Cuba: Internet in Your Home from September / Ivan Garcia

cuba_internet_0-620x330According to a spokesman for ETECSA, the only telecoms company in Cuba, they are going to start marketing internet in peoples’ homes, with ADSL included, from the first half of September.

We don’t yet know what the price of the installation will be. What has come to light in a document which we have seen are the different tariffs for national and international internet surfing.

The document, put out by Ibis Díaz Silva, commercial executive of ETECSA’s Oficina de Pequeños y Medianos Usuarios (Office of Small and Medium Users ), indicates that the 20 hour internet package will cost 10 convertible pesos a month, 50 hours 15 cuc (Cuban convertible currency), 100 hours 30 cuc, 180 hours 50 cuc, and 220 hours 60 cuc. There will be a 90 hour package, usable between 8 pm and 7 am which will be offered at 20 cuc. They will sell additional hours at 30 convertible pesos.

Additionally, starting from September, they will market the local intranet network at a lower price, where you can find official media. The connection speed will be between 2 and 4 megabytes.

Gradually, Raúl Castro’s government has taken some steps forward to provide internet access for Cubans. On 4th June 2013, ETECSA opened 116 navigation rooms in 15 provinces of the country.

Up to this month, according the ETECSA spokesman, about 600,000 customers have connected to the network. Last February 25th, the Gaceta Oficial de la República (Official Gazette of the Republic) announced new cellphone internet tariffs. And from 2013, ETECSA workmen have been busy putting in place wireless networks in different parts of Havana.

The prices of these new services have generated a lot of controversy. The point is that the Cuban man in the street, with an average salary of $20 a month, can’t afford the luxury of connecting to the internet while he has no chicken, fish or meat in his pantry.

One way or another, nearly everybody is complaining. Whether they are unknown citizens, like the private shoemaker Alfonso Ayala, who has never surfed the net, or official journalists like Elaine Díaz or Alejandro Rodríguez, who have criticised the excessive prices in their blogs.

“One hour at 4.50 cuc (Cuban convertible currency) is equivalent to 112 Cuban pesos. Repairing shoes, I make between 80 and 100 Cuban pesos a day. All my income is for buying food and supporting my wife and kids. As far as I can see the internet continues to be out of my reach,” says Ayala.

As far as the regime is concerned, the internet is an invention of the US special services with the aim of colonising information and culture. Only the inescapable necessity of not continually putting the brakes on Cuban professional development has forced the government to authorise access to the internet.

It all started in 1998, when the island was connected up, via satellite, more slowly and with a narrower band than a public university in New York. The official press blamed the technological backwardness on the trade embargo imposed by Washington, which forbids connection to the underwater cables owned by US companies, which surround the green Cayman Islands. And we know that Cuba and the USA are continuing with the Cold War. And truth is the first casualty of any war.

According to the ETECSA spokesman, in 2010, some gringo companies located in Florida were authorised by the Obama government to negotiate with Cuba to recommission an old unused underwater cable.

“The project was viable. It cost $18m with a bandwidth right for our requirements. But the government preferred to bet on the so-called digital self-government and designed a project jointly with Venezuela called ALBA1, stated the source.

At a cost of $70m, the submerged cable connected the twin cities of La Guiara and Siboney in the east, in Santiago de Cuba. There is a spur off it which goes off to Kingston, Jamaica.

There is a structure of corruption around the cable in the upper echelons of the Ministry of Communications and Information, which led to the desertion of a high-up manager of ETECSA in Panama in 2012.

There was no news about ALBA1 until 4 June 2013, following the government decision to open new navigation rooms. There is no doubt that the famous cable clearly improved the connection speed.

Before that, in a five-star hotel like the Saratoga, where Beyoncé stayed last year with her husband JayZ, the connection speed was slow and expensive. At best it didn’t get past 100Kb. And 2 hours of internet cost a bit over $15.

From September 2014 on, things are going to change, according to specialists I have spoken to. It could be that not many Cubans will be enthusiastic about the new provision, on account of its irrational pricing. But the ETECSA functionary referred to is optimistic and considers that the opening up of cyberspace will bring more positives than negatives.

Iván García

Photo: A Cuban surfs the net in one of the cyber cafes opened by ETECSA all over the island in June 2013. Taken by El Universal.

Translated by GH

9 March 2014

The Workers Never Believed in “Their” 20th Congress / Orlando Freire Santana

Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, secretary general of the workers. Photo from
http://www.trabajadores.cu

HAVANA, Cuba.  The 20th Congress of the ruling Cuba Workers Central (CTC) has just concluded its sessions.  Even though authorities proclaimed that this had been a democratic meeting, what is true of every workplace discussion of the main documents is that very few workers expected anything good from the event.  I could verify the foregoing a day after the conclusion in conversations held with several people.

Alina is a worker in a dressmaking shop of the Ministry of Industries.  She told me that she did not bother to read newspapers or watch television news during the days that the Congress was in session.  Overall, it was not going to answer her demand and that of the rest of her companions: a salary increase.

Alina told me that in her workshop three systems of payment have been applied, and none of them has served any purpose. They have not been able to pay the wage stimulus because the company to which the workshop is subordinate has breached the indicators that they call macroeconomics, and no worker understands where they come from.

The day that they gave the pre-Congress meeting in her workshop, her companions suggested that, since they never paid the stimulus, at least they could increase the base salary. But the municipal CTC official said that was impossible until the country’s labor production and productivity increased. “And of course I wasn’t about to listen to the same story now in the 20th Congress,” concluded Alina.

Miguel Angel is a Bachelor in Economics. He does not much like that kind of slogan that the government brandishes in the context of modernizing the economic model, in the sense that planning prevails over the market. What he likes least is that the CTC is not original and merely repeats what the country’s rulers say.

Like many, he was not aware of what happened in the chief worker meeting. He did not need to be. Some days before, Mr. Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, who presided over the Organizing Commission for the 20th Congress, confirmed that the unions supported the economic strategy that planning put in the foreground. “Well,” says Miguel Angel, “I oppose planning in Cuba. The government planners here, besides being inefficient in their work, want to stick their noses into everything, even in what must be produced and sold in a simple farmer’s market.”

And on passing near one area where some months before everything was business due to the clothes that private workers were marketing and that today languishes in loneliness, I stumbled on Yoandri, a young man who had to turn in his license as a self-employed worker. He was one of the first to agree to belong to the unions sponsored by the CTC. Today, however, he assesses that decision as useless. “Bottom line, it was all for nothing. When they closed my clothing business, the union did nothing to defend me,” he confessed.

He also said that his case could serve as a lesson to many other self-employed workers who find themselves pressured by authorities to join the unions. “The government wants to unionize them in order to control them better, because here the union and the government are the same thing. The rest is baloney,” he concluded.

Ah, and the three knew beforehand that the fatso by the name of Brazilian — as they call Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento — was going to be elected secretary general of the CTC. That was decided previously.

Cubanet, February 26, 2014,

Translated by mlk

The Last in History’s Line / Angel Santiesteban

Cuba has always been the last in line in terms of positive results compared to the rest of Latin America.  By a wide margin we were the last ones to abolish slavery, and also the last to achieve decolonization from Spain.

After a half century of trying out a prosperous and honest republic, we had a “revolution” that immediately stopped being such in order to turn into the iron dictatorship that we currently suffer, exceeding half a century of totalitarianism.

After Fidel Castro’s arrival to power in 1959 began the tumultuous period for Latin American countries in that failed effort to export the revolutionary model.  After the communist threat covered the rest of the continent like an ominous shadow, the answer, also negative, as a solution for moving away from Castro’s Carribean Stalinism was the establishment of more dictatorships that captured, tortured and assassinated anyone who opposed them.

After years of governing, those dictatorships were surrendering power because of social and international pressures.

We, as good Cubans, also will be the last to free ourselves of the “monarchical” regime of the Castro brothers.

Angel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement.  March 2014.

For Amnesty International to declare Cuban dissident Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience, please sign the petition here.

Translated by mlk.

14 March 2014

The .cu / Anddy Sierra Alvarez

Web domain for newcomers or daredevils.

For many, the designation .cu is a way to identify the country on the internet. But for the most accomplished netizens it remains a place very little in demand.

The .cu indicates mistrust, ease of hacking, promotion of the reading of personal sites by third parties—little privacy. Anyway, there are no encrypted sites [https] to protect visitors.

Why does .cu even exist? For those who want to share with the DSE (Department of State Security). For that reason it has ceased to be a domain visited by Cuban dissidents. Except for rookies with only a few hours in front of a computer.

To summarize, I would use .cu, but only when accompanied by a good HTTPPSSSSSSSSSSSS

Translated by Tomás A.

14 March 2014

Challenges of the Cuban Press / Yoani Sanchez

“The newspaper was talking about you…” sings the voice of Joaquín Sabina, while I read the newspaper Granma. On the cover, as usual, there’s some event. A tribute to a figure from the past, a reminder, a phrase someone said forty or fifty years ago. All the pages have this rancid stink of journalism that doesn’t dare to address the present, that avoids the here and now.

The Cuban official press can’t reform itself because to do so would be committing suicide. To report on the national reality it would have to renounce its role as ideological propaganda. It’s not enough to change the design of its digital sites, add new signatures to its articles, or keep the readers’ letters complaining about bureaucrats and corruption. It must go further and shed its political commitments and take on the truth as its only obligation. But this… this we know it cannot do.

I expect more from the press that will emerge, or consolidate, than a “new official journalism.” But I am also aware that the work of reporting from civil society, precarious and illegal, has to improve. Information is not trench warfare and it is not a weapon. Events should not be reported from the point of view of what we want to have happened, but from what did happen.

For its part, thematic variety is not contrary to the defense of freedom and human rights. There are many ways of speaking, and of speaking beautifully. We must search, then, for ways of reporting that bring us closer to ordinary readers. Creativity, daring and diverse points of view help us to be better professionals of the press. Going down that path is worth it.

For my part, I’m taking the first steps. The countdown to the digital media I’ve been working on for four years has begun. A new professional challenge approaches, but I will not be alone; rather I will be accompanied by a team of talented people who want to do journalism with a capital J.

In the coming weeks this personal blog will be transformed—right in front of your eyes—into a media of the PRESS. Words of encouragement are welcome!

14 March 2014

When Ramiro Valdes Lost his Cable / Tania Diaz Castro

Ramiro Valdez, a confident of the Castro brothers
Ramiro Valdez, a confident of the Castro brothers

HAVANA, Cuba – I heard the story late, it happened a year ago. But the residents of Santa Fe, a coastal community to the west of Havana where about 50,000 people live, are afraid to say anything about Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, a “historic commander,” who is credited with numerous shootings at the beginning of the Cuban Revolution.

At the entrance to Santa Fe, on 1st Street, is the residence of this member of the Politburo of the only legally existing party in Cuba. It is hidden there behind high walls that span more than two blocks, so that nothing can be seen from outside. It’s a Nazi-style bunker, but with access to the sea.

Between gritted teeth, very carefully, in case it might reach the ears of the Artemisa Spy as many call him, or one of this many bodyguards, I was told this story.

On a sunny afternoon in April 2013, several workers from the Communal, an organization that is responsible for cleaning and slashing of weeds in sidewalks and green areas of the city, was performing these tasks near Ramiro’s bunker when one of them inadvertently slashed a wire in the undergrowth with his machete.

The area of Ramiro Valdes's bunker from Google Earth
The area of Ramiro Valdes’s bunker from Google Earth

They continued their work, but on seeing the soldiers pour out of the bunker like wasps, looking for the counterrevolutionary terrorist who had cut Ramiro’s cable, they stopped in surprise. They didn’t know what to say.

Within minutes they were all under arrest and at the trail three of those working outside the bunker were sentenced to five years in prison, because as the action had been accidental, it was impossible to know who had cut Ramiro’s cable.

Three humble men who live in poverty, in houses they made themselves with materials found in the streets.

I know one of them, Carlos Merino Martinez, who has been my gardener for six years, someone who rarely speaks, honest and of good character, who still wonders why he has to serve a sentence if he is innocent.

He says that on occasion he’s wanted to speak with Ramiro who, after all, although he is vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers, was a poor man like him, a shopkeeper according to what he’s heard, back in Artemisa near his bunker, and to tell him of the injustice committed against him and his two companions, but he fears he would just be stopped approaching such a mysterious house. He tells me he feels humiliated, although the prison sentence was converted into “prison without internment,” he has to sign in at the Police Station every month, as if he were a criminal.

Groundskeeper Carlos Merino Martinez. Photo by Tania Diaz
Groundskeeper Carlos Merino Martinez. Photo by Tania Diaz

As a man who lives a quiet life, along with his wife, he doesn’t care that he’s forbidden to attend parties or to leave Santa Fe. In short, he has always gone home from work. He never made money for parties. But it saddens him that his companions, younger than he is, are facing this situation.

Time has passed but the story of the wire cut by the three unfortunate gardeners is still talked about. As we’ve lived half a century and backwardness and very little of internet cables, many of us wonder if the so-important cable Ramiro has hidden in the weeds along the sidewalk from his bunker was for electricity, telegraphy, or an underground or underwater telephone. Some even think it might be that very “fiber optic cable coming from Venezuela,” through which Ramiro instructs his Cuban agents there.

Cubanet, 14 March 2014, Tania Diaz Castro

The Bloody Combinado del Este Prison Riot / Jose Antonio Fornaris

Cells, some for 15 inmates, others for three. Photo: EFE

It happened in 2005. The prisoners were killed while guards remained impassive. A witness recounts the events.

HAVANA, Cuba – A riot that caused several deaths and dozens of injuries occurred on April 5, 2005, at the the maximum security Havana prison, Combinado del Este. Yoslan Diaz Quinones, recently released from prison after serving more than ten years in the prison, witnessed these events and agreed to describe them for Cubanet’s readers.

“The riot began because the inmate José Antonio Pavón Bonilla, one of the leading members of the cult called ’Just as I Am’ was notified that he would be transferred to a prison in Villa Clara. He claimed he could not go to that place because he had several enemies there. Furthermore, also in that prison, years ago, José had organized a riot.

“His reasons were useless. They told him the decision was made and there would be no reversing it.Then, at the first opportunity, he called the jailer who had keys to several of the cell blocks. He managed to tie him up, get the keys off him, and started to let everyone out.

“There were about 200 prisoners in each block. The only cell that Bonilla didn’t open was that of Abnoli, the Bakun Kere. He is a dangerous murderer. Abnoli screamed obscenity and said if he didn’t open the bars he would kill him. Meanwhile, others who were with him asked him not to release the Devil. But one of them called Chiqui, grabbed the keys and let him out.

“From there everything changes. They said everyone went to the dining room with their mats and protested José’s transfer, but they also immediately started to protest against Lt. Col. Carlos Alberto Quintana, then head of the prison, and yelling things against Fidel and Raul Castro. continue reading

“There were a few that did not agree with the riot. They were told that if they did not cooperate they’d burn them up. And so it happened. They set fire to the mattresses and closed the doors of the dining room.

“José Antonio Pavón Bonilla did not want to push things to such extremes, and told Abnoli he had to open the doors because there were people burning and choking, but Abnoli said that he didn’t care because they weren’t his family. Then someone, I don’t know who, gave the order to collect all the knives,the shivs, and every kind of weapon they had.

“After this they decided to open the doors. But there was another order: those who were leading the riot had to put themselves at the front and mercilessly stab everyone who came out. Neither the authorities nor anyone tried to control that frenzy.

“After three hours the riot squad appeared, they said it was Raul Castro’s Command One, and using rubber bullets and other weapons they were able to stop it.”

According to the testimony of Yoslan Díaz Quiñones, there were five dead in the revolt and some 80 wounded, 29 of them seriously.

josefornaris@gmail.com

Editorial Note:

These images of prisoners in the Combinado del Este prison were taken by the EFE and AFP agencies during a visit allowed by the government in April 2013. The photo report, published ihere, said there is no overcrowding and fighting among inmates is rare.

The head of prison health, Kervin Morales, said that knife crime among prisoners is rare (“we almost never have emergencies”) and there are no HIV infections in prisons. However, he admitted that from time to time there are hunger strikes.

It is also said in the report that prisoners work in an area outside the double fence, where there is a workshop for crashed cars, whose parts are sold . In this work, EFE said, outside mechanics and inmates work together, earning the ‘results.’ Some get between 2,000 pesos and 3,000 Cuban pesos per month (83 to 125 U.S. dollars), three to five times the national average salary.

They saw the face of Combinado del Este that the govenment wants to show, and some of the media bought it.

Cubanet , March 5, 2014, Jose Antonio Fornaris

The Documentary “Worm” Goes Undercover on the Island / Manuel Guerra Perez

In digital format and DVD media, it is alarming part of the population that says it is unaware of the siege of the dissidents.

HAVANA, Cuba – The documentary “Gusano” (Worm), produced by Estado de Sats, is being shared hand-to-hand on DVD and digitally and has generated many reactions among people who are not dissidents – at least openly – in the capital.

The documentary is about the acts of repudiation in Cuba and mainly what happened last December 10-11 outside the Estado de Sats (State of Sats) site, where an event was being held: the First International Meeting on the United Nations Human Rights Covenants. The video has been shared with dissimilar people across the capital regardless of their political persuasion.

The audiovisual shows how the residence of Antonio Rodiles, director of the independent project, is besieged in an act of repudiation organized by the government, where the Ministry of Education (children and adolescents) participates, along with the Ministry of Culture, the Young Communist Union, the National Revolutionary Police and agents from the Department of State Security, all with the aim of neutralizing the event. In the film we see Rodiles being beaten and the arrests of other participants in the independent meeting held by the Cuban dissidence.

“The documentary has been taken to the streets to denounce the government, and show abuses and violations of international rules committed, like using children for repressive acts,” said Ailer Gonzales, Rodiles’s wife and one of the organizers. In the street, Cubanet collected some opinions:

“I didn’t know that this happened in this country, I still don’t understand it,” said Erick Chirino, 24.

“The repression used to block this activity is typical of a dictatorship,” said Yordanis Barceló Silva, 36.

State of Sats is an independent project where artists and dissident thinkers come together on the island, and has been repeatedly besieged by the State Security (the political police). The headquarters is located in the town of Playa in the Cuban capital.

Cubanet, 4 March 2014, Manuel Guerra Pérez

The Reform Czar Doesn’t Authorize Private Cooperatives in Tourism / Polina Shvietsova Martinez

Marino Murillo, the so-called Reform Czar
Marino Murillo, the so-called Reform Czar

Marino Murillo argues that the conditions are not conducive . Afraid of private talent? Of losing control?

HAVANA, Cuba . – ComTur, an alternative project for the development of tourism, tried to start up within the law, to generate local and community development. But it has been stopped.

A source close to the project reported, “One of the members sent a letter to Minister Marino Murillo on 30 October 2012, to get approval. The minister responded with the bad news: ComTur’s legalization was not approved. According to this source, Murillo, “Noted the project, but said he still cannot authorize the formation of a private cooperative for tourist workers, because the conditions are not conducive.”

ComTur calls itself a Consulting Partnership project. It’s objective would provide advice to rural and urban communities. It would also offer its services to groups of self-employed, relative to their lodging and food offerings relative to tourist potential. They would also advise, relative to tourism, on natural and social-cultural resources in these areas.

This project was developed on the basis of the so-called “Guidelines for the economic and social policy of the party and the Revolution,” the road map of the “updating of the Cuban economic model.”

In the Guideline 264, page 33, Chapter IX, Tourism Policy, states, “To design and develop as part of the municipal initiative for the territories, attractive tourist offerings as a source of hard currency income: accommodation, food services, social, cultural and historical activities, horseback riding, rural tourism, observation of flora and fauna, among others.” continue reading

ComTur is composed of professionals and academics who have treasured long experience and results in the management of community and tourist plans in Cuba and abroad. They are seeking to channel all their knowledge in ways that is beneficial for the country, and at that same time allows them to earn a fair return for their professional services.

The specialists began their consulting work in the city of Santa Isabel de las Lajas, in Cienfuegos province, for the purpose of enabling festivals in memory of Benny More there. Another place where the work of ComTur could be useful is in the capital community of Regla. “They should pay attention, it’s an iconographic place of traditional popular culture, the cradle of the Regla Guaracheros. This town is the strategic axis for the promotion of international tourism and is in the area of the future development program of Havana Bay.”

The response of the “Reform Czar,” is further evidence of the chronic ineptitude of those who pull the strings of the system, and its sick fear of creating legal spaces for private talent.

Cubanet, 13 March 2014, Polina Shvietsova Martinez

The Holes in the Belt / Fernando Damaso

Photo: Rebeca

Two upsetting phenomena have occurred in the last few weeks: some products have disappeared from the market stalls, both those selling in Cuban pesos and those selling in hard currency, and prices overall have gone up. Cleaning products on sale for Cuban pesos don’t exist or are scarce, and personal hygiene products are even available in hard currency. In the farmers markets a pound of onions, lemons, or a small cabbage cost fifteen Cuban pesos or more.

It seems that the announced upcoming monetary unification and the new mechanisms of established trade, plus the reduced production, have been the principal causes.

In our commerce, supply and demand are unresolved issues: they seem to be locked in due to many years of absence. A product costs the same from the time it arrives at the market until it goes bad, and discounts don’t exist, while the ordinary citizen finds his pension or wages are less every day, able to stretch to less and less, without any real prospects of an increase. He finds himself between a rock and a hard spot, hoping some family member “out there” will help him out by sending some money or that there will be a miracle, at a time when these seem ever more rare.

The discomfort this creates is palpable in the street, and there are few who don’t express it: you just have to listen to what people say at the bus stops and on the buses, in the stores, and wherever two or more people get together. In these conversations the authorities don’t come out very well. For now, it is only this, but no one can be sure that this will always be the case and that tomorrow, those who today only talk, might not begin to act. Everything is possible: it just depends on how many holes are left for tightening our belts.

13 March 2014

A Brief Dictionary of Cuban Newspeak / Regina Coyula

Production — that is true production — this country does not produce, but in the matter of being creative with language, we are champions.  Psychologists are at the head of the invention of words, as if our language were sparing of synonyms.  The bureaucracy cannot be more creative with abbreviations, but the press, the press has specialized in euphemisms.  I invite you to add words to this incipient list.

Newspeak / real meaning

jinetera (jocky) = female prostitute

pinguero (penis provider) = male prostitute

to struggle = to steal

diversion of resources = embezzlement

missing = misappropriation

extractions = evictions

physical disappearance = important death

self-employed = private worker

factors = participants

internationalism = Cuban participation in other countries’ issues

interference  = foreign countries’ participation in other countries’ issues

temporary facilities = ¿housing?

semi-bus = truck used to carry passengers

modernization = leave me alone and go play somewhere else

Translated by mlk.

11 March 2014

If this country needs a “Revolution” it is not in industry but in Human Rights / Angel Santiesteban

The New Container Terminal at the Mariel Special Development Zone

There is no economy without liberty

The last visit by the Brazilian ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to the Mariel Container Terminal, accompanied by the dictator Raul Castro — in order to learn of the advances of the large-scale work carried out thanks to a credit awarded by his country, and which began during his first term — was totally wrongheaded.

Raul Castro, Lula da Silva, Fidel Castro

Lula da Silva committed several errors; the first was, according to what he said to the press after the tour through the finished areas, that the terminal “represents for this country the possibility of an industrial revolution.”  We totally disagree given that this country, if it needs a “Revolution,” it is not in industry but in Human Rights, because of the deep and complex violations of the same, and in particular, against the political opposition.

One must recognize that the social achievements of the Castro brothers, in power for more than half a century, are not sustained or justified when the price for them has been the loss of freedom of association and free expression.  The magnitude of their punishments, prisons and deaths, has been and is immense.

Another blunder by Lula da Silva was to assert that — after the completion of construction of said container terminal — “now we just need to overturn the American blockade so that Cuba can full develop itself.”  Mr. Lula da Silva, no industry will be prosperous while a totalitarian regime commands it because wealth itself is in human beings, in those to whom it falls to stimulate that development, and we have spent exactly 55 years in frank decline because we Cubans are not happy.  One pretends to be happy because the cruel boot of the repressive machinery of the Castro brothers is ready to crush everyone who raises a voice against their omnipotent power.

It is no secret that the Castro brothers, for decades, bet on armed struggle in the world, advising and investing our economy in it, which is why today it is so badly battered and unhealthy.  But for the last 20 years, on learning that the times were changing, they began to sponsor leftist revolutions with which to bring future presidents to those countries, hence the appreciation of these on their arrival to power, a regional variant of the Cosa Nostra.

The greatest good that Cubans can wish for is that principled nations refuse to negotiate and use that marvelous terminal until they restore our rights and we Cubans determine, in free elections, who will be the leader to govern our nation’s destiny.

Meanwhile, not a thousand terminals like the Mariel will be able to wipe away the tears of the families and make the national economy prosper.

Sign the petiton to Amnesty International to declare Angel Santiesteban a political prisoner.

Translated by mlk.

5 March 2014

Cuban Dissidents Prepare for the Future / Ivan Garcia

Carlos Millares, Frank Abel García y Tamara Rodriguez

Carlos Millares, Frank Abel García y Tamara Rodriguez

While 17 young Cuban dissidents attend advanced courses to master the tools of leadership and business at a university center in Miami, in Havana, the newly formed Fundación Sucesores, imparts courses to the civil society in Havana. Run by sociologist Carlos Millares, 65, Fundación Sucesores has been giving classes to the nascent civil society since December of 2013.

“We told students the location at the last minute, so that the State Security wouldn’t put any obstacles in our way, preventing classes,” said Millares. The group has a collegiate direction. Besides Millares, the group is integrated by Frank Abel García, Daniel Palacios, Tamara Rodríguez, William Cácer, and Luis Alberto Diéguez. With the exception of Millares, everyone is between 26 and 40 years old.

“Since the second half of January, we’ve been teaching two courses: one for the formation of leaders, and another one for journalists and photo journalists. Each course has 10 students,” said Frank Abel.

Most of the participants are young people that recently became involved with political activism or independent journalism. The classes are ambulatory and secret.  One week, they can be at a room in ruins at the old part of the city and outside the capital limits the following week.

The leadership course lasts six months and among other subjects teaches history, law, social media, and public speaking. Intellectual dissidents such as Manuel Cuesta Morúa, lawyer René López, Julio Negrín, Arturo Torrecillas, Daniel Palacios and Carlos Millares, teach the classes.

Desks consist of seats at a dinner table or a bed. The students copy the content of the classes in flash drives. Professors only have one laptop. “We don’t have all the necessary resources, but the lack of resources cannot be an impediment to create and prepare people within the incipient society in Cuba,” said Millares.

The course of journalism lasts four months and includes 20 topics. Four of the six members from the board of directors from Successors Foundation became dissidents after they worked in State institutions.

Millares has the most experience of all. He has been part of different dissident organizations for the last 25 years. He was a curious and polemic general secretary for the Union of Young Communists in the faculty of medical science in the University of Havana.

His journey to the pacific opposition was a slow and painful process, like surgery without anesthesia. Frank Abel worked as chief of staff in Radio Rebelde, a radio station symbolic of the revolution. Abel became a provincial delegate at the radio station. He was involved in a case orchestrated by the cultural authorities against young intellectuals from OMNI Free Zone. His sense of justice made him break from the regime.

For eight years, Daniel Palacios was a sports chronicler from the official newspapers Trabajadores and Juventud Rebelde. He had a spot in the capital radio station COCO, in which along with other reporters, he tried to break with the government censorship. Palacios gave out the results from the games of the Major Leagues during his time on air in radio, and remembered that before the Castro dictatorship from 1962, there was a glorious past in baseball, Cuba’s national hobby.

“One afternoon, I received a call from Pelayo Terry’s office, who was then director of the newspaper Juventud Rebelde. Two men from the State Security threatened me and showed me mail that I had exchanged with Wilfredo Cancio Isla, a Cuban reporter from Miami. After my expulsion from my position as a journalist, they have continued to harass me,” Palacios said.

His exit from official journalism had repercussions for his family life. He lives away from his wife and daughter because he doesn’t have a place of his own. Most of his colleagues from within the state journalism have turned their backs on him.

“It has been hard but I feel good about myself, which is the most important thing,” Palacios said. Now, besides teaching journalism classes, he writes for Café Fuerte and Diario de Cuba.

Tamara Rodríguez was a commercial specialist at CIMEX, a military corporation that collects convertible pesos for the government. They tried to embroil her in a corruption case after she started to make friends with women from the Ladies in White.

After she broke ranks with the government, she became part of the group. Since the beginning of 2013, Frank Abel went to the home of sociologist Carlos Millares and told him about his interest in turning young dissidents into leaders.

Through different paths, opposition organizations in Cuba or in the United States decide to take dissidence as an option. Perhaps, today’s dissidence is uncomfortable for many exiled people from Cuba, due to their distinct pacifism and inability to create a powerful lobby group in the neighborhoods of the island.

Havana is far from being Kiev or Táchira. In Cuba, the opposition from the barricades suffers the worst. But the future could be different.

When new times arrive, nongovernmental organizations would have materialized the initiatives toward young Cuban dissidents, who have had trouble accessing a college education because of their political views. Some of these organizations are the Human Rights Foundation from Florida, in collaboration with Miami Dade College, which work with funding from private donations and the United States government.

From this side of the world, some people do not sit back. They start initiatives to promote values of democratic leadership and the use of journalistic tools among young activists.

The Fundación Sucesores is one of those initiatives. According to its members, this initiative is about a new Cuba, who above all, needs people qualified in the art of politics, democracy, and modern journalism

And that future is around the corner.

Iván García

Photo : Frank Abel García, Carlos Millares and Tamara Rodríguez talking to Iván García. Fundación Sucesores is also the name of the blog they have created.

3 March 2014

Havana: A Guide for Tourists / Ivan Garcia

Useful advice for tourists who visit the last bastion of the Cold War in the Caribbean

Useful advice for tourists who visit the last Communist barricade of the Cold War in the Caribbean

If you speak Spanish, it’s advisable to get to know Havana by taking private taxis. In a rented car, air-conditioned and with a map of the capital, it’s more pleasurable, but also more expensive, and you wouldn’t be able to chat with the habaneros.

If you know the city only through the guided visits to museums or cigar factories, organized by tourist agencies, you will have good photos when you return to your country, but you will only have seen a postcard of Havana.

You can decide to drink mojitos, stroll on the Malecon, flirt with prostitutes in a cafe where you need hard currency to listen to a duo singing Compay Segundo’s Chan Chan at your table. Or you can discover the other face of Havana, ignored by the official press. Then, first hand, you will know the priorities of ordinary Cubans.

The capital of Cuba has in its favor the fact that it still is not as dangerous as Caracas, Medellin or Michoacan. You can walk through rough and poor neighborhoods without fear of being assaulted (I advise you to go during the day).

Better than reserving a hotel is renting a room in some private home. For your trips around the city, the ideal thing is to move around in the old U.S. cars known as almendrones.

And talk to the passengers. There is no platform more authentic and liberal in Cuba than the private taxis. As in any capital of the world, the Havana taxi drivers possess a culture of speech and an acceptable level of information.

You will find out that many of the Cuban taxi drivers are doctors, engineers, retired military men or professionals who, after their work day, sit at the steering wheel, trying to earn some extra pesos that will permit them to complement their poor salaries.

The Havana taxi drivers seem to be dissidents when they speak, but they’re not. They, like numerous people you find in the lines or in the streets, openly criticize the government.

The list of complaints about the state of things on the island is extensive. Traveling in a 1954 Ford, with a South Korean motor and a Japanese gear box, you will know first-hand that people aren’t applauding Raul Castro’s reforms with much enthusiasm now.

Be prepared to listen to a dissertation on the daily hardships. One suggestion: before your trip around the city, in your backpack carry deodorants, tubes of toothpaste or soap to offer to the people you talk to. Right now, these articles are scarce in Cuba (see the Note at the end).

Havana taxis are a microphone open to different political opinions. And in their interior there is more democracy than in the monotone national parliament. In the almendrones there are usually people who think differently. Each reveals his opinion. Loudly and gesticulating with his hands, typical of Cubans.

Upon arriving at his destination, the passenger who supports the Regime says goodbye amicably to the one who wants profound changes in his country. Two details: the old Havana taxis don’t have air conditioning and the drivers listen to reggaeton or salsa music at exaggerated volume.

If you get into a jeep, which can fit up to 10 people, the trip is uncomfortable. But there is no better way to make people-to-people contact than to travel in private taxis. And they are very cheap. For 50 cents or a dollar on longer journeys, you can get to know the other face of Havana. It’s not recommended to take the urban omnibus: owing to the bad service and overcrowding, what should be an exploration of the city and a motive to make contact with its people can become a torture.

Iván García

Photo: Taken from Panoramix.

Note. In Cuba something is always lacking. Sometimes the scarcity is most visible in the capital, but usually where you find a lack of most products, food or hygiene, is in the interior of the country. After writing this piece, independent journalists were reporting that “eggs were missing.” I don’t know if eggs have reappeared, but now salt is missing.

On March 5, Ernesto García Díaz wrote in Cubanet that salt was hard to find in the grocery stores, markets and hard currency markets (TRD), where a kilo nylon bag of Cuban salt with the stamp “Caribeña” cost 45 cents (10.80 Cuban pesos). In the Ultra TRD [the government-run “Hard Currency Collection Store”], an employee told the journalist that “it’s been some time since we’ve had Caribeña salt. We are selling a fine Andalusian salt of the brand “Aucha” at the price of 1.65 CUC ($US 1.58) a kilo.”

In Cuba there are five saltworks that supposedly should guarantee the distribution of salt for the ration book, at the rate of one kilo for a nuclear family of up to 3 people, every three months. But because they haven’t managed to extract more than 400 million tons annually, the government has had to import salt, as occurred in 2008, when they bought 30 million tons of salt at a cost of 9 million dollars (Tania Quintero).

Translated by Regina Anavy

8 March 2014