Since its installation in power, the Cuban government has always moved stride for stride with the corresponding thick ideological cover. Each year was given a name, which was supposed to serve as an incentive for work during its twelve months. Thus, 1959 was the Year of the Liberation, but it really meant, by the measures taken, rather than the liberation, the violation of all existing rights and freedoms. Then came many others which, above all, were more than just names without concrete results, until they lost interest in the practice and it become routine, and then they started to put the focus on slogans for extensive periods of time.

One of the most interesting was the so-called Battle of Ideas, where everything that is done or undone formed a part of it, from fixing a pothole, repairing a bodega, replacing a bulb in the street, tilling the land, holding a rally, reaping the harvest, etc.

It was so important that he even had his ministry and minister, who seemed drawn from the pages of George Orwell’s novel 1984. I came to constitute a little parallel private government within the existing, complicating everything even more that is already was.

When he stepped down from the presidency for health reasons, the ministry, the minister and the Battle didn’t last very long, although the formula was not abandoned and reappeared in the Guidelines of the Party and the Revolution.

Since then, everything that is planned, done or undone forms a part of them, now with the addition of its corresponding little number: everyone works in compliance with some guideline, be it number 10, number 83, number 104, or any other up to 313 and, necessarily, it has to be put on the record.

I dream of the time when in my country things are done because they must be done, and the government implements them because it’s their obligation and reason for being, without any ideological cover, let alone strides that usually have always fallen on deaf ears.

22 May 2013

Photo Peter Deel

In the Republican Cuba each province had a governor and each municipality a mayor, who governed, in the case of the province with a Council of municipal mayors, and in the municipalities with a city council with councilors. The municipality was the local society organized politically to an extent determined by the necessary relations of vicinity, on a basis of financial capacity to meet the expenses of the government. It had autonomy, with powers to meet the peculiar collective needs of local society. The province was composed of the municipalities within its territory. So it was established in the Constitution of 1940.

From the year 1959, instead of perfecting what already existed, these structures were modified and, in the case of the municipality, which is what interests me, the mayor was replaced by a triumvirate of three commissioners, something also provided in the aforementioned Constitution, but with the number of commissioners in correspondence with the number of inhabitants in each municipality, rather than a fixed number for all.

As the experiment failed, due to the multiplicity of leaders, it was changed to just one, though with limited executive and financial power, and with the measures to be applied having to be approved or ordered by the central government.

In practice, the old town hall of municipal government became a mere administration. Then they experimented with the same dismal results, with the so-called JUCEI (Coordination, Operations and Inspection Boards, which were the municipal and provincial governing bodies). With the emergence of the People’s Power they thought that the problem would be resolved, looking to the experiences gained within the Republic and later, but these lessons were discarded, maintaining the inefficiency, now increased with the increase in bureaucracy.

The truly great problem is that, sitting on top of the existing bodies of government, both national as well as provincial and municipal, is the Party. It is no coincidence that every time there is a meeting of any of them, either the National Assembly or the provincial or municipal ones, the Party Plenary is held first and it establishes the scope and limits of what will be discussed and approve by the assemblies.

In this scheme, in reality the Party has the power, and of course it the Party that governs and the government (the People’s Power), are simply administrators. Herein lies its inability to solve problems, national as well as provincial and municipal. It is a duality similar to the two existing currencies where one, though it do not do so consciously, conspires against each other, because they occupy and act in the same small space.

In the capital this is the big problem, aggravated by the presence of the central government and its agencies and institutions, who influence and pressure the administration, which becomes an executor of the tasks of others, leaving its own tasks uncompleted.

The result is on view for all: broken streets and sidewalks without maintenance,  abandoned landscaping, chaotic garbage collection, terrible services of all kinds, buildings deteriorating and collapsing daily, poor health and other evils that affect citizens.

As long as our provincial and municipal governments do not have real, strong and resourceful leaders, who perform their duties as such, all this will be insoluble.

18 May 2013

Photo: Peter Deel

A careful read of the extensive article, “A look at the Cuban model of wellbeing,” published in the daily Granma on 13 May 2013, raised, for me, some doubts and disagreements.

The cases with which the article begins are people of different ages who, for one personal reason or others, have decided to return to live in Cuba, representing an insignificant percent of the hundreds of thousands who have not, and who prefer to continue developing their life projects in line with other wellbeing models overseas, despite the economic crisis, the violence, unemployment, social isolation, rootlessness, the distance from their lived ones, the exclusion, discrimination, lack of solidarity, etc.

On the basis of these atypical cases, the entire posterior argument is structured, emphasizing the lack of a feeling of exclusion, the social spaces, social solidarity and the collective creativity and intelligence.

To suggest that there is no feeling of exclusion because everyone in the neighborhood knows everyone else, is an incredibly trivial argument, as is defending the bad custom of sticking your nose in other people’s lives, which is the result of the widespread surveillance among neighbors, leading to envy, gossip and the existence of mandatory collective activities which, far from avoiding exclusion, directly threaten the individuality of citizens, which should be respected. Continue reading →

Archive photo

There is a word in the Spanish language, which is used in different ways by the Cuban authorities, according to their interests: this is diversity.

In international relations it is widely used by the top leaders and their representatives, who demand respect for it. It’s logical. When the majority of countries have democratic governments, diversity is represented by those who do now. In this situation, the presence of these, Cuba among them, is only possible if it is accepted and respected. This happens in the United Nations (UN), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), and so on.

For individual countries, diversity works in two different ways. If in those countries that have democratic governments, which do not share the Cuban political-ideological spectrum, the defense of diversity support parties, movements and opposition groups. If governments are authoritarian and populist, and respond to the interests of the Cuban authorities, then diversity is attacked, accusing its representatives of being bourgeois, stateless, fascists, mercenaries, lackeys, allies of the empire, and so on. Continue reading →

Photo: Peter Deel

Although the United Nations stopped being a credible institution many years ago, at times it still issues announcements which can leave us astonished. This is what happened when a letter from the United Nations Director General for Food and Agriculture (FAO) was published yesterday in the state-run press. In it the Director General congratulates the former president of Cuba and all the Cuban people for having fulfilled the goal of reducing the number of malnourished people by half before the year 2015.

First of all, diplomatic protocol dictates that such a letter be addressed to the current president and not the former president — no matter what personal sympathies this important official might like to express — given that this is, supposedly, an official UN communiqué. Secondly and most importantly, where is the FAO getting its figures for such reports? Are they perhaps supplied by each government to the representative in that particular country?

It is hard to understand how someone can responsibly claim that a country with an inefficient agricultural sector — one incapable of producing the most basic staples for its population, or at retail prices affordable to most of its citizens — has reduced the number of malnourished people by half. Does this half perhaps refer to all the various types of civil servants and those who belong to the huge government bureaucracy? Is it average citizens who make up the other half?

We Cubans know all too well how serious malnutrition is. We must struggle day to day to find food; it is a juggling act just to survive. Has the FAO’s representative in Cuba ever looked into what the situation really is? Judging by appearances, it would seem that he moves in the highest circles of power — sometimes mistaking himself for one of its officials — if we take into account his public statements, which often appear in the  state-run press. Perhaps they stem from absent-mindedness on the part of the Director General, who resides in Rome.

We trust that statistics from the other participating countries have been gathered in a more serious way and are, therefore, more reliable. At least this would not lead to the macabre irony of telling someone who is malnourished that this is not the case because the FAO has officially declared it to be so. One final question: Of all the countries in the world, is it only the sixteen mentioned in the letter (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chile, Cuba, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Nicaragua, Peru, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Thailand, Uruguay, Venezuela and Vietnam) which have reduced malnutrition by half?

7 May 2013

Patio of the former La Salle High School, 13th Street between B and C, Vedado.

Some, hopelessly lost, a few dedicated to other purposes with better luck, others collapsing, and most in an advanced state of accumulated deterioration, the large Havana private schools, both religious and secular, that existed before 1959, are irrefutable proof of irresponsibility and negligence with respect to the care of national possessions.

La Salle of Vedado, the Marists of the Vibora, the church schools of Guanabacoa, Havana and the Vibora, Baldor, the Edison Institute, the Ursulines, St. George’s, Arturo Montori, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Pilar, others, both male and female or mixed, without years of maintenance or repair or shoddy repairs and a bit of “rouge” on their facades, are sad bad examples that everyone can see. And something similar happens with those in other provinces.

Major financial resources were dedicated to building boarding schools in the countryside, and not on preserving the existing architecture dedicated to teaching, during the years of the fever to link agricultural work and study at all costs, in a narrow interpretation of a Jose Marti, precept. The large private schools, designed and built to meet all educational requirements, are now old ghosts scattered around our cities. The agriculture-education experiment, both from the point of view of teaching as well as production and economics, now most of these junior high and high schools in the countryside are also abandoned and in a deplorable state, or in the process of adaptation as homes and shelters for farmers and agricultural workers.

The large private schools were stripped of their original names, renamed using the official ideological saints and totally transformed, not for the better, into gray institutions, they have lost their personality and traditions, achieved in years of the exercise of teaching. In addition to these losses, the generational link is also lost where grandparents, parents, sons and daughters and grandchildren were students at the same school, becoming teachers and students in a large family, to which belonged for life. To be a graduate of La Salle, of the Marist,s of Edison, of Belén or the Ursulines, to cite just a few examples, was part of personal identity and proclaimed with healthy pride.

Despite the time elapsed and the many avatars, from time to time we find former students of these schools, who mostly remember their school days, and their teachers and classmates and some transcendental moments spent in their classrooms and patios fondly and with nostalgia. It is true that, with the first storm winds of the “hurricane of January,” a considerable number left the country and those who stayed, the few, molded their lives to the new imposed conditions in order to survive, now without the possibility to reunions every five or ten years in the same school, as this had ceased to be.

There are, not officially recognized, some alumni fraternities in the country, which join together according to the colleges they belonged to. I know in detail of the Piarist Alumni Fraternity, comprising the male alumni of Havana and Vibora and the alumnae of El Cerro, which, despite many difficulties, and the continued aging of its members, meets every three months, in the old, rundown places that were the Pious Schools of Havana in San Rafael and Manrique.

On the agenda, they regularly speak of the successes and achievements of their members and their needs and problems, as well as reports on the deceased in the last quarter, they are old professors or students. Also they learn about the major Piarist activities in other countries, where these schools maintain their presence.

These quarterly meetings become a forum for fellowship and friendship, despite passing of the years. Alumni of the Marists, De La Salle and Belén, to a greater or lesser extent, also have them. All function due to the tenacity of their members who don’t accept the disappearance of an important era in education in Cuba.

Sometimes, going over and over the old Reports of each course, which was kept in the majority of the schools, have images of those years with the known names and faces, and we never stop comparing these to the present. Then the memories take on their own life where poets, engineers, architects, artists, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, traders, businessmen and even politicians, of either sex, all appear, who, in earlier times, were mere students of these schools. Each one marked by a different destiny, but most with a great longing for those unrepeatable times and the absurd and unnecessary loss of a tradition.

To save the great schools that are still standing, should be a demand and citizen outcry, as they constitute material and historical value, as well as being an important part of the identity of the municipalities, provinces and the country, and even more of generations of Cubans.

Marist College in Vibora

Former La Salle College, B Street, Vedado

Former La Salle College, 11th Street between B and C, Vedado

All photos by Fernando Damaso.

Translated from Diario de Cuba

6 May 2013

Photo: Rebeca

In the 1950s one of the principal objectives of the fight against the dictatorship was the full restoration of the constitution of 1940, some of whose articles had never been fulfilled. Once the new regime was in power, however, it ignored this constitution and the country began to ruled according to the so-called Fundamental Law, which legalized a priori any action carried out by authorities based on the principle that “the revolution was the source of power.”

It was not until 1976 that a new constitution was drafted, one with a new socialist character, modeled largely on the USSR’s Stalinist-era constitution, which by then had already itself been revised. It was drafted by a commission created expressly for this purpose rather than by a constituent assembly, which would have included representatives from the country’s entire political spectrum. Upon completion it was submitted to a national referendum (whose participation was more formal than real) and was approved by referendum with few significant changes, the way things always get approved in Cuba.

This constitution — amended and ratified in 1992 and 2002 — is the one now in force, although it remains unfamiliar to the majority of the population and even to the authorities, who take it out only to highlight a few of its articles when they find it politically convenient, ignoring some and violating others. For most citizens the constitution is really just one more document without any practical application for solving their day-to-day problems and, therefore, useless.

In addition to other absurdities, archaic articles and inconsistencies, this constitution decrees one-party rule, the exclusivity of state organizations as the only legal avenues for expression, and the irrevocability of socialism. It also enshrines the idea that none of the freedoms for citizens recognized in its text can be exercised to oppose anything stipulated in the document or in its laws, or in opposition to the existence or aims of the socialist state, or against the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism. Once again everything is ideologically generalized, ignoring the fact that the so-called “Cuban people” are not made up only of sympathizers of the regime, but also of many thousands who are not, and who have and hold, as Cubans with equal rights, other political, economic and social viewpoints.

If we hope to have dialogue and peaceful means of resolving our problems, it is necessary to have constitutional and political reform which permits the decriminalization of the opposition and expansion of civil liberties. This must not be seen as something contrary to economic reform or as an objective to be achieved after such reform. It is rather something that cannot be postponed, a necessity brought about by the appearance of new constituencies that are not being legitimately represented by current state institutions.

4 May 2013

“Civil Society Forum on Human Rights in Cuba.” From Cuba’s Communist Party daily, Granma.

A few days ago the government organized a Online Discussion Forum for a generic Cuban civil society, about human rights in the country, with an eye on the upcoming report from the United Nations Human Rights Council: the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

As expected, there was representation only of women, intellectuals, religious and Cuban artists who support the regime, and from pro-government organizations and government institutions such as the National Union of Jurists of Cuba, the Federation of Cuban Women, the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, the Council of Churches, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, the Cuban Movement for Peace, the José Martí Cultural Society, the Council of Scientific Societies Health Solidarity Organization the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, among others.

It was all one voice (the choir syndrome), as if they had rehearsed repeatedly the same arguments already worn out on the marvelous Cuban political system, the democracy of our socialism, the focus on gender, racial equality, and the respect for sexual diversity, the blockade, terrorism, etc. It wasn’t worth spending a single dime on the carefully planned event, with totally known figures, lacking any originality and not bringing anything new.

I’ll touch on another aspect that stands out: the appropriation of certain terms which were previously considered taboo by the authorities and which had been dismissed from the official vocabulary, such as democracy, human rights, diversity, civil society, etc.; instead they used socialist democracy or our democracy, socialist rights, unity, dictatorship of the proletariat, and so on.

It seems that, with the passage of time and the accumulation of failures, both domestic and international, the latter lost credibility and validity, and have had to dip into what was once considered taboo, albeit properly recycled ideologically. Thus we see that by using the term democracy, the authorities say ours is the most perfect and best there is on the planet; the only human rights defensible are those officially accepted; diversity refers only to gender, race and sex, excluding the political; and civil society consists only of those who share the system’s ideology.

The attachment to the politically archaic, outdated and outmoded is so entrenched, that to leave it behind seems an impossible task for the authorities, despite the updates, experiments and other adjustments, designed for their survival.

Meanwhile Cubans, whatever they think, are not part of the terms in use, and this trying to monopolize them by the government, without understanding, accepting and respecting diversity as an indispensable component of the unit, will continue to block the paths for the solution our national crisis.

30 April 2013

Photo: Rebeca

A month ago I wrote about the motto that will preside over the May Day celebration in Cuba: United for a Prosperous and Sustainable Socialism. I thought anyone with half a brain would realize the absurdity of that and would recommend replacing it with something more palatable.

This didn’t happy and today, a couple of days from the day, they are repeating that slogan to the point of exhaustion in the press and on radio and TV. It’s like fingernails on the chalkboard. Socialism never has been and never will be  prosperous and sustainable. Its global failure proves it. The motto seems more typical of capitalism, despite its crises and problems.

The motto and the slogan, which in this case is the same, I brought to mind some used in different years, when they wanted to mobilize the masses in pursuit of some task or goal. I remember “Humanism yes, communism no” (clearly they were hiding the ball), “Fidel this is your house” (political innocence), “Fidel and Khrushchev, we two together” (survived until the October Crisis).

Also, “The ORI (Integrated Revolutionary Organizations) is the fire, take care you don’t get burned” (pure sectarianism), “The ten million [tons of sugar harvested] achieved” (the harvest failed), “Convert the setback into a victory” (as a sequel to the prior one), “Armed struggle is the only way” (lasted until the triumph of the Popular Unity in Chile), and the most absurd of all, “Now we are going to build socialism” (after more than twenty years of sacrifice for it). The latter ranked first for a long time, until displaced by the current one.

In the world of advertising, when a slogan is developed for a campaign, that is as like the motto and the slogan, there is usually some random sampling from a certain number of people to determine if it sticks in people’s minds. Depending on the results obtained, it was used or not.

It seems that now the mottoes and slogans are made by one or a number of feverish minds, sitting behind their desks, believing that their ideas are shared worldwide. They forget that times have changed and with them the people as well. Even a cursory glance would prove otherwise, it is not so easy to actually fool most of the population.

Anyway, as I wrote then, the events on that date will be a success, both in the capital and in the provinces and municipalities. Cubans will come, not because they wish to do so or believe in what they do are doing but because they feel they must do so to avoid possible effects on their jobs, schooling, travel abroad, promotions and other scraps that depend on the state.

This situation has been repeated year after year, and if it shows anything, it is how much we still lack of having a civil society that is the driving force of the nation. Therefore, the mottoes and slogans are the least important and can be absolutely false and even virtual. They actually do not mobilize anyone: the instruments of mobilization are completely different.

27 April 2013

For some time, our main political leaders have begun talking about the need to accept and respect differences, both in Cuban society and the world. Although, in regard to the world, at least in the speeches and communications, and even some regional and international organizations. In the national sphere it’s not the same and they limit themselves, so far, to questions relating to culture, religion, race and sexuality. The issue of differences in political conceptions seems to be taboo, and not part of the official language.

To accept and respect some differences, excluding other important one, is not serious nor sufficient: acceptance and respect should encompass everything but, even more, it is essential to create the constitutional and legal framework to ensure their practical implementation, and failing this it is all just words which, usually, are gone with the wind.

“Pluralism,: which is a more all-encompassing than “differences,” is a pending issue for the authorities, to which they have to pay special attention, if they truly want to walk the path of economic reform, although they want to call it an “update” when what it needs is to be “fixed.”

Without constitutional and legal changes that delete or modify the different articles that prevent and repress pluralism, our society cannot advance and, much less, get in line with the times. To keep one-party hegemony, political and social organizations organized and controlled by it, a National Assembly legislates and, itself, decides the constitutionality of legislation (judge and jury) and elects the president and fills the main posts, based on a proposals from a so-called Nominations Commission, without direct participation of voters and other absurdities, refusing the proclaimed acceptance of differences, or, and it’s the same thing, of pluralism.

It’s true that this is not an easy task, for those who have held absolute power for more than fifty years, but, sooner rather than later, they will have to decide to take the bull by the horns, for the good of the nation and of all Cubans.

23 April 2013

Some unsuspecting tourists who I ran into at Cafe El Escorial, Plaza Vieja, asked me, in the course of a friendly conversation, why don’t we Cubans solve our own political problems like the Libyans or Syrians.

Without going into too much detail, I tried to explain that our situation was somewhat different and that Cubans, tired of failed violent solutions to resolve our political contradictions, for some time have chosen to do so peacefully.

I told them that since the establishment of the Republic in 1902, violence has always been our first choice to resolve things, perhaps influenced by the many years of armed struggle for independence, and that far from achieving independence, it had made things worse. Continue reading →

Archive photo

The result of the Venezuelan elections — a Pyrrhic victory for the ruling-party candidate in spite of having all the levers of power at his disposal as well as the celestial help of the deceased former president and his entire retinue — shows the degree of polarization of the population between those who accept the government’s agenda and those who reject it. Among those who exercised their right to vote, 51% supported it while 49% did not. This does not take into account those who chose not to vote for one reason or another. It is a group is made up of several million Venezuelans who, while not swayed by the opposition, cared even less for ruling-party candidate.

It is noteworthy that in a very short period of time — barely seven months since the October elections — one million voters switched sides from the ruling-party to that of the opposition. The reasons for this were the illness and subsequent physical demise of the Bolivarian leader, and his replacement by an uninspiring and dull figure devoid of charisma or his own power base. In spite of latching on to the cadaver of his predecessor in hopes of rising in the political firmament, he did not get very far. The future for a president with these personality traits is far from assured, as time will tell.

What is shocking is how the print and broadcast media in this country played along with stories and reports of big, tumultuous demonstrations in support of the ruling party candidate, portending an overwhelming landslide victory against “the representative of the bourgeoisie and imperialism,” with ten million votes and even a twenty point advantage. Neither turned out to be the case. It was pure media manipulation. The bubble burst when confronted with reality. Now the question to ask is: Was it a victory or a major defeat for chavismo? Again, only time will tell.

15 April 2013