Category: Victor Ariel Gonzalez

HAVANA, Cuba, January, www.cubanet.org — Doorways where until a few days ago all kinds of clothes and shoes were for sale are now empty. All the usual stalls are closed. It is a return to the recent past, confirmation that the economic openings are not as open, but quite the opposite: they narrow.

The state of opinion on the streets of Havana is negative. Skeptics have multiplied and pessimism is heard in normal conversations. A taxi driver who was driving an old American car, in the dark December nights, predicted to this reporter what the new year would be from his vision at that time. According to him, he’d never seen such a dark end of year, perhaps not even such an infamous December 31, 1994, when a cigar box cost 120 pesos (the entire pay, let’s say, of a secretary).

The man apparently was not mistaken in his forecast that 2014 would be fatal. The first thing that happened is that an important branch of trade is dead. There will be no stalls where the poorest buyers can go looking for something to wear. People are angry, as the Cuban population usually is without any spontaneous social event occurring. continue reading

Isn’t it totally iconic that the four or five newspapers — no more — that are sold in Havana are distributed by old men?

Whether it’s a way to flagellate myself, make myself laugh, and even to get a spark that sets off something I end up writing about, every day I go and buy one or two of these gray pamphlets that should contain news. I recognize that sometimes they succeed.

And one of the things that marks this regularity is that I always buy them from a quite old gentleman. It’s not that it’s always the same seller: what I mean is that in Havana it’s the old men who sell the newspapers, and in the morning, at dawn, you can see long lines of old men (if we add their ages these lines would be millennial) waiting at the newsstands to buy what they then sell for a profit.

So let’s compare this: if you watch a movie and see a newspaper seller, for example, in the United States. His figure is diametrically opposed to the “dealer” here because he has, let’s see, a bike, he rides through a nice neighborhood, and he’s no more than 11 or 12 years old. He’s a child who sells newspapers to Americans. He rides quickly through on his bike, hefting a canvas bag with with its umpteen pages (obviously the newspapers there breakfast better) and then he gets lost on his bike, zigzagging childishly between one sidewalk and the other.

Now I turn my gaze to the daily Cuban move, where I am my own hero: I’m walking down the filthy Carlos III Avenue (and still I have a song in my chest just being out there) until I reach a corner where waiting for me is a gentleman who could be my grandfather, surroundied by newspapers on the ground. I look at the old man, who must be more than seventy, and give him a peso or two for a few printed sheets.

These veterans of whom I speak are part of an army that is our living image. This is because the situation facing the elderly in Cuba is the extract of Revolutionary history. There is no one more helpless, no one from whom they’ve snatched more because, to me at least, I have overabundant youth and strength, but I don’t have all the freedom I want; to them, all that remains is pure waiting while their strength and the years of their youth are left behind, “compensated” by a pension so miserable that they have to walk around, with their tottering steps and trembling hands, selling the newspaper Granma, peanuts or candy.

4 November 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, October, www.cubanet.org – While most young people have virtually no place to go, others go to clubs where the entry fee alone is more than the weekly wage of the average Cuban. The price, actually, is nothing special, but we know that in Cuba 5 CUC is a sum of money that few pockets would be willing to pay to get into a halfway decent establishment.

Havana is a city that has not died, but languishes. On weekends, most of its inhabitants dedicate themselves to wandering around to overcome some collective boredom. People are gather in a few places in the city, like Paseo de G or Coppelia, or they wander around with nothing to do along the well-known streets of the city like 23rd or the Malecon.

The most common diversion is sharing from a bottle, can or carton the alcohol that can be acquired on any park or on any corner for a little party. This, far from representing some collective happiness that many tourists relate delightedly when they return to their own countries, is a distinctive feature of the decadence that more and more marks recent generations of Cubans.

You have to have enough money to entertain yourself and have a really good time in the capital. Some girls — and also boys — prostitute themselves just to have the privilege of entering what are considered the “luxury” venues within a short circuit of nocturnal Havana: cabarets for foreigners and discotheques in hotels which, in any great city in the would pass for second-rate, except that here sex-for-hire is infinitely cheaper. The number of Cubans who go to these places is tiny.

Meanwhile, in the streets, amid apparently immobility and the lack of alternatives, the most destructive forms of entertainment flourish, forms that have been criticized lately in the government’s own media, with its continuous calls to public order and the “fight” against “the improper behavior of a people like ours.”

Some teenagers engage in all kinds of dangerous games, damaging the urban environment and even assaulting other passersby. They hang onto the buses from their bikes, or, on rainy days, do it barefoot sliding along the pavement; they break the garbage bins and write vulgar signs, abuse vehicles, shout, insult, push and cause all kinds of annoyances. The deadly boredom of Havana reaches a crescendo each year with the annual carnivals, which have a far from comforting quota of deaths and injuries in riotous quarrels or knife fights.

The government, instead of promoting healthy options, exerts itself in punishing the undisciplined. It doesn’t seek to create appropriate environments, stimulate the market of services targeted to Cubans, repair the occasional damage in a timely fashion, or provide abetter education in the schools.

Of course, no child of the famous residents in the most exclusive neighborhoods inhabited by the super-exclusive caste of the country’s leaders looks in on these commoners’ parties: nor will they favor them with their presence, because, for their families, the already most “generous” result is having converted one of the most prosperous and active cities in the Caribbean into a dark and silenced sun helmet.

Victor Ariel Gonzalez, Cubanet, 2 October 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, November 1, 2013, Victor Ariel Gonzalez/ www.cubanet.org.- For days now, rumors have been spreading about a strike of self-employed workers somewhere in Central Havana in the capital. Presumably, the event would be November 1st on Reina Street, where people would come to the demonstrations to protest the restrictions announced in the Island’s official media for weeks, relating to private sector trade in industrial products.

A call for public protest has been circulating on the Internet. But as in Cuba there is no real access to the network, it’s unlikely that an announcement in this media will be effective; the population doesn’t know that something is afoot.

“This morning the Department of Technical Investigations, a division of the Ministry of the Interior, came to ask who was going to participate,” an appliance repairman who asked not to be identified confessed a few days ago. Clearly, concerned State Security officers tried to intimidate potential protesters.

There is no known trade union daring enough to organize a strike, nor have links between the self-employed and opposition parties that could be involved in the event, or the call to the streets, proven to be strong enough.

So far, what could be identified as an emerging social class of non-state workers doesn’t have a political platform distinguished by the regime nor does it seem to have a definite political opinion. This sector, which is also too new in a country civicly depressed and without the social networks that have helped the transition to democracy in other parts of the world.

Weeks ago Cuban government officials declared what is obviously a persecution of industrial goods vendors. These are retailers who, given the lack of supply that we suffer, find it normal to speculate on the price of products, which is the main weapon that the country’s leaders ranged against them.

But beyond this accusation, it has been proven that the self-employed (officially they avoid the word “private”) are able to fill the market and even make better deals than the State, who would have all the advantages of competition, but in instead they have chosen to annihilate any opponent.

Victor Ariel Gonzalez, Cubanet, 1 November 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, October 4, 2013, Victor Ariel Gonzalez / www.cubanet.org.-  In the heat of what appears to be a crusade against clothing and shoe retailers, this reporter interviewed vendors in the capital who expressed their worries about recently enacted measures and warnings issued by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MTSS) in the media. According to the newspaper Granma, “as part of the new arrangements to go into effect as of Thursday, September 28, MTSS officials affirmed that the sale of industrially manufactured products, or products purchased abroad by seamstresses or tailors (…) will constitute an infraction and lead to the charge of a misdemeanor against those who perform this activity.” ( Granma, page 8, October 2, 2013).

A week has passed and the vendors continue on in their usual places “waiting” for them to come and close them down. The first complaint from one of them was the lack of foresight on the part of the government: since they started issuing licenses to seamstresses and tailors a vast network of clothing sellers has appeared who considered themselves enabled within the legal framework; some entrepreneurs mortgaged their small family fortunes and created an entire employment sector. The authorities remained silent, watching as the activity prospered.

“And now they’re going to close us done, after I put my money into it?” asked a trader who did not want to be identified.

Facing the fear of permanent closure, some are lowering their prices to recoup at least some of their investment in the shortest possible time. One self-employed woman suggested that at least they should establish a window for getting rid of the merchandise they already have.

Everyone agrees that they would liked for a State wholesale market to have been created, so as not to have to go shopping in Mexico, Panama or Ecuador, the leading suppliers of the independent market on the Island. But the Cuban government takes the opposite path and insists on disrupting this market niche.

“They say we have to change our mentality, but they keep doing the same things as always,” said one of those affected in reference to the current official discourse, which contrasts with the announced measure.

Interestingly , in trying to interview venders at the Gaya shop on Carlos III Avenue, they refused to express an opinion on the grounds that “they had been directed” not make any statements. This shows that there is also fear on the part of the authorities towards the negative reaction triggered by the enactment of new legislation in the coming days, when the inspectors and police visit the bazaars one by one.

Referring to the possible problems that may arise, another respondent felt that it will be difficult to get some people to accede to the orders without protest, especially those who have put all their effort into their business. In any event, clearly the government will arrange things so that the discontent does not become a moderately important popular movement.

After all, it isn’t the first time they decided to remove a visible group of individuals who are successful in their private economic management.

Victor Ariel Gonzalez

From Cubanet

4 October 2013