Why Isn’t the Dissident Movement Relevant to the Average Cuban

20130128-620x330My neighbors think exactly the same way as many in the opposition. They are as unhappy with the government of the Castro brothers as any dissident. Many a night I have to listen to loud complaints and criticisms leveled against the regime of General Raúl Castro.

The causes for this disgust are numerous. They vary from the cost of putting food on the table, low wages and the absurdity of having two currencies to sky-high prices for basic commodities and corruption at every level.

At least people have not taken to the street to protest as in Brazil. In Cuba the escape valve is the living room of your house, where people never tire of grumbling and bemoaning their bad luck.

When workers are asked why they do not form independent trade unions or housewives are asked why they do not bang their pots and pans in the street to complain about overpricing, they look at you as if to say, “Do you think I am stupid?” Invariably the response is almost always, “I’m not going to play the hero,” or “If others do it, I will too.”

“Why don’t you join an opposition group,” I ask. No one admits to being afraid; they prefer to say they do not want to put their families at risk. Others claim they do not trust dissidents. Or that no one from the opposition has approached them with a proposal.

This is an interesting point. It is odd that in no neighborhood of Havana — I should mention I happen to live in the capital — can anyone find a dissident, especially since most of the opposition suffers from the same shortages as the average citizen. Actually, they suffer even more if you consider they are often harassed by the special services.

In my opinion the opposition has not figured out how to take advantage of this obvious discontent to attract followers. They live in their own world — one of discussions, meetings, debates among themselves and now trips overseas. Their initiatives are unknown inside Cuba. The average Cuban is not even aware of what they do.

Meanwhile, the inefficient public transport system continues to be a popular source of discontent. People complain about the poor quality of bread. Trash cans overflow with garbage yet trucks do not come by to pick it up. And every night broken water pipes turn the city’s streets into rivers.

I do not believe that official journalists — steadfast defenders of the regime — are unaware that their neighbors are irritated by the qualitative decline in public education or by the professional incompetence of many doctors.

Eight out of ten people with whom I speak on the street do not support the Castro regime, but the opposition has not figured out a way to capitalize on this anger. It is more concerned with promoting its agenda overseas.

By harassing them, infiltrating their ranks with secret agents and sowing divisions, State Security has made dissidents’ work difficult. The official media has never given them a platform to make their viewpoints known. Nor will it. This can only be done through hard work.

The business of an opposition party is to recruit members. I believe it would not be too difficult for the opposition to find people willing to listen in parks and on the street, or while waiting in line and at bus stops. Dissidents would have to do community outreach, focusing more on the problems of a neighborhood and its residents, their natural allies.

Certainly, enlisting a skeptical people is not an easy task. Politics are not fashionable and many of those feeling outraged also view the opposition as “a band of moochers and opportunists.”

This is the message the government has been putting out for years. Undoing this image will be difficult and the behavior of certain dissidents hardly helps matters. Some join the opposition in order to gain political refugee status and move to the United States.

This vagabond dissident movement has no shortage of people who battle the regime with their ideas but remain bookish narcissists. The problem is that political initiatives have validity only if they are group endeavors, not individual ones.

Among certain dissidents there is also a disturbing tendency to believe that the initiatives of others do not count. They use the same weapons as the government; you are either with them or against them.

False accusations and condemnations are used frequently. If someone does not share another’s opinions, the first impulse is often to say that “this guy is an agent of state security” without providing any evidence.

It is the fastest way to brand an adversary but no one comes out of it looking good. When dissidents fight among themselves, only the regime benefits.

The opposition simulates a catwalk of vanities. I am sorry to say this but every time I attend an event or have a conversation with some of them, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

If up until now they have not been relevant to the average Cuban, the fault is in part theirs. The future of Cuba should take precedence over egos and garnering the spotlight. Tactics should be changed. The Creole autocracy meanwhile does its thing, mapping out its strategies and trying to colonize the opposition.

My neighbors want a change of government as well as systemic change. They have grown up in an ideological insane asylum which is not capable of providing a glass of milk for the breakfast table or producing a decent pair of shoes. They do not trust the Castro brothers.

Or the dissidents. The Cuban opposition has done very little to win them over.

Iván García

Photo: One of the many lines Cubans form every day. From the blog by Tania Quintero.

23 July 2013

Cuba: What’s Behind the Arms Smuggling? / Ivan Garcia

El-buque-norcoreano-620x330Reinaldo’s family had finished dinner when, in passing — it wasn’t headline news on the nightly broadcast — Rafael Serrano, the histrionic presenter, read an official press release from the Ministry of External Relations revealing the regime’s point of view with regards to the North Korean cargo ship Chong Chon Gang, intercepted at the port of Colon, Panama, with conventional weapons and anti-aircraft missile systems belonging to the Cuban armed forces.

“The information isn’t clear, Reinaldo speculates. “Supposedly the army sent that batch of obsolete weapons to be modernized in Pyongyang. It seems that the grandson of Kim Il Sung, the current leader in the isolated nation, has factories to modify and renovate Russian weapons. I do not know what’s behind it. Or of Cuba is selling old weapons to North Korea to strengthen them militarily, or if the Cuban State is in full modernization of their old weapons and if so, I wonder what the goal it.”

The regime’s version says that the batch of obsolete weapons manufactured in the last century traveled to North Korea to be renovated. As a rationale, it invokes  sovereignty and national security. A former soldier consulted explained that whenever a nation is caught in such an action it justifies itself with external threats.

“In any government, democratic or autocratic, there are authorized groups within the sewers of power who do the dirty work. An example is the case of former CIA analyst Edward Snowden. The young man has brought to attention the broad U.S. electronic eavesdropping on global communications. Barack Obama is left with the evidence. And it’s the case in Spain with Luis Barcenas, former treasurer of the Popular Party, who with his explosive statements can blow up the executive of Mariano Rajoy. But in both countries there is freedom of expression, journalists investigate things and publish them. In Cuba, thanks to the absolute power exercised by the government over the media, it is easier to manipulate citizens,” argues the former soldier.

According to the retired soldier, it is true that Cuba’s weaponry is defensive and outdated. “The armed forces’ most modern technology, such as the MIG-29, T-62 tanks and anti-aircraft missile systems ,are antiquated. The topic of discussion is why Cuba now decides to modernize its weaponry. There is no threat from United States: against its power and advanced technology, it would mean little or nothing to renovate existing arsenals. I think it’s a matter of business and they were selling those weapons under the table to North Korea.”

In the quiet Sevillano neighborhood south of Havana, people didn’t pay much attention to the North Korean ship detained in Panama. The youngsters, on vacation, played football with stones marking the goals.

On the streets, vendors hawked onions at a good price. A tall gray-haired man was engaged in buying gold jewelry. And two burly men were repairing old mattresses in the garage of a house.

What the North Korean ship also caught by surprise was ordinary Cubans. And if something caught my attention it was the fact that old weapons were hidden under 10,000 tonnes of sugar, a product in decline on an island that was once the ’world’s sugar bowl.’

Iván García

Photo and computer graphics taken from La Prensa of Honduras.

18 July 2013

Che Guevara: Hero or Villain / Ivan Garcia

libro_CheThe life of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is most like a legend.  The truth is simmered over a slow flame along with countless inaccuracies.  Since the date of his birth until the date of his death in the Bolivian village of La Higuera, mix-ups abound.

According to the official Cuban historiography, Ernesto Guevara, alias Che, was born on 14 June of 1928 in Rosario, Argentina, and was assassinated on 8 December of 1967 in Bolivia.

The American biographer and journalist John Lee Anderson offers another version, by pointing out that the date listed on Che’s birth certificate is false. He alleges that the reason must have been to cover up the pregnancy of Celia de la Serna, Che’s mother.  At the time of her marriage to Ernesto Guevara Lynch on 10 December of 1927, she was three months pregnant.

Anderson’s version is supported by the Argentine biographer Julia Constenla, to whom Celia personally confirmed Che Guevara’s true birth date and the circumstances of her pre-marital pregnancy.

As far as the official Cuban media are concerned, Che was born a month later.  As such, the 85th Anniversary of his birth was celebrated last Friday, 14 June.  Surrounding his death, another curious bit arises.

In Cuba’s elementary and high schools it is taught that Che was assassinated on 8 October of 1967 in the Bolivian hamlet of La Higuera.  Scholarly texts highlight that he could have been captured in Quebrada del Yuro, after being injured in the leg due to an automatic rifle malfunction.

The Castros regime loves epic odes.  They speak little of how José Martí died in an absurd skirmish dressed like a wedding guest and trotting along on a white horse.  A perfect target for the colonial Spanish army.

When a security guard at the Peruvian embassy, Pedro Ortiz Cabrera, died on 1 March of 1980, the official Cuban press blamed the driver of the bus that crashed violently against the embassy gates with the intention of requesting asylum.

It was never mentioned that the true cause was the ’friendly fire’ of his own comrades.  During the United States occupation of Grenada in 1983, the Cuban media got ridiculous.

In a fervent paean of praise, in the best North Korean style, an official  announcement told us that the valiant Cuban collaborators who defended the airport they were building in Granada died embracing the Cuban flag in battle against the U.S. 82nd Division.

A few days later it became known that there was no such fight.  Nor did anyone die gripping the national flag: the supposed officer in command of the troops ran away and requested asylum in the embassy of the erstwhile USSR.

Thus, historians should read the official versions of the “legendary guerrilla expedition in Congo or Bolivia” led by Che with a magnifying glass.

Ernesto Guevara has as many followers as he has detractors.  To the extent that in May of 1968 in Paris, disgruntled students utilized his image as the guardian of their protests.  His photo (taken by Alberto Korda in March of 1960 in the port of Havana, at the site of the explosion of a Belgian freighter that was transporting light arms) has been seen around the world.

Che has become a marketing icon.  The “disgraceful capitalists” that he so hated sell countless products with his image.  And his relatives in Havana collect copyright royalties.

Guevara, also nicknamed el Chancho (“the pig”) for his scruffiness and lack of personal hygiene, which gave him the air of a Buenos Aires hippy, was the archetype exalted dogmatist.  His motorcycle tour throughout various countries of the Southern Cone and Guatemala, defined his harsh, gloomy, and ascetic character.  His trip etched into his mind a one-way theory: the only way to be sovereign in Latin America was through armed struggle.

And by November of 1956, when he joined 81 Cuban expeditionaries on their voyage on the Granma yacht, he was a convinced communist.

He became a commander in Fidel Castro’s rebel army thanks to his temerity in battle and his discipline under the threat of atomic bombs.  There are various documented witness accounts of his exaggerated disposition toward violence during that era.

He was a soulless tyrant during many executions.  He pulled the trigger without regret against those he considered enemies and traitors of the cause.  Once the revolution triumphed, Che Guevara took control of La Cabaña, a military fortress adjacent to Havana Bay.

One of the first measures undertaken by the new government was to establish a judicial committee, charged with investigating citizens who were associated with the Batista dictatorship, supposed war criminals, and nascent political opponents.

Between January and April of 1959, approximately one thousand persons – other sources cite several thousands – were sentenced to death or lengthy prison terms in summary trials without due legal process.

The figures of those executed by firing squad vary.  Between 550 and 3,000.  In his post as military chief of La Cabaña, Che was responsible for the trials and executions.  He expressed his opinion on the executions publicly before the United Nations on 11 December of 1964:

“We have to say here that which is a known truth, that we have expressed always before the world: executions, yes, we have executed; we execute and will continue to execute as long as it is necessary.  Our struggle is a struggle to the death.  We know what the result of a defeat would be, and the gusanos* also must know what the result of the defeat in Cuba is today.”

Guevara was assigned various ministerial portfolios.  His performance was dismal.  He was convinced that, in order to eradicate the “bourgeoisie vices inherited from the old society”, a “New Man” must be forged.

That is, the prototype of a robot made of flesh and bone, obedient to orders from above, focused on his work like a slave, and barely given to rumba and alcohol.  Of course, with a license to kill “Yankees in any corner of the world”.

From his posts among sectors of the Cuban economy, Che launched the confiscation of national and foreign businesses, central planning, and “volunteer” labor.  He internationalized the armed struggle.  From the Congo in Africa to an uprising in Salta, Argentina, and the failed rebellion in Bolivia.

Personalities from diverse ideological and professional backgrounds have expressed their admiration for Che, like Domingo Perón and Jean Paul Sartre; the soccer players Diego Armando Maradona, Leo Messi, and Thierry Henry; the boxer Mike Tyson; the musician Carlos Santana, the actor Pierre Richard; the writer Gabriel García Márquez; the Chechen leader Shamil Basayev; the rock group Rage Against the Machine; the Sandinista leader Edén Pastora and presidents Evo Morales and Rafael Correa.

His motto, “Ever onward to victory” was used as a crutch by the deceased Venezuelan head of state Hugo Chávez.

Among progressives and subversives of half the world, with a discourse that favors the poor against gringo hegemony, there is never a lack of someone with a tee-shirt or a protest sign with his image.

Perhaps Che Guevara’s greatest achievement was that he risked his own hide to demonstrate his truths.  The shadows of his personality are better forgotten.

Iván García

Translated by: Yoyi el Monaguillo

30 June 2013

The Business of Exporting Cuban Doctors / Ivan Garcia

El-negocio-de-la-exportación-de-médicos-cubanos-650x394

Photo: Cuban doctors showing their diplomas in Havana. From Martí Noticias.

By 1998 Fernando had already spent a year and a half working for free in the civil war in Angola where, to get to a clinic in an isolated hamlet, he had to be accompanied by a landmine deactivation expert. Twenty-five years later he is packing his bags for Venezuela.

This time there is no war. The government of General Raul Castro has turned Cuban medicine into the country’s premier export industry. It is a profitable business. Doctors are to Cuba what petroleum is to Venezuela.

According to figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), in 2011 the depleted state coffers took in around five billion dollars just in the exchange of Cuban doctors for Venezuelan oil.

In 2003 the government of the late Hugo Chavez reached an agreement in which PDSVA, the state oil company, would send 105,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba for which Havana would pay by sending doctors, sports trainers and military advisers to Venezuela.

When Fernando, a medical specialist, travelled in an Ilyushin Il-62 jet to lend his services in the Angolan jungle, Fidel Castro’s official rhetoric was quite different. Money did not matter. In speeches he reiterated that he was motivated only by altruism and ideological solidarity, known as “proletarian internationalism.”

The Cuban regime did not begin charging for medical services until after 1991, the year Soviet communism said goodbye. Cut off from the wealth of rubles, petroleum and raw materials coming from Moscow, Cuba entered a period of unending economic crisis.

The Soviet Union defrayed the cost of the island’s military expenditures. A phone call to the Kremlin was all that was needed to obtain financial credits. Subversion was not Fidel Castro’s only tool for exporting his brand of revolution. On any given day he might use funds from the national budget to build a school in Kingston, Jamaica or to provide a sugar mill to Nicaragua.

It did not matter; the money was not coming out of his pocket book. But with the precipitous fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, subsidized Cuba had to adapt to changing times.

Exports fell 40%. Sugar production some 70%. There was only tourism, which generated somewhat more than two billion dollars annually. And family remittances, which with hard currency, packages from overseas and cash spent by Cuban Americans on trips to the island amounted to almost five billion dollars a year.

But what contributed the most green-backs to GDP was the export of services. Not all the statistics are readily available but Carlos, an economist, believes that “just in terms of the services provided to the ALBA countries (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua) the figure approaches ten billion dollars annually.

It is estimated that currently some 40,000 doctors, specialists, nurses, technicians and others are working in sixty countries on five continents. Schools of medicine at Cuban universities graduate as many as 5,000 physicians annually. It is an assembly line, a highly profitable one.

Most of them are paid between two thousand and three thousand dollars a month, though some nations such as South Africa pay twice that. The regime retains 95% of their salaries.

Recently, Brazil announced it had agreed to hire about six million Cubans to work in the country’s depressed, rural areas. In a statement Brazil’s Federal Medical Council branded the agreement as “irresponsible and questioned the “technical and ethical quality” of the Cuban professionals.

After Brazil’s physicians exerted pressure, the government of Dilma Rousseff instead decided to hire Spanish and Portuguese doctors, whom it considered to be more qualified.

Cuba’s medical system does not enjoy good health but, so far, this situation is not reflected in the country’s favorable statistics. The average lifespan is 78 years. In 2012 the rate of infant mortality was 4.6 deaths for every thousand live births, the lowest in the Americas.

However, many hospitals are in ruins, their equipment in poor condition and their personnel mediocre. The mass exportation of doctors provokes unease among Cubans. Oneida, a housewife, says that specialists are rare. “At the clinic where I go, the dermatology department is open only one day a week due to a shortage of dermatologists. No hospital in Havana has a staff of dermatologists on duty. Those who treat you are foreign students and their quality leaves something to be desired. Most of the trained physicians are on ’missions’ (working overseas).”

According to the Brazilian Medical Council 94% of Cuban medical school graduates who took Brazil’s medical licensing exam in 2012 failed.

More than 5,000 Cuban doctors have deserted the international medical missions. Due to a lack of rigorous training for many of Cuba’s medical professionals, some doctors and specialists who decide to leave their homeland opt to work as medical assistants and nurses in the United States.

“Acquiring an American medical license is an arduous task. The exams are very rigorous. Once you live here, you realize there are a lot of gaps in our medical training. For me it’s not bad. While I am learning English, I work in a private clinic as a nurse. It pays well,” admits Eduardo, who has lived in Miami for two years.

Fernando, the doctor who 25 years ago was stationed in Angola, acknowledges that quality these days is not the best. “The reasons vary. From not having immediate access to specialized information, in spite of the national network Infomed, to low salaries and lack of technology. But I don’t think that the world is full doctors willing to work for two years in remote locations for subsistence wages.”

In 2012 sixty-eight Cuban doctors died in Venezuela. The Chavez government memorialized them, unveiling a plaque in their honor. “To heath care workers killed in Bolivarian lands while carrying out their duty,” reads the bronze inscription in a Caracas hospital, as though they fell in combat.  Most were killed in street violence, which last year alone claimed 12,000 lives in that country.

“Then why are you going,” I ask Fernando.

“It’s the only way to acquire hard currency — performing abortions, doing small-scale business transactions and saving what little money they pay you — so that, when you go back home, you can fix-up your house and provide a better living for yourself and your family,” he says.

Some doctors with whom I spoke said it was economic necessity and not altruism that was leading them to work in out-of-the-way and dangerous locations, even at the risk of losing their lives.

Iván García

19 June 2013

Olive Green High Society / Ivan Garcia

103031308-300x164They have few reasons to envy of their capitalist counterparts. The differences between them are ones of rhetoric and philosophy. The anti-capitalist islanders having studied Marxist manuals and speak on behalf of the poor.

But many are living at full throttle. At the workplace they wear sweltering uniforms designed by some sadistic tailor from the former Soviet Union. Twenty-five years ago they used to get around in Russian-made Ladas with capitalist tires and stereo systems. They called attention to themselves.

The top officials were untouchable. Officers used to place their caps in the rear of their vehicles so that police would not stop them for traffic violations. Laws were for other people to obey.

The only ones who could dismiss them, punish them, jail them (or shoot them) were the Castros. They lived in the former residences of Havana’s upper and middle classes in the Siboney, Miramar, Nuevo Vedado, Fontanar or Casino Deportivo neighborhoods.

They had more than one car and houses with Ikea furniture, electric kitchens, “made in USA” refrigerators, Sony televisions, South Korean air conditioners and Philips audio equipment.

They enjoyed three succulent meals a day and once a week they read articles from the western press that had been condensed for the directors of the Department of Revolutionary Orientation or the Communist Party. For vacations they travelled  to one of the USSR’s Baltic republics or strolled carefree through Prague’s Wenceslas Square. And they went to Varadero whenever they felt like it.

The drank Czech beer and Yankee whiskey. They smoked cigars for export and carried American dollars in their wallets back when doing so was forbidden. Ministers and military brass were fond of dressing up like Madrid’s posh elite or New York’s jet set, with Levi’s 501 jeans and polarized Ray-Ban sunglasses.

In the difficult years of the “Special Period,” while the masses whom they lauded suffered from hunger, became ill from malnutrition, put up with blackouts lasting twelve hours and got around on bicycles, the revolutionary upper class maintained its same lifestyle. They had electrical generators in their homes, celebrated with loud parties and never had to put up with the lousy food — ground beef from soy, meat paste and Cerelac — devised by Fidel Castro for the average Cuban.

In the 21st century they have become successful entrepreneurs. The various businesses established with capitalist partners as well as the “industry” which arose after the increase in remittances sent by Cubans living overseas nourish members of the armed forces and interior ministry.

An absurd captive market, which forces Cubans to pay for everything from a bottle of cooking oil to a ventilator in another currency, is managed by a holding company set up by the military.

Meanwhile, the number of maneuvers intended to counter a supposed Yankee invasion have diminished. Aging Russian armaments, built in the 1980s when the government was mobilizing the population for “imminent enemy aggression,” lie rusting in underground bunkers.

Today the new Creole upper class is betting on the world of business. It advises Venezuelan comrades and secures positions in European embassies. The old Russian Ladas are no longer fashionable. Now they show off with Audis and Hummers.

Cuban baseball bores them. They prefer to watch Big League games, championship football matches and NBA playoffs live on satellite. The like to play golf or go hunting in exclusive game reserves. They dine as though they lived in London or Paris. They have internet access at home and use Skype for video conferencing or for chatting with their children in Florida.

Offspring of the nouveau riche have studied or are studying at universities in the United States or Europe. Others, more in tune with the times than their fathers, prefer to live in exile.

At night this elite bourgeoisie dines at Havana’s finest restaurants and frequents its hottest nightclubs. They dress in designer clothes, perhaps made in dismal garment factories in Bangladesh. They sport French perfume and Swiss watches. By day they take part in revolutionary actions while wearing white guayaberas.

They demand productivity and sacrifice, speak of a prosperous and sustainable socialism, condemn Yankee imperialism and ask that the people work with them to end rampant corruption. This new Cuban upper class loves to foment revolution from the soap box.

Photo: Banquet and show from the XV Festival del Habano 2013, which took in more than a million dollars. These festivals has been taking place in the Cuban capital since 1994 and bring together hundreds of celebrities, specialists and cigar lovers from all over the world. Parents and children from communist military high society regularly attend these exclusive, opulent events. From Diario de Yucatán.

Iván García

16 June 2013

Venezuela: Maduro Digs In / Ivan Garcia

The PSUV (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela) brothers have divided the country into two trenches. Their followers — in petrocasas (mass-produced small houses) and medical practices painted in red and white with images of Chavez hanging from the roof — if they show absolute loyalty, gain the right to a position as a minor official, where they can earn thousands of bolivars extra.

Those who are against — half the Venezuelan population — are treated as enemies. Nicolás Maduro is governing in virtually a state of siege. The army in the streets. And his comrades turn up in Parliament with gauntlets hidden in their pockets in case they need to hit their opponents.

Maduro has drawn the short straw. The man has a short fuse. He has little room to manoeuvre. As a statesman, he leaves a lot to be desired. His public speaking is a disaster.

He pulls three or four phrases out of the drawer and repeats them to the point of tedium about his love for Hugo Chávez . It doesn’t look as if the old Caracas bus driver is able to more Venezuela forward with his government drawn from the street, where only his own followers turn up.

A country is not a party. You should govern for everybody. Listen to the others. And respect their opinions in the parliament. Many people believe that the advice that Fidel Castro is whispering from Havana is seeking to polarise and radicalise a Bolivarian revolution which is deflating.

That’s how Castro governed in Cuba. The bearded guerilla humiliated the priests and any religion which was not Marxist. He nationalised all property. And provided an air bridge which allowed his enemies and the middle class to flee to Miami. But that was in the time of the cold war.

In the 21st century, to put together an almost scientific autocracy, with a parliament in the Cuban style in which they vote unanimously, is impossible. Following Castro’s strategies is the shortest route for the PSUV to dig its political grave. For many reasons. One of them: Castro’s government is a monument to inefficiency.

It survives on exile dollars and passing the collection box in Venezuela. Productivity is at rock bottom. Salaries are laughable. The infrastructure is dysfunctional. Even the much-trumpeted successes of the revolution in public health, education and sport are going backwards.

Politically, guaranteeing basic rights and employment while sacrificing liberties will never be worthwhile. Those rights and duties which a modern state must fulfil. Without asking for votes in exchange.

Maduro isn’t Chávez. The man from Barinas had charisma. Ability to manoeuvre, and, in spite of his major screw-ups, with his oratory he was able to convince his supporters.

Maduro creates distrust even in typical Chavistas. The position of President is too big for him. Rushing forward is not the right decision.

Whipping up the political differences between Venezuelans is putting out a fire with gasoline. Entrenching himself in institutions which respond to the interests of his party is not the correct solution.

He should offer political breathing room and participation to the opposition. It represents 50% of the electorate. It’s not a small thing. If you could grade Maduro’s performance in his first month of government on a scale of one to ten, he would get a zero.

As President he has not been up to scratch.

Iván García

Translated by GH

4 June 2013

Welcome to Havana, Willy Toledo / Ivan Garcia

RYANAIR-Willy-ToledoAlthough virtually unknown in Cuba, the Spanish actor Willy Toledo — to paraphrase one of his icons, Argentina’s Che Guevara — at least intends to put his money where his mouth is.

In an interview with the pro-Chavez Venezuelan broadcaster Telesur, Toledo declared his intention to live full-time in Cuba. Guillermo Toledo Monsalve, his full name, was born in Madrid on May 22, 1970.

He is the son of José Toledo, a prominent surgeon and a pioneer of thoracic surgery in Spain. Willy grew up without food rationing, power outages or water shortages. As well as being an actor, he is a theatrical producer and a left-wing political activist.

He received a Goya, the Spanish equivalent of an Oscar, for his performance in the TV series 7 Vidas (Seven Lives). After the death of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo on February 23, 2010, Toledo declared him to be “a common criminal, not even a political dissident,” echoing the official stance of the Castro regime.

The actor is a fervent supporter of the Cuban revolution, the late Hugo Chavez’s policies and the 15-M movement in his own country. Unlike his comrades-in-arms who voice support for Cuba’s military government from Europe or the United States while living in nice houses, driving late-model cars and enjoying broadband internet access, Willy has decided to move permanently to Cuba.

Perhaps he is fleeing the economic crisis afflicting Spain. Or perhaps he is moving to the “Caribbean paradise of workers and peasants” out of real political conviction.

I like this kind of guy. It is easy enough to support a cause from thousands of miles away while staying in five-star hotels, but it is better to be in the thick of things.

But I have my doubts about Willy Toledo living in Cuba if he is coming to stay in a guest house in the upscale Laguito neighborhood run by Cuba’s Council of State, or paying out of his own pocket for an exclusive duplex apartment for foreigners.

Toledo will gain the respect of many affluent, progressive people if — once he is on the island — he moves to a poor neighborhood. In Havana there are more than sixty.

I can see it now. I imagine him carrying jugs of water through the impoverished Colón neighborhood, with a hooker, a marijuana dealer, an unemployed worker and a bookie for the bolita, or illegal lottery, as neighbors.

And if he is really a dyed-in-the-wool communist, then he would prefer to be in a llega y pon, a shantytown of cardboard and aluminum shacks. In these unsanitary neighborhoods there are no electric lights or sanitation services. People eat little and poorly, and drink too much distilled alcohol.

If he is coming to work and earn his wages in Cuban pesos without turning to the black market while taking the city buses and private taxis, and feeding himself from the ration book like any other Cuban, then we could say that Willy Toledo is preaching by example.

What disappoints me is when a leftist remains above it all, when he stays in special houses when travelling through the country, or accepts luxurious perks such as those given to generals and government ministers by the Council of State.

I would be disappointed if this European leftie ended up living in an old bourgeois Creole villa – one of those remodeled by the government with air-conditioning, a pool and private security .

I would not like to see Willy Toledo driving an Audi or Mercedes Benz from the flotilla of cars used by Castro’s guests. Or visiting the CIMEQ* clinic, with its latest advances in medical technology.

I would be disappointed if someone wore a Ho Chi Minh T-shirt to accept a Goya. Or if he ran around town at night, paying hard currency for drinks at the newly renovated bar Sloppy Joe’s, surrounded by mulatto beauties.

Or dined in expensive restaurants with the creme de la creme of “Castro’s aristocracy.” Presumably he would in no way resemble Beyoncé or her husband Jay-Z by declaring himself to be anti-capitalist.

If Willy Toledo is coming to experience first-hand what socialism under Fidel Castro is really like, then welcome to Havana.

Iván García

Photo: Willy Toledo creates an incident when he tries to board a Ryanair flight without proper identification.

*Translator’s note: Spanish acronym for the Center for Medical and Surgical Research, a hospital dedicated to treating senior government officials, their families and foreign dignitaries, but inaccessible to ordinary Cubans.

28 May 2013

Cuba: Internet, in Slow Motion and Hard Currency / Ivan Garcia

Cuba-Internet-150x150Facing the India fountain, next to Fraternity Park and close to the Capitol, in the center of Havana, is nestled the Hotel Saratoga.

Its ancient facade, painted lime green, has an architecture of curved arches and tall columns. The interior is a modern frame with iron structures and plasterboard. According to the relaxed norms of Cuban hospitality, the Saratoga is a 5 star hotel.

Like almost all hotels, has an Internet cafe. Going up a wide staircase with iron railings, after crossing the piano bar in a small room and pool, one can connect to the internet.

If you have a tablet (iPad), laptop or smartphone, you can do it from anywhere in the hotel, thanks to a wireless network. Otherwise, the Saratoga has three computers. The speed of transmission is a maddeningly slow.

Opening a Yahoo email can take up to 6 minutes. Forget Gmail. The connection runs at 100 kilobytes. Downloading videos and photos that exceed a megabyte is not advisable.

The service is too expensive, even for a foreigner. Half an hour for 6 CUC (over $6 US). One hour for 10. Two hours for 15. In the same hotel where a month and a half ago the singers Beyonce and Jay-Z stayed, the internet works in slow motion.

In 2010 the Castro government, opting for a full ’digital sovereignty’, decided to open its wallet to the investment and together with Venezuela and Jamaica, financed a submarine cable of several thousand kilometers. Its birthplace was the Venezuelan region of La Guaira and termination, Siboney Beach in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba, about 550 miles from Havana.

Little is known about the cable. It is a kind of ’ALBANET’, with filters and control mechanisms. Behind the famous cable there is an Olympic framework of corruption.

Some put out their hands along the way and lost several million dollars. It’s rumored — in Cuba the rumors are more reliable than the news from the official press — that several people could go to jail.

State media reported euphorically that when the cable is connected, the  data transmission speed would be multiplied by 300. While technical issues are resolved, 97% of the Cuban population still sees the Internet as the stuff of science fiction.

In its absence, a USB flash drive serves as transmitter of information for those computers not connected to the network. The regime considers the internet a ’hegemonic control tool of U.S. imperialism’.

Since the island links to the information superhighway via satellite, the tropical ’think tanks’ wear themselves out trying to design and effective cyber police that can tame the democratic worldwide web.

So far they have not succeeded. What they have achieved is to block sites deemed ’subversive’ and in the workplaces ’big brother’ is watching the footsteps of those disobedient people who decide to take a look at a digital newspaper from Miami or Madrid.

In ETECSA, the State telecommunications company, staff with access to the web had to sign a statement agreeing not to read ’enemy pages or visit pornographic sites’.

Nor may they have international email account (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail). Zero Twitter, Facebook or other social networks. But in such closed societies, people applaud a speech with the same emphasis that they blatantly steal from their job or violate established rules.

Raisa, 24, has never surfed internet. That has not stopped the girl from having a Facebook account and a page where she advertises herself as a photographer for weddings and quinceañeras — girls’ 15th birthday parties.

All thanks to a computer savvy friend, charged with editing and updating her site. And those who have State accounts on the internet don’t miss a trick. They sell access for 2 CUC an hour.

But I don’t recommend it. At its best, the connection is 50k. It can take you up to 30 minutes to get to the online edition of the Journal of The Americas.

Even though the Castro regime has established a drips-and-drabs internet, some censored information reaches the average Cuban. Late, of course.

Ivan Garcia

Photo: Several people access internet in a room in Havana. Taken from Infolatam.

1 June 2013

Havana, Between Filth and Social Indiscipline / Ivan Garcia

My beautiful pictureAlthough a sputtering Russian-made truck and its crew passed through the Sevillano neighborhood picking up trash and garbage in the streets the night before, debris had once again accumulated on the street corners by morning.

“It never ends. At dawn every morning we go through areas of Diez de Octubre picking up trash. We take tons of waste to the dump, but a little later the street corners are overflowing with junk again,” says Orlando, a 35-year-old sanitation worker.

Directly facing the Plaza Roja in the heart of the Havana neighborhood of La Víbora, there is an unoccupied building where neighbors dump significant quantities of trash. Every so often large dump trucks and a bulldozer carry off the piles of debris. A few days later the building is once again filled with refuse and discarded objects.

The garbage trucks cannot always make their rounds. The drivers do what they can with the aging fleet. Many of the vehicles remain idle due to a lack of spare parts. Widespread indifference leads some people to steal the wheels off the trash containers to make pushcarts. Or for fun, gangs of youths turn trashcans over into the streets.

Public health and epidemiological officials launch media campaigns in an effort to stem the illegal dumping, but they have little effect.

“Havana as a city is extremely vulnerable to diseases associated with a lack of cleanliness. Unhealthy conditions as well as rats, mice, mosquitoes as well as poor water treatment can lead to skin infections, cholera and dengue fever,” says a specialist.

In spite of some outbreaks of dengue fever and cholera, Havana has not seen large-scale epidemics — at least not yet — even though dengue fever has reached almost epidemic proportions.

Because potable water is not available 24 hours a day, a large segment of the population is forced to store water in containers, and not always in the most hygienic or careful way. As a result mosquito larvae carrying hemorrhagic dengue fever can be difficult to eliminate.

“Ending the cycle of the dengue epidemic has so far proved to be impossible. As long as current living conditions in Cuba persist, trying to eradicate dengue is like tilting at windmills,” says the head of a brigade which fumigates houses in an attempt to prevent the illness.

A shortage of trash bins means pedestrians often throw peanut wrappers, beer cans and other pieces of trash into the street. Because there are fewer public restrooms — especially in bars, cafes and nightclubs — at night many people urinate or defecate in public thoroughfares, on street corners or in building stairways.

Public apathy and societal discontent among certain segments of the population manifest themselves in acts of petty vandalism towards public telephones, automatic teller machines and city buses.

The filth and stench have turned the capital into the dirtiest city on the island. A shortage of trashcans and public idleness have caused the streets to overflow with refuse and debris.

“If the accumulation of dirt and poor water treatment continue, an epidemic of huge proportions could be unleashed in Havana in the near future,” warns an epidemiologist. We have been lucky so far.

Iván García

18 May 2013

Cuba: Sex, Taking All Comers / Ivan Garcia

There is still the ration book. Potatoes are scarce, the price of fruit is going through the roof, and drinking a natural orange juice is a luxury. Sanitary pads are only distributed every two months — a package of ten to menstruating women. And connecting to the Internet is still a science fiction story for a large part of the population.

However, sex is liberated. A national sport. According to some, the infidelity between couples is a gene human beings carry. If those verse in it give a tour of Cuba, we can confirm their strange theories.

And they confirm that teenagers of 12 and 13 are “experts” in the field. Unaware that Australian is a continent, or that Henry Lee was in independence fighter in the American Revolution and not the creator of Lee jeans. But when it comes to sex, they have countless stories to tell. For many boys, their fathers teach them from the time they’re small, that the more women they have the more macho they are.

It’s the ABCs of a Cuban father to his son; life is dick. Men don’t cry. And the boss of the house is the one with balls. If in the 19th and 20th century fathers paid prostitutes to de-flower their sons, today it’s not necessary.

Most children are more up-to-date and more promiscuous than their parents. Having a “honey” or a lover is synonymous with masculinity. An athlete of sex. A son of a bitch of the street.

The more lovers, the more drinks friends pay for. In the bars they offer “wise” council about how to get into an impossible female. For hours, they tell sex anecdotes without ceasing to drink like Cossacks, beer and cheap rum.

Sex in Cuba is messy, but it has its hierarchies. Not like the neighborhood pimp that manages a five-star hotel. A capital that’s a general. A boring and monotonous deputy to parliament that’s a mandarin.

The “honeys” of the superiors respect them. Secretly they look at their breasts or butt, but desist from the rude compliment or indecent proposal.  A boss can fire you or make your life impossible if he finds you prowling around his woman.

Meanwhile, the more stars on your epaulette or if your photo appears among the members of the Central Committee, the more chances you have to give major luxuries to your lovers. You can even choose: blondes brunettes, mulatto or black. Or have a collection with one of each. As all are stunning, with pride and discretion we see you on the weekend in exclusive recreational villas for senior officers, or at parties their wives don’t attend.

Being the “honey” of a major character in Cuba, is synonymous with social status. As if rocket-propelled, you climb the ladder at work. All over Havana everyone is talking about the meteoric rise of a famous television report, who is both beautiful and talented. According to the rumors, the lucky guy who sleeps with her is the “boss of the bosses.”

It’s still remembered that in the 90s, when Carlos Aldana was the third strong man on the island, in charge of the ideological sector of the Communist Party, came to have three “darling” journalists, the three well-known.

Even Fidel Castro, between sips of Jack’s Daniel, liked to talk in private about his sexual exploits, like the affair he had with the German Marita Lorenz and she told about it in a book. In a macho-Fidelista Revolution like the Cuban one, having amorous adventures in bulk sets you apart from the pack. A rogue, a pimp. A hallmark of virility that makes the difference.

In a note from Juan Juan Almeida published in Marti News, told about the debauchery of Cuban officials in Angola. He gave a figure, taking from the Ministry of the Armed Forces: 40% of the woman who were on the mission in Angola were harassed or raped. That figure has never appeared in the newspaper Granma. For me, Almeida Jr. is a highly credible source. He lived among the creme de la creme of the Cuban hierarchy. His father, a great person in the opinion of his relatives, took to his bed every woman who stirred his pleasure.

And I pardon their children and wives. The great difference between being the “honey” of a leader and dying of hunger, are luxuries and comforts. The guy with few resources invites you to a movie and buys you popcorn or peanuts. The “bigwig” puts a roof over your head. And if you really satisfy him he buys you a car. And in addition, you climb the ladder in your profession.

There are women who live off their lovers, like the pimps off their prostitutes. And sometimes they have more than one “girlfriend,” they compete to see who gets more and remains preferred. Recently I heard an argument between two hookers. One said to the other, “Yeah, I’m a monster, I bought my boyfriend a motorcycle and three gold chains. The others just give him shirts and sneakers.”

You can live in tile house in Carraguao, or a residence in Miramar. But if you were raised to it, you have to have a “honey.” In a conversation between “tough men,” if you don’t talk about the “girlfriends,” “honeys” or lovers you have, they might label you Catholic or retarded. A bore who doesn’t know how to use the penis God gave you. That is, taking care not to mention or even look at the boss’s lover.

Ivan Garcia

16 May 2013

Fidel Castro, Mentor to Chavez / Ivan Garcia

The French General Charles de Gaulle used to say that when two people or two countries associated with each other, one always tries to have the upper hand. Cuba, which because of its geographical situation is considered the Key of America, after 54 years of the exclusive mandate of the Castro brothers still has pretensions of being a lighthouse of redemption.

As the first Communist country on the continent it has forged the natural right to be an ideological mentor of the rebellious, seditious, or outdated Latin America anarchists.

The Havana government has outlined interventionist policies. When in the time of the “proletariat internationalism” the Soviet titty connected a tube of rubles, funds and oil, Fidel Castro offered guerrilla apprenticeship courses in Cuba.

Terrorists, such as the Venezuelan Carlos “The Jackal,” currently in prison in France, learned to use C-4 explosives from his Cuban comrades. On behalf of the dictatorship of the proletariat, an enraged poor island sent troops to civil conflicts in Africa. continue reading

After the years of the Castro hurricane are left behind, the amount of money and resources squandered in overseas battles will be known. When Soviet Communism said goodbye, the island entered a stage called the “Special Period”: a punishment of waste and economic unproductivity. The regime was jumping through hoops.

The State coffers were nearly empty. Lack of oil paralyzed the development plans. Closed industries. The blackouts lasted 12 hours a day. It was like a war, but without aerial bombardments.

In Venezuela, in 1992, a lieutenant colonel in the paratroopers attempted a military coup to install himself in Miraflores. Meanwhile, in his office, Fidel Castro circled in red pencil the news from the event. He awarded the highest priority to young Hugo Chavez. And when he was released in 1994, he was the guest of honor. It was in Havana where the future alliance was born.

The olive-green autocracy bet everything on a winning horse. Screaming, the homeland of Bolivar demanded changes. The corruption and inflexibility of traditional politicians, rampant poverty and urban crime, had gestated an explosive panorama.

Hugo was Fidel’s man in Caracas. He came to power skillfully managing the discourse of poverty and social change. No talk of socialism to be controlled much of Venezuelan institutions. He didn’t talk about socialism until he had the better part of the Venezuelan institutions under control.

Venezuela is a democracy in appearances. There is free press and political game. Even elections. But the strong man of Barinas designed a strategy that will enable staying in power for decades, using authoritarian methods subtly supported by the Constitution.

Chavez’s ideology was amorphous. Catholic, a little Marxism along the way, and a first class passion for the XXI Century Socialism devised by the German political scientist, Heinz Dieterich.

Death came to collect him and saved him from disaster. If Venezuela remains committed to the path of political absurdity, it will end in massive street protests, citizen discontent and social unrest. The economic figures are unsettling. Crime is frightening. Inflation soars.

Although the barrel of oil is around $100, the money collected evaporates. Oil production decreases. Part of this production is to pay their debt to China. Another part is delivered at a subsidized price, if paid for at all, to Cuba and other Caribbean nations.

Socialism sounds nice in theory. Helping the homeless, prosperity, health and free education. That is good. But social policies should be designed without violating individual liberties or leaping over democratic laws. A State can’t plan a whole economy from toothpicks to the exact amount of slushy ice.

President Nicolas Maduro could turn things around for good. But he’s carrying the burden of his friends’ cadaver on his back. The advice that blows down from Havana should not be a pattern to follow.

The project is to polarize society. To continue delivering oil to the string of friendly countries. And consolidate the continental hegemony against the United States. During his visit to Cuba he met with Fidel Castro for five hours, presumed mastermind of today’s Venezuelan landscape.

If Maduro is an honest man, he will notice that his alliance with the Cuban government could lead to political ruin. The ideal would be to break that heavy burden, which annoys even many supporters of Chavez.

And the model to follow, opting for a modern and moderate leftist style like Lula’s of Dilma’s in Brazil. Otherwise, its days are numbered.

Iván García

Photo: Gregory Bull / AP, taken by Los Angeles Times. Fidel Castro receives Hugo Chavez at the airport in Havana on November 15, 1999.

11 May 2013

Private 3D Movies, the Latest Fashion in Havana / Ivan Garcia

Some are advertised online. And they pay taxes to the state. Other work by the left. Either way flowers grow like Havana.

All are located in private homes. Prices vary between one and three CUC with the right to a bag of popcorn and a soda. They also sell ice cream and beer, rum, vodka and whiskey for adults.

There are runs for children, adolescents and youth. And sessions just for adults with horror movies or violence. These private 3D cinemas have a wide collection of films in three dimensions.

Avatar or Tintin, are now all the rage among children. In the neighborhood of La Vibora there are now several 3D cinemas. One of them is located in a house on the side of the former primary school, Pedro Maria, today a dilapidated shell.

So many children, youth and adults attend, making reservations days in advance with Roinel, the owner. The house has air conditioning and a small wood and metal bar. About twenty yellow and white plastic chairs, four large sofas and three high-legged stools.

In one of the showings last Saturday, the makeshift 3D theater was packed. Each session lasts two hours. “It’s tremendous, the reception given the 3D. It is a unique experience and people are loving it. In one day I have to 5 showings with a full house,” says Roinel.

He has 40 polarized glasses. A formidable 60 inch flat screen and a special projector for films in three dimensions. When Roinel is asked about the profits he responds with a smile. “I’m making good money,” he said without giving figures. The olive-green state, owns 90% of the companies in Cuba, and keeps an eagle eye on the new 3D cinema private businesses.

The first public exhibition hosted by the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) was held in the province of Camagüey, a little more than 300 miles east of Havana, at an event for film criticism, last March. “It was more symbolic than anything else, because we only had 20 glasses, but for historical purposes it must be as the first exhibition in a public space by the State,” he told the film critic Juan Antonio García from the Spanish agency EFE.

According to ICAIC officials, the agency is considering adapting a small room at its headquarters at 23rd and 12th in Vedado, for three-dimensional projections. As always, the State lags behind the creativity shown by the self-employed.

The equipment in these particular 3D cinema comes to the island thanks to relatives residing in South Florida or Cubans married to foreigners.

Although 3D cinema is now causing excitement, this type of experience is not novel in Cuba. “In the 50s, in various rooms of Havana they showed films with the anaglyph 3D technique, blue and cyan. The new thing now is the polarized glasses,” says a capital cinephile.

According to official data, Cuba has just over 300 cinemas, with 16 and 35 mm format. Most were built before the Revolution. Today, operating theaters have severe damage and do not have the technological equipment to make the jump to 3D. Others have disappeared or turned into juggling schools, theater companies and stores selling schlock.

A movie ticket is very cheap on the island. Two pesos (ten cents). But talking about comfort is another thing. You can count on the fingers of one hand the air-conditioned rooms, ushers with flashlights and clean bathrooms.

The days of the old children’s matinees in the local cinemas where the children saw Chaplin and for the first time and the comedies of Laurel and Hardy, gone.

That magic of a dark room and a large screen has begun to be replaced by new private cinemas in 3D that proliferate in Havana. The difference is that the experience can cost a family two week’s wage.

Iván García

7 May 2013

Camouflaged Capitalism / Ivan Garcia

Like Deng Xiaoping in China, General Raul Castro is using capitalism to save Cuba’s brand of socialism. It worked in China. The party and its ideological stalwarts achieved results.

Not only did the market and capital investments transform China into the second largest economy on the planet, creating spectacular economic growth, the party also performed Olympian ideological acrobatics. Sweeping away the resounding failures of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the barbarities of the Cultural Revolution was a masterpiece of Chinese advertising magic.

Deng experienced the violence of the revolution personally. He was a victim of the Cultural Revolution unleashed by Mao. Accused of being a counter-revolutionary, he was stripped of power. He was confined in 1969 to a remote region and forced to work in a tractor factory in Jianxi province. After Mao’s death he was rehabilitated. Once in power he gradually began China’s transformation.

From a rural economy he created a superpower by fusing the tools of capitalism with the supremacy and control of the Communist Party. His first steps were gradual. At the time his Soviet comrades and Cuba’s Fidel Castro branded him a traitor to Marxism.

In the 1980s, while Fidel Castro dismissed the new Chinese government, his brother Raul took note. The Chinese reforms began seven years before Gorbachev’s perestroika. They met with approval from the United States which, astonished by the economic and social experiment, granted China most-favored-nation trade status.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International accused China of violating human rights, imprisoning political dissidents and carrying out 18,000 death penalties a year.

During the uprising in Tienanmen Square in 1989, Deng Xiaoping did not hesitate to order the army to fire on peaceful protesters calling for democracy. Deng was clear; no one but no one was going to impede the progress of the reforms.

Millions of people got out of poverty thanks to the economic transformations. Today the Communist Party applauds people who make money, as long as they remain silent, obedient and do not succumb to democratic rhetoric.

Today China is a quiet empire – a country where laborers work for seventy dollars a month for as many hours as an investor wants without worries about losses from strikes or independent trade unions.

China is a cocktail of voracious capitalist ambition combined with the rigid societal controls typical of an autocracy. The entire reform process in China has been carefully studied by the accountants, technocrats and economists advising the Cuban general.

Raul Castro has been in charge of the nation’s economy since the mid-1990s, but it was only after July 31, 2006, when his brother gave up power due to illness, that the path was clear to introduce economic changes on the island.

In Cuba the capitalist methods of a market economy are to be introduced gradually. As in Deng’s China, lip service will still be paid to a planned economy, but the doors will be discreetly opened to capitalist investors. The economic czar, Marion Murillo, is careful to camouflage his future plans.

Among the first steps will be overtures to millionaire Cuban businessmen living in the United States. Unlike China, however, Cuba is of no particular interest to the world’s power centers.

A limiting factor is that its market of eleven million impoverished Cubans in not a seductive draw for foreign investment. Its complicated investment laws also do not inspire confidence.

Until now the Castros have acted like swindlers, breaking it off with capitalists and closing down their businesses when they feel like it. General Raul promises to change the rules of the game.

The embargo is another big obstacle. No capitalist with any sense of pride is going to invest money in Cuba if it means not being able to do business with the world’s superpower.

There is nothing more cowardly than a million dollars. To reverse the situation, sensible people in the regime are trying to strengthen the anti-embargo lobby in the United States.

They can count on the support of most country’s in the world as well as the proven inefficacy of the embargo. Economic pressures from Washington have brought neither democracy nor free elections to the island.

Eleven administrations have passed through the White House during the fifty-fours years of this autocratic government, having committed themselves to democracy in Cuba.

If Raul Castro comes up with cosmetic political changes and creates business opportunities for all Cubans — exiles and non-exiles — the next American president could change policy.

At the end of the day, China is no more democratic than Cuba. And the United States wants a neighbor that keeps illegal immigration under control and combats drug trafficking and terrorism.

These are the trump cards the government of Castro II will proposed to sit down and negotiate with the Americans. The current regime could be innovative in creating democratic pockets.

For some time, the special services have been colonizing certain areas of dissent. As an international image it doesn’t hurt. And, above all, to engage the rest of the nations of the continent, where the opposition is legal.

Raul Castro’s intentions are to revive the economy so that people can to live better without questioning who governs. His goal is to extend the Castro regime beyond his death.

His guide has been China’s reforms. His strategy is similar. That capitalism saves a shipwrecked socialism.

Iván García

Photo: Iberostar Ensenachos. Five star hotel with 440 rooms, located on the north coast of the province of Villa Clara, in the center of the island. Among the benefits of the environment are two pristine beaches, the Ensenachos and The Mégano. Built on a virgin key in a the shape of a horseshoe, the area is considered a Biosphere Reserve, for having endemic species of flora and fauna and an aboriginal settlement.

25 April 2013

Havana and the Cult of Burglar Bars / Ivan Garcia

Havana is not Caracas. You can still walk the streets at night. There are gangs of youths who, dagger in hand, will relieve you of a Detroit Tigers jersey, some Puma sneakers or an iPhone.

Assaults on the street, however, are not common. In the capital there have been bank hold-ups, guys who have robbed trucks carrying hard-currency or who have highjacked a plane at gun point, but these are the exceptions.

Compared to Mexico, Venezuela or El Salvador, homicides are almost non-existent. There are hardly any violent crimes to report, though once in awhile a woman might go mad and kill her children, a wife might take a candle to her husband, or a rapist might unleash panic in the city.

The press publishes not a single line of gory news. In spite of such an apparently peaceful life and low rate of violent crime, Havana’s citizens are increasingly fortifying their homes.

The number of petty thefts is increasing. Some thieves spend months planning home burglaries with the goal of stealing a valuable painting or large sums of money.

The biggest increase in thefts has been by gangs of ruffians. They often take the closest thing at hand – a car’s steering wheel, an auto’s stereo system, a wet T-shirt hanging in a patio or on a terrace.

The increase in domestic robberies is the reason a huge number of Havana’s citizens have decided to install burglar bars on their doors and windows. When 62-year-old Anselmo was a boy, he played hide-and-seek in his neighborhood, running freely through its labyrinth of internal passageways. His children cannot do the same today. The neighbors have closed off and put railings around not only their own properties, but the adjoining alleyways as well.

“Every day we find out about a robbery in a nearby neighborhood. People deal with it by protecting their families and their belongings. But even houses with tall, spiked fences are broken into. Thieves simply figure that, if a residence has burglar bars, there must be money or valuables inside,” says Luisa, a resident of Vibora Park.

This has unleashed a cult of burglar bars. If you walk through Havana, you will see that homeowners have installed bars on 90% of the houses, porches, doors and windows, creating a symphony of ironwork.

It is a bunker mentality from which the government itself has not escaped. In the 1980s Fidel Castro, in one of his many eccentric obsessions, planted the idea in the Cuban consciousness that an invasion from the United States was imminent.

The deepest recesses of Cuba are filled with underground tunnels and bomb shelters. Thousands were constructed. Today almost all of them have been converted into discotheques or luxury retail stores. At night young couples without cash use them as love hotels.

The Yanks never came, but the regime kept up its war games, waiting for the anticipated invasion, though without the fervor of twenty years before.

Nevertheless, from time to time there are still military maneuvers in which overweight militiamen with corrugated metal rifles run to seek refuge in antiquated bomb shelters.

Fidel Castro still retains a state-of-siege mentality. He lives in an area of forty-five houses known as Zone Zero, where fortifications, security measures and camouflage are part of the landscape.

The military’s businessmen and government ministers also live surrounded by iron bars and fencing covered with vegetation to prevent onlookers from being able to see inside their homes.

They also rely on police protection and surveillance cameras. Others in Havana are not so fortunate. People pay for the protection they can afford. Those with the fewest resources try to keep an eye on their plasma screen TVs and 1950s Chevrolets. They pay ironworkers to fashion barricades of bulky metal rods to surround their houses or to craft a kind of garage-jail.

Families with greater resources opt for grillework that harmonizes with the architecture of the house. Although violence in Havana is nothing like that in Caracas or Medellin, people still jealously guard their properties.

Iván García

21 April 2013

Raul Castro Buys Time / Ivan Garcia

On Sunday, April 14, at 11:45 PM Havana time, the president of the National Electoral Council, Tibisay Lucena, delared Nicolas Maduro, the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the winner of the presidential election. More than a few bottles of champagne and Russian vodka were uncorked by Cuban government ministers and military businessmen in a relaxed and familial atmosphere.

The close victory by Chavez’ hand-picked successor — 50.66% of the vote compared to Capriles’ 49.07% — was the culmination of a political campaign orchestrated in large part from Havana.

While the Bolivarian comandante lay dying in CIMEQ, a large hospital west of the city, the Castro brothers offered their services as political intermediaries to the bereaved Chávez cabinet. It was in the Cuban capital that a plan was cooked up and a timetable for succession was worked out. Behind the scenes a script was being written. continue reading

Nicolás Maduro rehearsed the score beforehand. The regime did not want any surprises. It was a matter of life and death. Of national security.

Egos, ambitions for power and rivalries among red-shirted comrades had to be put aside. An agreement was patched together in the name of Chávez and Latin American unity.

If they lost the election, twenty-first century socialism would die of starvation. It would deal a death blow to the ALBA trade alliance, whose members included Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba.

Without Chávez’ policies of providing oil at cut-rate prices, multi-million dollar loans and subsidies for Latin American social projects, the continent-wide revolution’s days would be numbered.

Maduro’s mission is to continue Chávez’ social policies in Venezuela and to follow the moronic strategies of the lieutenant colonel from Barinas, as well as his confrontational and anti-American rhetoric in the name of Latin America’s insurgents.

Maduro is being asked to be a clone of Chávez. It is all a symbolic drama staged to reinforce pro-Chávez sentiment among the hill dwellers.

There is a little of bit of everything in the cocktail shaker. Allusions to Christ. Recalling the Bolivarian leader through folk songs and hymns interpreted in his voice. And mobilizing all the beneficiaries of the PSUV’s social policies to remind them whom they should vote for on April 14.

According to forecasts by the Cuban government, Maduro should have won by a wide margin, with an overwhelming landslide of 15% to 18%

Maduro himself talked about getting at least ten million votes. But as the days wore on and the country experienced blackouts, urban violence and shortages, many Venezuelans began to suspect that they were being led into a trap.

A difference of less than 235,000 votes in Maduro’s favor can be read in different ways. Capriles improved his standing, gaining a million more votes than he did on October 7, 2012. And at only 40 years of age, he is now a real threat to the ruling party.

During the fourteen years of Chávez’ rule no opposition candidate gained as many votes. Maduro must know that, if he keeps up the polarizing rhetoric and tries to govern only for the benefit of his supporters, half the adults in Venezuela will not feel comfortable about it.

The former bus driver and trade union official from Caracas could choose to make a 180 degree turn and govern for all the people in the manner of former Brazilian president Lula da Silva. If he leads the nation in an inclusive, modern and coherent manner, he could escape from under the shadows of his ideological father. He could even outshine him.

The county’s internal situation presents a serious test. There are 7.2 million people who do not support the pro-Chávez agenda. With Hugo Chávez’ corpse growing cold, and the economic and social situation in Venezuela continuing on its precarious course, Maduro has no other choice but to listen to all political opinions.

The opposition has been strengthened. If they devise effective strategies, they could attract more supporters. Chavismo could see several hundred thousand people desert if Maduro does not govern with complete independence.

It has been a Pyrrhic victory. It is possible to discern a maze of confrontations. The atmosphere could keep heating up. Maduro is obligated to govern for the good of all Venezuelans and to develop the country. It would be a big mistake if he continued his predecessor’s practice of bleeding the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, to provide bonuses to other countries on the continent.

Cuba’s autocrats know that the alarm bells from Caracas could sound at any moment. Raul Castro will “slowly but steadily” continue with his tepid economic reforms. Nicolás Maduro’s victory has provided a burst of political oxygen. It has bought time. What no one knows is how much.

Iván García

17 April 2013