Category: Reinaldo Escobar

Jose Antonio Fornaris, APLP president, told 14ymedio that at present the organization is focused on “learning of and denouncing the problems of Cuban journalists in the exercise of their profession.” The most common difficulties range from arrests, the confiscation of working tools, and the little access to sources.

Freedom House, based in Washington, reported last year that Cuba remains, both regionally and globally, one of the countries with the greatest restrictions on the press. The organization denounced the fact that many Cuban journalists continue to be imprisoned and that official censorship is “widespread.” The island ranks last in Latin America with regards to press freedom.

The Cuban Constitution states that “citizens have freedom of speech and of the press in accordance with the objectives of socialist society,” but the editorial line of the national media is governed by the Department of Revolutionary Orientation (DOR), an arm of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Many professionals, both in the independent sphere as well as those closest to the ruling party, have pushed in recent years for a press law. This legislation would regulate the activities of journalists and, in particular, force institutions to provide information of national interest in a public and transparent way.

Without this legal basis, the work of a reporter in Cuba will continue to move between self-censorship and danger, as APLP finds every day, when working to ensure that “in each province there are observers who are aware of the problems faced by information professionals.” Undoubtedly, these activists for press freedom have a great deal of work to do to collect every violation against the profession.

It is not enough, therefore, that a group of reporters, such as the APLP, are willing to raise their voices for others. “The ideal is for someone who has been harmed to approach us and report their case,” says Fornaris, a first step in order to then get “the corresponding verifications,” and “to provide assistance to the victim,” he adds.

Last October, during the 71^st General Assembly of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), a devastating report on Cuba was presented in which it is stated that human rights and freedom of the press are violated “absolutely and systematically” with the State “monopolizing” the media.

The small team that makes up this NGO tries to optimize its time. Miriam Herrera is responsible for the committee that attends to the journalists, while Migiuel Saludes, located in the United States, serves as the representative abroad; each one of the seven members of the board is responsible for an area of the NGO’s work.

In the APLP “we don’t have lifetime tenure,” says Fornaris. He says it with a pained smile in a country where there have not been democratic elections for seven decades. It is very important for the organization to break with this fatal flaw, and “this year we are renewing the mandates.” The president sees it clearly, “It would be unacceptable for us to call for democracy in Cuba and to have a dynasty in our ranks.”

His hope of a new morning of greater freedoms does not blind him to the present. “As long as the press doesn’t point the finger at who is responsible for its faults, nothing happens,” Fornaris concludes with determination. He does not believe that “under the rules of this system monopolized by a single party can one expect substantial change.”

However, what is not in doubt is that “the press must be free, otherwise it can’t be called the press.”

Much of this land that is leased to “natural persons,” was idle, and in the words of many, dead. Marabou and other weeds had taken it over, because the all-powerful state had not been able to make it produce.

Now, in the midst of a real price war, Communist Party leaders are trying to “incorporate into daily practice strict control over the use and possession of the land leased out under usufruct.” Machado Ventura repeats like a mantra that the solution to the problem of food shortages and high prices is in producing more, but he minimizes or understates the shortage of inputs required to achieve this production.

“They place demands on us as if we had everything we need: irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides and don’t even talk to me about machetes or the files to sharpen them,” said Agustin Lopez who only planted yucca and sweet potatoes because they are less demanding. And, he concludes, “We aren’t magicians, just peasants.”

When the controversial topic of prices arose at the Artemisa meeting, the second secretary of the Cuban Communist Party said that he would evaluate the alternative of fixing a maximum limit, that is, “setting an ‘up to’.” The obsession with identifying private traders as unscrupulous intermediaries is leading to the temptation to resuscitate Acopio, that ineffective state entity that only wants to buy from the farmer what it is sure it has the ability to sell, and that on numerous occasions has been responsible for losing tons of food through problems with transport or because of the inefficiencies of central planning and distribution.

Meanwhile, in the capital, the pushcart vendors who operate under the rules of supply and demand have disappeared, and 66 State Agricultural Markets have been set up where there is a list of 37 products, not always available, with fixed prices. The intention is to cover the city’s 195 “people’s councils.” An official note announcing this measure describes it as “the recovery of the status” of these places that had come to be managed outside state control.

“We had nothing and this, at least, was a way to get out of that rattrap,” said Clare, one of those awarded an apartment in El Molina. She arrived at the shelter recently married and her children were born there. “It was very difficult to maintain a relationship as a couple in rooms where the neighbors on the other side of the partition heard everything,” she says.

Clara and her family lived for over a decade in an old motel that had been designed with rooms to be rented by the hour for lovemaking, and converted into a shelter for the homeless. “There we had the kitchen, the cradle for the children and our bed where up to six of us slept,” explains the woman, already retired.

Then hope interrupted her life. “They told us we were going to get a petrocasa and the truth is, to get out of there I would have gone to the moon,” she confesses. The day of the handover of the keys to the new apartments, Clara felt like it was her quinceañera, “I couldn’t stop crying and laughing from all the excitement.”

After the television cameras left and when the families were safely under their new roofs, the first thing they discovered was that they couldn’t hang a picture on those walls. Then they became aware of the vibrations caused by walking around upstairs, and in less than six months leaks began to appear.

In 2008 the petrocasas project manager, Julian Alonso, told the official press that “Cuba will produce more than 14,000 homes a year from polyvinyl chloride (PVC), thanks to a bi-national project with Venezuela.” However the figure was never reached and in 2015 the total number of homes planned for the whole country – of every kind of structure or construction method – was cut to 30,000, at least 17,000 of these to be built by people’s own efforts.

The panels to erect the petrocasas would be manufactured in a petrochemical complex that the late Venezuelan president promised to develop in the city of Cienfuegos. The work was not completed in its entirety and many of PVC panels that were used in Clara’s neighborhood were imported from other destinations such as Spain.

Poor construction quality has marked the settlement from day one: the windows began to fall out, the cement floors to crack, and there were short circuits in the electrical systems and leaks in the water pipes, several residents of the neighborhood told 14ymedio. On a bad day with high winds Clara’s top floor neighbor’s roof was about to fly away.

Rosa Helena, the mother of two children, slept in the living room to avoid the dampness in the bedroom. She complained that when the upstairs neighbor mopped the floor, the water started to drip on her furniture within a few minutes. “No one came to fix these problems, but we had barely arrived when they formed the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution,” she claims.

These problems were compounded by the area’s infrastructure. The woman tells how when she went to register “the boys in the elementary school they opened in the neighborhood, they told me it was full and we had to get up at six in the morning to get to the school where they accepted them.” She said her mother was visiting her one week and the first thing she said was, “Ah, sweetheart, you were better off in the shelter.”

The place could not be more inhospitable. The streets are unpaved and dampness gets into everything.

Carlos, considered a “social case” because of his serious health problems, complains that the Ephraim Mayor Polyclinic is too far away. Like the rest of the neighbors, he has to pay a monthly rent for the apartment granted. They haven’t even become owners of their petrocasas, but maintain the status of renters.

“In any event, I don’t even have a peso to eat, so I’m not going to pay anything,” he says. When asked if his house has the same defects as the others, he smiles sarcastically and says, “They explained to us that there was a one year warranty and that during that time the State would be responsible for any repairs. After one year, anything that breaks is charged to the tenant.”

However, the old man said that after he was there nine months, there was a short circuit that burned out the refrigerator. “Now I can only turn on the lightbulb in the bathroom and no one has responded to my complaints.”

Other neighbors who didn’t want to be identified said that in many houses from the very beginning there has been a lack of doorknob in the rooms along with other construction elements. They said that after the opening, buried near the houses were reserves of things that had been stolen, boxes of tiles, bags of cement, containers with silicon and bathroom fixtures.

The blame for these “diversions of resources” and the poor quality of the finishing is the responsibility of the ECOI 53 Industrial Works Construction Company, and the Julio Antonio Mella Brigade, that worked on this neighborhood of petrocasas. Many of the employees didn’t even stay on to finish the work because they were fired for bad work or stealing, as confirmed by a builder who was involved in the work.

Settlements of this type have also been raised in the San Agustin, San Miguel del Padron, Guanabacoa and Alberro neighborhoods. The neighbors have renamed the petrocasas “cardboard houses”.

An elderly lady who listened to the complaints of Carlos and Clara, says that she feels “happy” with her new home. “What happens is that there are many ungrateful people who do not recognize the efforts the Revolution has made to give us these houses.” There is a long pause and she concludes: “Perhaps we deserved something better than this?”

As far as is known, no tomato grower has been forced to throw his harvest to the pigs because he can’t sell it at the price demanded. In the markets in Havana and in many of the provincial capitals, there are always enough customers with the necessary purchasing power to acquire, literally by the sack, everything that is on display in the stalls.

Playing with numbers difficult to confirm but easy to imagine, it is calculated that 10% of the economically active population enjoys 80% of the products and services sold. This means that the remaining 90% will have to settle for 20% of what appears in the markets. This, obviously, generates shortages and rising prices.

What is produced and sold under the rules of the market will be absorbed, for the most part, by those who produce and sell within that system, without their feeling compelled to refuse the crumbs from the ration market or any of the subsidized public services.

The rest, sometimes call the working class or other names – the “people” or “ordinary Cubans” – are obliged to acquire their most basic necessities, those not supplied in the ‘basic market basket’ from the ration system, from the TRDs – initials that, literally, stand for “Hard Currency Collection Stores” – and the agricultural markets. Every peso rise in prices in either place means an irreparable loss to the family table, unless you have recourse to “the diversion of resources” (i.e. taking things home from your workplace, for your own use or to sell to others), “the struggle” (more or less the same thing), or “invention” (also the same thing), or any other euphemism that masks the commission of a minor crime.

Farmers know that if they produce double they would have to market their products at half the price, which means working harder to earn the same. Barbers who can’t keep up charging one convertible peso for each haircut, or snack shop owners who sell soft drinks in front of their establishments, can only raise their prices. That six-Cuban-peso cheese pizza that solved the problem of lunch in early 2007 is now only a memory. A closed circuit of prosperity has taken shape, where those excluded are state employees who are not stealing, retired people without family abroad, unsuccessful entrepreneurs, and those who depend on social security.

The emerging Cuban middle class has a particular vision on how to replenish “the expenditures of socially necessary labor” in their hectic work, far from the state’s criteria, cemented in the belief that the rationed and subsidized basic market basket allows it to reproduce the salaried workforce under its control.

The promised solution to the problem, announced outside the program in the last session of the National Assembly, so far has been represented only by a couple of “calls” to produce more, launched by the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) and the agricultural workers union. Faced with the empty food stalls and the little signs with their inflated prices, many wonder why, if this was the solution, they didn’t call for it much earlier.

Escobar. Have you received a call from the Cuban Council of Churches to investigate what happened?

Quesada. To our knowledge, we have not received any calls. Furthermore, the Cuban Council of Churches has been completely divorced from our church.

Escobar. What is the situation now at the temple?

Quesada. It doesn’t exist, it was completely demolished. However, yesterday, we came to worship at the place where it had been. The turnout was massive, even people who hadn’t come to our church for days, came to show their support. The support has been widespread.

I stood under an almond tree and below its branches we held the services, we worship… however we can.

Escobar. Who flocks to the temple?

Quesada. People come from everywhere. We’ve only been here three years, since October 2012 and we have a congregation of over 500 people. Before coming here, I was pastor of the Fire and Dynamics Church in Macareño, Santa Cruz del Sur. I am also the founder of the apostolic reform in Cuba since 2013, when a group of pastors tired of hypocrisy and a form of “doing church” that was a little bogged down, too passive and attached to the existing system in Cuba.

So we began the apostolic reform on the island, which today has about 50 churches nationwide.

Escobar. What do you think prompted the authorities to demolish the temple?

Quesada. Everything that is independent or has nothing to do with the officialdom, they really hate it, they do not like it. We’ve spent years holding events at the national level, and they see this as a threat, because it is our churches – right now – that are growing the most, adding the greatest number of people.

Escobar. Is your church legally recognized?

Quesada. We want them to enroll us within the Law on Associations and Worship. We have asked repeatedly to be allowed to complete the process for legalizing our church, but even if there wasn’t a law of association, it is not possible. We have addressed the institutions orally and in writing, at all levels from national to municipal, we have also made ​​claims, sent letters signed by dozens of people to demand we be recognized but they do not respond.

Escobar. But why did they deny you recognition?

Quesada. They said we were independent, we had nothing to do with the government. They accused us of being “a church paid by the CIA” and a few years ago they told us we were part of the “Bush plan” and we wanted to do a church in parallel to the existing one. All that, because we have not stopped stomping our feet and raising our voice.

Escobar. And is what they are saying true?

Quesada. It is a slander. So we’ve been punished. For example, we spent almost ten years unable to leave Cuba because they did not give us permission to travel. Since we founded our church until the so-called immigration and travel reform of 2013, several of us were not allowed to travel abroad.

Escobar. How are the relations of the church with the Office of Religious Affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party?

Quesada. Mrs. Caridad Diego, who heads the office, wants no part of us. For more than ten years we have not been invited to any activity or event.

Escobar. How do you plan to continue your work as a pastor now that you no longer have a temple?

Quesada. The temple is not a building. The temple is not a ceiling. The temple is its people.

Escobar. What do you think the authorities will do now?

Quesada. After they committed this madness, they are scared. There are still police patrols in some of the main streets leading to our temple. They are worried because they have very few arguments to explain why they did something like this.

Escobar. What were the reasons the Institute of Physical Planning gave to explain the demolition?

Quesada. They said it was built from materials that had been purchased illegally, but it is clear – knowing the monster – that were we were not going to make a mistake like that. Those were the rumors they put out there, for the fools. They also started to put out that “the pastor works for the CIA and has a car full of toys.” Nonsense, not arguments.

Escobar. Will you make a claim?

Quesada. No, we will not. We will not spend ink on that. It is fruitless. We have too much of God for such a little devil.

Free citizens, in modern democracies, are usually impatient with leaders who don’t meet the terms of what they say they will do. They punish them at the ballot boxes and take to the streets to demand their resignations. The inmates of a prison, in contrast, easily renew their hopes that improvements will come, because the only alternative is to jump the walls of the prison or to plot a riot, where they would be playing with their lives.

A simplified list of the unfinished business of the Cuban government would include aspects such as the insufficiency of wages, the dual monetary system, the lack of productivity and the lack of attractions for foreign investment. To that we would have to add issues of housing, public transportation, shortages and communications. Not to mention deeper issues, such as the lack of political and economic rights.

But students who fail to complete their school assignments have limited chances to get their work re-graded or to take special exams. Nor can they repeat a grade in school every time they want, because there is a limit – let’s say a moral one – to asking for another opportunity, and another limit for granting it.

To many it may seem exaggerated to compare the situation of Cubans with those of prisoners in jail, but it would be even more absurd to equate them with the citizens of a functioning democracy. The truth is that those who do not want to escape, or who are not disposed to riot, convinced they have no power to decide anything at the polls, may be tempted to offer another opportunity, but not in response to just any promise!

The Cuban leaders repeatedly failed. They have not been able to shape the “New Man,” nor have they brought material prosperity and economic equality. They have not eliminated poverty, nor slums; they have not been able to peer into the socialism that 29 years ago they said “now, indeed,” they would construct. The only decent thing that remains is to propose a profound and immediate change.

They have fewer than one hundred days in which to do it.

Now, the old textile factory located on 162nd Street is newly painted and trucks come and go hauling away the trash. At the entrance, some photographs show the deterioration that overcame the building during the “Special Period” – after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its subsidies to Cuba – when the factory was forced to stop production and send its workers home.

Enguayabera is trying to emulate the popular Cuban Art Factory* in Havana’s Plaza district but, unlike that center, it will be administered entirely by state entities. The place has four cinemas with a capacity of 40 seats, a small theater, and party space where the whole complex was opened on 29 December with a concert by Manolito Simonet y su Trabuco.

For now, the literary café, ice cream shops and the shops operated by Artex and the Cuban Fund of Cultural Assets attract the most people during the day. Although the wifi area trumps everything atthis point, as an alternative for those who, until recently, had to travel to the Pan American Village or wifi zones in more central parts of Havana in order to connect.

The space also has a playground and three inflatable parks, but the huge puppets that make up the latter were not inflated this week, to the frustration of the children and their parents who arrived, excited by television reports about the new attractions. The sense of a rushed opening permeates the place, but does not diminish the enthusiasm of many.

With two teenagers, Yusmila has lived in the area since she was a child and commented to this newspaper about her relief, now that her family will have recreational opportunities so close to home. “I don’t let them go into Havana after six in the evening and they were really bored at home,” said the woman, for whom “the ability to go to the movies 200 yards from here is a blessing.”

However, others are more skeptical about the cultural offerings promoted by Enguayabera. A young taxi driver who operates on the route between Havana’s Central Park and Alamar commented on this. As a self-employed worker, it seems excessive to him to have “four movie theaters, in a time when people have everything at home with the weekly packet.”

The man also recognizes that the new cultural center will affect him directly because, as he confesses, “all those who will now entertain themselves in Alamar are customers I will lose because they won’t need to go here and there to get to a disco or a movie theater.”

Eusebio Mitjans has lived for 35 years in the neighborhood that was supposed to be the home of the “New Man,” but which ended up becoming a dysfunctional bedroom city filled with prefabricated blocks. He spent dozens of hours in voluntary work on the construction of the guayabera factory during the eighties, and now says he feels “satisfied” because the site is being renovated for young people.

Sitting with Mitjans on Thursday in the site’s literary café was his 20-year-old niece. The young woman asked the waitress if there was a program yet for the authors who would be presenting their works. But the clerk just shrugged her shoulders and didn’t answer. “In Alamar there are more writers than buildings, and now all they need is to publish their books,” said the young woman.

All around her is the glittering appearance of the new. The nightmare of the parishioners is that one bad day it will all collapse into ruins, as happened once already to the guayabera factory.

*Translator’s note: See articles here, from The Havana Times, and here from the Washington Post.

Whatever the accepted meaning of the term “reserve” might be, in its sense of “value that is saved for special occasions” it must always imply the willingness to conserve – at least what is included under this heading – the fruits of an unexpected surplus. We hear about a nation’s “gold reserves,” or its “water reserves” for times of drought, “fuel reserves” for a long trip, as well as “troop reserves” which are not mobilized until they are needed, along with “food reserves,” jealously stored for an emergency situation.

Efficiency, an abstract noun with practical implications, cannot be saved or set aside for another time. That which was not used, irretrievably disappears when an action concludes with unalterable results. How can a surgeon explain to the family of a patient who just died on the operating table that some quantity of efficiency reserves remain unused in the failed operation?

In cutting sugar cane, one of the indicators of efficiency is the height of the pieces of cane remaining in the ground. If they are very long, it is unthinkable to make another pass to recover the wasted cane; if they are cut too close to the ground the cane will not germinate again and a great deal of useless organic material will inevitably – and without recourse – contaminate the mass fed through the mill. In that case, the efficiency will be vaporized and no one will be able to argue that having left the stalk too long or too short represents reserves of efficiency to achieve a better crop for the next harvest.

Efficiency is a value that must be constantly renewed under new circumstances and attached to the unstoppable development of productive forces, as a Marxist faithful to the catechism would say. Unlike stagnant water in a reservoir, resources that have served to make work efficient today will not be equally useful for what we are going to undertake tomorrow.

Whomever tries to exhibit, with cheerful optimism, their supposed reserves of efficiency, can do so only to the extent they have been inefficient. It is a trick of linguistics. There are no reserves: there were only deficits.

from all the accounting implied in these statements, and to accept that the more they produce the more they will earn, could be beneficial not only for those with their feet and hands in the earth, but could reduce, over the long term, the prices of agricultural products, a ubiquitous demand from all voters to their delegates in the local “Assemblies of Accountability”

Finally, it was also announced that no taxes will be paid on the use of workforce personnel directly contracted for production. This could benefit both cooperatives, lessees and owners, as at peak times during cultivation and harvest the use of casual labor is essential. The exodus from agricultural areas – especially of young people – is due, among other reasons, to the bureaucratic limitations that don’t allow free movement of the workforce and which give rise to the phenomenon of “ghost agreements,” where day laborers lack all rights and protection.

For a long time, even from positions held by the opposition, there have been demands that those who produce food for the population should be freed from tax burdens, which could help boost production and ensure supply. If implemented as announced, agricultural food producers would be freed from the fear that making money would lead to the imposition of taxes that can suck the blood out of those who declare the highest profits.

The measure could be evaluated as a pragmatic step, but also as an ideological concession to the obsession that farmers not get rich, a typical ramification from the times of classic Fidelism.

Minutes later, the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry added that the Cuban migrants will leave by air from Costa Rica to El Salvador, from where they will be taken by bus to Mexico.

Once in Mexico, the Cubans will be granted an exit permit already allowed under that country’s immigration laws. This exit permit, according the Mexican National Institute of Migration, is valid for 20 days and is granted to citizens declared “stateless.” In the case of Cubans, this happens when the Cuban Consulate is advised by the Mexican authorities of the entry of a citizen with a Cuban passport, and the consulate remains silent or denies that the citizen is Cuban.

According to the Mexican Foreign Ministry, there are no plans to accompany the Cubans arriving from Costa Rica to the US border.

Costa Rica has granted nearly 8,000 special transit visas to Cubans since 14 November, but last week announced that it no longer has the capacity to continue receiving the islanders, and so has ceased to issue these documents in most cases.

The crisis was generated on 15 November when Nicaragua closed its border to Cuban migrants, citing security risks to its sovereignty and stranding thousands of Cubans who are now in Costa Rica and Panama waiting to continue their journey through Central America.

Representatives of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico, as well as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), met Monday on the outskirts of the Guatemalan capital to discuss this immigration crisis, which finally found a solution more than a month after the Cubans began to be stranded in Costa Rica, which led Costa Rica to leave the political discussions of the Central American Integration System (SICA).

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez described the results of Monday’s meeting as “positive” and said in the official statement released in San José that he could not fully detail the technical and logistical aspects of the transfer, out of respect for the discretion requested by some countries.

“We hope that these agreements can materialize in the short term. Unfortunately, this season of the year makes it impossible to move faster,” he said.

On 18 December Costa Rica suspended its participation in the political affairs of SICA due to the lack of solidarity among countries in the region to allow the passage of Cubans and solve the humanitarian crisis.

“It is satisfactory and a reason to thank those countries who showed their good will,” said the Costa Rican Foreign Minister Monday, after the agreement reached in Guatemala, but he did not specify if the government had decided to fully restore relations with SICA.

But this decision, celebrated by Costa Rica and all the participating nations, should not be interpreted as “a precedent” in the region, but an action to address “a temporary situation,” said the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry, which also said that it would convene the Regional Conference on Migration (CRM) to address this issue in its entirety.

The participating countries also reaffirmed their commitment to combat human trafficking networks, and said they would apply “without delay” the law which severely penalizes this illegal activity, and that “unfortunately obliges countries in the region to return to their country of origin all persons entering their territory in an unauthorized manner.”

“This will be addressed to prevent irregular migration and to firmly combat the crime of human trafficking, and primarily to protect the integrity of migrants and ensure respect for their fundamental rights,” said Guatemala, a country through which migrants transit and that every year suffers migration firsthand.

MCR leader Librado Linares told 14ymedio that morera Bacallao now weighs less than 95 pounds, and within the next few hours his health could deteriorate “to the point of no return.” Saturday afternoon, Linares, a former prisoner of the 2003 Black Spring, said “he is so weak now that he doesn’t recognize anyone.”

Linares says that he is “knocking on the doors of the Bishop [of Santa Clara] and some of the province’s fraternal organizations,” to prevent the hunger striker’s death and to achieve his immediate release. The dissident is calling on the national and international community to do everything possible, “to not let him die.”

Morera Bacallo, was sentenced to four years in prison in case 404 of 2015, accused of the crime of “injuries.” The basis of this accusation, according to his family members who attended the trial, was a blow to the head received by Ivis Herrera, second secretary of the Communist Party in the municipality of Manicaragua, in the province of Villa Clara.

Several witnesses confirmed that the injury occurred when the official fell to the ground while sliding on melted asphalt that had been thrown down in front of and around Morera Bacallao’s house. The dumping of the material was part of the aggressions of the area’s “rapid response brigades” against the dissident, instigated by Ivis Herrera himself.

The events, classified as “public disorder,” happened on 19 April of this year, on the eve of the elections for the People’s Power. The opponent decided to put a sign on the door of his house where he proclaimed, “I vote for my freedom and not in some elections where I cannot elect my president.” The text unleashed the fury of the town’s government rulers.

Most of the working-age people in Manicaragua work in military factories or are active members of the armed forces. Thus, the residents of the area respond with a special intolerance and violence against any public display of differences with the government.

Rapid response brigades assaulted Morera Bacallao’s house in April, breaking windows, beating the inhabitants without distinction to sex or age, and throwing bricks. The operation included the spreading of melted asphalt, along with insults and abuse. In the early morning hours, when it seemed that everything was over, the uniformed Special Brigade of the Ministry of the Interior arrived and arrested the activist.

From the moment he fell into prison, the dissident declared himself on a hunger strike and only abandoned it in June, 40 days later, when he was hospitalized and they promised they would review his case. As the authorities did not fulfill their promise, on 9 October he resumed his hunger strike in the Guamajal prison hospital on the outskirts of Santa Clara. There he lost more than 88 pounds, according to Arsenio Lopez Roa, an inmate who provided the information.

Last Monday, the medical team informed the family that the striker had “vomited blood at least eight times, during the transfer from prison to the hospital.” The same source predicted that “at any moment he could experience digestive bleeding.”

In November 2013, Morera Bacallao was sentenced to eight years in prison for reasons very similar to today’s, after suffering an act of repudiation. He was released after one year, on 14 December 2014, after consecutive hunger strikes. Two months later, his name appeared on the list of the 53 prisoners released after talks between Barack Obama and Raul Castro; a list that was not initially made public at the time of their release.

As they say in the movies, “it’s nothing personal” against Raul Castro, it’s that the country doesn’t need to re-experience the disruptions of mid-2006, when ill health prevented the then “Maximum Leader” from continuing to rule the nation.

In his speech at the Sixth Congress, Raul Castro warned that this would probably be the last with the presence of the “historic generation.” And in the Seventh Congress that warning would be a source of major drama. The risk now run by the octogenarians, is that the longer they delay in passing the baton, the more probable an unexpected rupture.

It is hard to believe that the Communist Party of Cuba does not have a single member under 65 (or even under 70), with sufficient capacity to assume the leadership of the organization. Perhaps it is not just about intellectual preparation, indispensible for a “correct application of Marxist-Leninist theory to the revolutionary practice,” nor the experience accumulated in “direct work with the masses,” nor should there be a scarcity of virtues such as integrity, diligence, capacity for teamwork, and others that are in demand in these cases. Most likely it is a lack of confidence that the anointed one would want to maintain continuity. It’s enough to look at what Raul Castro himself has done with the legacy of his brother to imagine the changes that would be introduced by a man without so much ballast.

Obviously, the optimal would be the Communist Party renouncing its constitutionally mandatory hegemony, and opening the opportunity to other political tendencies, but that is another topic.

The year 2016 will be terminal for Raul Castro, at least according to the Chinese horoscope, because on 8 February the Year of the Goat will end, which is the sign under which he was born in 1931. Now begins the Year of the Monkey, whose motto is, “I am the unexpected.”

The Americans have been clear that they have not changed their objectives, only their methods. The Cuban leaders insist on not moving even an inch from positions they classify as “the unshakable principles of the Revolution.”

Raul Castro’s advantage over Barack Obama is that he doesn’t have a parliament demanding equity in the steps taken, nor does his party have to subject itself to the scrutiny of an electorate jealous of every concession, calculating every gain. But this advantage only helps him do nothing. The American negotiators no longer know how they are going to alert the Cuban side that Obama is not the dictator of the United States, but only its president, and that if there are no signs from Havana in the hoped for direction, those in Congress who oppose the policy of rapprochement will be proven right.

What are the signs that the Americans are eager to see? First, guarantees that they can invest and reap dividends from their investments. Second, respect for all human rights. The relationship between both aspirations deserves a book, but can be reduced to the idea that an atmosphere of economic and political freedom is the environment most supportive of a market economy.

The resistance to turning the wheel in that direction is adorned or masked – according to how one prefers to see it – with the political will to guarantee certain margins of social justice expressed in the highly publicized achievements in health and education within reach of everyone. Behind it all, there is a group of hierarchs obsessed by power who do not want to risk it. Venezuela just proved it: authoritarian regimes cannot trust in democracy, “not the least little bit,” as an Argentinean* was known to have said.

In Cuba there is a repressive apparatus made up of tens of thousands of individuals charged with blocking opponents from expressing themselves or meeting together. If the country democratizes, they will not only lost their jobs and privileges, but they feel they would be victims of revenge. So the officials in charge of each case strive to make their reports convincing and every opponent appears as a traitor and a dangerous agent of imperial forces. This troop, well trained and well armed, has been educated in the principal that the only order that can and must be disobeyed is the order to “cease fire.” If Raul Castro were to try to decriminalize political dissent in order to democratize the country, he would be converting his most loyal and submissive servants into his potential enemies. And he knows it.

One year after that hopeful 17 December, it can be affirmed that each party has reached the ceiling of its possibilities. Repealing the embargo, suspending the American-taxpayer-financed radio and TV broadcasts from Florida to Cuba, paying compensation for damages caused by American policies, returning Guantanamo to Cuba, all seem to be gestures too difficult for the White House; as difficult as it would be for the Cuban government to introduce a multi-party system, ratify the United Nations covenants on human rights, allow free enterprise, or legitimize independent civil society.

The lands purchased on either side of the railway line began to depreciate today, because the damn train is not about to run down the rails any time soon.

Translator’s notes:
*Like Americans say “9-11” instead of “September 11, 2001,” Cubans say “17D” instead of “17 December 2014,” the day Barack Obama and Raul Castro jointly announced the restoration of relations between the United States and Cuba.
**The phrase is associated with Ernesto “Che” Guevara. In Spanish: “ni tantico así.”

Escobar. Is the attitude of the people of Costa Rica and their government toward these “rafters on foot” something new?

Arias. Costa Rica, taking into account its size, is like Germany in Europe. We have been a country of asylum; we are generous, hospitable, supportive of those who for political reasons have knocked on the doors of our country. We are recognized as a nation of asylum, both for our Latin American brothers persecuted for their way of thinking, as well as for immigrants who flee their countries for economic reasons. We have a small colony of Cubans who arrived here in the past. Cubans have contributed greatly to Costa Rica, as have the Chileans who came here in the Pinochet era.

With regards to the Cubans who have arrived in recent weeks, the Costa Rican government has the obligation to provide them a roof, a shelter, as best we can, because they deserve it.

Escobar. Why do you think that these migrants have left the island and have undertaken such a dangerous route?

Arias. Frankly, they are fleeing a dictatorship. The only dictatorship that exists in Latin America, which we have been unable to end.

Escobar. Do you think that emigration could be reduced if there is a democratic change in Cuba?

Arias. This will end the day a Deng Xiaoping appears in Cuba. A man with the clairvoyance, with the vision and also with the courage to say “enough already” and “we are going to change the system, because the system does not work.” Because the system does not meet the expectations of being able to improve the living conditions of the Cuban people.

Escobar. Is it a failure of the implementation of the model or of the model itself?

Arias. Marxism failed and the practice of it ended, except Cuba and North Korea.

Escobar. How can a new migration crisis be prevented?

Arias. If we want these things not to happen again, it is imperative that Cuba open itself, that it open itself to democracy and freedom.