who, within Cuba, maintained a policy against Trump and were confident in Hillary’s victory. (…) Maybe difficult times will come for the process of normalization of relations with Cuba and the continuity of Obama’s program. We expect another direction in the dialogue and a president who places the issue of respect for human rights and freedom of expression as a priority, a determinant, at any negotiating table.” continue reading

Jose Daniel Ferrer, a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, UNPACU, argues that the electoral decision does not mean negative effects on the relations between the two countries: “I do not think the difference is notable. The American people have chosen. The new president will do what suits the citizens of the United States and, as he should, prioritize the interests of his nation (…). The candidate the people believed to be better has won (…). (Regarding Cuba) common sense in the process of normalization of relations will prevail and we expect a strong hand with the dictatorship because (Cuba) is a regime contrary to the interests US, it is a regime that no American candidate would never agree to in the style of Venezuela or China. (…) We expect better relations with the new government.”

The regime opponent Martha Beatriz Roque said: “It seems that the American people have passed the bill to the Democratic Party. Many people are concerned about the ways in which Trump has expressed himself during his campaign, but I think that concern should be minimized because surely the Republican Party will take control of the situation. (…) With regards to his impact on the Cuba issue I think there are measures taken by Obama that are irreversible. Especially because America is a democracy, not like Cuba, which is governed by a totalitarian. It will not be easy to give a twist to relations with the island. However, I think this gentleman will be educated by his advisers enough to not make the mistakes of the previous president.”

Eliecer Avila, activist with the movement Somos+ (We Are More), confessed to not having had a previous position in favor or against any candidate, although he said about his expectations: “I didn’t support either of them one hundred percent. In Hillary Clinton I saw very positive support for Obama’s policy (toward Cuba). (…) Donald Trump has shown some strong positions but I do not think that will change the policy of his predecessor but, apparently, will negotiate from other positions.”

The lawyer Laritza Diversent , founder of Cubalex, believes that the elections were a reflection of the opinion of the American people and believes that Cuba will occupy an important place in the policy of President-elect: “The process of normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba is irreversible. (…) There is a responsibility to the legacy of Obama. The United States, with its current policy, is leading positive changes. Many challenges are imposed on the new president. We should also consider the views of the US Congress and other powers in that nation.”

Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, believes it is too early to make predictions about the directions Trump will take regarding policies on Cuba: “We have to wait. I have never preferred one or the other because there is a reality: it is not about the Cuban President but about the President of the United States. Someday I want Cuba to be able to elect a president in a way similar way to that in the United States. (…) We don’t know about Trump, we have to wait. There may be changes but I do not know, I’d rather wait. ”

The election of the 45^th President of the United States has not only launched numerous questions in the world’s most important economic sectors. For Cuba, undergoing a process of rapprochement with the United States that could help find a solution to economic stagnation, for the government, or a way for democratization, for civil society, the policies toward the island that will be decisive in the immediate future will be designed by Trump.

“Wi-fi is Killing My Business” / Cubanet, Pablo Gonzalez

Young men in Cuba connected to a Wi-Fi network (Photo: EFE)

Cubanet, Pablo Gonzalez, Havana, 31 October 2016 — “I work as a network administrator in a company in Havana, but everyone knows that in this country the salary is not enough to live on, you always have to have something under the table. So the bakers steal the flour and oil to sell it on the street, and I use the internet in the same way. The problem is that I am losing my clients thanks to the wifi zones,” says the young computer expert, who – like everyone interviewed for this story – doesn’t want to reveal his name.

With no viable way to access the internet in Cuba, for many years Cubans had to find alternate ways to surf the web with the help of the black market.

Computer experts working in state businesses with internet connections managed to share the connections with users “on the street” for a price that ranged from around 70 to 100 dollars a month. continue reading

It wasn’t until 2014 that ETECSA (the state phone company) opened navigation rooms for a price of $4.50 US an hour [more than a week’s pay for the average worker], and in mid-2015 wifi zones were opened for two dollars an hour – the current price of internet in Cuba, where the average monthly wage is now about $23 US.

These days, the business of selling dial-up internet connections (an obsolete technology with 56k modems and a phone line) continues, but it’s losing ground with the opening of the wifi zones.

Another computer expert talked about his experience in this business: “I worked for many years as a computer expert in a trading company that had internet access. There was one computer connected to the internet and it was inside an iron cage with a key. The authorized person had to leave their name on an incident sheet that was next to the PC keyboard. They also had to write down anything unusual that happened while they were surfing.”

He continued: “Over the years they were giving access to other computers within the company. So I had access to the internet and started to share it under the table. Although the connection was dial-up, my customers were willing to pay 100 dollars a month, or 20 if it was only for international email. I always had between 5 and 10 users. With the earnings I was at least able to clothe my family and eat well.”

Asked why he stopped working for the state, he responded, “I had to quit because I started to lose customers to the ETECSA wifi zones, and the 30 dollar a month salary they were paying me wasn’t even enough for transportation. Big surprise, people prefer expensive and fast internet to expensive and slow internet.”

“I want ETECSA to stop opening wifi zones. It’s killing my business,” he added.

Each state work center with Internet access is subject to “strict compliance” laws and must prepare on operating document where the working and monitoring is explained. Despite this, and their business being in decline, many network administrators still risk losing their jobs to sell the internet illegally.

Cell phone with Nauta site open (Photo: Pablo González)

Cuba has a connectivity rate of 5%, which is reduced to 1% for broadband. It is the country with the lowest rate of connectivity in Latin America. In addition, Internet access has always been a delicate issue with extreme supervision by the government. In the late ’90s when some companies had to have it to do their work, the control mechanisms began.

Meanwhile, the service currently sold by the state leaves much to be desired among the island’s netizens, due to its high price and poor performance; however it is 50 times faster than the archaic dial-up.

Infomed, the information network for health professionals, was the first institution to provide access to international email and domestic websurfing. It began more than 20 years ago, only for doctors, and in 2015 included internet access after the opening of the Wi-Fi zones.

But this is also sold, and currently Infomed accounts have a black market value of 25 to 30 dollars. Acquiring an account is relatively easy, as they can be found on the classified ads site Revolico.

“I paid $25 a month for an Infomed account, but since they started the Nauta email service, I dropped it. It is better to have the mail on mobile, it can be checked from anywhere, I save more money and I can speak on wifi through IMO, which cannot be done with a telephone modem connection,” said an elderly lady who no longer wants to use a dial-up connection, even from the comfort of her own home.

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