Category: Juan Juan Almeida

Having no choice, the press has presented a ton of coverage of the VIII Congress of the Cuban Writers and Artists Union (UNEAC), which concluded with the presence of Army General Raul Castro, and  which affirmed during the different discussions that the culture is committed to the Revolutionary forces to implement in every sector of the country the “new Cuban model.”

And, as “a picture is worth a thousand words,” taking a look at the published photos, we see the main auditorium of the Palace of Conventions with an audience only comparable to an overbooked hotel during Holy Week; the faces of those present reflect boredom, absence and “I don’t care.”

The curious note of the Congress was that, like someone coming out of the closet. the General defined himself as “the absolute enemy of unanimity.” So he leaves us to wonder if he understood what he said, or said it without thinking?

16 April 2014

Oh Jesus, our only consolation in times of sorrow, our only consolation sustain us in the immense vacuum that…!

Today I woke up praying, asking for the rest of the fast-paced, almost dead, but still alive Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas. Parasite with a beautiful face and expensive clothes, recently promoted to general. He knows full well that this olive branch is the final blow.

With more fear than money, Luis Alberto walks prudently, as I said a few days ago, gripping the armrests of his battered old couch. Having beaten Deborah Castro to the point of putting her in the hospital, he is more vulnerable than a manatee at the North Pole. No father accepts this; and much less so if he is the “Godfather” of a formidable clan, because as they say in Sicily, the Camorra doesn’t forgive.

This significant promotion has at least a couple of purposes and one reading; to distract our attention, and bring Lopez-Callejas to paroxysm of despair making real the torment of being between pride and terror.

We can think, speak, and insinuate and put our heads together; but faced with such cases we must never forget that the January 1, 1984, Maj. Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez publicly received the distinction of Hero of the Republic of Cuba, the highest honor awarded by the Council of State. And only 5 years later, on July 13, 1989, he was shot by a makeshift firing squad by the sea, by the decision of Raul and a military tribunal.

Chance or coincidence, a few years after the execution of Ochoa, Alejandro, his only son, died in suspicious accident; but I don’t even want to talk about this out of respect for people I love. But I have to admit that a few weeks ago just when I finished writing an article under the title “The powerful former son of Raul Castro, into exile” a great friend (family of the General) whom I prefer to keep more hidden than groin of a nun, had the wisdom to warn “As you publish this, you’re only protecting Luis Alberto and dragging out what for him is inevitable.”

Indeed, only the press can shield Luis Alberto today, and he clings to his best and only wild card, Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro (his eldest son), who although he is the favorite grandson of the Cuban leader generates frequent discord within of the royal family, because this arrogant boy, with the well sculpted athletic body, fed certain addictions that build gradually.

The road to Cuban power is paved with hypocrisy and victims. The recently sanctioned General Rodríguez López-Callejas is at the center of a hurricane at the mercy of Raul Castro’s clock, and his son Alejandro, who without any hurry, calculating, calm and meticulous waits for the exact moment to activate the guillotine which, during the unexpected storm of some morning, will fall on his neck and like the curtain in a theater and put a final end to the terrible work of his short eternity.

19 March 2014

Some months ago, someone who does not wish to be named because she is closely related to a high level Cuban leader, called me and told me that she had finished living her first and very unhappy American experience.  Her voice sounded ragged, with the irregular breaths that usually accompany crying.

Bilingual, university graduate, pretty, well prepared and much better raised, she applied for a job and found as an answer: Your last name is vetoed here, we don’t want any trouble. I told her, “Don’t worry, when someone destroys our dream, life always fixes it to help us build another one much better.”

I believe that so I managed to calm her; but today I need catharsis after seeing the hubbub generated in the local press by the arrival in Miami of the young Havanan named Josué Colomé Vazquez, the son of the Cuban vice-president and minister of the interior, General Abelardo Colomé Ibarra.

It is true that since there is no gossip press on the island, the lives of certain people who make up that clouded high society generates a curiosity that approaches morbidity and gives life to hunters who with mandibular exercise seek to call our attention shooting relentlessly at the so-called elite who because of non-programmed genetics were born with certain privileges.

Needless to say, with exceptions, this so attractive demographic group that includes many relatives of leaders of the Cuban revolution, does not decide to emigrate because of feeling persecuted or for political reasons; they do it because of fashion, eccentricity, or to study and one day return home with the honorific baggage of an American residence and some ultra-flamboyant title.  Also to improve their personal economy and/or look for more stable places than Havana in which to reverse the syndrome of generalized apathy that is produced by not knowing where we are going… In short, the reasons vary by those who come, ninety miles further north, this galaxy that many call “Daddy’s kids.”

Are they simply opportunists?  God save me from judging, although I agree that they are taking advantage of Public Law 89-732, “The Cuban Adjustment Act” which offers refuge and opportunity to Cubans in this country, the United States. The same law and opportunity of which so many Cuban emigrants (the term exile sounds a bit more cruel to me) make use of.

It is not good to outlaw so much. He who is free of sin come and ask me for a few. Is it necessary to clarify that, although to many it seems an act of high patriotism, stealing an airplane, a boat or raiding a warehouse in order to steal loaves of bread, without being hungry or needy, are not political issues but common crimes?

Look, on March 31, 1589, the fortification works of Havana began to come into being, directed by the engineer, military architect and Italian builder Bautista Antonelli, and by field marshal Juan de Tejeda who was governor of Cuba from 1589 to 1593.  An excellent anniversary to think of building a better country, where judging is an act of law, the guilty pay for their crimes and not for being sons or nephews. Reconsidering it bodes well.

1 April 2014

In a small editorial, the newspaper Granma reported that, in accordance with Article 90, section (a) of the current Constitution, the State Council of the Republic of Cuba agreed to convene a special session of the National Assembly of Popular Power to consider the draft Law on Foreign Investment.

Wow, even in that there is apartheid! Wouldn’t it be better to reconvene to establish the rights of Cuban entrepreneurs? I don’t know why I bother if Cubans already know that in this strange debate the MPs only attend to shout in unison “Aye.”

20 March 2014

The newspaper Granma intended to have an impact with pompous editorial “Towards the 500 years of Santiago de Cuba” where it explains how that province has developed a project consisting of measures that will allow it to arrive at July 2015, the date commemorating 500 years since its founding, with the rehabilitation and total embellishment of its historic city center and significant sites.

Certainly, as it suits them, the Cuban authorities will disburse funds to restore important public works exposed to the eyes of foreign visitors. But I am slightly curious: what are they going to do with the beggars and mentally ill who wander around the city and leave much to be desired relative to social adornment, will they include them in the beautification? Hopefully they’ll hide them because then, as the song says… Who cares, I don’t give a damn.

25 March 2014

On 14 March, one more anniversary was celebrated of the appearance, in 1892, of the first issue of Patria, an old dream of Jose Marti in which Tomás Estrada Palma, Manuel Sanguily, Gonzalo de Quesada, Manuel de la Cruz, Enrique José Varona and other important figures participated, managing to fuse politics and literature. The role, at that time, of this important newspaper was clear, and the apostle — Marti — described it in his editorial: “What the enemy has to hear is nothing more than the voice of attack itself… This is Patria in the press. It’s a soldier.”

Because of this commemoration, Cuba’s first vice-president Miguel Diaz-Canel, toured the facilities of the national television information system, and afterwards congratulated all the workers on the anniversary, baptized as “Day of the Cuban Press,” and he called on them to perfect their reporting work.

A small concern seemed to upset the leader on making these declarations, in the “improvised” conversational exchange, later rectified with absolute precision: Any work of the Revolution is incomplete if it’s not in the present press.

Why the urgency to amend the supposition. Because Mr. Diaz-Canel, like any other leader, knows very well the invisible guiding hand that manages our real politik, where there is no room for these kinds of errors, they are simply deliberate negligence, or purposeful inaccuracies, that should be punished.

The unaware assert that the Cuban leaders fear the opposition; but for them the dissidence doesn’t exist, they are afraid of their own power and paranoia leads them to calibrate every accent, every word, every phrase in its multiple interpretations and every detail with maximum rigor.

In Cuba there are no secrets, but we must distinguish them. Everyone should know that for Cuban parliamentarians, the concern isn’t the time that their names appear in the news, but the location of the chair that they will occupy during the next session of the National Assembly.

If we looks closely at the image of a plenary session in the Palace of Conventions, irrespective of whether its organized by the provinces of municipalities, it will not be difficult to decipher the terror of the officials who know how their own goodwill is measured by the tapestry of their chair and how close it is to the leader.

Occupying a plastic chair, located in lowlife class, feels as secure as prostitutes felt in Moscow during the Cold War.

The leather armchairs in tropical class represent the more important and deserved reward. Space reserved for people skilled in the art of meanness. Knowing you’re in tropical class provokes a certain expectation and converts you into hungry wolves or quarrelsome sheep waiting for the slightest opportunity to tear to shreds, circumstances which can serve to climb into the beige leather armchair on the great podium of superiority. Where Diaz-Canel sits. Hence his justified tremor, knowing that if he commits a single mistake, in less than five minutes he can be in the dungeon.

As my grandmother said of someone who didn’t speak for days,”Ah son, when are you going to understand that in Cuban politics ideology is pure facade, so leave it in the hands of the idiots and the military.”

18 March 2014

After it was closed on 2 August 2013, given the urgency to undertake discrete repairs on its constructive infrastructure, the Luis de la Puente National Center of Minimal Access Surgery (CNCMA), continues under repair today, obvious to the naked eye, and as usual, it’s the never-ending story.

In reality, given the rhythm established by the Cuban government on social issues and demands, I don’t see the hurry. Or you’ve forgotten the building in El Vedado in Havana on Linea and 12th streets, that only took 18 years to build, and today is a monument to bad taste. Let’s go, as the General said, slowly but surely.

15 March 2014

According to the Official Journal of the European Union, the Brazilian government decided to triple the number of Cuban collaborators in its program of popular health “More Doctors.” And to cover the increase of the Cuban medical contingent in Brazil, Dilma Rousseff updated the contract it has with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), bringing to 973.94 million reals ($ 415 million dollars) as the resources for this expansion for the next six months.

What is blatantly obvious on the Brazilian news is that the Cuban doctors expected to arrive in Brazil, are those who — given the unstable and turbulent situation facing Caracas — are preparing to flee Venezuela.

15 March 2014

On February 11, while a toxic product was being worked with on one of the fields of the Jose Antonio Labrador Agricultural Cooperative, produced an ammonia leak that affected several villages. At Ciro Redondo Hospital in Artemisa more than 45 patients were seen with respiratory problems, all of whom were released except for two girls who remain under observation in Comandante Pinares Hospital.

The causes of the leak are still being investigated.

15 February 2014

For a long time there have been countless comments within the circle of Cuban power, where the name of the cunning and not-at-all innocent Colonel Luis Alberto Rodrigues Lopez-Calleja persists, as the “Czar of the Military Economy.” A fictional creation, a legend.

So today, February 24, instead of writing about this group of brave men who in 1895 shouted “Independence of Death!” resuming the struggle for Cuban independence; I prefer to comment on Luis Alberto; an arrogant character, insensitive, calculating, abusive, with the last name of a porn actress, lover of numbers that always add up in his favor, clever with arithmetic and epics, who despite all his positions (CEO of the Business Administration Group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and member of the Communist Party Central Committee), trying to escape himself and adulterate his destiny.

A difficult thing, he knows how to do business with the clam and wants to enter “The Family” always bringing negative consequences. His many year marriage to Deborah Castro went on, as we all know, with a long history of abuse and infidelities which were always tolerated. But suspicious, as usual, he understood that in this new economic transition taking the country from paleolithic times to the middle ages, he was losing power and tried, unsuccessfully, to use Deborah as a shield.

It’s clear that his ex, the oldest of the Castro Espins, is a huge mistake that corrects its errors by committing others, worse; but the always seductive Rodríguez López-Calleja, instead of snorting cocaine smoked composure and put on the boxing gloves. He gave her a brutal thrashing, Deborah ended up in the hospital with serious contusions.

A coward, like any batterer, he doesn’t need an Aladdin’s lamp to understand that, in a country like Cuba, where low class is very low, the average is not high, and the high lacks class, his old superiority became a cage. He knew very well that it went against him, and wanting to revenge the sadness of his father-in-law-leader, is a completely obedient army that, in frank restructuring, needs to hang medals.

To judge him wouldn’t be right, but in a case like this, quite logically, to parents it seems to use that the job is not usually fair.

Raul’s government has skillfully navigated several crises, and doesn’t want to do this, a news scandal. So he ordered the criminal case dismissed and will send, or already sent, the father of his grandchildren to serve a mission in Angola, a dangerous land for a Cuban in disgrace.

But now, Luis Alberto, urgently, strategizing, is moving heaven and earth to keep a grip, however little, on the armrest of the couch that already has termites. We know very well that the underworld is unforgiving, he knows that in any place protected from prying eyes, the final bill will arrive.

Perhaps he won’t even get to step on African soil, perhaps he won’t board the plane; or perhaps, because there is always a perhaps, when we least expect it, we’ll have him over here.

25 February 2014

After its closure in the late sixties, the emblematic Marti theater in the Cuban capital reopens its doors after nine years of intense repair work on its valued architecture.

The property underwent an accelerated process of destruction, to the point that only the stone facade was preserved. A simile of the national decline. To everyone’s satisfaction, the coliseum of 100 doors, as the poet said, is ready. Moving forward, even when the recovery starts from zero, is worth the trouble. We go for the push.

26 February 2014

According to a note in the newspaper Granma, the Council of State, on a proposal from its President–Raul Castro, or “El Chino” as we call him–agreed to promote to Minister of Culture the compañero Julian Gonzalez Toledo. A suspicious agreement, knowing that Toledo doesn’t understand much about culture because he spent his whole life at the Senior Party Cadre School.

Now the curious comment that the ex-minister Bernal will be assigned other tasks: a nice shower accompanied by a white guayabara and a straw sombrero, so when he’s bored on the “pajama plan” (as we call forced retirement), he can go out in his backyard and entertain himself watering his plants. That is, if he leaves the house.
6 March 2014