Category: Juan Juan Almeida

The government realized this was a time bomb on the verge of detonating, leading either to a new stampede from the island or a widespread revolt. Therefore, to increase morale within the military, a series of promotions was announced on June 6 of that year.

But by August Havana had become a sweltering city, with the sea breeze serving as the poor man’s fan. On August 5 around twenty young men were sitting on the sea wall along the Malecon at Puerto Avenue near Cuba and Chacon streets. Perhaps because they were poor or perhaps because some of them were black, the men aroused suspicion.

Trucks carrying members of the special brigade appeared and began harassing the youths. Exhaustion, hardship, rage and even longstanding grievances led to an explosion of civil disobedience. The men gathered there responded by marching down the street en masse and shouting, “We’ve had enough” and “Down with Fidel.”

Others joined them, and then many more joined those. It was not an anti-social riot carried out by criminals; it was a spontaneous popular reaction to circumstances, which was repressed with perverse excess. The reaction by the Cuban government was brutal. It counter-attacked from all sides.

Using force, trickery and bloodshed, it confronted groups of Cubans, quashed the protest and infiltrated the demonstrators’ ranks, casting a chill over libertarian bravado.

The police made a public show of force. Helmeted riot squads with shields and combat vehicles patrolled the streets of Havana, especially those in the Old Havana, Guanabacoa and Tenth of October neighborhoods. The assassins of law used the technology of enforcement to threaten everyone, leaving the city’s population with a somber, frightening and discouraging vision.

In the national media everyone was forced to publicly repudiate what was being called “the events of August 5.” They had to cheer even when there was no reason to do so. But what few of them realized was that a plan had been put in place to “safeguard the physical well-being of the leaders of the revolution.”

Yes, those khaki-clad men who grew old repeating the spurious slogan “To defend the revolution to our last drop of blood” had an evacuation plan for such contingencies. It involved gathering their families together and heading not for the frontline but for the front of the plane where, instead of trenches, there were comfortable seats and flight attendants serving champagne.

I know this because on August 5, 1994 — even before the sun had fully risen in the sky — I received a short phone call from a security officer asking me not to leave the house. Five minutes later my father’s chief bodyguard, Raul Romero Torreblanca, showed up and told me gather essential items because they would be coming by to pick me up. There was no explanation.

Doing otherwise was not an option. For many years Cuban officials (the most high-ranking) were asked to identity key family members and, even though I was no longer to the liking of the top leadership, my name still appeared on the list my father had drawn up.

Torreblanca left. Three hours later the phone rang again. “All clear,” I heard someone say. “Situation under control.”

Asking around, I discovered that not all the leaders or their family members had gotten the same call, or comparable instructions. As my grandmother used to say, “Those who steal always lie.”

11 August 2014

This is not impossible but first they must acknowledge the overwhelming need to come together and organize themselves. More than a union, they must form a pact. Competing to demonstrate acquired leadership skills, as they now do, is like swimming in a make-believe desert to feed one’s ego. While this may be laudable, it does nothing to help one’s country.

Meanwhile, as time marches on, those on the island and those in exile express conflicting opinions. The kings of prevarication who currently make up Cuba’s governing clique are looking like heirs-in-waiting.

All indications are that — barring a miracle or a cataclysm, which are unlikely — Cubans will be presented with a souvenir: the imposition of a governmental succession that transfers power from the current office holders to their children, friends, in-laws, cousins and/or close associates.

But it is not I who is saying this. Sir Isaac Newton himself expressed it in his laws of motion and universal gravitation: “The apple does not fall far from the tree.” There are those who do not want to acknowledge this because they are too invested in a funerary transition, or because they spend their time being fascinated with themselves.

The heirs to power, the leading players, will almost certainly be family members of current leaders who already hold strategic positions, party officials who have amply demonstrated their loyalty, and military men such as Raúl Rodríguez Lobaina, Lucio Juan Morales Abad and Onelio Aguilera Bermúdez whose devotion was formed in the heat of battle in places such as Angola, Ethiopia and Nicaragua.

They are the new Caesars, people who, like water, have the ability to go around any obstacle and adapt to any circumstance. Their task will be to restructure the country, guiding it towards “who knows what.” They are certainly willing to fight to stay in power and one day Cubans — worn down by time and memory — will give in and agree to live in oblivion, allowing victims and victimizers to coexist. One fortunate aspect of a laboratory run by pirates is that, instead of eye patches and gold chains, they sport embroidered guayaberas and treat “the Fatherland” as their personal inheritance.

4 August 2014

They amounted to monologues that sounded good but convinced no one. Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General himself, spoke of human rights before a cynical troupe of representatives from countries – Zimbabwe, Syria, Equatorial Guinea, Cuba and Venezuela – accused of violating them. And the there was China, which arrived at the summit without bothering to conceal its true intentions: commercial expansion and strategic positioning in the Americas.

I suggest that analysts start paying attention to this particular issue and stop ignoring Asia’s current imperial-minded superpower, which has invested more than one-hundred million dollars in the region over the last eight years.

There were pleasant but disturbing words from the gruff, obstinate and colorful Evo Morales, president of the summit and of Bolivia — the poorest and most backward country in the South America — whose speeches were sprinkled with his customary and dangerously foolhardy statements. Instead of requesting more support for his nation, he proposed the elimination of the UN Security Council as a means of creating a “new world order.”

A dictatorial government must appear above reproach and project an exemplary image, at least according to books that try to explain how power and social harmony in totalitarian systems are achieved principally through fear. But it can intimidate the lackluster, incoherent, arrogant and rigid.

General Raul Castro, with marked but unconvincing overacting and macho bravado, eschewed the customary meddling policies of Cuba’s revolutionary government. Projecting instead a posture of economic prowess and crocodile charisma, he publicly and shamelessly denounced what he called “illegal, covert and subversive actions, used to destabilize countries.” The Cuban president added, “At the present time state sovereignty is being transgressed and principles of international law are being blatantly violated.”

Has the General/President been drinking again or does he think  that saying one thing while doing another is not lying but rather just a way to maintain a tradition that has been passed down?

In short, the sea.* I don’t know if it was luck or misfortune but, because attention was focused on goals, news of a summit attended by presidents, heads-of-state and over 100 representatives from various countries was not reported until the end of some newscasts. It is evidence that we live at a crucial time marked by a complete leadership vacuum. Worrisome.

*Translator’s note: “en fin, el mar.” Final line of a stanza from the well-known poem “Tengo”  (“I Have”) by 20th century Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen.

16 June 2014

There are, therefore, many who confuse a beach with a battlefield, trash with news, who on seeing themselves observers of the real world, limit their vision and mimic whatever parrots are to blame for this crisis called Nicholas Maduro.

Big mistake. The politicians know perfectly well the basics and the repetitiveness of the human race; most people allow themselves to be led, need to be led, and hope that their loyalty will be well compensated.

The former member of the Socialist League, the former bus driver of Caracas the former Foreign Minister, the former executive Vice president, autocrat par excellence and current president of Venezuela, is simply a chess piece who has great responsibility; here Havana is the predator with amazing acuity, and driven by its usual strategy, of domination and management, it invests resources in sending doctors and medicine to control the area and to feed groups of opinion. Julius Caesar, military leader, politician and former Roman dictator said, “A people should not be invaded without any reason.”

I still can not accept that so many analysts in their work of analysis overlook the detail that “El Chino” has nothing to do with China, and the invasion of stethoscopes and white coats is pure business; delivering to the highest bidder the great bear of the Russian steppe.

General Raul Castro, A man more occupied in accumulating power then in defending ideologies, avidly pro-Russian, zigzagging, calculating, and in favor of the Cold War, is trying to organize a possible ending serving the area to a Moscow that is awakening from a lethargy and misses no opportunity to throw itself threateningly into the backyard of the United States with the idea of recapturing its feudal Caribbean paradise and using it as a naval base in the expansion of ALBA, CARICOM, CELAC, OEA and MERCOSUR, all governed by the left and, coincidently, the geographic space that could favor the Kremlin and its ambitions to match the pulse of the New World Order. Something that contradicts the Monroe doctrine; hence much to my regret, “America is no longer for Americans.”

17 July 2014

Arrested and sent to Havana, an innocent aid worker traveled handcuffed and guarded, carrying as baggage as a sheet of paper where he is accused of being a spy; without trial but with judgment. Such slander is the work of an inquisitorial tribunal chaired by Roberto Gonzalez, national chief of the Cuban Medical Mission in that country.

Somewhere I read that to see an injustice and to remain silent is like committing it. So it is my duty to clarify that the information published did not come from any foot soldier, but an upper crust official who, with his high sense of greed, tried to live in a world beyond the sky.

I do not think any cooperator would risk breaking the barrier of imposed compartmentalization without some guaranteed escape. Something that I believe justifies the innocence of the arrested. Those below don’t possess the information, nor have the desire; it’s enough to have to the responsibility to save lives and to be sheltered in a country where few people want us; because despite our good, bad or ulterior motives, much of the Venezuelan population, sees us as mere invaders.

But back to the subject at hand, and with more information than I had last week; on Monday,June 30, in Anzoategui, Aragua, Bolivar, Carabobo, Lara, Miranda, Sucre and Zulia 330 Cuban collaborators were reported with acute respiratory infections; 37 of them in the last week. In Nueva Esparta, Trujillo, Monagas, Yaracuy, Sucre, Miranda, Lara and Barinas, there is an increase of collaborators with dengue fever (nine, to be exact).

I am not given to putting figures in writing, but sometimes, like this is necessary. I must also add that in the Amazon, Trujillo, Nueva Esparta, Apure, Guarico, Anzoategui, Lara, Falcón, Barinas, Delta Amacuro and Zulia, 98 Cubans were diagnosed with ADD (acute diarrheal diseases).

Also, in the Amazonas, Apure, Monagas, Guarico, Nueva Esparta, Bolivar, Vargas, Cojedes, Sucre, Merida, Barinas and Zulia, 248 Cuban professionals (79 doctors, 80 nurses, 55 dentists and 34 laboratory technicians) are under observation after suffering some kind of occupational accidents involving exposure to blood and body fluids.

The Cuban medical mission in Venezuela has serious problems; besides manifest rejection and disease, the exodus of physicians is increasing.

I was told that the opening of offices in areas of extreme poverty is stagnant due to the lack of cooperation of community leaders, and Venezuelan students are reluctant to participate as extras in this circus. And to make it more surreal, there is a lack of medications, even basic ones. They say there is a delay in delivery. I will also speak about this.

8 July 2014

This fact, and other administrative issues that of course are ignored, were responsible for the insufficient availability of beef cattle for people’s consumption (as if citizens even received beef), with effects on the food industry, tourism and even light industry because of the lack of skins for the making of shoes and other leather goods for export. The words fly, we know that during the important meeting there was talk about creating rules and measures intended to exercise more control over the livestock industry, and making new regulations aimed at exorcising the evil of illegal slaughter.

The Revolution dictates, and the revolutionaries comply with the need to confront the problem by creating a joint integrated commission for officials from the Ministries of Justice, Agriculture and the National Police, with special participation in the issue by the forces and measures of State Security.

For the first time, to anyone’s knowledge, in a government meeting no one mentions “the Blockade”; I imagine that it’s pretty convoluted to blame the United States for the Cuban amateurs. But the prize for the day’s hero, or the fool of the moment, depending on your point of view, was won by Gustavo Rodriguez, agricultural engineer and Minister of Agriculture.

The comment is heard among the most select gossip of the Cuban political class.

They say that in the full meeting, where the job is to obey, the man, armed with the courage that comes from ingenuity, and not rebellion, criticized the inefficient of the State and its legal mechanisms. He said that, “Increasingly severe criminal penalties haven’t been able to stop the crime; we should recognize the farmers’ ownership of their animals and implement other alternatives to address the problem, such as legalizing and regulating the controlled slaughter of cattle, and gradually implement it, in an experimental way and with a tax policy and prices capable of governing the trade in beef.”

“El Chino*” got upset and let out a shout that was heard in China; leaving the only alternative and unanimous proposal to increase repression, sanctions and the prison population. Oh! And to keep under observation the opinion offered by the comrade minister.

*Translator’s note: “El Chino” (the Chinese man) is reference to Raul Castro.

25 June 2014