The Disappearance of a Myth / Fernando Dámaso

Photo: Revista Carteles

Cuba’s baseball team could not take the title in the recently ended World Cup, which took place in Panama, the honor going to the Netherlands. This is nothing new, as the same thing happened in the two previous Cups and in other events. Those times when the Cuban baseball team – always manned by professional players, whose only responsibility was playing ball and collecting their salaries (very meager) for it – defeated teams manned by students and true amateurs from participating countries, are gone. Then it was a contest of a lion against tied-up monkey, and we would boast proclaiming that we had the best baseball in the world, something totally untrue.

When the participation of professional ball players was authorized, even though the best never came – those active in the American Major Leagues – the myth of Cuba’s invincible team started to crumble.

It is symptomatic that once professional sports were prohibited after the triumph of the insurrection, for being considered not consistent with the new political postulates, soccer, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, track and field sports and others, where professional teams and athletes participate are well promoted and even have fixed slots on television, radio and press, while professional baseball and its players don’t have the same coverage, and Cuban ballplayers are not allowed to play in teams in other countries, much less in the Major Leagues, the personal objective of any one of them.

The absurdity reaches the extreme of the banning coverage of the Major Leagues from local sports news shows and even from Telesur (a Venezuelan state-affiliated television station broadcast in Cuba), not allowing sports writers to speak or write about them, even of teams to which Cuban athletes living outside of Cuba belong, who are considered by the model as traitors to the Fatherland, when they should be the pride that were in previous times Adolfo Luque, Miguel Angel González, Orestes Miñoso, Conrado Marrero, San Noble, Adrián Zabala, Fermín Guerra, Sandalio Consuegra, Edmundo Armorós, Pedro Formental, Roberto Ortiz, Héctor Rodriguez. Willy Miranda, Camilo Pascual and others, who played in the Major Leagues and were also national champions, being part of the classic teams of Havana, Amenendares, Cienfuegos y Marianao.

clip image0061We Cubans have for years been prevented from enjoying the performances of Orlando Duke Hernandéz, Liván Hernandéz, Cansecu, Tartabull, René Arocha, Rolando Arrojo and others in the best baseball in the world, and our ballplayers have been mutilated in their development by not allowing their participation in it, as has happened to Marquetti, Vinent, Huelga, Mesa, Muñoz, Kindelán, Lazo and others who, once their active career is over, either have died or wander about making a living however they can, remembered only on some convenient date, without having been able to play in big baseball and make it to the Hall of Fame, which would have made them recognized world figures.

It would be convenient that, in the so-called actualization — or updating — of the model, we kept in mind to actualize also this erroneous policy, and our ball players could self-actualize without dogmatic and obsolete political meddling that, by the way, doesn’t apply to other athletes. Though soccer is considered a universal sport, in Cuba baseball is the national sport, and we Cubans have the right to enjoy the performances of our players, wherever they play and irrespective of the team they belong to, and not have to learn about their successes outside of Cuba in a clandestine fashion, as happened a few years ago with the music of the Beatles.

Translated by: lapizcero

October 19 2011

Another Look at the Grito de Yara* / Fernando Dámaso

Archive

Nobody can deny the foundational importance of October 10, 1868 for the Cuban nation. Though twenty years before Narciso Lopez had, for the first time, unfurled the national flag calling for combat against the oppressor, though his voice was not listened to then, the opposite occurred in Yara, when Cubans, conscious of their nationhood, responded to the call of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes.

This historic feat, praised and respected by all generations, is generally presented only from the point of view of the heroism and selflessness of its protagonists, ignoring the economic interests, which had a fundamental role and that should not be forgotten. Many of those who rose in arms that day, maybe most of them, were rich landowning Creoles who for some time had been conspiring against Spain, as their interests in expansion clashed with the restrictive policies it ordained, that constrained their development.

They, other than their national sentiment, which without a doubt they possessed, needed to throw off the Spanish yoke that smothered their businesses and, as a result, the garnering of profits, needled by what was happening further North, where the United States was rapidly becoming a world power, with a regime of liberty and rights, that constituted the example to follow.

It is not surprising then, that even Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, in the beginning, supported annexation to the American Union, though he soon gave up on that idea, focusing his efforts on obtaining Independence. It must also be pointed out, if we are to be one with historical truth, that the initial call for emancipation of the slaves included indemnity for their owners and their incorporation into the uprising’s army as condition of their liberty, something that was only eliminated months later in the Assembly of Guaimaro, where the total abolition of slavery was decreed.

As can be appreciated, historical facts are not simple and crystal-clear, as they are sometimes presented. They are influenced by interests of a different nature, material as well as moral, that far from diminishing their value, make them more real, and illuminate their protagonists not as gods of purity come down from Olympus, but as mere mortals, with light and shadow, that sometimes are right and sometimes are mistaken, but that are capable of imposing themselves over their difficulties and reaching their objectives.

On October 10, 1868 patriotic and economic interests conspired. The same has happened in other historical moments of the Cuban nation, up until our days. Today, the same as in 1868, the political and economic chains imposed by the model, hinder the development of citizen initiative and that of its the productive forces. To overcome this anachronistic situation is everybody’s obligation, so that the country can advance, eliminate the accumulated misery and take its rightful place among free nations, a place it once held thanks to the work of all her children and that, because of erroneous policies, it lost.

*Translator’s Note: The Cry of Yara.

Translated by: lapizcero

October 13 2011

The Gastronomic Slums / Fernando Dámaso

Photograph by Rebeca

In the section Acuse de Recibo (“Acknowledgement of Receipt”) of the daily Juventud Rebelde (“Rebel Youth”) for 9/25/11 there is an article titled El Potín, y mucho más (“The Potín and Much More”), where a citizen and the journalist show the deplorable state of this formerly elegant commercial establishment, with regards to the paltry services it provides and its anti-hygienic facilities.  The article by itself is sufficiently explicit and I will not repeat it, rather use it as the foundation to delve and expand on the problems of the so-called State Gastronomy.

If this Potín in El Vedado (at the intersection of Línea and Paseo) is in crisis, its sibling in Old Havana (O’Reilly Street) is a sad reminder of the past: the only remains are its name embossed on the granite floor and the deteriorated facade, the once elegant place turned into a primitive and dark warehouse.  Something similar has happened with the majority of the gastronomic establishments that existed in the decade of the fifties, that were the pride and points of reference of our city: either they have ceased to exist, most converted to ruins, or they are true slums.

The same fate overtook the so-called Beach Clubs, belonging in their time to different workers’ or employees’ federations (telephone, hardware, retailers, bank, pharmaceutical, etc.) that were handed over later to the unions, and today (and for many years) in death-throes and in a total state of abandonment.  Why were they nationalized? Maybe to let them be destroyed?

Such measures, demonstrating their absurdity with the passing of years, can only be explained in the minds of people ambitious for power, who desired to be absolute rulers of everything, without taking into account their shortcomings, nor thinking about the social consequences of their adventurous decisions. Nowadays, when there is so much talk of updating the Model, even if the lost is irretrievable, it would be good that the eternally failed State Gastronomy should be laid on the table, along with other problems, and that real steps be taken for handing them (with their dilapidated facilities and inadequate equipment) to entrepreneurs who, in the short time of running their businesses, have demonstrated initiative, responsibility, organizational capacity, efficiency and quality, things that state entities have never accomplished (and much less maintained).

If we must learn from mistakes, as the never tiring refrain of mass media goes, at least we can begin to move forward learning from this, giving it a solution, so we can end, once and for all, all the discredited and inoperative gastronomic slums, called cafeterias and restaurants, that constitute an offense to our cities and towns.

Translated by: lapizcero

October 1 2011

The Battered Health System / Fernando Dámaso

Photo: Rebeca

The Cuban health system has many followers in different countries, those who contemplate it and hold it up as an example, based more on its image to the outside, a strange mixture of humanism and propaganda and political proselytism, where it is not very difficult to determine which weighs more, this inner reality vs. the chronic suffering of most citizens. It is assumed, by these advocates, that the healthcare system is an original creation of the Cuban regime, and that previously there was absolutely nothing, that health problems were not addressed nor treated. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The Cuban health system, existing in the nineteen fifties, included first-aid, municipal, provincial and national hospitals, and mutual and private institutions, as well as research laboratories and schools for the training of doctors, nurses and other health professionals, equipped with relevant technology and staffed by recognized and capable professionals.

Moreover, there was an extensive network of laboratories for the manufacture of drugs and pharmacies stocked with all necessities. On top of this system, organized and functional, they built the new one. The land, therefore, was well-tended with deep roots and the trunk was healthy. It was only necessary to treat it responsibly and continue developing it.

The system established in the early years operated during the so-called revolutionary period, before falling in a process of deterioration, which continues to this day, where many of the hospitals, except those catering to foreigners (for political reasons or hard currency) and to leaders, officials and their relatives, are in critical condition, both from the construction point of view as well as hygiene, with their equipment in disuse due to breakage and lack of spare parts, and patient care leaving much to be desired, adding to the latent discontent of the population, which due to its magnitude, has not been possible for the press, government agencies and the party to ignore, where it is a source of concern and debate.

As a reminder, here are some indicators of the health system at the time of the Republic:

  • Cuba was ranked 22 among 122 countries, with 128.6 doctors and dentists per 100,000 inhabitants.
  • With 6.6 million inhabitants, Cuba had twice as many physicians (6,401) as all other Caribbean nations combined, with 19 million inhabitants.
  • In 1948 Cuba had 3,100 doctors (one per 1,650 inhabitants) and in 1957, 6,401 (one per 1,021 people), in proportional growth placing it second in Latin America.
  • The average life expectancy in 1958 was 63 years (third in all of Latin America), having increased in the first half of the century from 38 to 59 years, a higher 12 year increase than the average for the region.
  • Infant mortality (0 to 1st year of life) was 32.34 per 1,000, the lowest in Latin America. Uruguay was the closest with 53.6 per 1000. West Germany was 33.8, Austria 37.5, and Spain 43.7 per 1000. There had been a gradual improvement since 1935-39,when the mortality rate was 99 per 1000.
  • Mortality between 1 and 4 years of life was 2.8 per 1,000 in 1957 – the best in Latin America. Argentina was the closest with 4.9 per 1,000.
  • Maternal mortality in 1955 was 145 per 100,000, and in 1958, 115.5 per 100,000.
  • The mortality of the population in 1933 was 51,000, with a population of 3,960,000 inhabitants; in 1943 it fell to 50,000 with 4,779,000 inhabitants and in 1953 to 37,000 with 5,829,000 inhabitants. The annual average in this respect, was 9.6 per 1000 (second in Latin America).
  • The number of inhabitants per health care bed in 1952-53 was 1 bed per 300 inhabitants (fifth in Latin America). In the late fifties it was 1 bed for 203 inhabitants. In 1958 there were 337 hospitals in full operation.
  • The distribution of doctors by area was as follows: urban areas, 1 per ​​263 residents; rural areas, 1 per 1,750 inhabitants. Taken together (1 doctor per 1,001 inhabitants), it was the best in Latin America with the exception of Argentina (1 doctor for 681 inhabitants). It should be noted that 70% of the Cuban population lived in towns and cities and only 30% in the countryside.

As you can see, health care existed and was successful. It is true that there were places lacking services, mainly due to the lack of roads and transportation, but nobody can deny that it was in constant development and from year to year indicators substantially improved. There was no immobility or paralysis, and a significant annual national budget was devoted to it.

I consider it healthy to expose these realities, given so much manipulation, although for some it may seem wrong to criticize the health care system, one of the flags of Cuban socialism. As not all that glitters is gold, nor is all that is offered gold, so it is with the current Cuban health system.

The important thing is not to do hundreds of transplants and thousands of operations in Cuba and abroad (mostly outside of Cuba), or to publicize it constantly in all mass media, but to know how many were actually effective (which is almost never spoken of). Size has never been synonymous with quality. Furthermore, while I believe in providing assistance to other countries, we can’t tend our neighbor’s crops while ignoring our own, it is the same as if the shoemaker’s son were always to go barefoot.

Today, health care for Cubans is highly deficient, with long delays in treatment and a great shortage of drugs, forcing patients to offer the well-known and widespread gift (or bribe) before and after, to receive care, as well as obtaining drugs in the so-called black market at high prices. This is how the health problems of most citizens are really resolved, contrary to what is declared and published by our friends outside. I aspire to a health system such as existed in the fifties, enlarged and improved with the technological and scientific achievements of the past fifty-three years.

1 August 2011

Fashionable Verbs / Fernando Dámaso

In the Cuban official language there is a set of verbs in wide use in recent years: to rescue, restore, recover, and the like. Leaders and officials use them in all their speeches, and journalists repeat them in their articles and interviews. I’m not against their application in practical life, but I think, for complete clarification, two questions are needed: Why are so many things lost? Who was responsible?

The material and moral losses did not happen overnight: it was a long and continuous process, during which voices were raised in warning, but were not heard, but on the contrary, silenced. Those who dared, honestly, to raise the alarm, were accused of being weak, conflicting, judgmental and even unpatriotic traitors, at the height of dogmatism. Moreover, in many cases, they were fired from their jobs and functions for not trusting the wisdom of the rulers. The numerous victims, more or less known, inhabit our islands.

Those responsible are not reported, although the consequences of their mistakes amount to a political, economic and social tsunami. Maybe it’s because, unlike hurricanes, which are baptized with names, tsunamis have no name of their own, as there is no reference to the place where they razed with their vehemence. Anyway, even if they are not reported by name and surnames, everyone knows them: it is an open secret.

Despite that, officially, they don’t give answers to these two simple questions, the important thing is not to be constantly digging in the past, but to live the present, where these verbs are the order of the day. If it doesn’t constitute, as so many other times, a fad, deserving applause. To rescue, restore, recover so many lost things, if achieved, would always benefit the majority and, therefore, the nation, and help it move forward, albeit slowly, from the deep crisis in which we live.

It is also good to alert (maybe now their ears will hear) that it is with the actions alone that these verbs signify the problems will not be solved. Further measures are necessary, consistent with the times, to catch up with the world. There have been many lost years with stagnation and immobility (which is why there is so much to rescue, restore and recover), while other countries, some more some less, kept moving forward. To achieve it will is not any easy task nor a quick one, but it is not impossible if everyone, without exception, participates in it.

April 20 2011

Migrations / Fernando Dámaso

Migration, the movement of people from one place to another for economic, social or political reasons, as well as the periodic traveling of some animals in search of food and for other needs, is as old as the emergence of life on earth. These motions have always occurred. In some countries the population is practically formed by immigrants and their descendents. The cases abound and are well known. No one, in principle, is against it.

However, when talking about migration, it must be undertaken legally, meeting the requirements established by the country or countries that are going to receive the immigrant. People allow those they please to enter their homes, and establish rules of conduct. It should happen the same way with countries. The immigrant should understand, accept and respect this.

You may wonder: where does this free lecture comes from? The reason is very simple: in my country, which by the way doesn’t welcome immigrants, the authorities have become advocates for those who emigrate to other countries, demanding for them, whether they are legal or illegal, fair treatment and respect for all the inherent rights of human beings.

To speak of the noose in the hanged man’s house has always been considered in bad taste. This is what bothers me about this attitude of solidarity. Considering that it is not adding fuel to the fire, or in a malicious way, to help towards the solution of the emigration problem which, it’s important to say, will always exist. In the first place, the responsibility belongs to the countries whose citizens, for one reason or other are forced to emigrate (Cuba stands out in this). If favorable economic, social and political conditions are created, there will be fewer people emigrating. Cuba was never a country of emigrants, quite the contrary, it has been one of immigrants. Here, Spaniards, Chinese, Japanese, African, Lebanese, Americans, Syrians, Hebrews, French, Haitians, Latin Americans, and even Russians and other nationalities settled and founded families and created wealth. It must have happened for a reason! Today, Cuba is a country of emigrants: there are Cubans in all the corners of the world. It happens for a reason!

The country that receives emigrants and, therefore, has immigrants, has every right to establish how many laws and regulations it deems appropriate to achieve peaceful coexistence and national security. It is assumed that somebody, in an illegal way, will try to stay in order to benefit from the national laws. Here–the source of rants in defense of legal or illegal immigrants in other countries–discriminatory measures are applied, and citizens are not allowed to reside in a locality or province, or to relocate elsewhere, without proper government permits. Moreover, they cannot even temporarily visit their families without such permission. This, not to mention family members living abroad (be they children, siblings, parents etc.) who, when they stay in their family’s house when they come to visit, must have authorization from The Office of Immigration and Foreign Affairs, paying 45 CUC (hard currency) ahead of time for each visit (regardless of whether it is for babies or elderly). A complicit silence is maintained over these national aberrations. As it more or less says in the hit song: I have a telescope to see far away. Perhaps I need another to see up close!

Translated by: Adrian Rodriguez

July 19 2011

From Paternalism to the Other Extreme / Fernando Dámaso

Máximo Gómez, the great Dominican promoter of our independence, said that Cubans either don’t reach far enough or reach too far, and without a doubt, he was right. As you can see he knew us very well! Now with this new issue of eliminating  paternalism and gratuities, the correctness of his opinion is ratified one more time. Let’s look at it piece by piece, but first is necessary to make clearthat the so called paternalism and gratuities are undisputed fallacies, which served to mask the miserable wages that Cubans have been receiving for more than fifty years: the government supplied through the commonly named ration card some products, increasingly fewer, at lower prices (subsidized), as well as some services provided free of charge, in order to not raise the salaries and pay the workers what they really should have been paid. Therefore, everything has been paid for with the salaries that the workers didn’t receive.

Today the minimum monthly salary does not exceed $240 pesos national currency (equal to 10 CUC* or 9 US dollars) and the median monthly salary is $440 pesos national currency (20 CUC* — equal to 18 US dollars). If we convert this to a daily basis the wages will be 8 and 16 Cuban pesos national currency, respectively (in either case less than 1 CUC or 1 dollar a day). This is important in order to establish comparisons.

The prices of products that were supplied before as subsidized, now are supplied as “released” (that is unrationed) items (it seems they were in jail), but at a huge price (maybe because the cost of the bail bond). Here are some examples: rice, from 40 to 90 cents a pound, increased to 5 cuban pesos; refined sugar, from 20 cents a pound  to 8 cuban pesos; brown sugar, from 10 cents a pound  to 6 cuban pesos; washing soap, from 20 cents a bar, to 6 cuban pesos; bath soap, from 40 cents a bar to 5 cuban pesos, and liquid detergent, from $3.50 a liter to 25 cuban pesos. If the State truly subsidized these products, how much were the subsidiesequivalent to? Nobody can believe that sugar (the primary national export product back in its heyday) could possibly be subsidized at 7.80 cuban pesos a pound, nor liquid detergent at 21.50 cuban pesos. This is totally absurd.

The question would be, why these exaggerated prices on essential goods? The acquisition of one of them represents a citizen’s salary for a day’s work or more. Is this part of the economic model updating? For these price raises there was no need for any kind of meeting, nor discussions in the social base, neither in the National Assembly: They were just implemented and that’s it. About raising the salaries, which should be the right thing to do, nobody says absolutely anything. The most you can hear is that, it will be done when we are able to produce and increase the production. In other words: Wait for the Greek Calends.

These, unfortunately, are our realities, and it calls attention to the fact that there are still dreamers, who believe we are on the right path towards the solution of our problems. So far, it has only produced a redistribution of the load: Move even more cargo from the imaginary shoulders of the State (in reality it has always been on Cubans shoulders ) to the already overloaded citizens.

*Translator’s note: CUC is a Cuban Convertible Peso, one of Cuba’s two currencies, the other being Moneda Nacional — National Money — or the Cuban peso.

Translated by Adrian Rodriguez.

July 10 2011

An Essential Document / Fernando Dámaso

To return repeatedly to the past is not healthy because it presupposes nostalgia and idealizes something that like it or not, is blurred in the collective and individual memory in accordance with the passing of the years. But to forget it …. of course, is an equally bad idea. The present anguish and distress that it is our turn to live, is such that often we turn our gaze backwards, trying to see where we went wrong and at what point we should have acted differently from what we did instead. The present, without a doubt, has its firmest footing in the past

Today the majority, nearing the end of the current historical moment, try to imagine how to embark upon the immediate future. And it is there that I think we must carry out a return to the past, something that to many could seem unnatural (and counter-intuitive) to the point of being excessively conservative.

I’ll explain. I believe that in order to return to the path from which we strayed on March 10, 1952, and now well known, from which we strayed from on the first of January 1959, we have to re-establish, from the outset, the Constitution of 1940 as a foundational document, singular and prevailing, from which going forward, we would carry out the changes that would be determined by our political, economic, and social needs. Overall, the point of meeting between the lost Republic and the Republic to be established must be this document. With it, we would achieve something of real importance; the historical continuity of the Cuban nation. The current totalitarian regime, and the regimes of Batista and Machado as well, constitute negative phenomena, dark stains, in the republican advent begun on the 20th of May, 1902

The point at which this meeting takes place, more than a point of departure, would constitute a concrete base from which to begin the innumerable and difficult tasks that we must face, among them the task of building a strong democratic state. I know that 71 years have passed since the day when this exemplary document was approved (it was signed on the first of July, 1940 and formally acknowledged on the fifth of July) and so much has changed in Cuba and the world. However, the Constitution of 1940, in whose creation the entire national and political spectrum participated, without exception, and which in its time was considered among the most advanced in the world, has not lost its relevance in many of its articles nor has it been surpassed by the version created in the socialist phase, a faceless copy of the Stalinist Soviet constitution with amendments of a deeply opportunistic character, added in the last few years in order to support the needs of the current regime.

A return to the Constitution of 1940, although it could seem to be a return to the past, is simply to retake the path at the point at which it was left 59 years earlier, and from that point, to reconstruct and consolidate the Republic under new conditions found today.

Translated by James Delacroix

July 1 2011

Professional Protesters / Fernando Dámaso

The public meetings and marches of protest, so common nowadays, are almost as old as the humanity itself. In different forms, and for different reasons, we can find them in all eras of world history. Some because of their transcendence, have prevailed in our memories, and others less important, have been erased by the time. However, both have played a roll in the making of history, facilitating changes and adjustments, mostly for the benefit of the mankind. Those who had been participating consciously in them, and those who still participate today, defending their rights and good causes, deserve a lot of respect and are not the subject of these lines.

Since the end of the past century and the first years of the current one, they had been changing and growing, sometimes out of proportion. Today protesting has become commonplace, practically everything is protested, turning it into a national sport as well as an international one. There is a great variety of protests: against the politicians in office, against economists, against credit organizations, in support of different social groups, against the greenhouse effect, against fossil fuels, against hunger, in favor of the whales, polar bears, kangaroos, etcetera. Sometimes they are organized against certain books, pictures, paintings, sculptures and so forth.

In this process of spreading mass protests, avery peculiar character has emerged: the professional of the protest (the protester). In reality, he is not concerned with the reason of the protest and has nothing in common with it. His participation is just motivated by snobbishness and his attention seeking behavior. As a general rule he has a comfortable economic situation or a patron (individual or social), who conveniently helps him. In his wardrobe, to make sure he won’t clash with the nature of each protest, he has all kind of outfits: from t-shirts with musical or third world icons, like Che and Lennon, to olive-green caps showing humongous red stars at Mao Zedong style, not counting boots, jeans, jackets, parkas, etcetera, all of them of famous brand names, preferably the most popular ones.

Another important aspect is their freedom of movement: He or she is ready to participate (interested or disinterested) in any part of their own country or the world, as long as in that place the right to protest is conveniently respected. You will never find them in those places where protest (by your own decision) is strictly forbidden, and by doing it you pay with your life or a jail term. This character shows up either in a big city or a tiny country town in the middle of nowhere, any place where there’s someone or something to protest against. They meet and move massively by land, air or sea, using buses, trains or ships and even planes. They come like the plagues and proceed to settle down and establish chaos and anarchy, making more difficult the existence of the locals, with their multiple signs and banners in the wind, their burning of flags and their speeches and harangues learned well by repeating them restlessly.

Years ago, many of these characters, planned their social international meetings in their agendas: for the spring, an exhibition of Van Gogh paintings in Amsterdam; for the summer an out doors concert in Saint Mark’s square; ; for the fall , in Paris Opera house and in the winter, in the Rockefeller Center in New York City. Now everything had changed: in the spring they meet for a march in defense of the whales in Sidney, Australia; in the summer in London against the International Monetary Fund; in the fall in Buenos Aires in support of the native South American Indians and in the winter in Moscow against the greenhouse effect.

These activities, of a marked folkloric significance, are made with a big deployment of the news media, due to the importance of protesting, but also and much more important, is to be in the newspapers, magazines, the TV and also on the internet. This builds the curriculum for a future events participation. Obtaining a protester profile, guarantees your position in the select group of professional protesters, including to be invited to different events, most of them all expenses paid. The professional protester, born in the last century, without a doubt, because of his dedication and tenacity, has a place in society and has created a new occupation for the XXI century.

Translated by: Adrian Rodriguez

June 22 2011

The Myth of Old Age / Fernando Dámaso

Everything the government does for senior citizens is constantly spoken of and written about in the national media. It all consists of marvelous plans and measures, which, as emphasized, would be impossible without the Revolution. Rhetoric included, it seems to be that the only government in the world taking care of these people is the Cuban government. Anyone who has access to minimal information knows that things are not exactly so.

In the majority of countries, whether first world or otherwise, people use their talents, initiative, and work to build a certain quantity of personal wealth throughout their lives. This wealth translates to satisfying their daily needs by possessing a trade, a profession, a business, a dwelling, an automobile, particular equipment, a bank account, a pension, etc. Such things permit them to provide for their families during their active working life and, after retirement, to have the economic resources necessary to live and enjoy old age traveling, playing sports, attending cultural events and doing what they’d like without having to depend on relatives or the government. In fact, many of the tourists who visit us here are the retired people of these countries.

In our case, this possibility does not exist, as the majority of eternal citizens earn wages from the government without being able to establish any type of business nor possess real property, much less generate and accumulate wealth. People reach old age practically naked, forced to depend on the help of family members and the magnanimous government to survive a miserable retirement without possibilities of enjoying a peaceful and economically secure old age. You simply have to see that there are no retired Cubans taking part in international tourism.

Faced with this reality, the state (responsible for said reality), has no other option than to confront the monstrosity it has created which has prevented citizens from securing their futures during the intellectually active working years of their lives. Trying to cover up the mistakes that were made — and that are still made — with propaganda of false paternalism neither resolves the problem nor convinces anyone. The solution must come by restoring to each citizen the right to build his or her present and future.

Becoming a senior citizen should be a joyful moment that generates new impulses before these different years of life; more about enjoyment than sacrifice. In our case, arriving at old age consists of a mystery, marked by the unknown, by what slips through our hands and must be determined by others. Sad proof that we’ve lost the best years of our lives without preparation for this obligatory moment.

Translated by: Kathryn Sue

June 7 2011

In the city of Havana, Cuba, “Big Almond” (almendrón in Spanish) is the nickname given to the antique cars, most of them made in USA, from the decades of the forties and the fifties. With ingenious bodywork they are still running around the main streets and avenues, giving service as collective taxi cabs to citizens who need to travel quickly from one place to another, without depending on the deficient public transportation.

My intention is not to write about them, but about another type of Big Almonds: the political Big Almonds. These, the same as their mechanical counterparts, also have an ingenious bodywork, pretending to keep on moving on the political grid, as if it were a road grid, after having given their old conceptions body and paint work, offering them as new, in agreement with the called socialism of the XXI century, which is nothing other than the same socialism of the XX century, now turned in a Big Almond.

These Big Almonds, some untouchable and perpetual, and others subject to the ups and downs of every moment (sometimes on top and sometimes on the bottom), have been present in high positions or in the less important ones, but always unconditional to the voice of the boss.

It seems they don’t understand how necessary a vehicle fleet change is, and their substitution for modern vehicles equipped with the new technologies, capable of performing their functions in a new age, which turns out to be impossible for the Big Almonds, although they went through capital repairs, thorough body work and painting with the best acrylic paints and lacquers.

The Big Almonds, either mechanical or political, are cars of the past, run down and obsolete, incapable even if you rebuilt the engine, of running at today’s high speeds or offering the required safety standards. Sooner than later they will be substituted and, like classic samples belonging to certain age, they will end up in the back of some museum. That will be their final destiny !

Translated by Adrian Rodriguez

June 25 2011

My Grandchildren’s Country / Fernando Dámaso

At times I’ve stopped to imagine the country I wish Cuba would be in my grandchildren’s future. First of all, and I am being absolutely frank, it shouldn’t be either like the current one, nor the one I’ve been living for the last fifty years, disregarding the happy and sad times it has given me.

I would rather bet for a country with a coherent Constitution, where each citizen, disregarding their ideology, political views or religion, sex, sexual preferences, race or economic situation, will be able to exercise all of their rights and they will be respected; for a just State, responsible, strictly law-abiding and a watch dog for it, one that doesn’t interfere in the private life of its citizens, a keeper of social harmony and peace, that guarantee public health and education for all, considering this task as its duty not as a favor; for an economic system which permits the free exercise of individual initiatives, a promoter of economic growth, and one that doesn’t become an obstacle to people’s life projects, where everyone should be able to contribute with their talent and effort and, honestly, receive and enjoy  benefits they’ve earned; for a prosperous and continuously developing society, where the highest priority will be national welfare, and where public officers will be changed after terms established by the constitution; for a country with a minimum of armed institutions, only the ones very necessary for national security and to maintain the order, where respect for others will be a duty.

Maybe, for some people, this is nothing more than a utopia, but I am convinced that a nation like this is possible, if we learn from our many mistakes, and work to assure the they will never happen again. For this, we need the creation and consolidation of strong and healthy democratic institutions, that will be respected by all of us, where opportunists and power psychos could not find refuge. A society morally solid, it only possible when all of its citizens have and exercise their civic conscience, and will be able to avoid, with their actions, any type of deviation.

It will be a hard and difficult task to achieve this. There is a lot that is negative accumulated materially and spiritually. In the first place, maybe without looking for it, the crude reality has been dismounting myths and barbarities committed over years. The way is being cleared as the days pass by. What is missing is what is necessary to build, something new, different.

Reinventing a nation, after so many wasted years, and the distance from its historic connections, will require dedication and sacrifice. There are lost generations and others exhausted or close to be it, but also generations pushing, anxious for the necessary changes and ready to achieve them, in spite of all the difficulties. In them, as Jose Marti did in the past, we should trust.

Translated by Adrian Rodriguez

June 19 2011

Change of Generations / Fernando Dámaso

Lately it has been repeatedly affirmed by leaders and officials that the Cuban people chose the Revolution in 1959 and Socialism in 1961, such that it is no longer necessary to decide anything because it was already done at that time. Accepting that it’s true that in 1959 the majority of the people welcomed the insurrectionist victory, we mustn’t forget that that meant getting rid of a dictator and seven years of dictatorship.

The struggle then was based on restoring the 1940 Constitution and freedom, not about changing the economic, political and social system that had previously existed. In 1961 the declaration of the Socialist character was made at a rally at the corner of 23rd and 12th in El Vedado, before enraged militants holding their rifles high, in response to the air attacks that were the prelude to the Bay of Pigs, where there was a limited number of people who, by and large, did not represent the Cuban population. In reality, it was imposed, taking advantage of the right moment, and later, through propaganda and political pressure, extended to the whole society.

Even accepting these realities, which occurred at a given point in our historical development, and whose responsibility was solely that of the generations active at that time, nothing obliges current generations to accept this decision they had nothing to do with as something unchanging and unchangeable. It is like trying to establish, for life of the nation, a Gordian knot, which can not be undone, on pain of being stigmatized as a traitor.

When these decisions were taken and were implemented, they ignored all of our republican history, as well as the principles established by our forefathers and thinkers who had fought and won independence from Spain, and the creation of a republic with all and for the good of all, based on democratic principles.

Why could all could be changed in 1959 and now it can not be done again? Is it that the generations active in 1959 were more intelligent and wise than those in 1900 and now? Were they considered to be more patriotic?A Nation is not anyone’s personal feud nor their ideas, however important or not a performance was in a given historical moment, and to pretend it is is nonsense. Children do not have to pay for the sins of their parents.

The present generations have the full right to change anything they deem necessary to change. No one can limit them to simply refurbishing a badly constructed social edifice. The present and immediate future belongs to them and their children, rather than to past generations who, at one point may have been revolutionary and progressive, and who played a role, but now have ceased to be. Wanting to keep laws and decrees, that sooner or later will be abolished, is something that has clearly demonstrated its inefficiency and failure and is an attempt to unnecessarily prolong the agony of the nation.

Let us put our feet on earth, as one of the recent government slogans says, and understand once and for all that the process of change in a society is unstoppable and that like it or not, it will happen. In addition, social change does not allow straitjackets. Recent developments in the international arena prove this.

Translated by: Juanita M.

February 7 2011

Sovereignty and Independence / Fernando Dámaso

To defend the sovereignty and independence of the nation, has been turned into the basis of all the arbitrary and absurd bans that have oppressed the Cuban people for more than half a century. We forget that, for a country to be sovereign and independent, first each of its citizens must be so. José Martí raised this in the nineteenth century, although it was muted and, as with many of his approaches, somewhat uncomfortable for the national reality.

The current stagnation also relies on the same basis and attempts to frighten us with the loss of something that we really haven’t had for a long time. Allied for over thirty years to the former USSR (a fact endorsed in the original Socialist Constitution), bartering our sovereignty and independence for large subsidies, which allowed the survival of an inefficient and unproductive model. Then there was talk of brotherhood and social solidarity. Today, funded by Venezuela, history is repeating itself, now with Bolivarian and Latin American solidarity.

In a world always in transition, at a time when words meant something, and even were the cause of bloody wars, they have lost effect since the second half of the Twentieth Century. Now integration and globalization (despite their problems), generate the drawing together of countries and not their confinement behind old walls. The revolutionary is to get in tune with it and not cling to the outdated and already overcome by humanity.

To change attitudes, sedimented by years of inertia, is not easy. It takes will and a clear mind and being open to challenges and disappointments and being willing to sacrifice, and even to be misunderstood by many, but it is an inescapable necessity.

Today, at the beginning of the 21st Century, much has changed in the world, both materially and spiritually. I don’t consider it for the worse, as some doomsayers and sacrificers proclaim to the point of exhaustion. In our case, after losing so many years we, once and for all, just joined the countries marching in front, and have proven in practice, the correctness of its truths.

Translated by RST

May 5 2011

Cautious Optimism / Fernando Dámaso

1. Once again small businesses have begun to appear all over the city, even on my Tulipan Avenue, where only five months ago they were wiped out. It’s like a weed no one can kill, but in this case weeds that should never die, and that should be transformed into strong and leafy trees, with well-established roots to resist the battering of the cyclones that are sure to come. Depending on the possibilities of each one, some better conceived than others, but all with the desire to prosper, something innate in human being. It is to start again.

2. We must look on their resurgence with optimism, although we can’t be too confident in their permanence. We have already seen several negative experiences previously (remember the “Kingbird On The Wire*” operations against the artisans and artists in the Plaza of the Cathedral, Adoquin and Maceta, against the self-employed, and others, to cite some of the glaring examples). Reality obliges us to be cautious. Some people have already begun to blame them for some of the product shortages in the stores.

3. Analyzing what’s in writing and talking about it with the self-employed, their efforts arise from the necessity to save the drowning, from conviction of the advantages, and we discover that to launch such a business they must pay the state between 30% and 35% in taxes on profits, spend (it’s calculated) up to 40% on expenses (legal proof must be provided for half), and earn not more than 25% (not enough to get rich). In other words, the State appropriates 75%, in one form or another (through expenses, that include energy, materials, etc purchased from the state, the only source and one that sets exorbitant prices), and the self-employed person gets 25%. Not even the demonized savage capitalism acts like this.

4. It’s as if someone on the point of drowning asks for help and his savior demands that he buy the rope and the life jacket with which he will be rescued, and at a fixed price. It would be absurd. As we can see, the self-employed, despite what they say, is still seen as an undesirable traveling companion, an ideological enemy, someone being used because there is no alternative, with the intention of disposing of him as soon as possible. It continues to focus on the failed socialist enterprise, that has never functioned anywhere where it has been tried. It is the contradiction between the efficient and productive and the inefficient and unproductive.

5. Despite these concerns, it’s healthy that something has started to move, even if the movements are minimal and with many strings attached. In short, the creature, if is manages to gain strength and develop itself, little by little it will be capable of freeing itself and picking up speed.

*Translator’s Note: A kingbird (pitirre in Spanish) is an aggressive little bird that will attack larger birds and even people. “A kingbird on the wire” is a common Cuban expression warning that someone is eavesdropping, or there is a snitch, with bad intentions.

Translated by Ariana

January 29 2011