Author: Fernando Dámaso

In Havana in the 1950s stores, cinemas, theaters, clinics and hospitals had great open doors. (With the advent of air conditioning they were alternately opened and closed to maintain the pleasant indoor temperature.) This allowed citizens to easily come and go without unnecessary crowding and inconvenience. Back then, which according to the current official propaganda were “the bad old days,” doormen (who were to be found only in places like hotels, cinemas, theaters and the like) were there to welcome you and invite you to come it, or to take your ticket if it was a cinema or theater. You could go in with wallets and handbags and you did not have to check them or suffer the humiliation of having to hand them over to someone else as though you were a criminal.

Over time things changed. The grand doors were closed, leaving only small openings through which to enter and exit, which is now done under the watchful eye of a doorman, whose job it was to keep you from entering with wallets or handbags, and to check your purchases to make sure they matched your sales receipt. The smile has disappeared, replaced with a disinterested “Come back soon,” said perhaps in hope of a tip that never comes. Now that everything is so great — again, according to official propaganda — everything is behind metal bars. Even glass doors have matching metal ones, the kind that sometimes extend across the display windows, unless they have been replaced with concrete block walls or metal pull-down shutters that seal them off entirely.

This is an example of the secrecy syndrome applied to businesses and other public spaces, one in which the first concern is to hide and then later complicate access. An innovation of tropical socialism! Let us hope that new private businesses will do away with this ridiculous custom so that once again these great doorways — open to all or repeatedly opening and closing to retain all the air-conditioning — might once again return to the city.

7 December 2013

Cuban authorities, instead of promoting the country’s development in a diversified manner, by applying science and intelligence to serious, systematic, and responsible work, have always gone about it by constant improvisation, betting on this or that economic factor that could resolve all the problems in one go. That is, they tend to put all their eggs in one basket.

So in the early years they bet on the unlimited support of the Soviet Union and, when some political differences with their key leaders arose, on the Harvest of Ten Million, which disrupted the whole country, enthroning economic chaos as a way of government and laying the foundation for the subsequent liquidation of the sugar industry.

When that failed they doubled down, letting the Soviet specialists virtually run the economy, implementing State Committees in Cuba in the image and likeness of those in their own country, and incorporated in aid to the other socialist countries, grouped within the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CAME). It was the era of the Central Market, only one for the whole country, of the mini markets and stores offering products at high prices, well out of reach of existing salaries.

With the disintegration of the socialist bloc, they concentrated on the accelerated search for oil in the national subsoil and surrounding waters, until the miraculous appearance of the Venezuelan patrons with their large subsidies, which, however, have never reached the previous astronomical amounts provided for nearly thirty years.

When those disappeared, with an unstable situation causing economic and political complications in the Bolivarian country, they hastily resumed the search for oil, this time on the Gulf seabed, with the participation of foreign companies, which — after the explorations did not yield quick results, and due to the uncertainty of their investments — have withdrawn.

Facing the new unknown, the bet is now focused on the so-called Mariel Special-Development Zone (ZEDM), located west of Havana, which, according to the senior leadership, will become the solution to all our economic problems starting in 2015, when the Panama Canal expansion becomes operational. We have already heard these siren songs many times, and in the end that’s all they are, siren songs.

The interesting thing is that the small openings and closings in the domestic economy moved in concert with the ebbs and flows of foreign subsidies. While receiving socialist aid, they never spoke of nor permitted private work, with the exception of craft work, authorized originally in the Cathedral Square,then persecuted and decimated, moving to G Street and Primera Street, both in El Vedado, until ending up now, under the protection of the City Historian, on the old San Jose docks, primarily of interest to foreign tourists.

These subsidies ended, they appealed to small scale private work (in a few rudimentary trades) and authorized the Free Farmers Market, which lasted until the first bet on petroleum and the emergence of the Venezuelan patrons.

Given the insufficiency of the resources provided by the latter, they reestablished private work, not baptized “self-employment,” expanding the authorizations of some of the trades principally of the medieval court, allowing the rental of rooms in private homes, authorizing agriculture on leased lands, legalizing the buying and selling of houses and cars, relaxing the procedures for emigration and travel, and increasing the allowable size of private restaurants, snack bars, etc, rather than the absurd twelve seats.

The patron, Hugo Chavez, physically disappeared, and given the uncertainty of what might happen in Venezuela, they opened up some new trades, almost all in the areas of services, and there were relaxations in the social sector.

Now, with the great of Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM), the restrictions and prohibitions are returning, starting with the 3D movie rooms and the private shops. It’s the never ending story: one step forward and five back, “updating” according to Lenin.

If they never authorized these activities, as the authorities and their representatives allege, why, in full view of everyone, did they allow some citizens to invest their scarce resources in them? More than a political problem (it has reached the point of absurdity where they are claiming that 3D movies are a threat to national security), or an economic one (the private shops compete effectively with those owned by the state), it seems a simple act of government evil against the citizens they claim — in any international forum where they speak — that they are protecting. Perhaps as compensation, they have ironically, lately, added to the private activities authorized, the incredibly important one of “caretaker of public bathroom.”

You have to see it to believe it.

All these arbitrary acts, and many others that they surely will commit in the future, have a common denominator: the absence of a rule of law. Without this, the authorities act without any citizen control, at their free will, and often according to their personal whims. Until this situation is resolved and we return to being a republic based on democratic laws, nothing will change.

2 December 2013

For several years the Cuban economy has come up with some strange processes which raise questions and cause us to think. On the one hand there is talk of an interest in attracting foreign investment to jump-start the economy. Some of these investments — those from Russia, China, Vietnam, Brazil and Venezuela — have a certain selective political character. Along these lines is the recently approved Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM).

Spanish investment has been principally focused on the tourist industry and a few other sectors. Investment by Cuban-Americans has been ruled out, though they would logically and naturally be the group most interested. In spite of geographic proximity American investment has also been rejected in favor of establishing an import-export market and attracting tourists once the embargo is lifted.

On the other hand authorized investments by Cubans residing in the country have been limited to businesses of little importance which provide only subsistence incomes. Most of these have been primarily in the service sector, not in small and medium-sized industry, which it seems will continue to form the basis, along with “the great socialist state enterprises,” of the inefficient and failed governmental monopoly.

It is worth noting that, after the passage of legislation in accordance the the principles of the so-called economic “updating,” management control of these enterprises has been transferred from technocrats to high-ranking military officials retired from active service, to their family members and to individuals close to them.

For anyone who has read about the transitions in former socialist countries, starting with the former Soviet Union, the process will seem very familiar. The similarities between what happened there and what is happening here do not seem to be accidental. Rather, it all seems well-planned, with the aim of ensuring principal economic control in an inevitable process of transition.

These strange processes, as well as others being done under the table and behind the backs of citizens, indicate that the current authorities — no matter what they may say publicly — know socialism is a failure. They will not allow corrections to be made even though a profound change is necessary to get the country out of the abyss in which it finds itself and place it on the road to development.

However, since they share a high degree of responsibility for what has happened, they lack the political will to accept this. Instead, they attempt to gain time with tepid measures — mainly economic but some social — trying to create conditions so that whomever comes after them will respond to their own interests and assume the task of bringing about a happy ending in the style of China or Vietnam.

Fortunately though, as the old saying goes, “man proposes and God disposes.” No one knows for certain what is to come, but one might assume that new forces, which are already in the wings, will become part of the transition.

It will not happen as the current authorities, accustomed to rigid socialist planning and secretive five-year plans, have assumed. Rather, it will be a process of debates and exchanges with different sectors of society, which is desirable for peaceful development in an atmosphere of tolerance, mutual respect and civic responsibility if we are to avoid greater ills for the country.

It is necessary to keep paying attention to the changes being implemented, no matter how minimal they might be, as well as to their regulation, their progress and their set-backs. Perhaps we might then find the keys to moving closer to what is most possible and to a method for achieving it with the goal of not being surprised by events. Whether we like them or not, they will involve all Cubans, no matter what they think, no matter where they live.

27 November 2013

Since the introduction in early 1959 of the term bitongo* to refer to youths who voiced opposition to the newly formed regime, Cuban authorities have routinely used denigrating terms when referring to those who do not share their ideas or their proclivity to publicly express them.

Annexationists, Plattists, mercenaries, imperial lackeys, traitors, stateless, anti-Cuban and many other epithets have been extensively used for more than fifty-four years. They continue to be used even today as tools in campaigns to discredit opponents. The term most commonly employed, however, has been gusanos, or worms.

Gusanos were professionals, intellectuals, artists, workers and students who first said no and they are those who continue to say no. The term has become so ingrained in the public’s mind that many people use it indiscriminately, without thinking about its meaning, to refer to anything that veers from the official party line. For these people there is no such thing as someone who thinks differently; there are simply gusanos.

Inertia has led some opponents and dissidents to also use the term when referring to themselves or to others who sympathize with their ideas. A well-known woman, now deceased, who was opposed to the regime from its very beginnings, used to say with pride that she was a “protozoan worm.”

While not going such an extreme, the term’s usage continues to grow even today within Cuban society, throwing a log on the fire of division and political confrontation. It is the preferred term among defenders of the regime during disturbances carried out by students, workers, professionals, artists, housewives and others mobilized under the official banner of “an enraged people” who participate in “acts of repudiation” against the Ladies in White and other peaceful opposition figures.

The term anti-Cuban is reserved for those living overseas, wherever they may be, who carry out orders issued by “Miami’s anti-Cuban mafia.” In reality what exists in Miami is a powerful group of Cubans opposed to the government — a situation repeated in other cities around the world — just as there were Cubans opposed to the Batista dictatorship in the 1950s. It did not occur to anyone at that time to label them anti-Cuban because they were not that then nor are they that now. Politics is one thing; Cuba is something entirely different.

Distorting terminology to take advantage of the confusion this creates and generalizing disrepute has been a regular practice of Cuban authorities. This is not conducive to creating the climate of tolerance and mutual respect essential to producing the national dialogue that Cuba needs.

Translator’s note: Someone who is arrogant, haughty, vain, swell-headed; a bourgeois youth.

19 November 2013

These days, the authorities boast of having renegotiated their debts to Mexico, Japan, China and other countries, which, convinced that it would be very difficult to collect them, have forgiven them in part on the one hand and extended settlement periods for the rest for ten, fifteen, twenty and more years. Take whatever you can get, no matter how little.

What they do not say is that these new deadlines further mortgage the country, and transfer the obligation to pay to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who have had nothing to do with the substantial credits received, wasted and squandered on absurd projects and guerrilla adventures in Latin America and Africa, instead of having been used responsibly for the country’s development.

I don’t know if Russia participated in these renegotiations; a great deal was owed them when they were part of the former Soviet Union. In any event, the debt continues to be huge, despite what has been forgiven by some countries.

The sad thing is that continues to grow, because the authorities, accustomed for over half a century to living off of others, continuing to request credits, and some countries, to secure the payment of what they are owed, even within a few years, conceded. They bet on the future, convinced that a once again democratic government will settle its debts.

Ignoring what’s been forgiven, what was delivered as grants and gifted, Cuba’s foreign debt, according to data from its creditors, has now reached forty billion dollars. And official number the Cuban authorities have never divulged, keeping it hidden under the cloak of their habitual secrecy.

As a curious element it’s worth noting that, when they took power in 1959, the debt was only seven hundred eighty-eight million dollars.

14 November 2013

Some years ago, when they started granting licenses to engage in a few types of self-employment, some people who had been working in the underground economy to supply families with fresh and powdered milk, yogurt, butter and cheese, fish and seafood, meats, clothing and other products and articles, as well as serving meals from home, on hearing that they could now do this legally, told me that didn’t have the least bit of confidence in the government and would continue to do it in their own way.

They kept their word, and despite the persecutions, fines and forfeitures, still continue to do so. Given recent events involving some self-employed workers who are now prohibited from carrying out their activities, it seems that they were right.

This new step back by the authorities, one more in their continued retreat, is going to throw thousands of Cubans on the street, people who will now have to return to inventing some way to make a living and survive, with all the resources they invested lost, abandoned by the government that says it protects them.

As nobody accepts dying of hunger by decree, some are looking for new businesses, and others, the most optimistic, are returning to illegality, strengthening the development of the black market.

I don’t know if the authorities, worried about maintaining absolute control at all costs, have assessed the economic, social and political consequences of their latest blunder. With these absurd measures, to speak of progress shows a lack of respect for the citizenry and also strengthens the disrepute in which they are held by ordinary Cubans, who, in practice, respect them less every day.

A government entrenched in power for over half a century, keeping the same leaders in the top jobs, does not change: it only repeats itself, repeating its same mistakes.

11 November 2013

The existence in Latin America and the Caribbean of presidents closer to comic theater than politics is not an exclusive, since they have also existed and do exist in other regions of the terrestrial globe.

What happens around here is that these characters like to interpret their roles with an elevated dose of overacting: Mariano Melgarejo between 1864 and 1871 in Bolivia; Porfirio Diaz between 1876 and 1911 in Mexico; Juan Vicente Gomez between 1908 and 1935 and Marcos Perez Jimenez between 1952 and 1958 in Venezuela; Rafael Leonidas Trujillo between 1930 and 1961 in the Dominican Republic; Francois Duvalier between 1957 and 1971 in Haiti, and some others constitute the important historical benchmarks.

In the 21st century, in order not to break the tradition, there have emerged others, among those that stand out are Evo Morales in Bolivia and Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, in Venezuela.

As Chaves, now physically disappeared, for his characteristic histrionic and inimitable nature, deserves an individual study, I will only point out in passing that Morales, the native Aymaran, more fiction than reality, is capable of saying the greatest simplicities without the least blush, as if he were expressing transcendental truths (the one about chicken meat and homosexuality is priceless).

But I will stop on Maduro, who has exceeded them all, who himself converses with a Chavez converted into a bird (maybe the one from Twitter?), a bird that gives him instructions and tells him how to govern, which appears to him in the streets or on the wall of a Caracas Metro tunnel under construction.

Some days ago he created the government position of Vice Minister of Love and Supreme Wellbeing, and now we have the Day of Loyalty and Love for Chavez.  It seems that, besides suffering from hallucinations and visions from beyond, he has a fixation on the word love.  He seems to me to be re-reading 1984, the magnificent and terrifying novel by George Orwell, only now become reality.  Closer to a psychiatric hospital than the Miraflores Palace, this true bull in a china shop, like all good comic theater actors, always appears with something new to make us laugh, very superior to all that came before.

Without a doubt, all these presidents and others that I do not mention, chose the wrong careers: with magnificent conditions for the stage, they erroneously decided on politics, unfortunately for our nations.

Translated by mlk

7 November 2013

The closing, on 1 November, of the 3D movie rooms, and the ban, after 30 December, of private shops, deals a hard blow to self-employment. The authorities, once again (we remember “Operation Bird on a Wire,” “Operation Flowerpot,” and the liquidation of Free Farmers Markets in earlier years — all crackdowns on private enterprise), demonstrate their inability to compete with private property, even if it is nascent and must exist within absurd straitjackets, and the falsity of the so-called updates and changes to the economic model. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, and it wouldn’t be unusual for them to apply other or similar measures in the coming weeks. Time will tell.

Anchored in the past, dogmatic to the core, Marxism-Leninism and socialism fanatics, despite their more-than-proven failures, they are trying to survive (at least as long as they have a physical existence) in the closed feudal system they’ve turned the country into, light years away from the real world. The sad thing is that many citizens peacefully accept this arbitrariness, most often committed against their own neighbors, and they may even declare their support for them in some of the so-called “Public Opinion Polls,” which we are getting used to in the official press.

Forgetting the more then 54 years of failed improvisations and failed inventions, some who see a little hope in what was happening slowly, have received a real bucket of cold water. If the government intends, with the application of these measures, which respond only to the desire to demonstrate force and show who’s boss, it will gain followers and organize the country’s legal system, in which disorder is the greatest element, they are wrong again.

Once again, illegal activities and the black market will proliferate throughout the country, like before, simply because no one can force the citizens to starve to death and live in misery. Our young people, their life plans blocked by demonstrably incompetent authorities, choose exodus, like so many professionals, athletes and artists in Cuba; and as the lyrics of an old tango said, it will continue sliding down the slippery slope.

4 November 2013

When we talk among friends of the things we discuss in Cuba, some label me incredulous. I will tell you the reason, and try to explain my incredulity, in that they are too old (older than 54) listening to the old and new storytellers telling the same stories. Of course I’ve ripped the pages from many more calendars than they have.

They talk to me of some decentralization of power, of a little economic autonomy in the state enterprises, the reduction of bureaucracy, control of corruption, self-employment, flexibilizations and many other updates, and it makes me smile. The authorities, as a rule, like to show the carrot, but usually placed at an elusive height, adding many obstacles as well. This tactic has been used many times and has not changed, because so far they have been successful.

Some tell me now that the situation is the same, because everything has become very complicated, and the more responsible citizens question and demand something that didn’t happen before. This, according to them, has forced the authorities, even against their will, have to offer a little more, and also they have to compromise on some economic and social issues, never politics, because the update of that is never contemplated in their calculations.

These realities make hope flourish in some of the youngest (those who haven’t opted to leave) but, unfortunately, they are only elements in the struggle of the authorities to gain more time at the least cost possible. It’s good to remember that our authorities only know two speeds, first and reverse, and that there are others to move forward. When applying the first, and producing a slow movement, they are frightened and immediately shift into reverse to return to the starting point.  So it has been before and is repeated now with the private shops, the 3D movie rooms, bars and other businesses.

To expect serious changes and reforms that solve national problems, is not a part of the approved Guidelines. I have said and repeated to the old and new storytellers: Here there is no reform, there are only updates of the same model to make it more prosperous and sustainable. A word to the wise!

2 November 2013

Two pieces of news attract my attention these days: Cuba’s draft resolution against imperialist politics to be presented to the UN General Assembly today October 29, and that Cubans is among the top in the world in gender equality.

The first is repeated every year, updating the supposed damages inflicted by the blockade (the embargo) on Cuba. Now, after meticulous mathematical calculations of the various agencies and institutions, which have been published daily in the newspaper Granma, the figure rose to $1,157,327,000. It is striking how well the government economists can calculate the figures for the supposed damages of the blockade (the embargo), and yet have never been capable of calculating the damages from Cuban mis-governance, with the errors, improvisations, voluntarism and failures, that they have inflicted on the country over the last 54 years.

This shifting of the blame to another and laying all the responsibility for our misery entirely on their account is repeated every year. It’s beyond belief!

The second makes me laugh: that the World Economic Forum (WEF) makes this claim, putting Cuba in fifteenth place in gender equality globally among 136 countries evaluated because it has a high percentage of women in its parliament, shows how superficial they are.

The Cuban Parliament is a parliament in name only: all that its male and female deputies do — meeting twice a year for three days — is unanimously approve government decisions that, as a rule, have already been implemented before this formal approval. These deputies have nothing to do with those of other countries and are completely useless, simply members of the chorus.

It would be nice, before making this absurd claim, to ask our women about gender equality. Gentlemen of the WEF, please, a little more seriousness.

29 October 2013

The Cuban cartoonists, who publish their cartoons and works in the official media, seem to have signed an agreement, by which eighty percent of their satirical darts are directed against the empire and its lackeys, and the other twenty are partitioned between the treatment of general topics (peace, war, hunger, climate change, etc.), that does make anyone cringe, nor cause them personal problems or complicate their existence, plus some things and cases about irrelevant administrative leaders, bureaucrats, service employees, and so on.

Never has any politician at any level been touched with so much as the petal of a rose, although they have systematically demonstrated their ineptitude and incapacity to fill the jobs they occupy. They seem to be included in some clause of untouchables, together in a signed agreement. It is often said that political satire has been and is an important part of humor because it is a thermometer of politicians’ rights and wrongs.

In Cuba it was like this until the liquidation of freedom of the press by the new regime. The Liborio character created by Roberto de la Torriente, later the Bobo (Fool) character created by Eduardo Abela, and later, in the fifties, Loquito (Wacko) by Rene de la Nuez, showed, with salt and pepper, what was going on in our national life.

Other cartoonists did the same, having among the characters in their cartoons and work all the public figures, from the president of the day down to minor figures. Then, political humor was not persecuted nor punished. To review the thousands of caricatures published during the years of the Republic, is to take an interesting and instructive tour through this part of our history, which is impossible with the most recent, where reality has been kept hidden and distorted by spurious ideological interests.

To be able to do this, we have had to turn to publishers outside of Cuba, for the magnificent Cuban comedians living abroad.

Now that some pro-government journalists have dared to respectfully request a loosening of the current secrecy, it would also be advisable for some of these humorists to ask, also respectfully of course, to be allowed to reflect, from the humor side, the sad national reality and the many responsible for it.

26 October 2013

In the recently concluded Second Congress of the Hermanos Saiz Association (AHS), a government organization that brings together young artists from the art world, the three most repeated words were Fatherland, revolution and socialism.

Furthermore, most of the time were used together, as if the first had no life without the presence of the other two, which is absurd, since the Fatherland existed before the revolution and socialism, exists now, and will exist when the latter two no longer exist. The reason is very simple: the Fatherland is absolutely independent of them.

The concept of Fatherland is eternal and includes all Cubans, without exception, whatever they think and wherever they live, and is above politics and ideologies, which does not happen with revolution, which is just a temporary social phenomenon, generally violent, and socialism, also transitional, which is just one of several known social systems: slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and so on.

The use of these three artificially united concepts, is a long-standing government practice, intended to confuse the public and take them for a ride. It was denounced in 1998 by the late Bishop of Santiago de Cuba, Pedro Meurice, in his words prior to the Mass of Pope John Paul II in this city, but fifteen years have passed and the formula continues to be used by the authorities.

It’s a shame that young creators, who in all eras have represented societal forces of renewal, accept this manipulation and do not raise their voices against it. I am convinced that not all accept it (examples abound), but silence gives consent and, unfortunately, this is what has happened in this Congress, and what happened at the congress the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), and it will happen in the congress of the Workers Center of Cuba (CTC): words and more words and more of the same, unchanged.

Losing the opportunity to influence the economic, political and social life of the nation, wasting these few opportunities to be heard and, even more, to make demands to the authorities, does not reflect well on the Association or its members. Every day we see it demonstrated that, over here, the various congresses, organized and carried out under the control of the State, are only small enclosed oasis, so that participants feel they can breathe a little easier, in the great desert of national life.

22 October 2013

With regards to the adoption of the Mariel Special Development Zone Decree Law, it comes to mind that this idea of trying to solve the problems of the country not in a global way, but by creating regions and special plans, has been a tendency of the authorities since their earliest days in power.

We remember the declaration of the town of El Cano, as the first socialist town of Cuba and, later, that of another unimportant one as being the first town where money would not be needed. These constituted, at the time, childish utopias within the large adult utopia that has been the so-called Socialist Revolution, which has had very little of socialism and a great deal of voluntarism.

To these initial blunders, we have to add the failed Havana Cordon, the Ten Million Ton Harvest, the micro-jet bananas, the failed livestock cross-breeding plans, the Pharaonic harvests of pangola grass and pigeon peas, the windbreaks, the embankments on any nearby key, the Turquino Plan*, the Escambray Plan, and a great deal more economic and ecological nonsense.

Now, copying the Chinese brothers in turn (we lack originality), and after greatly criticizing them, the so-called Special Development Zones started to appear which, though they strengthen the creation of accelerated wealth in the chosen and controlled regions, they deform the economic map of the country, generating reas of extreme poverty, where people have no other option for survival than to emigrate to these new El Dorados, where all this rootlessness and loss of identity leads, affecting the social fabric, making even more virulent the economic and social differences between regions, creating a country alienated by its different living conditions, very distant from “with all and for the good of all” advocated by José Martí.

For those of us who dream of a single prosperous Cuba, where citizens do not have to emigrate from the places of birth to develop their life projects, time and the tenacity of Cubans are working in our favor.

*Translator’s note:  The Turquino Plan was a 1980s effort to develop forestry and site appropriate agriculture to stabilize mountain populations and make mountain areas independent of cities.

18 October 2013