Category: Ivan Garcia

Millions of Cubans are beside themselves with delight. The biggest sporting competition in Cuba starts on Sunday, November 28th in the old Cerro Stadium, today called the Latinamerican Stadium. And they’re celebrating the 50th season of baseball, the King of Sports on the island.

January 14, 1962, in his inseparable olive green uniform and a pair of cheap sunglasses, Fidel Castro inaugurated the first national series with amateur players. On that day, he said “it is a triumph of free ball over slave ball”, referring to professional baseball which before 1959 was played in the country.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. The Latinamerican, the biggest stadium in the country, the home stadium of the Industriales, Havana’s home team and current champion, has no artificial lights and presents a lamentably deteriorated state.

The national series is surrounded by debate. Like the case of Frederic Cepeda, one of the best ballplayers who mysteriously wasn’t a member of the national team which took part in the 17th World Cup celebrated in Taipei, and afterwards, stayed off his team, the Roosters of Sancti Spiritus.

Such was the resulting hullabaloo, that some days before the inauguration of the new season the sporting hierarchy decided that Cepeda would be a member of the team from Sancti Spíritus. One interview with the ballplayer was published in the local newspaper, Escambray.

One would hope that in the press conference called for Tuesday the 25th, they’d give more details and clear up the situation of other players excluded from the national series. The lack of information usually makes of all classes of rumors and speculations explode among fans.

It is then when people try to find out what is said or published in Miami. From the Miami press some recent declarations of Antonio Castro, son of el Comandante, an orthopedic doctor by profession and vice president of the Cuban Baseball Federation were extracted.

According to his comment, during the celebration of the World Cup in Taipei, Castro made a proposal to permit that Cuban ballplayers could play in the professional leagues of other countries.

In the other ear also arrived the name of the latest “deserter”: Yasiel Balaguer, 17 years old, who excelled as a first caliber batter.

“Ball”, as the Cubans call baseball, is the only spectacle capable of filling a place made for 55,000 people not called together by the government. But owing to official censure, its millions of fans cannot follow the best leagues in the world, like those of the United Stats, Japan, South Korea, the Dominican, Mexico, or Venezuela.

Ball, besides, is a question of State. The teams for the national series correspond to the seats of the provincial communist parties. Among the tasks of the First Secretary of the Party in any province is that of attending to the material needs of his territory’s team.

Although more than 350 ballplayers have deserted in the last twenty years, the governmental press maintains its usual silence. The people find out from foreign newspapers; e-mails from friends who live abroad, or on Radio Martí — United States government broadcaster — which since 1985 transmits to the island and whose signal is strongly jammed by Cuban military engineers.

To try to stop the incessant flow of desertions, they’ve made living conditions better for the players during the national campaign. They travel in air-conditioned buses, sleep in comfortable hotels, and eat their fill. Even so, they earn laborers’ salaries. And because of that, at the first sign of change, they abandon their Fatherland to play as professionals, and in not few cases, earn salaries with six zeros*.

Secrecy and mystery surround matters related to baseball in Cuba. Nobody questions the professionalism of the official journalists, but their lack of cojones is criminal when it’s time to communicate and debate the red-hot themes, with the exception of some radio announcers.

In the middle of this grey outlook, at last comes the best time of the year — baseball season. And with it, the enthusiasm and noise in the stadiums. Good news for the ordinary Cuban.

Iván García

Photo: Getty Images, 2009. Fans seated around the statue raised in the bleachers of the Latinamerican Stadium, in homage to the late Armando Luis Torres. Better known as Armandito “El Tintorero”, for years he was the leading cheerleader or fan of Cuban baseball.

*Translator’s note: a salary with “six zeros” is, in English, a “seven-figure” salary.

Translated by: JT

November 28 2010

Havana has the prices of London and the infrastructure of Zimbabwe. Life is as expensive as in Madrid or Berlin, and the streets look like those of Bosnia after its civil war.

The state of Havana’s streets is pathetic. Particularly the secondary and interior streets of the city. At the corner of Milagros and Diez de Octubre, in the La Vibora neighborhood, there’s a hole like one that might be left by a 500 pound bomb.

Rene, 45, nearly lost his life in this cavern. On rainy night he was driving distracted, when suddenly the car, a ’56 Ford, that has weathered thousands of battled and millions of kilometers, was caught in the trap in the middle of the street.

“It was terrible. I couldn’t see the pothole as it was underwater. The car fell almost six feet into the hole. The crash was very violent. I lost consciousness and got a hole in my head, they had to give me 23 stitches. The car was totaled,” he related three weeks after the accident.

Many streets and even stretches of the National Highway are a clear demonstration of the state’s neglect of road maintenance. Real landmines, for the damage they do to the cars.

Ask Luis, a Spanish tourist passing through Havana, how many tire blow outs his rental car has suffered due to the state of the roads. “Man, it’s horrendous. And then, to make it worse, there’s nowhere to put air in the tires,” he says in disgust.

The government invests millions of pesos in the repair of certain principle arterials. But the repair work is poor quality. In a few months the streets are full of potholes again.

The number one enemy is the breaks in the water pipes. When it gets dark, a great number of streets seem like real rivers, where the water is lost to the streams. Meanwhile the propaganda on TV announces that we have to save the precious liquid, every night about 60% of the drinkable water doesn’t make it to its destination, because of the deterioration in the capital’s water system.

This water that runs extravagantly though the streets of the city is a ticking time-bomb. The famous Havana potholes have caused numerous accidents. Sometimes, trying to avoid them, drivers cause fatal crashes.

Take note. Traffic accidents are the fifth leading cause of death in Cuba. Even though the density of traffic is nothing like in the great European cities, the number of deaths and injuries is skyrocketing.

The government tries to solve the problem. And since August 1 they have enacted a law demanding road safety. Not bad. But first they have to repair the streets of the city; compared to them the streets of Zimbabwe have nothing to be jealous of.

September 15, 2010

I don’t think capitalism is the model of a perfect life. But it is more logical and possible at this stage of human development. Communist ideologies removed at the stroke of a pen competition and discrepancies.

We already know what that has meant. Material poverty, lazy people with no motivation to work. It discourages individuality. What counts is collectivism.

Closed systems such as Cuba and North Korea go against human nature. In their attempt to design a New Man, perfect, docile, who works for a pittance and venerates his leaders, they have demolished the institutions of modern life.

It’s the hideousness of people like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung… In theory, the concepts of communism are attractive. Societies without police or armies. One lives according to one’s needs. And there is no money.

To reach this hypothetical paradise you must first go through hell. That is making the nation mediocre, restricting essential liberties and “educating” the masses to respect their leader.

These nations that have embarked on this chimerical project, have always had to face a dictator, a caudillo, a visionary…

Totalitarian regimes are the cradle of nationalists, egomaniacs, and personalities who are not always in their right mind. When power goes beyond reasonable limits, it can become monstrous.

Examples abound. To maintain your monsters you use prisons, gulags and firing squads. In this type of society there are no checks and balances. Everything is controlled by a group of men. Or one alone. The choice is the supreme law.

But man is a weirdo. Like some bacteria, he develops resistance to certain antibodies. Citizens emerge who have no desire to continue applauding the country’s daddy.

And the battle begins. Silent. The natural reaction of a human being with respect to his right to be different. To be able to talk, shout, write, opine, and disagree at his leisure.

Cuba is one of the societies where there has been a long war of ideas and concepts among an elite that is sure that Marxist Socialism is the best, and a group of intellectuals, opponents and independent journalists who try to show that the Cuban model is broken.

Let’s leave aside the figures that confirm the country is sinking. While Fidel Castro walks as the prophet of nuclear conflagrations and world apocalypse, those on the island who dissent know that democratic change in Cuba is a daily struggle. Extremely peaceful.

September 17, 2010

The question is not if you believe in Afrocuban religion or in Catholicism, if not in the Revolution and its leaders. In Cuba, you never know if the last thing they say is what they are really going to do. They’ve carried on more than 50 years talking, but in practice there are not many tangible results. Or they have been limited.

As has happened in agriculture, livestock, fishing, the sugar industry, transport, among other sectors of the economy. Or in health, education, sport and culture. To mention one example, who remembers the ten basic cultural institutions, that great project of the 1980s?

“The Revolution has lived by the force of slogans, pamphlets and speeches. In a word, improvising. So the latest statements of Raul and Fidel slip by some people. Their credibility has fallen a lot, above all among the poorest Cubans, for those who watch one year pass and start the next one the same or worse off,” says Ernesto, 46.

You already know. Man doesn’t live by politics and propaganda alone. And when it is hard to eat, clothe yourself, fix the house, catch a bus, know the news, that abroad they can make headlines, but ordinary Cubans are rarely interested.

“One is very cujíao (chastened). And it’s a joke that at this point they tell you, ‘now we are going to construct socialism.” We’ve had 52 years with more of the same,” says Mario, 65 and retired.

Also lacking are individual liberties. The Internet is not for everyone and if you want to travel to another country you need a government permit. Realities that few Cubans mention, unless they are dissidents.

“What matters to me is if Fidel is going to continue at the head of the Party. I’m not moved by his too-late regrets. He and his brother spend too much time making mistakes. And they still try to make you continue applauding them,” opines Alberto, 18 and a student.

Things may be about to change on the island. But if people only read and hear promises, and don’t see facts, they’ll continue not to believe. Trying to resolve their own and their family’s problems. And the nation? Good luck.

The Castro government could use a vote of confidence. But they would find it difficult among ordinary citizens. Where they are assured of getting it is among the more than one million Party members and the members of the armed forces and the ministry of the interior.

A power sufficient to carry forward the envisaged economic reforms. Believe in them or not.

November 21 2010

There’s nothing as complicated and stressful in Cuba as eating. “It’s terrible. Putting three meals on the table every day wipes out 90% of our household income,” says Caridad, a 39 year-old pediatrician.

“Imagine my case,” comments Orlando, a construction worker, 46. “I have four children, a wife and my sick mother to feed. I don’t receive any money from foreign remittances and not one penny of my wage is paid in dollars.” (In Cuba, the dual currency system leaves those who don’t have access to CUC, commonly known as divisas or dolár, much worse off than those that do.) “The only way my family can eat meals of rice, beans, and the occasional bit of pork is through theft. It’s as simple as that.”

On the island almost every aspect of life is difficult. But the food situation borders on insanity. For instance, two married professionals with two children and a combined monthly income of 1000 pesos (45 US dollars) would only be able to provide food for 14 days. The rest of the month, you ‘invent it’.

Now for some calculations. Juan, 26-years-old and a workshop employee, lives with his retired parents who between them receive a state pension of 377 pesos a month (15 US dollars). When he adds to this his wage for a grand total of 496 pesos (21 dollars), he goes to a market and buys 5 pounds of pork at 23 pesos (almost a dollar) per pound. There goes 115 pesos.

Next he heads to the fruit and veg stall. One avocado costs 10 pesos (50 cents), and he gets three small green mangoes for 22 pesos. Two pounds of guava costs 10 pesos per pound and 8 plantains are 3 pesos each.

Juan buys a little garlic and onion for 25 pesos. Five nylon bags are one peso each: for some time now here in Cuban stores there haven’t been any shopping bags. And Juan can brag that he’s a lucky guy, because you can’t always find what you’re looking for at the markets.

When he arrives home and works out the numbers, he shakes his head in disgust. He has spent 211 pesos on being able to eat a little better for 3 days. And he still doesn’t have rice, eggs, oil or tomato purée.

If combined with the basic food rations provided per capita each month by the state (7 pounds of rice, 3 pounds of sugar and 2 pounds of dark sugar, 20 ounces of beans, a few ounces of coffee and a daily bread roll weighing 80 grams), Juan’s family can eat for half the month.

Long ago, his parents replaced a proper lunch with a bread roll and a piece of guava paste or a flour fritter seasoned with chives. Breakfast, when they have it, is a cup of coffee. They can’t ask any more of their son: he already spends all of his wages on food.

There’s more. In his workshop, Juan usually steals what is thrown away. Bulbs, paint, screws, alcohol… anything. The extra money he earns from selling these items is also spent on jama (food).

When he goes out with his girlfriend on the weekends, all they have to share is their love for each other. They are always penniless. Occasionally they sacrifice and go to the cinema, and then to the wailing wall of Cuba: Havana’s seafront, the Malecón.

And just like Juan, Rolando and Caridad, around 40% of the Cuban population receives no money in foreign remittances. General Raúl Castro has repeatedly recognized that beans are more important than guns. He’s even said that the provision of food is a matter of national security.

This matter does not seem to interest his brother Fidel. With his world leader complex, what matters to him are foreign affairs. He doesn’t burden himself with such mundane problems.

According to Jeffrey Goldberg, the American journalist who recently interviewed Fidel, the older Castro enjoyed a Mediterranean diet during lunch: fish, salad, bread with olive oil and wine. Not bad.

If heroes, or in this case heroines, exist in Cuba, then they are the nation’s housewives. They have spent decades inventing ways to provide food for their loved ones. With little to cook, they have the creativity of top chefs. Their top priority is that nobody in their family goes to bed on an empty stomach.

It’s like the miracle of the loaves and fishes. They deserve an obelisk in Havana’s Revolutionary Square.

September 19, 2010

When he played Cuban baseball, Aroldis Chapman de la Cruz was called “the Cayo Mambi missile,” after the town in Holguin where he was born on February 28, 1988. Now, in the United States, they call him, “the new king of speed.”

The left-hander recently made major league history, throwing a fastball at 105 miles per hour, shattering the mark of 104.8 miles set in 2006 by Joel Zumaya of the Detroit Tigers. If he continues with such powerful pitches, he could topple the record of 115 miles per hour, held by Steve Dalkowski, a retired pitcher from the minor leagues.

The recent feat of Aroldis Chapman, player for the Cincinnati Reds, did not go unnoticed among the island’s fans of the sport of bats and balls. Especially in these autumn days, when Cuban baseball prepares for its 50th series and the national team participates in a watered-down contest celebrated in Puerto Rico until October 12, from which seven slots are awarded for the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.

As the quality of the Puerto Rican tournament is mediocre, local fans keep themselves informed through Radio Marti, which broadcasts the post-season major league playoffs from its station in Florida. Or through illegal television antennas which abound in the city, and available for a monthly payment of ten convertible pesos.

Those who can spare the hard currency can watch the Major League playoffs in the Havana hotels that show them. And the following morning they often turn to the “sports corner” in Central Park to discuss the details, such as the record of their fellow countryman Chapman.

And no wonder. A human being throwing 150 miles or 160 kilometers per hour is not something that happens every day. But in Cuba it was no surprise.

Aroldis, a 6 foot 3 player, joined the national team and the World Youth tournament, hell in Sancti Spiritus province in 2006. Two years later, he was wearing the team jersey. In the second Classic, facing a powerful team from Japan, he won, and threw a 101 mile-per-hour pitch.

When he played on the island, the left-hander pitched at meteoric speeds exceeding 100 miles. On a rainy night in 2008 at the height of the fifth inning against the Industriales team, he threw two supersonic lines 100 and 101 miles. Besides a great breaking ball, he has a good slider and top curve ball. He has everything to be a giant.

Aroldis Chapman defected in July 2009 during a tournament in Rotterdam, Holland. In January 2010, he signed, for $30.25 million dollars, for six seasons with the Cincinnati Reds. If injuries do not make a dent in Holguinero, in a few years he could become one of the all-time great Cuban pitchers who have played in the majors.

Besides being a hero in Holguin, for the young and talented players on the island the successes of their compatriots across the pond are an incentive to make the jump to the best baseball in the world.

Millionaires wages are a major temptation for stars who earn the wage of an ordinary worker. And they leave at the first opportunity.

Although these days in Havana, as in Miami, it is rumored that the Castro government could open the door and allow players to participate in the majors, while still based in Cuba. Before, they would have had to play in the national series for seven years.

It is speculated that they would be represented by the state agency Cubadeportes and have to pay tax of up to 40%. Consulted sports officials denied the news. A coach would not confirm, but said that “something is cooking.”

The regime has no way to stop the incessant drip of players who leave each year for the United States. More than 300 have left the country since Rene Arocha in 1991 first took that road.

With prohibitions they have achieved nothing. Most players on the island want to demonstrate their capabilities in the major leagues. And earn six-figure salaries. The real icing on the cake.

Video: Aroldis Chapman during the XXXVII Baseball World Cup held in 2007 in Taipei, China. He then wore his jersey number 52, the number his idol, the Cuban pitcher Jose Ariel Contreras, has in the Philadelphia Phillies. Now, with the Cincinnati Reds, Chapman wears number 54.

November 1, 2010

Goodbye to the Chinese model or that of Vietnam. Forget about copying Russia or Serbia. General Raul Castro, president of Cuba, is about to introduce one hundred percent home-grown changes.

Those who dreamed of a market economy, please, back down to earth. Cuba’s move is “new and native” — in the words of the leaders. It has nothing to do with the methods used in other places.

In a meeting of the Communist Party leaders at the Ñico López School in Jaimanitas, to the west of Havana, Marino Murillo, head of economics, said it loud and clear, “We are not going to opt for a market economy, we are going to continue with the planned economy.”

The results of the new regulations and economic reforms remain to be seen. Those already implemented have achieved very little. The 2008 granting of land in usufruct to individual farmers has not produced significant results in the chaos of food production. Nor did the relaunch of self employment this October encourage hundreds of thousands of unemployed to take out licenses to earn money working for themselves.

At bottom, there is a sickness. Structural and ideological. Trying to step on the gas of an economy that’s taking on water, applying methods not proven to give results, with an excess of audits, controls and high taxes, is a check on the progress of an economy at the margin of the State.

Given their fear — that people can make money and generate wealth — the changes in economic matters proposed by the historic leaders of the Revolution will never be serious.

Trying to invent or experiment at this stage of the game is more than daring, it’s a political blunder. With the exhaustion 52 years of power would produce in any government, what would make sense now for the moribund island economy would be to use processed that have been proven successful in other countries and adapt them to our own characteristics.

In five decades of State central planning and control in every area of national life, Cubans have never achieved the strong growth and living standards that would validate these concepts. Just the opposite.

Now, when the shoe pinches and time is our worst enemy, the expert recyclers offer no guarantees, trying to test their concepts in a country in urgent need of profound change, and Cuba is not Venezuela, sitting on one of the major oil reserves of the world. Chavez has guaranteed income with which to try his populist methods. The Castros do not.

A nation like Cuba must and can opt for radical changes in the economic sphere. Why have the only methods that have worked with a certain efficiency been those of the capitalists?

China and Vietnam have successfully proved that the market economy and strict political control work in communist countries. That touch of savage capitalism linked with Marxist discourse and the watchful eye of the Police State would not be desirable on the island.

What is feasible is that economic changes would be accompanied by political transformations. Democracy, a multi-party system, free elections, and a tripartite division of powers. But we know that none of this meets the approval of the brothers from Biran.

Either way, watch. If the “economic update” they intend to launch doesn’t work, the almost absolute power of the Castros could be in danger. It wouldn’t be the first time that the government dug its own grave.

November 21, 2010

After going through a black iron gate, hundreds of Habaneros, tourists and religious, calmly wait to take three turns around an ancient ceiba, throw a handful of coins at its roots and quietly ask for their desires or make promises.

It is the ritual with which every November 16 marks the anniversary of Havana. This city, humid, hot and noisy and is 491-years-old. With its cracked streets and drinking water lost to the sea due to the deplorable state of the pipes. With a terrible infrastructure and urban transport that is a calamity.

Despite all these disasters, the Cuban capital has a ceiba tree located in The Temple, its true icon. Every good Habanero, once in their life, has visited it. Just outside the old Palace of the Captains General, next to the Castillo de la Fuerza and the Santa Isabel hostel.

Very near the Cathedral and the Bodeguita del Medio with its scrumptious black beans, these days the Havana ceiba welcomes thousands of people who yearn for a better luck for their city. And almost in a prayer they supplicate their God, Catholic and Yoruba, to bring improvements to their lives.

People do not go to the ceiba of the Temple people because the State called them to do it, nor do they listen, there, to inflammatory speeches. No. People go from genuine and natural impulses. Here, for a few minutes, they cast aside the mask of mendacity and hypocrisy. They forget the party slogans and clichés. While they make their three orbits, they park their enmity and hatred.

All cities have their hymns, songs and shrines. In this old part of this mixed Havana of Joseíto Fernandez and his famous Guantanamera, of the masterful Ignacio Jacinto Villa — nicknamed “Snowball” — and of politicians and humanists such as José Martí, there is a historical ceiba waiting for their wishes and coins.

November 21, 2010

Fidel Castro is back with the force of a tropical hurricane. Active as in his best days and apocalyptic as ever. He looks good physically.

But his predictions of nuclear holocaust and that we earthlings have been the puppets of a global club of the rich and powerful who run governments at will, makes one wonder.

Either Castro wants to be in the headlines or his mental health is doubtful. His regular presence in the media of the island has become tiresome.

At first, after four years in bed, it was thought that he had reappeared publicly to overshadow the news of the release of 52 peaceful dissidents.

But with the passage of time, it feels like Castro has put himself into the role of the savior of mankind. To confirm his outlandish theories he appeals to analysis, articles and sites like Wikileaks, written by Western journalists and writers.

Castro’s new “strategic ally” is a writer, journalist and researcher, Daniel Estulin (Lithuania, 1966). A good writer with an overflowing imagination, with Estulin science fiction fell short. No wonder they call him the “discoverer of mysteries.”

Both born in the month of August, forty years apart, the commander of the Sierra Maestra and the author of “The True Story of the Bilderberg Club” recently met in Havana. Pleasant chat about conspiracies and threats. And they agreed on the theory that the man should emigrate to other planets if he wants to save and preserve the earth.

According to Castro and Estulin, even the passion for the Beatles is prefabricated. In a world of imperfections, one can not believe that the types who make up the enigmatic Bilderberg Club, design the future design of these are indecipherable characters which are humans.

I would like to believe Estulin. But before I would like to ask him to write about the government of total control mounted the Kremlin in the Soviet era. He should also talk about the abuses of the Red Army in Budapest, Prague and Afghanistan.

And Fidel Castro would have more credibility if he admitted that the first time the world came close to a nuclear conflagration was in October 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The same loquacious old guy who will shake hands with Daniel Estulin in 2010, on October 26, 1962, proposed to Nikita Khrushchev that the Soviets should launch a first strike nuclear attack against the United States.

Thank God, Khrushchev did not pay attention to the bearded young man. Four days later, he replied: “That would not be a hit, but the beginning of global thermonuclear war.” And he recalled that “in the fires of the war Cuba would burn.”

Castro again wrote to Khrushchev: “We knew, and we did not assume you to be ignorant of the fact, that we would have to be exterminated, as implied in your letter, if nuclear war broke out.”

Hopefully after his stay at the island, Daniel Estulin will interest himself in the days when Russians and Cubans put humanity on the brink of a third world war.

If not, it’s all the same. For my mental health I avoid reading catastrophic books. Even if they are best sellers.

September 1, 2010