Author: Iván García

Going shopping or simply browsing through Havana’s large stores is a popular hobby for many of the capital’s residents. But few of them can afford to buy anything without first looking at the scandalous prices of the merchandise, which is levied with taxes ranging from 240% to 300%.

Most buy just the essentials: a liter of cooking oil, two bars of bath soap, a box of tomato puree or a 250 gram bag of detergent. Others visit the stores to look at the display window mannequins dressed in brand-name clothes or the widescreen TVs they can never afford.

Since 2006, when General Raúl Castro took up the presidential baton after being hand-picked by his brother Fidel, the military regime has eliminated ridiculous regulations and autocratic prohibitions which had reduced average Cubans to the status of fourth-class citizens in their own country.

Property rights in Cuba were merely a semantic nicety. Legally, people could not sell houses, works of art or cars obtained after 1959 (though they were sold anyway on the very efficient black market). In 2011 Castro II legalized what for a long had been taking place under the table.

After the unexpected fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet Communism, blank checks, canned fruit and petroleum from the Caucuses stopped arriving in Cuba.

Fidel Castro encouraged a do-or-die resistance. When he proposed at a women’s conference in 1991 that the attendees hold onto their clothes because they would be in short supply for the foreseeable future, some thought he was joking.

The man was not kidding. The ration book for manufactured goods vanished, leaving only the one for food. The island reverted to a state of destitution, devastated by hunger, exotic illnesses and run-away inflation.

After dollars were allowed to circulate legally in 1993, the gaps and differences in a society designed to make everyone on the low-end equal became apparent.

Those who had dollars lived better than state workers, who earned poverty-level wages. Getting dressed meant spending the equivalent of six-months’ salary. continue reading

From my birth in 1965 until 1977, I lived in Romay, between Monte and Zequeira streets, less than ten blocks from Latinoamericano Stadium. I was 3 years old when my grandmother Carmen, a rare woman of peasant heritage who was a baseball fan, took me to the stadium two or three times a week. Admission was free, otherwise our modest family budget would not have allowed us to go that often.

We went after lunch, so my grandmother just had to spend on coffee (she was a chain-smoker) and bread with croquette for me. All that cost 50 cents or less. On very special days she bought me a pizza. A native of Sancti Spiritus, she rooted for any Villa Clara team. I, a purebred Havanan, was always for the Industriales.

During the 70s, I sometimes went with Jorge Luis Piloto, then a neighbor in our building, today a renowned composer who has lived in Miami since 1980. He was born in Cárdenas, but when he moved to Havana he became a fan of the Blue Nine. I have not asked Jorge his opinion about the visit of ten Industriales to Miami, but I have asked ten friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.

It seems like a very good idea to everyone to mark the 50th anniversary of the debut of Industriales in the national classics, and now the immigration reform put into effect last February, with the old legends of the Blue Nine being allowed to travel to Florida, for fellowship and to make friendly stops.

Beyond the worn slogan that “we are one people,” if anything unites Cubans on both sides it is the passion for baseball. But the ten people I spoke to in person or by phone disagree on one point: the commemoration should have started in Havana in Cerro Stadium, home of the Industriales. And then moved to Miami.

They say, and I agree with them, that Latino Stadium would be filled to overflowing with fans of Industriales and other teams and provinces, to see the Duque Hernández, Agustín Marquetti, or René Arocha. They would also have appreciated the participation of Yadel Martí, Yunel Escobar and, of course, Kendrys Morales.

Although the media on the island have overlooked the visit to “the cradle of the mafia” by the players from the flagship team of the Cuban capital, the people manage to stay on top of every detail. Like the pall that fell on Miami with the presence of Javier Méndez and Juan Padilla. They even knew the answer that Padilla gave to a Herald reporter — that he had not come there to “talk about it.”

“It” was the beating that he, Méndez, and the Villa Clara catcher Ariel Pestano, inflicted on Diego Tintorero, a Cuban exile who came on the field with a sign asking for the release of political prisoners, during a game between Canada and Cuba as part of the Pan American Games in Winnipeg, in August 1999.

If Miami did not forget, neither did Havana. “Given the repercussions that incident had, we don’t know why the U.S. Interests Section gave visas to Padilla and Mendez. They behaved like thugs in Winnipeg. In Spain recently, a guy wanted to hug Neymar. There are specially hired security guards to prevent such activities, not athletes,” says an acquaintance from the neighborhood.

“Javier Mendez and Juan Padilla should not be part of the entourage,” says a taxi-driver friend, who recalls that some time later Alberto Juantorena boasted in an interview of having beaten Tintorero as he protested outside the Canadian stadium.

The bravado of Juantorena and the Cuban delegation to the Pan American Games in Winnipeg could not prevent the defection of the Pinar del Rio pitcher Danys Baez, then only 19 years old. Baez retired in 2012, with an excellent record.

A retiree, a self-styled sports historian, says: “They deliberately inserted Padilla and Mendez, it was a provocation.” And he showed me a paper documenting several acts of violence perpetrated by Cuban athletes in international events.

In 1962, to reject the athletes who defected from the 9th Central American and Caribbean Games that were held that year in Kingston, Jamaica, Fidel Castro said: “Give it hard to the worms.” Already in those Games, the weightlifting team assaulted a group of exiles who asked them to stay.

“What happened in Kingston was nothing compared with what happened in the 10th Central American Games, in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1966,” says the retired chronicler. And he tells the story of Cerro Pelado. Better that the readers remember it in the documentary by Santiago Álvarez. A confrontation of the kind Castro always liked, in the best style of the Cold War.

There have been other violent incidents by athletes, coaches, and sports officials from Cuba. One of the most embarrassing happened in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as recounted in the Spanish newspaper El País: “The Cuban taekwondo athlete Angel Valodia Matos and his coach were banned for life from all sports competitions after the former assaulted the referee after being disqualified in the bronze-medal match against Kazakhstan’s Arman Chilmanov, and the coach yelled that ’the referee was paid off.’ Valodia was disqualified (while winning 3-2 in the second period) because he exceeded the one minute available for medical attention after suffering a blow to the foot.”

The presence of Juan Padilla and Javier Mendez in Miami and their refusal to publicly apologize for the beating Dyer does not help ease tensions. When it is convenient, the regime turns the page. Or tries to let it pass. This has not been the case.

Florida-bound trips, temporary or permanent, by artists, musicians, intellectuals, and now by dissidents and athletes, are in full swing. The rope of Cuban-American exchange is still pulling in one direction. It’s time to also pull in the opposite direction.

Iván García

Photo: Taken from the blog of Villa Granadillo.

1 September 2013

Giving an accounting of their administration was never among the priorities of the Castro brothers. The modern caudillos are considered beyond good and evil.

Indeed, Fidel Castro managed the nation like a private bodega, with outlandish economic plans, bypassing the state budget, bleeding its finances, material resources and human lives sacrificed in civil wars in Africa or subversive plans in America. To Raul Castro has fallen the difficult task of saving and perpetuating the olive-green revolution.

It may seem a mission impossible. On July 31, 2006, Castro II inherited a country in the red. The domestic economy was a real mess. In bankruptcy and with a powerful cartel of corrupt bureaucrats pulling the strings of domestic trade behind the scenes.

Cubans, exhausted and with no future, living from campaign to campaign. The ideological factor was one of the keys of the bearded one. The nation was mobilized and industry paralyzed to plant burro plantains in the fields, to demand the return of Elián González and the release of five spies imprisoned in the United States.

Cuba was the closest thing to an asylum. Fidel, historical leader of the Revolution, transformed the continent’s third largest economy into a quagmire.

Little or nothing worked well. Inefficient public transport and unprofitable production. People went to work to lie around or steal. The best, health and education, began to recede.

The Cubans were not or are not happy. There is no way to express complaints publicly. The media is a caricature administered by the regime.

The solution of many, flee. In rubber rafts, as stowaways on a ship or commercial aircraft. Hijacking a boat passenger or marrying a European or Canadian gentleman or lady, three times their age.

The picture Comrade Raul had before his eyes on July 31, 2006, when his brother handed over power, was very ugly. Cuba was broken. Shut down.

The Cubans were fourth-class citizens in their homeland. “Prohibited” is the buzzword. We had no right to sell our homes and cars purchased after 1959. We could not stay in a good hotel and travel abroad; a commission of the Ministry of the Interior had to approve your departure.

The General came in as a relief pitcher, although by the mid-90s, military companies controlled 80% of the national economy through a network in key sectors.

The differences between one management of the government and another were glimpsed from the inception. Fidel Castro never learned to listen. He ran the country like a military camp. Meteorologist one day, cattle geneticist or national baseball coach others. He had no friends, only sycophants and partners of convenience.

For the comandante, democracy was an aberration created by liberal drunks . The people needed leaders of his stripe. After his studies at a Jesuit school, he became an incorrigible egomaniac.

Raul is another thing. Communist in his heart, without much political talent, likes teamwork and is a good listener. But it is a hard and pure autocrat.

Juan Juan Almeida, the son of a guerrilla commander who lived in Raul Castro’s home for a while, told me he came home from work, downed a shot of vodka, and sat and chatted with his children and grandchildren.

His fondness for his family did not mean he liked the people. He enlisted in the socialist youth and felt admiration for the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

In his office hung a painting of the Georgian butcher of inordinate proportions. Those who suspected that Castro II would bury Real Socialism and lead the island within the canons of Western democracy, may have been wrong.

The timid economic reforms of the Raul Castro regime demonstrate the fear of losing control. Everything is slow  predictable and calculated. The general dislike surprises.

He surrounded himself with a team of colonels and generals converted into technocrats. Two of his trusted men, Abdel Yzquierdo, minister of economy, and reform czar Marino Murillo are military men who now wear spotless white guayabera, but years ago they worked in business development management in the armed forces.

Before initiating his economic proposals, Raul Castro swept out the barracks. All men loyal to his brother were retired discreetly, sent to jail for corruption, or, in the cases of Carlos Lage and Felipe Pérez Roque, dismissed dishonorably.

On July 26, 2007, Raul Castro publicly enumerated the financial problems and warned that Cuba needed structural reforms. Soon after, in February 2008, he was elected president of the republic.

In April 2011 he was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party. In its management he has introduced a dozen economic measures. According to renowned economist Carlos Mesa-Lago, some reforms have been structural and others nonstructural, because they do not change the nature of the regime.

For Mesa-Lago, Castro II reforms are positive, but slow, face excessive regulations and are insufficient. The ordinary people are of the same mind as the Cuban economist.

Richard, selling pirated discs, applauds the sale of cars and homes. “Cubans who have money can go sightseeing. The expansion of self-employment and immigration reform are also positive. The downside is that everything is designed so that those with a small business do not accumulate a lot of money.”

Seven years later, there is a less ideological atmosphere in Cuba. The tiresome speeches and campaigns have been minimized.

Politically, Raul Castro has moved few pieces. In 2010, after the death on hunger strike of dissident Orlando Zapata, and then the marches of the brave Ladies in White demanding the release of their husbands, fathers or relatives, Castro II initiated a dialogue with the hierarchy of the Cuban Catholic Church.

As a result, and thanks to the mediation of the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, hundreds of political prisoners were released and exiled. It was the only positive step. Because repression of dissent has not stopped.

Right now, opponents Sonia Garro and her husband Ramón Muñoz have spent a year and a half behind bars without a trial. They are in limbo, in deplorable conditions. Nationwide beatings of dissidents have risen. Countless arrests occur in a few hours. Surveillance and harassment of independent journalists has continued.

In the summer of 2013, more than 400,000 Cubans earned a living without the help of the state. With exaggerated taxes without a wholesale market, the self-employed learn the ABCs of capitalism.

The citizenry has been loosened its tongue. It’s common to hear coarse criticism against the regime in an old private taxi or at a bus stop.

After seven years under President Raul Castro, in Cuba there are things that have changed. Others, such as low wages and the unification of a single currency, should be addressed promptly by the regime.

But the future is still a dirty word. Without profound changes, the country will continue to drift.

Photo from the blog Solución Cuba.

3 September 2013

The Minister of Education, Ena Elsa Velázquez, is hoping to turn corruption and academic fraud in Cuban schools around.

In her tour through several provinces to check on preparations for the new school term beginning on September 2, Velázquez highlighted the “social commitment of teachers and professors” to address illegalities and acts of corruption.

She spoke of strengthening families’ confidence in the educational system and confronting “scholastic fraud and other more subtle and nefarious distortions.”

This requires great political and oratorical skill in analyzing the conditions that for years have affected education on the island, to say nothing of the low salaries paid to teachers.

As always in Cuba, one must separate demagoguery from reality. The complacency of government officials causes them to suffer from an irreversible myopia.

They only see the successes. And they do exist. For a third-world country, it is laudable to be able to provide free education and public health. We may be better than Burma or Haiti, but there has been a qualitative reversal in sectors which once were showpieces of the Revolution.

There are schools but they lack good instructors, teaching material has to be recycled, the merienda* has been eliminated in primary schools, and lunch for boarding students is wretched.

And we have not even talked about the extreme politicization and ideological content in course material and extracurricular activities. These include everything from classes on how to load an AKM assault rifle to fundraising for self-defense militias.

Too often the Cuban government likes to remind us that education and health care are free. These are the cornerstones of the socialist model that the world sees.

They are, however, distortions of reality. The state can subsidize the health and education system thanks to the high tax rate it imposes on workers. In countries where students pay not one penny towards the cost of their education, the money to fund this “privilege” must come out of the taxpayers’ pocketbooks.

But this is not the case with Cuba. A percentage of the ridiculously low salaries paid to workers and employees, excessive taxes on the self-employed and import duties of up to 300% on hard-currency remittances subsidize a significant portion of the national educational system.

However, everyone who one way or another contributes to society — whether it be by cutting cane or spending dollars they have received from relatives in Miami — can and should demand a better education for their children.

For a decade primary, secondary and pre-university education has been in marked decline. Because of poor wages and low social status many instructors go to work as porters in five-star hotels or as fry cooks in a street-side stalls.

It is inconceivable that a policeman or armed forces officer would make close to 900 Cuban pesos a month — not counting their ability to acquire groceries, cleaning supplies and clothing at low prices, or to stay in exclusive recreational villas — while a professor at a secondary school makes only Cuban 350 to 400 pesos a month.

The teaching profession is one that is not highly valued in Cuba. It is not an attractive alternative for university graduates. Only when there is no other option, or when men are trying to evade military service, do young people choose to study pedagogy.

The new school term will begin on Monday, September 2 in schools which have received a fresh coat of cheap paint, whose furniture and windows have been repaired and whose families have put aside some money for their children’s meriendas. Believe me, it is not easy to provide five meriendas a week. Children’s backpacks resemble those of mountain climbers.

The school uniform presents another problem. Some sadistic bureaucrat decided that each student would get a new uniform every two terms. The dim-witted technocrat did not stop to think that in their primary school years children grow quite rapidly. Or that given the heat and the carelessness typical at this age, students often return home with their uniforms in tatters.

The solution was for families to buy uniforms on the black market for five convertible pesos apiece. These are not their only expenses.

In case a child gets a mediocre professor — something now quite common in primary and secondary education — parents must pay ten convertible pesos a month to a retired teacher to tutor him after school.

As the Minister of Education follows her road map through the country, checking on preparations for the next school term, teachers are hoping the official will agree with them and announce a salary increase.

Teaching remains the worst paid profession in Cuba.

Iván García

Photo: Cubanet

*Translator’s note: A traditional afternoon snack or light meal somewhat comparable to tea time.

28 August 2013

In a country such as Cuba not known for its middle class, few are the families who can give themselves the luxury of paying between 300 and 800 convertible pesos for a three or four night package in an “all included” hotel of Varadero.

Even though an employee at a Havana tourism bureau mechanically repeats a string of numbers and statistics, to reinforce the thesis of the increase in Cuban tourists in 4 and 5-star hotels, behind the numbers are different hidden matrices.

Nothing is black and white.  Less so in Cuba, where an average citizen receives a monthly salary in pesos equivalent to 15 or 25 dollars.  According to predictions of the Ministry of Tourism for 2013 almost 1.5 million Cubans could take a dip in Varadero.

This is good news.  But the fabulous beach and the comfort of its hotels are still not within the reach of the majority.  One and a half million Cubans represents 10% of the total population.

A not so gratifying percent for a government that shouts their heads off with populist discourse in favor of the poor.  Behind a series of nationalizations, decrees and expropriation of businesses, mansions and works of art of the Cubans who generated riches, the middle class suddenly disappeared.

Many felt obligated to flee to the South of Florida.  The number of doctors and engineers on the island dropped by more than half.  With a base of voluntarism and utopias, a frenzied Che Guevara buries the rules of the economy underground.

All the summer properties that upper and middle class people possessed in Varadero became the summer homes of the heavyweights in the revolutionary state.  Other homes swelled the real estate funds of the Workers Central Union of Cuba (CTC), in charge of giving a week of rest to the most loyal and dedicated workers.

The carelessness, lack of maintenance, looting and robbery of vacationers in the hotels and villas, caused the best beach in Cuba to enter a stage of destitution.  It was pitiful to see the splendid chalets destroyed by the salty air and state apathy. Sometime in the 80s, when the soviet paradise of workers and peasants cut the subsidies to the island, Fidel Castro decided to bet on capitalist tourism.

With the fall of the Berlin wall and the shabby Soviet communism, Castro maintained his anti-Yankee discourse and continued brandishing a sermon agreeable to the ears of the dispossessed.  But, in practice, they started dismantling the “benefactor state.”

The houses owned by the unions were expropriated and renovated by the State. They rented them in dollars, the money of Castro’s enemy.  But the generals, ministers, and functionaries maintained their residences and floated their yachts in Varadero.

The “dedicated compatriots” had no other choice than to spend their vacations in the country, swim in rivers and shores or beaches without conditions.  Varadero turned into a prohibited city.  Only the inhabitants and workers of the town had access.  A police control station was put up on a bridge entering the city.

Chubby Europeans or Canadians went arm in arm with male and female prostitutes who target tourists.  The families and friends of the “worms” and “scum” also had the green light.  Cuban-Americans who, thanks to their buying power, were now received by the regime with a red carpet.

It was an era of embarrassing apartheid. The Cubans could not dine in a restaurant of a hotel or enter the room of a foreigner. We were 3rd class citizens in our own country.

Raul Castro, appointed to the presidency by his brother, overturned the absurd anti-constitutional norms.  Since 2008 any Cuban with hard currency can enjoy a stay in tourist installations anywhere in the country.

However banned zones exist.  Exclusive.  Reserved areas to hunt wild boar, golf courses and villas designated for high officials.  But they are becoming fewer. From 2008 to the date, gradually, national tourism is growing.

Varadero is the preferred enclave for the majority of Havana’s residents, for its proximity to the capital–some 80 miles–its 52 hotels and dozens of private homes for rent.

Those with less money, for 70 or 80 pesos (3 dollars) a head, rent a bus and spend eight hours on the beach.  They bring water, food and cheap rum.  These tend to be day trips arranged under the table, and the bus driver and the transport boss of some company split the profits evenly.

There are families who save the whole year and in summer rent a private home. The costs are not within reach for the average Cuban: 40 CUC (the cheapest) and 100 CUC, daily.

And then there’s the “all included” option.  The preference of those with certain purchasing power.  First of all, they reserve and pay in one of the various tourist travel agencies (Cubatur, Cubanacan, Gaviota, Isa Azul or Gran Caribe).

Each agency has a variety of offers. Cubanacan, Gran Caribe and Gaviota are the most expensive. They offer rooms in 4 and 5-star hotels.  A 3 or 4-night stay costs around 600 convertible pesos.

Cubatur and Isla Azul are the most affordable.  For 300 CUC you can enjoy 4 days of sun and sea.  The difference in price marks the quality of service.  In the hotels grouped under Cubanacan, Gran Caribe and Gaviota you find the Spanish names Melia and Barcelo and the food is more varied and elaborate.

A brief survey of 30 Cubans, pertaining to this 10% who can spend a mini vacation in Varadero, found that 14 could enjoy this thanks to money sent by family in the United States or Europe.  Eight were discreet prostitutes.  Four, worked for themselves and saved the money.

The other four Cubans had been voluntary workers overseas and with savings, or certain under the table services, such as illegal abortions or plastic surgery, this allowed them to repair their house, acquire a car and enjoy a stay in Varadero.

In the “all included” hotels it is very difficult to find a professional or worker who can manage a vacation with their miserable salary of 15 to 25 dollars a month.

With this mess in the media, Cuba has fragmented into castes. And the hotels of Varadero have been converted into recreational sites for a few.

Ivan Garcia.

Photo:  Until 1976 the city or town of Varadero, where the most famous beach in Cuba is found, was a municipality.  But since 2010 it was reincorporated into Cardenas, one of the 13 municipalities that today form the province of Matanzas.

24 August 2013

On April 16, 1961, just before the end of a fiery speech at the speech delivered during the funeral for the victims of the bombardments that marked the prelude of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Fidel Castro exclaimed:

“Comrades, workers and peasants, this is the Socialist and democratic Revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble. And for this Revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble, we are willing to give our lives. Workers and peasants, humble men and women of the country do you swear to defend to the last drop of blood this revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble?”

Those words were spoken on the corner of 12th and 23rd, in the Havana neighborhood of Vedado. Fifty-two years later, less than five miles from that place, every night, at the break of dawn a trio of beggars begin their task in a rickety abandoned school in the neighborhood of La Vibora.

Armed with a chisel and a small sledgehammer, they take almost a hundred bricks manufactured before 1959. “Given their quality, we sell them for two pesos each. People buy these recovered bricks and use them in the construction of their houses or to make a closet. We work for hire,”  explains one of the beggars. continue reading

If, from the island, a person wants to read about the rusty North Korean freighter Chong Chon Gang, where the Cuban regime was caught with obsolete Russian weaponry, they must pay 4.50 CUC an hour — ten days of a worker’s wages — in one of the 118 Internet rooms opened on June 4.

They can also learn through a shortwave radio. But the daily worry about getting food and the indifference of many people to the comments from politicians, results in a soft landing for the-olive green autocrats.

The control is simple. It’s enough to silence the official media with regards to the news of the soap opera that occurred in the Panama Canal.

After Tuesday July 16, the Foreign Ministry issued a terse note, published in the State media, information about the cache of weapons on a North Korean ship, hidden behind a mountain of raw sugar, has been made invisible.

Cuban officials did not hold a press conference, explaining the reasons for the government to violate the arms embargo established by the UN on the impoverished Kim dynasty.

On July 26, contrary to what some Cubanologists expected, Raul Castro did not address the issue in his speech to mark the 60th anniversary of the assault on a military barracks in Santiago de Cuba.

The internal information policy, for now, is to bear up under international criticism without replying. Even the multinational television broadcaster, Telesur, created with Venezuelan capital generously donated by the late Hugo Chavez, has given little impact to the event.

The news in Cuba must be learned by reading between the lines. Expecting on August 5th that the UN will impose a penalty on the island, the ideological Taliban who control the media, preferred to highlight the military parade held in Pyongyang July 27, celebrating 60 years of the Panmunjom armistice. Among the delegations invited to the celebrations for the ’end of the Korean War’ (1950-1953) was one from the Cuban government, led by José Ramón Balaguer, the ousted Minister of Public Health and the current head of the department of foreign relations for the Communist Party Central Committee.

It is a coded message intended for world public opinion. The regime in Havana doesn’t regret smuggling weapons into the rogue state of North Korea. Two weeks before the incident, a North Korean military delegation, headed by General Kyok Sik Kim was on the island and was received by Raul Castro. “I visit to Cuba to meet with colleagues in the same trench, which our Cuban comrades are,” said Kyok.

Democratic nations should take note. The tepid and insufficient Cuban economic reforms apply only to maintain the status quo.

It’s purely cosmetic. Political oxygen facing the international gallery. A strategy to attract investment and capital from foreigners or moderate Cuban residents in Florida.

A lifesaver to perpetuate the regime. The changes are not driven by an urgent need to push for democracy. No. They are a mechanism to buy time, recapitalize and strengthen state finances and reinforce the regime’s institutions.

The Castro philosophy remains. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Therefore, news of North Korean ship and its weapons will never occupy the island headlines.

While the Castro brothers hold power, Cuba can change some things, but its anti-imperialist essence remains: America is the enemy.

Ivan Garcia

Photo: Search of one of the containers with weapons from Cuba, hidden under thousands of sacks of raw sugar on the North Korean vessel Chong Chon Gang, detained in the Panama Canal since July 10. Taken from EuropaPress.

6 August 2013

Two days before multiple entry visas good for five years, for Cubans with relatives in the United States, I walked around the outside of the U.S. Interest Section in Cuba (USIS), a few feet from the Havana Malecon.

In the small triangular park located in front of the Rivero Funeral Home, at Calzada and K, where hundreds of people with appointments gather from Monday to Friday, the news spread like wildfire, despite not yet been released by the official media. People had heard through Radio Martí or emails and calls from family and friends across the pond.

As of August 1, Washington decided to extend from six months to five years the period of non-immigrant visas granted to residents on the island to visit the country as tourists. Until now, they had to apply for a permit for each trip and the process could take up to two years.

“With this visa, Cubans who qualify to be granted one would not have to renew and pay $165 each year, as was previously the case for a visa to the United States,” an official located in Florida who requested anonymity said by telephone.

With the new visa, Cubans could travel from the U.S. to a third country. The measure does not include business travel, cultural exchanges or other from Cuba to the United States.

For years, the little park at Calzada and K, has become a gauge of the opinions of many Cubans about the push and pull between the governments of Cuba and the United States.

Not only because every day there are hundreds, and because they come from all provinces. The number of those waiting to be approved for emigration to the United States, under the heading of family reunification, in force since 1994, is significant.

The place also is filled with citizens seeking temporary visas, with the intention of visiting relatives or wanting to settle in the northern nation as political refugees.

The daily grind has transformed the blocks surrounding the Interests Section into an emerging local industry for many residents, who have opened fast food cafes. Eating a lunch of rice and pork I met Eugenio, 43, and asked his opinion on the new measure.

“For two months I have been arranging to visit my daughter and my mother, who have lived in Hialeah for 15 years. It’s the first time I’ve tried. They say that for those who want to visit for three months and are under 45,  the Consulate automatically denies the visa. Apparently, it is for fear they will seek asylum on American soil. Young people are often not granted a visa. In the morning my mother called from Miami, she had read the story in the Journal de Las Americas. I’ll wait a few days and see if I can opt for a multiple entry visa.”

Among those waiting to be interviewed, are also those who say that the USIS officials are too demanding when granting visas to Cubans who are going to visit.

Jorge, 38, has another argument. “It’s because of the Cuban Adjustment Act. I’m crazy for them to repeal it. For three years I have been trying to visit my family in Tampa and have been rejected twice for potentially being a migrant, although I am married and I have two children. But when they look at my age, they are deaf to my reasoning.”

According to Jorge, among USIS officials there is an unwritten rule: to catalog all those who are younger than 50 as prospective emigrants. “I just want to see my family and return. I understand them, but repealing the Adjustment Act would make it easier. I hope this new measure makes the requirements easier for people who request temporary visas regardless of age.”

But also in line are citizens who travel unhindered repeatedly to see their children and grandchildren in Miami. “I guess it’s because of my age. I am 74 and the first time I traveled I had turned 50. The Americans know that I live in one of the best buildings in Havana and it would be crazy not to return,” he smiles.

Coinciding with this relaxation of U.S. immigration authorities, the National Bureau of Statistics and Information has reported that 46,662 people have permanently left the island (in the last year), the highest number since 1994, when due to the so-called “boat people crisis,” 47,000 Cubans took to the sea.

Meanwhile, according to data provided by the USIS, in the first half of 2013 they granted 16,767 temporary visas, versus 9,369 granted in 2012. The 79% increase is directly related to the entry into force on 14 January, a new Cuban migration law.

Although you have to give it time to see the results, respondents applaud the new measure. “Anything that is done to lower costs and facilitate family reunion is positive,” says Clara, a woman in her 60s queuing for free internet browsing on one of the two rooms fitted by the USIS that accommodates anyone requesting access.

In the August 2 online edition of the newspaper Granma, in an article titled New Tools, two specialists appeared, giving their points of view. “It’s a pragmatic decision that lightens the work of the Consular Office of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana”, said the researcher and former diplomat Carlos Alzugaray. For political analyst Ramon Sanchez-Parodi, “It does not change one iota the hostile policy toward Cuba, which remains the same. This measure does not cover ’people-to-people exchanges’ at all, nor does it address prohibitions on Americans traveling to Cuba. However, it can’t be described as a measure openly hostile; it’s convenient, practically and politically for the U.S. government.”

In the squabble that the olive-green autocracy has maintained for five years with eleven leaders in the White House, common sense has been a rare bird. And the openings and relaxations of both sides have been scrutinized with suspicion. Now, it couldn’t be any different.

In the scuffle that for five decades has remained olive-green autocracy with eleven leaders of the
Ivan Garcia

Photo: Miguel Iturria Savon. The little park Calzada and K and in the background the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba. Taken from Cubanet

Iván García

5 August 2013

It is said that in his childhood he liked listening to news on the radio about the Spanish Civil War alongside the family cook. At the height of WWII he sent a letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt letting him know that in an area near his house there were enormous deposits of nickel.

In exchange for this information he asked Roosevelt for a ten-dollar reward. There was no reply. His adolescence and youth were free of poverty. He liked to leave his father’s farm to scale the mountains. His mother would call him to lunch with two shots of a rifle.

He got his diploma from a strict Jesuit school in Havana. Even then he was obsessed with being a political leader. He would practice fiery speeches in front of his bedroom mirror. He dreamed of being president.

By the time he entered the University of Havana’s law school, he had not yet developed a fixed ideology. He read voraciously — everything from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf to the writings of José Ingenieros and Machiavelli.

He joined the university gangs of the times, the kind whose members had short fuses and were prone to settling their affairs with guns. He tried to enter the republican political stage through the back door. One morning in the 1940s he went into the offices of Dr. Eduardo Chibás — that rare specimen, an honest politician — to join the Orthodox Party.

When his secretary, Conchita Fernández, told him Castro wanted to see him, Chibás reacted like a frightened child who had seen a ghost. “Conchita, please, don’t let that gangster in here,” he said according to Fernández, who died in 1998.

He was not put off by this insult. To reach the political summit, he had to look for other shortcuts. He found allies, godfathers and people with deep pockets such as his father-in-law, Rafael Díaz-Balart, who had been the political manager of a certain army sergeant and stenographer named Fulgencio Batista.

And although Díaz-Balart did not like the way his son-in-law bragged, he was the father of his grandson. Some people who knew Fidel in the 1950s describe him as being visionary, adventurous, crazy. His political ambitions could withstand hurricanes. He knew how to seduce.

Journalism was his next step. He wrote articles denouncing the corruption of the Carlos Prío Socarrás government and took part in student marches. He was participating in one of these when on March 10, 1952 Batista led a coup d’état. This action served as the perfect pretext for Fidel to turn to armed struggle.

There are crucial moments in history. One way or another Hitler was going to achieve absolute power in Germany in the 1930s. The Reichstag fire only sped up his plan. Castro would have been Castro even if there had not been a coup d’état.

Power was in his genes and the only way to achieve it was through the use of force. After the coup Castro organized a paramilitary group, later known as the July 26 Revolutionary Movement. He had the qualities of a leader. He recruited the humble: laborers, bookkeepers and the unemployed.

He did not recruit intellectuals or politicians. Castro wanted obedient soldiers. The group was not a school for democratic debate or a fledgling political party with a plan for gaining power through the popular vote. It was a private army. His shield.

With this group he launched an assault sixty years ago on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, 500 miles east of Havana. He took advantage of the fact that the city was celebrating its Carnival. On July 26, 1953 they attacked. The operation was a military disaster. In the span of a few hours fifty-five attackers died in combat or were later executed by government forces.

Not even the Socialist People’s Party — the Communist party of its time — applauded this hare-brained action. In a press release it condemned the attack, characterizing it as a “small bourgeois putsch.”

Looking back, if there is one thing that is most telling in Fidel Castro’s personal story, it is that he was an expert at turning defeats into victories. Disasters do not frighten him.

After the failed attack and his capture by army forces, Fidel drafted a document entitled “History Will Absolve Me” based on remarks he made as part of his self-defense at the trial. He was sentenced to fifteen years in jail.

The intercession of his father-in-law, Díaz-Balart, led to the Batista regime proclaiming a general amnesty, and Castro, his brother Raúl and the rest of the rebels were freed after only two years.

It is while in prison at the Presidio Modelo that the outline of his political profile emerges and he develops the chameleon-like abilities that will distinguish him in the future. In a letter to Melba Hernández, one of his most loyal collaborators, on the future of other political players he writes, “Let them talk. Later, when we are in power, we will squash them like roaches.” As so it was.

Before his triumphant entrance into Havana on January 8, 1959 surrounded by cheering crowds, Fidel Castro had led a three-year-long guerrilla war in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. His victory was due to his own skill and the military ineffectiveness of Batista’s army.

Once in power he systematically went about doing away with any vestige of democracy and freedom of expression. He has been on the crest of the information wave many times. His decision in 1962 to install nuclear warheads on the island pushed the world to the brink of catastrophe. In a daring letter he told Nikita Khrushchev he should be the one to first pull the nuclear trigger.

Under Castro’s leadership a formidable apparatus of subversion was launched in America and Africa. Cuba was the school for guerrillas, Basque ETA members and revolutionaries transformed into terrorists. He turned the country into a fortress, with a million men under arms. More than 3000 tanks. And a fleet of 200 fighter planes.

For the first time in history, the Cuban regular army moved beyond its borders. In the conflicts in Angola and Ethiopia — and earlier in Algeria and Syria — he ignored the directions coming from the Kremlin, asking him not to intervene.

In the ’80s he established a command post at his residence in Nuevo Vedado. From there he drove much of the civil conflict in Angola and the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale against the army of South Africa. Lounging on a black leather swivel chair, pointer in hand, he led major battles from Havana. He was aware of everything: the exact amount of rations to be distributed among the troops or the infidelities of the wives of senior officers.

Economically he’s amassed failures. So many that they could fill several anthologies. He did everything on his own. At the cost of a depressed economy.

Fidel Castro has survived 54 years. Only an illness could part him. He has escaped numerous attacks and the stagnating economic crisis that has lasted 22 years has failed to pulverize his revolution.

The effectiveness of his Special Services is one of the keys to the permanence in office of the brothers from Biran and the Communist Party. Despite the exhaustion of power, Raul designs the succession. The Castro Clan pulling the strings of everything that moves in Cuba.

He will make changes that must be made to make his work endures. No matter the name and surname of the future president. Nor the ideology. Fidel Castro was always a political chameleon. His only vocation is power. And he is one for the history books.

27 July 2013