TRANSLATORS – Page 210 – Translating Cuba

Prior Censorship, Decree 349 and the Constitutional Project of the Cuban Communist Party / Cubalex

Cubalex, 11 September 2018 — Decree 349/2018 sets up a system of prior censorship of cultural and artistic activities and other forms of expression, violating the freedom to carry out creative activities and the right to develop the human personality. It also offends against freedom of thought, belief and religion: and the right to hold opinion, to associate and to peaceful assembly.

In the Constitutional Project of the Cuban Communist Party, there is recognised, among other things, in relation to all citizens (although not all persons) the right to education, to culture, and its comprehensive development. Every person has the right to participate in the cultural and artistic life of the country. Men and women have equal cultural rights and obligations. Citizens should protect the natural resources and the cultural and historical heritage of the country. continue reading

The state recognises that the forms of artistic expression and artistic creation are free, but affirms categorically that its content must respect the values of a socialist Cuban society. This statement is a tacit recognition that prior censorship will be employed to supervise the content of the forms of artistic expression and artistic creation.

According to the Committee of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in its General Observation 21: The right of every person to participate in cultural life (Article 15 paragraph 1(a)), and also the other rights established in the International Agreement on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, imposes on the states three types or levels of obligation:

a) the obligation to respect;

b) the obligation to protect, and

c) the obligation to comply.

The obligation to respect requires the Cuban state to refrain from interfering, directly or indirectly, in the enjoyment of the right to participate in cultural life, which includes the creation, individually, or in association with others, or in a community or group, which implies that the state should abolish censorship of cultural activities imposed on the arts and other forms of expression. In other words, it is necessary to repeal Decree 349 and provide a constitutional project which may be supported by all of us.

(1) Art. 43 of the draft Constitutional bill

(2) Art. 45 section 1) of Article 91 of the draft Constitutional bill

(3) Section h) of the draft Constitutional bill

Translated by GH

Animal Protection… Also for Oxen

The economic crisis has meant that for decades most work on the land is done with oxen. (A. Bielosouv)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, September 13, 2018 — One of the subjects that has come up most frequently in the meetings where the reform of the Constitution is being debated is the necessity to have a Law of Animal Protection. The majority of the people who have launched the proposal are thinking especially about the infinite number of abandoned dogs and cats in Cuba’s cities, the violence they are victims of, and the irresponsible abandonment that they suffer at the hands of their owners.

The bad working conditions of thousands of horses used for passenger transport all over the country is also on the minds of many of those demanding an end to such bad treatment and the establishment of a law that prevents excesses. However, few think about the many oxen used for farming labor all over the country, made invisible as a matter of course, but in a situation many times worse than that of those horses who pull coaches packed with people or of abandoned pets.

The long economic crisis in the country and the lack of a market selling agricultural machinery has meant that for decades the majority of work on the land is done with these animals. Without the plow, with its corresponding yoke of oxen, it wouldn’t be possible to produce many of the products sold on the stands in markets. With the lack of tractors and mechanized combine harvesters, a large percentage of the harvest in rural areas rests on the backs of these animals. continue reading

In the Matanzas plain, Rigoberto takes care of his two oxen like they are the apple of his eye. He raised them from birth and they answer to the names General and Florentino. “Without these animals my family would be even worse off,” recognizes the farmer, who grows greens and vegetables. “I take care of them like they were my own children,” the farmer shares, although he recognizes that his story isn’t very common in the surrounding area.

“On the closest cooperatives and on the state-owned farms, these animals are exploited and so they have a short life, because they aren’t given time to rest nor the food that they need,” Rigoberto believes. “When a guajiro (Cuban farmer) is the one who has a yoke of oxen, he tends to take care of them more, because it is very expensive and it will take a long time to get others.” General and Florentino sleep under a roof in an improvised shed that Rigoberto made. “You need to have a veterinarian look after them and give them fresh grass along with enriched fodder,” he points out.

However, another view appears as soon as one leaves this Matanzas man’s farm. Ribs sticking out, snouts injured by a badly placed nosering, and workdays that never seem to end is the most common lot of the area’s oxen. Those that hope, along with dogs, cats, and horses, that legislation is passed in their favor.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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A Supposed Historic Right / Fernando Dámaso

Fernando Damaso, 15 August 2018 — The supposed historic right of the current Cuban Communist Party is fairly questionable.

In the first place, it is not the continuation of the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC), founded by José Martí to organize and carry out war against Spain for Cuba’s independence, which, according to its statutes, ceased to exist once that ended, leaving its militants free to found new parties, according to their economic, political, and social interests. Martí never demanded that the members abandon their political ideas to belong to it, but rather only that they desire and fight for independence.

The first Cuban Communist Party was founded on August 16, 1925 by Carlos Baliño and José Antonio Mella, on the base of the so-called Communist Association of Havana, founded by the former on March 18, 1923 with only fifteen members who later increased by organizing communist associations in other places. It was always a minority party. continue reading

Expelled from the party for not sharing some of its political aspects, when he was assassinated in Mexico in 1928 Mella was not fighting in it, but rather was a member of the Central Committee of the Mexican Communist Party.

Under the direction of Blas Roca, it turned into a party affiliated with the Third International, subject to its policies and those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Stalin, which brought as consequences a complete gap from the situation at producing the fall of Gerardo Machado’s regime and the so-called Revolution of 1933, with calls for the occupation of the factories by the workers and of the central sugar plantations by workers and peasants, just like in the USSR.

To avoid chaos this erroneous policyhad to be repressed by the Ministry of the Interior (Antonio Guiteras) of Dr. Ramón Grau San Martín’s government, who turned into the target of the party, conspiring against the unity necessary at that moment to consolidate the revolution, assisting their own downfall and the rise to power of Colonel Fulgencio Batista.

In 1940, after the start of the Second World War, six of its directors (Juan Marinello, Blas Roca, Esperanza Sánchez, Salvador García Aguero, Romárico Cordero, and César Vilar) formed part of the Governing Coalition in the Constituent Assembly, selected to write the new Constitution of the Republic. They played their role, like those of other parties, among the 77 delegates to the Assembly, achieving the historic and never surpassed Constitution of 1940.

Later, the Communist Party formed part, along with other parties, of the so-called Democratic Socialist Coalition, which brought to power Fulgencio Batista, who ruled between 1940 and 1944. In this government Juan Marinello and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez participated as Ministers without a Portfolio.

During the governments of the Authentic Party (1944-1948 and 1948-1952), the first with Dr. Ramón Grau San Martín and the second with Dr. Carlos Prío Socarrás as Presidents, the party, by now called the Popular Socialist Party, formed part of the opposition and centered its attention on dominating the unions, which in a large measure it achieved.

After March 10, 1952, when Batista carried out a coup, the party inserted itself in the political fight against him, but without participating in the armed fight, which it criticized until nearly the end of the fall of the regime, when it created a small group of gunmen in Las Villas under the command of Félix Torres and, at the same time, situated, both in the Sierra Maestra and the Sierra Cristal, some of its leaders in the respective guerrilla leaderships, but without direct participation in combat.

At the triumph of the Revolution, it participated actively in its consolidation, as in the formation of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations, of sad remembrance because of its manifest sectarianism, creating problems with the 26th of July Movement and the Revolutionary Directory of the 13th of March, principal organizations in the fight against Batista.

Separately, Aníbal Escalante and his followers in 1963 formed part of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution (PURS) and later, in 1965, of the Cuban Communist Party, Blas Roca delivering the banner of the party to Fidel Castro as its leader.

Both in the pre-1959 stage as well as later, the Communist Party has shown signs of mistaken assessments of the situation and of enormous errors in economic, political, and social management, which have affected the country and the citizens, incapable, in sixty years of exercising absolute power, of achieving its development and solving old and new problems. The facts are too many and known by everyone, and it’s not worth repeating them.

All this invalidates it, from the so-called “historic right,” from setting itself up as “the superior leading force of society and the State.”

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

The Original Sin / Fernando Dámaso

Fernando Damaso, 21 August 2018 — In the current project of the new Constitution one finds the original sin, which has been present in Cuba since the year 1959: confusing Homeland with Party and Nation with Revolution.

The bishiop of Santiago de Cuba, Monsenior Pedro Meurice, warned of this publicly during Pope John Paul II’s visit to that province in January of 1998.

The Homeland and the Nation are concepts that come up with nationality, and they hold up over time until its disappearance and, because of that, enjoy a long life. The Party and the Revolution are temporary concepts, corresponding to specific moments in the life of the Homeland and the Nation and, because of that, their life is limited. continue reading

Mixing them and manipulating them, with the dark purpose of prolonging the existence of the latter, and granting them a role and importance that they lack, only serves to confuse citizens and make them commit errors in assessment and analysis on the questions that concern the country and themselves.

Its application in Cuba demonstrates it: here the Party and the Revolution occupy the foreground and the Homeland and the Nation are simple catch-alls. Everything that is carried out, in any sphere, is an action or result of the Revolution, which prolongs itself indefinitely over time, while everyone knows that it is simply a temporary phenomenon, framed within a start and a finish (the time of transformations), which then gives way to the establishment of its precepts in a government.

Here nobody says “the government did such and such,” but rather “the Revolution did it,” adding, furthermore, “under the direction of the Party.”

This induced confusion of concepts has served to dismantle the characteristic public-spiritedness of Cubans, during the second half of the 19th century and the first of the 20th, that made them active subjects of society, substituting it with a fanaticism, also induced, responsible for the loss of values and the current civic passivity, waiting for the problems of the Homeland and the Nation to resolve themselves, worried only about surviving, whatever it takes.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

Panamanian Arrested for Transporting 10 Cubans Over the Border With Colombia

Cubans cross the Darien forest to reach Panama. (Courtesy / Archive)

14ymedio, Miami, September 10, 2018 — The Panama border police announced this Sunday the detention of a Panamanian who was transporting ten Cubans through a zone of the border with Colombia, in an alleged case of human trafficking.

The Panamanian, whose identity was not revealed, was driving a truck containing the ten Cubans, and was detained at the Agua Fría control post, in the province of Darién, bordering Colombia, the National Border Service (Senafront) reported this Sunday. continue reading

“It was coordinated with the Deputy Prosecutor’s Office of Primary Care for the corresponding procedures in this proceeding” after the arrest “of those involved in the alleged crime of international human trafficking,” added Senafront in a statement.

Illegal migrants who seek to reach the United States come from all over the world arrive in Panama, the doorway to Central America, after a route of thousands of kilometers, transported by international human trafficking mafias, in a business that generates hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

The massive arrival of Cubans a few years ago created a humanitarian crisis in Panama and Costa Rica, considered a consequence of the thaw in relations between Cuba and the United States and the end of migration benefits for Cubans in the US.

More than 100 Cubans have been expelled from Panama so far this year and 298 have been arrested for being in the country illegally, as the National Migration Service reported to 14ymedio. According to official statistics Cubans occupy the second place in the number of detentions, only behind Colombia and Venezuela, both bordering countries.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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"A Spaceship Fell in Our Neighborhood"

The Packard, with 312 rooms, has wide glass windows, sharp corners, and an entranceway that is integrated into the promenade. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, September 11, 2018 — Gerardo Carbonell chews tobacco, seated in the doorway of a housing complex on Calle Prado, as he says that in his neighborhood “a spaceship fell.” The dazzling object in fact is identified and is no other than the recently inaugurated hotel Grand Packard, the second five-star-plus hotel in Cuba.

The facade shines under the September sun and although one does not yet see the coming and going of tourists, the accommodation is already causing a stir. “In the last few days many important people have come to see it and participate in the inauguration,” says Carbonell, although “they don’t move much, they don’t walk this way,” he laments.

The housing complex where this retired Havanan has lived for 60 years is only meters from the impressive construction but they seem two worlds apart. “This is like the sun and the moon, day and night,” he believes. “Now these houses are looking more deteriorated because in comparison with this new thing everything seems much older.” continue reading

By “old” Carbonell doesn’t refer only to the age of the colonial style building where he lives with his wife and three children, but also to its facilities. “On this site the pipes collapsed years ago and all the water that we consume has to be taken in buckets from the cistern or carried to the rooms by our own power.”

However, the least of their problems is carryong the water from one part of the complex to another, the most difficult is getting it to the complex. “We have a supply once a week, maybe twice. The rest of the time you have to pay for pipas (water trucks) or take care of your needs elsewhere,” he maintains.

The retiree points out the places in the area where he frequently goes to use the bathroom. “In the Hotel Inglaterra there are good bathrooms and they aren’t such a pain about it, also in the Parque Central they have a good supply of toilet paper, but in the Telégrafo you can’t even enter because the security is really strict,” he explains.

The Grand Packard, developed by the Spanish company Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, will not have problems with water. This Monday the water trucks supplied it very early, in a routine carried out by all the hotels in the area, which has among the worst water shortages in Havana.

With ten stories and an exceptional view, the accommodation promises its visitors the chance to get to know an historical and well-trafficked part of the city. The shopkeepers in the area hope to benefit from the clients who venture out to eat and have a few drinks outside of the hotel facilities at a time when the drop in tourism worries everyone.

“We are on the same sidewalk and we’ll get a slice of this cake,” predicts an employee at the nearby private cafeteria La Tatagua. The place, small and well designed, has a view of the Paseo del Prado and a wifi connection that clients can use as they eat. “Although the Packard has all types of luxuries, there are always those who want to touch reality with their own hands,” he adds.

Reality is a vague concept in one of the most touristy areas of the country. On one hand, there are the spectacular old cars, many of them convertibles, that offer trips through the most famous areas of the urban landscape, but a few meters away are buildings, miracularly still standing, in which dozens of families are packed.

The floor of the central promenade has recently been polished and this week various workers continued working on the streetlights that line the route. “The whole area has made itself beautiful for the occasion, especially the green areas just in front of the hotel,” assures one of the guards, in a perfect suit and tie, who watches over the entrance.

Property of Gaviota, the state-owned hotel business controlled by the Armed Forces, the Packard has come to underline the contrasts in a area where the hotel Manzana Kempinski was already viewed as “something fallen from the sky,” as Carbonell jokes.

“This was a ruin, because before that the Biscuit hotel was here, which was inaugurated in 1911 and which my grandfather told me was a marvel,” insists María Eugenia, who lives in another housing complex on the opposite side of the street “with a direct view of the new hotel. Now I wake up and when I look out the window I feel like I’m in another country,” she remarks ironically.

The Packard, with 312 rooms, has wide glass windows, sharp corners, and an entranceway integrated into the shady promenade, typical of the area. Its impressiveness and size — it occupies almost an entire block — have few rivals in the area.

The facade, however, has its detractors. “Although part of the original exterior structure has been preserved, the majority of the elements are modern and break with the dominant aesthetic in the area,” believes Laura Fumero, graduate in architecture, who works with a small private design firm.

“The height of the entryway seems to make the building look big, but my major concern has to do with the demand for energy, water, and other resources that this hotel will have when it is fully operational. It is not much use to have something so luxurious in a place with general infrastructure that’s over a century old,” she points out.

The architect goes further and calls into question the need for hotels of “high volume.” The decision “would be more accepted if we were experiencing a dramatic increase in tourism, but that’s not the case,” she specifies. “It’s also a matter of a type of accommodation aimed at high income visitors, but right now we’re experiencing a fall in the number of Americans who come and they are the ones who are, for the most part, most likely to spend more,” she believes.

In the first half of the year global tourism numbers, about 2.5 million visitors, went down more than 5%. Taking into account only American tourists, the drop in that time period was about 24%. Between January and March, 240 groups of Americans cancelled their reservations due to the new restrictions that Washington has placed on trips to the Island.

In June, the nearby Manzana Kempinski was down about 20% in occupancy, according to testimonies given to 14ymedio by various employees. “It’s a difficult gamble to make, because in this area there is already a large saturation of rooms and we are in a difficult moment,” confirms a tour operator who preferred to remain anonymous. Despite that, the general director, Xavier Destribats, assured that the Swiss hotel group that manages it has various other projects in conjunction with the state-owned Gaviota.

“Every inauguration increases the pressure and urgency to attract more tourism, but we don’t see another boom happening like what happened with the rapprochement of Barack Obama,” explains the specialist in reference to the diplomatic thaw between the two nations that began in December 2014. “It would have to change somewhat drastically for the number of tourists to reach what it needs to be,” he affirms.

Further from the worries of architects and tour operators, the Grand Packard hotel’s closests neighbors, like María Eugenie and Gerardo Carbonell, fear that the building’s demand for resources will harm their delay routines.

“We will have to get used to the noise of the water trucks from early in the morning and the coming and going of supplies, security in the area area will increase and that will affect the black market,” he points out.

“Many people are afraid that this way of opening luxury hotels will continue and that Calle Prado will end up completely dedicated to tourism,” she warns.

Above their heads, on a brilliant terrace filled with attractive offerings, the first curious people look toward the horizon and once in while turn their gazes down.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Habeas Corpus Proposed in the Constitutional Reform is Ineffective / Cubalex

Habeas Corpus will be elevated to constitutional status

Cubalex, M.sc. Laritza Diversent — Article 50 of the constitution, as proposed to the National Assembly by the Cuban Communist Party, will recognise Habeas Corpus. This guarantee against illegal arrest was the subject of parliamentary debate. The Deputy for Baracoa in Guantanamo province, Tamayo Mendez, made reference to this precept.

“Any person who is deprived of his liberty,” he read. “Here we are affirming that it was foreseen that someone may be illegally penalised,” he added. “No, not penalised, but illegally deprived of their liberty,” he was corrected by Deputy Jose Luis Toledo Santander, member of the constitutional editing commission. continue reading

“What is being addressed here is the protection of the right of an individual who is deprived of their liberty to due process as established by law. This process exists in the Law of Legal Procedures,” explained Toledo Santander.

Due process” for Habeas Corpus and the authorities’ practices

In effect, Habeas Corpus is regulated in domestic law, but offers no protection against arbitrary detention, nor against enforced disappearance.

For example, one of the “processes established by law” is that of denying Habeas Corpus, if, during the arrest, a “sentence of or order for a limited period of imprisonment” was decreed. Every year, the Cuban state and its agents undertake thousands of arbitrary detentions as a punishment for exercising freedom of expression, meeting and association.

Additionally, it requires that “the place where the person is held be identified, as well as the official or his agent or the functionary who is holding him.” The government agents employ pseudonyms, wear plain clothes and do not identify themselves. As far as human rights defenders are concerned, they do not complete any detention paperwork, to isolate them and make it impossible to identify their location, opening the door to their enforced disappearance.

The tribunals limit themselves to verifying that the required procedural criminal documentation exists, and reject pleas for habeas corpus, without requiring the police officials to produce the person who has been detained and to explain when and why he was detained. It is unlikely they would agree to an applications for oral hearing.

Awarding constitutional status to a guarantee which does not comply with international standards does not constitute any advance in human rights, and is obviously ineffective.

M.sc. Laritza Diversent

Translated by GH

"Here We Haven’t Asked for Anything"

Like every other September, parents participated in an assembly to apportion responsibilities and conduct the necessary collections of money. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 6 September 2018 – “Here we haven’t asked for anything” was the most repeated phrase during the parents’ first meeting of the year in an elementary school in the municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, in Havana. The emphatic clarification, accompanied by gestures with eyes and hands that seemed to negate it, was made by the teacher after the authorities of the Ministry of Education called on their employees to not demand resources and money from parents in order to shore up the material precariousness of the classrooms.

Like every other September, the parents participated in an assembly to apportion responsibilities and conduct the necessary collections of money that allows for purchases from fans to cleaning supplies. However, unlike other years, teachers were warned by their directors that they could not participate in the appeals for, or in the organization of this aid. “You already know that I cannot be here when you collect money, so act like I don’t know about it,” the teacher warned. continue reading

For decades, and in view of the deterioration that public education has suffered on the island, it has become common practice for families to finance part of the resources used collectively in the classroom. These contributions are not only used to buy brooms or trash cans, but also to pay people who clean the classrooms “under the table”. Some of the money can also end up in the hands of the teachers to “stimulate” them to continue with their work despite the low salaries.

Faced with constant criticisms and denunciations motivated by this situation, the Ministry of Education decided to cut it off, but not by prohibiting the parental aid, but by appealing to the ostrich technique. “As I do not know, then it is not my responsibility,” opined the overwhelmed educator in front of those who calculated the amount of money that each household would have to give. “That is your thing and I cannot get involved,” the teacher repeated, but everyone understood that it was a formality to save her from liability.

“She knows that without this money it would be very difficult to keep a functioning classroom, but instead of giving her more resources now the Ministry tells her to look the other way,” criticized a grandmother. “This support will now be more clandestine, but it will continue,” said the lady who was already preparing to hand over about 10 CUC (convertible peso) in the coming weeks.

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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Cuban Policeman, Rafter and Now Confessed Murderer of Two Women in the United States

The bodies of Angie and Elizabeth Rodriguez Rubio, granddaughter and grandmother respectively, were found in Shenandoah National Park. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Mario J. Pentón / Manuel Mons, Miami | 6 September 2018 – Cuban police captain Hareton Jaime Rodríguez Sariol, who arrived as a rafter in the United States in 2016, is the main suspect in the death of Elizabeth Rodríguez Rubio and her granddaughter, Angie Carolina, whose bodies were found in Shenandoah National Park, in the state of Virginia.

Harrisonburg police confirmed to 14ymedio this Thursday the finding of the bodies of the two Colombians, aged 48 and 12 years, missing since August 5.

In exchange for his cooperation in leading the police to the location of the victims’ bodies, the Cuban will avoid the death penalty. continue reading

Sariol faces a grand jury indictment in Rockingham County on September 17 and could receive a 20-year prison sentence for each crime or life imprisonment.

Elizabeth and Angie were last seen at Dukes Plaza in Harrisonburg on Sunday, August 5. Rodriguez Sariol was going to take them to his home in Maryland, but they never got there. The police issued an alert, on August 7, for the missing child and her grandmother.

The vehicle in which Rodriguez Sariol was driving both women, a red Honda Civic, was found on fire on Interstate 66. After this the suspect drove a 2000 Volvo truck on August 6 and 7 to different parts of the country. Rodriguez Sariol was arrested in Lackawanna, Pa. “The captain was madly in love with that woman and was obsessed with her,” said a source close to the Cuban police officer.

Rodríguez Sariol came to the United States in April 2016 aboard a raft with 25 other emigrants when the wet foot/dry foot policy was still in effect, which granted refuge to all Cubans who stepped on US territory.

The video that recounts part of his journey went viral on social networks because he and another officer, Michel Herrera, arrived wearing their National Revolutionary Police uniforms.

As they said at the time, they did not take off their uniforms in order to avoid being detained when they were moving the boat to the coast in Cuban territory.

“The Captain,” as he is called by his acquaintances due to his rank while in the National Directorate of Transit in Cuba, denied having repressed dissidents or participated in acts of repudiation against the opposition in several interviews given to the South Florida media.

The rafters left Guanabo, east of Havana and were at sea for more than 30 hours before reaching the United States. Once in the country, Rodriguez Sariol received help from the Government and settled in Virginia.

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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Cubans and Venezuelans Among The Most Detained and Expelled From Panama

A group of Cuban migrants in Canoa Passages (Panama) during the 2015 crisis. (EFE /Marcelino Rosario)

14ymedio, Miami, 6 September 2018 – More than 100 Cubans have been expelled from Panama so far this year, according to figures revealed by the National Immigration Service to 14ymedio.

Cubans occupy fifth place in the number of nationals expelled, deported or voluntarily returned, surpassed only by Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.

According to the National Migration Service’s explanation to this newspaper “the deportation of Cuban citizens maintained an upward form in the months of May (13), June (17), July (18) and August (27), while the largest amount of expulsions of the islanders thus far in 2018, occurred during the month of May. continue reading

The authorities added that the main causes for expulsions are irregular stay and residency in the country and the expiration of visas.

“The foreigner who has been deported may not enter the country for a period of 5 to 10 years,” warns the National Immigration Service.

298 Cubans with irregular status in Panama have been arrested thus far this year. According to official statistics, Cubans occupy second place in the number of arrests only behind Colombia, a border country, and Venezuela, which is experiencing an unprecedented exodus.

Panama, along with Costa Rica, are countries of transit for thousands of Cubans who come to the United States border every year seeking refuge. In 2016, both countries were the epicenter of a crisis when thousands of Cubans were stranded in their territories. After an agreement with Mexico and economic aid from the United States, more than 9,000 Cubans were transported on two airlifts to the southern border of the United States.

In January 2017, a few days before the end of his term, President Barack Obama put an end to the wet foot /dry foot policy, which provisionally welcomed Cubans arriving in the United States. Although the number of Cuban migrants to the United States dropped drastically, thousands continue arriving at the border to ask for political asylum. Some Latin American countries have experienced a rapid increase in Cuban emigration.

Panama is also one of the main destinations for “mules”, Cubans who travel legally to buy products and resell them in the island’s large black market. So far this year more than 25,600 entries have been recorded coming from Cuba.

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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The Lynching of Mauricio Rojas*

The President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, greets Mauricio Rojas in the Moneda Palace.
(La Tercera)

14ymedio, Álvaro Vargas Llosa, Santiago de Chile, August 20, 2018 — It is not easy to assimilate that what just happened to Mauricio Rojas occurred in Chile at the height of 2018, after less than a fifth of the 21^st century.

Almost one century after the trials in Moscow, the Chilean intellectual has been submitted to an attempt at destruction of personality, a negation of a whole life trajectory, a traumatic deformation of his thought and actions, a stripping of all dignity and humanity, with the purpose that such a condemnation—so empty of content, so morally and psychologically ruinous, a death sentence (in this case expulsion from the city, to use the classic formula)—be something that the condemned man himself demand of his judges, convinced that his existence is useless. The only thing missing, to complete the Stalinist montage, was that Rojas beg of Chile: Shoot me, I am, in effect, a non-person, a non-man. continue reading

The Right and the Left have killed many people throughout history, and it’s hard to make a definitive accounting of who has killed more, but the Left has an overwhelming advantage in moral destruction, dehumanization by way of personality assassination of the real or supposed adversary. When the Right massacres someone, it gains moral standing, because the right is the incarnation of evil; when the Left massacres someone, it is freeing humanity of an enemy. Mauricio Rojas was the enemy from whom the Left had to liberate public life and the Chilean State.

The essential campaign against Rojas consisted of attacking his strength, which is his moral authority. That moral authority came from two things. First, his former militancy in the Revolutionary Left Movement, the violent MIR of the ‘60s, and his later conversion to liberalism, a process derived from experience, the most powerful thing that can cause someone to come to a conviction and then communicate it to his fellow human beings. To this was added a second source of moral authority: his denunciation, in the name of freedom, of all forms of political violence, abuse against human rights and authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. His books, articles and conferences have been for decades a denunciation against dogmatisms of the Left and the Right, against ideologies that justify vile methods with the pretext of accomplishing noble ends. His texts are available for anyone who takes the time to go to a bookstore, search on Amazon or look them up on the Internet.

This double source of moral authority made Rojas a problem. It was very difficult to throw away his reflections on the contribution of the fanatic Chilean Left of the ‘60s and ‘70s, or on the 1973 Military Coup and the bloody dictatorship and, thus, his present criticism of the dangerous radicalization of the Chilean Left in recent years. After all, this criticism came from the experience and the confession of a convert to liberal democracy, not from a Pinochet supporter.

It’s not difficult to understand why Rojas’ history, his life adventures as well as his discourse, profoundly offended the New Left, which looks very much, mentally, like the Left of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and which contributed much less than what Rojas contributed, between the end of the ‘80s and the decade of the 2000s, to making Chile the most successful country in Latin America.

Once he was named the Minister of Culture, it was essential to destroy his moral authority, that intellectual solvency that stemmed from his personal testimony and his intransigent liberalism in the face of the excesses of the Right and the Left. He only had one way to end the insolence of that nomination that the Executive Power enthroned, and in a position of high visibility to such a dangerous enemy for the strategy of the Chilean New Left. That way was to destroy his moral authority by distorting his double history—his life and his discourse—and converting it, literally, into the opposite of what it really was, into self-negation.

A quotation taken out of context about the Memory Museum was converted into a perfect casus belli for this operation. Anyone who would have taken the trouble to read Dialogue of the Converts would have understood that Rojas himself qualified what Pinochet did as “State terrorism,” and he affirms that nothing justified what happened. Anyone who would have deigned to make a few “clicks” on the Web would have obtained flagrant proof of what Rojas was thinking and continues to think about Pinochet. Among the many texts that would have appeared on the screen is, for example, his article, Revolutionaries and September 11, published 40 years after the Military Coup. There, once again, he speaks of the “horrors of the crimes of the dictatorship.”

If anyone had made a minimum effort to be informed about what the Chilean intellectual thinks about the Memory Museum it would have been enough to prove that his criticism had nothing to do with denial, since on various occasions he made it clear that the brutality and cruelty of the dictatorship that is plotted in the museum reflect facts that truly happened and should never be repeated. It would have informed anyone, also, of the true nature of his criticism of the museum, that can or cannot be shared, and that doesn’t emerge from the negation of the crimes that he himself fought from the first day and that he continues repudiating. At his trial, there was an incomplete version of that black period in the country’s history, because it left out a fundamental teaching that every new generation should learn: in the destruction of democracy, the radicalization of the Left played a decisive role, with its scorn for democratic institutions and the rule of law.

Saying and thinking similar things does not mean justifying Pincochet or that Rojas prefers the crimes of the Right to those of the Left, but rather to work so that never again will such a traumatic, painful and bloody experience be possible, such as what that dictatorship represented. If the antecedents and context of what happened in 1973 are put aside, it is, in the opinion of Rojas, dangerously mutilating the story of that historic stage. To argue this is a form of patriotism, in addition to being an exercise of high intellectual honesty on the part of a man who confesses to having contributed to that state of things from his own ideologization and acceptance of armed struggle as an instrument of justice. Why patriotism? Because he understands that it’s the best way for future generations to free Childe from the bitterness, the polarization and the hatred that led the country to a sinister Military Coup, which in another context surely would not have been viable.

I hope that those who attack the museums of memory in other countries do it in this civilized, reasoned and solid form. In Péru, for example, those who vilify the Museum of Memory are all sympathizers and, at times, servants of fujimorismo, and they do it from denial. For these critics there was no systematic violation of human rights; the figures of deaths are invented; and the story of State violence is an ideological lie of the Left.

Is there any book, article or conference of Mauricio Rojas that has ever argued the monstrosity that Pinochet’s crimes didn’t exist, that the State didn’t violate human rights during the military phase and that the falsity of the Left’s narrative consists in inventing abuses that didn’t happen? I spent many years hearing him speak before different audiences (we often met frequently at public events), and he never argued or even joked about such an imbecility.

Do his critics know this? Of course they do. Those who didn’t know were those numerous Chileans for whom Rojas wasn’t yet a household name, a public man fully recognizable, or he was someone whom they vaguely knew about. Because this easily manipulated public didn’t have an educated idea about Rojas, his detractors tried to convince them that he was aligned with State crimes. And something more: that he was an imposter who invented his biography for convenience.

It wasn’t enough to fabricate the idea that his thinking was like Pinochet’s in order to destroy his moral authority. It was also necessary to reveal his imposture, to convince themselves and outsiders that his life was a farce from beginning to end. Thus, one or another MIR figures were paraded through the press who insisted that Rojas never served in that organization. It didn’t matter that those who said this had responsibilities in the MIR much later than when Rojas was involved, or that many young Marxists of the ‘60s were close witnesses of his ideological radicalism and adherence to the MIR, because, after all, it wasn’t a matter of verifying the truth. The important thing was to advance the lie that then would make any contrary testimony unbelievable.

His detractors didn’t exhaust their methods in this operation. It was indispensable that they assure themselves that, if President Piñera decided against all odds to give Rojas tenure, his performance in that role would be impossible. He had to disavow his representative as a high-level member of the State and reject him as a player. It didn’t matter that Rojas would have announced that one of his great missions was to “democratize culture” to bring it everywhere, including to the poorest and most vulnerable, something that if the Chilean Left had been tolerant, they would have recognized as a goal in tune with their own aspirations (the Left used to talk about democratizing everything: property, credit, services and, horror of horrors, culture, precisely so these things wouldn’t be privileges of an elite).

Nor does it matter that, in the last five months, since his appointment as Presidential Assessor, Rojas had worked to bestow more social sensitivity on the Chilean Right and limit its rough edges. Today these qualities make him someone even more dangerous. The world of culture denies him the possibility of doing his work by using a systematic boycott against him and converting him into a non-person. It is not a lesser irony that, in its actions, the Left thoroughly gives Rojas justification for revealing that it is acting in the dogmatic spirit of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

His detractors think they’ve won the war against Rojas. In reality, they have won only one battle. Like so many converts of the last century (Carlos Alberto Montaner has recalled, speaking of himself, Malraux, Koestler, Semprún and Paz), he is much closer to the truth than his enemies. This should give him, in this moment of ingratitude, strength to win future battles.

(Published previously in La Tercera, one of the major newspapers in Chile. It is reproduced here with the author’s authorization.)

*Translator’s note: Minister of Culture, the Arts and Patrimony of Chile August 9, 2018 – August 13, 2018. He was fired for criticizing the Museum of Memory, commissioned by former President Michelle Bachelet after the Country’s Truth Commission issued a mandate to “account for human rights violations” committed during Pinochet’s dictatorship. In Rojas’ youth he was part of MIR, a revolutionary left-wing movement, and he was exiled to Sweden. He has since become more conservative. In an interview in 2016 with CNN, Rojas said the Museum of Memory gave a false version of history. Francisco Estevetz, the Executive Director of the Museum, says its creation was necessary to guarantee that the abuses suffered under Pinochet will never happen again.

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Four Cuban Rafters Rescued on the High Seas

Cuban rafters being repatriated by the United States Coast Guard. (EFE /Archive)

14ymedio, 5 September 2018 – A Norwegian Cruise Line ship rescued and handed over to the authorities this Sunday four Cuban-born rafters, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to 14ymedio.

After leaving Miami, and about 40 miles from Key West, the cruise ship found four people in danger who “were safely and immediately taken to the medical installation of the ship for evaluation and were provided with clothing and food.” continue reading

The Bahamian Maritime Authority and the Coast Guard were informed by the captain of the vessel, who received instructions to disembark the rescued people at the port of Costa Maya, making them available to the Mexican authorities.

“We are very proud of our team for executing a successful rescue of these people,” said the Norwegian Cruise Line spokesman.

After the end of the dry foot/wet foot policy in 2017, which allowed Cubans who reached dry land in the United States to legally reside in the country with protective measures, the number of people who throw themselves into the sea fleeing Cuba has decreased drastically.

I am currently on Norwegian Getaway and some passengers noticed a flash in the middle of the ocean. They then told the cruise workers and they stopped and it turned out to be four people from Cuba which they rescued. Other videos coming now @OfficialJoelF pic.twitter.com/nc6XeaQis5

— Pico (@alberto__rpr) 4 de septiembre de 2018

Since last October 1st, 331 Cubans have tried to emigrate to the United States by sea compared to the 1,989 recorded in the entire 2017 fiscal year, according to figures from the Coast Guard

The authorities have warned that all Cubans who try to enter the country clandestinely, either via the land border or by crossing the Straits of Florida, will be returned to the island.

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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Requiem for Transport

Gladys Carbonell’s grandson and great-granddaughter spent 24 hours on a Via Azul bus to Santiago de Cuba (FLICKR)

14ymedio, Gladys Carbonell, Havana, 4 September 2018 — In addition to the terrible catastrophe of the plane crash in Havana, there have been many road transport accidents in Cuba lately, in which, unfortunately, people of all ages have died, including children which is the worst and most heartbreaking. There have also been many other accidents in different provinces of the country.

I would like to relate what happened to my grandson a few days ago on his trip to Santiago de Cuba, when he was taking his 7-year-old daughter home from her vacation in Havana to the place where she lives. My grandson lives in Havana and makes these trips often to fulfill the sacred duty of taking care of his daughter on vacation and spending time with her as he wants to do after his divorce. As a grandmother, and because I can take on the expense of these trips, I help him to fulfill his function as father and give the child a chance to enjoy being with him, for which I pay the Government the approximate sum of the almost 300 Cuban convertible pesos (CUC) that these trips entail.

There are no planes and there is no chance of getting a space on bus if you are paying in Cuban pesos (CUP). The only alternative if you need to move between the two most important cities in the country are the Vía Azul and Transtur companies, initially created to transport tourists or residents who are living abroad. continue reading

It took my grandson and his daughter 24 hours to arrive via Vía Azul in Santiago de Cuba. A trip that should last about 15 hours lasted 24, because they left the terminal on August 28 at 6 in the morning and arrived in Santiago de Cuba on the 29th past 6 in the morning. It was an endless journey and full of many needs, something normal when you take a child.

The reason for the delay was that the rubber on the left front tire of the bus peeled away in Ciego de Ávila, which could have caused the bus to overturn which probably would have caused the death of several people. Who knows if it would have fallen to me to mourn the death of my grandson and my great-granddaughter.

As always happens, the company did not have the spare part. They sent it to look for it and, finally, the person who was supposed to bring this part to the place where the bus was parked, forgot where it was.

A month or so ago, the same thing happened when a son of mine returned from Santiago de Cuba to Havana. The bus that left at 10:30 on the night of July 26 broke down as it arrived in Palma Soriano, shortly after leaving Santiago, and they had to go back and to get on another bus to get to the capital. How is it possible that it broke down so soon after starting out? Is it possible that these vehicles are not checked at the maintenance base before leaving? Don’t they care that people could lose their lives?

How many CUC does the Government collect for that simple trip by bus on Vía Azul, which is sure to be full and where there are children? Which of those revolutionary leaders that supposedly must watch over the well-being of their people travel or live an experience like that? Which one pays for terrible service, the price of which is almost six times the monthly retirement income of any Cuban professional? Please, do not blame the ’blockade’ for this. Any other argument, even if it seems like a lie, I could believe it.

Translated by Jim

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Repression Does Not Rest in Summer

Alejandro Pupo Echemendía, who died in police custody. (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Havana, 3 September 2018 — The two main human rights organizations in Cuba published Monday their reports about repression during August.

The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), with headquarters in Cuba, puts the number of arbitrary political arrests at 219 in August. For the CCDHRN the most serious event last month was the death of Alejandro Pupo Echemendia, arrested on the 9th and declared dead hours later while in police custody. The activist was taken to the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) station in the city of Placetas in Villa Clara, and relatives and witnesses assert that the body showed signs having been brutally mistreated before his death.

“Official responsibility must be revealed in this flagrant case of another citizen who dies in police custody,” demands CCDHRN. continue reading

On the other hand the organization applauds the announcement of the opening of a trial against some twenty officials and other citizens who are accused of bribery, document fraud and other crimes aimed at facilitating the “illegal” relocation to the capital of people who live in other provinces, building a criminal network.

CCDHRN thinks that the government intends to keep the detention figures low, but in the face of this, it increases control over people and has carried out at least 21 acts of harassment and four physical assaults against opponents.

Moreover, the Cuban Human Rights Observatory (OCDH), with headquarters in Madrid, has accounted for at least 208 arbitrary detentions in Cuba during August, a figure somewhat higher than that set out in July.

The organization highlights the harassment and arrests suffered by several independent artists on the 25th when they held a concert against the approval of Decree 349 which increases censorship of the sector. The non-governmental organization Amnesty International has pronounced itself against that day’s arrests.

The activist network of OCDH accounted for 133 repressive actions against women and 75 against men on the Island, at the same time that more acts of harassment and intimidation were brought against members of civil society and activists throughout the Island.

Another of the punished sectors last month has been the milieu of the political movement Somos+ whose activists were victims of arbitrary arrests when they tried to meet to debate the draft version of constitutional reform.

Add to these two groups those who habitually suffer the harassment methods of State Security and the Police, among them the Ladies in White who continue to be most affected by the brief detentions, the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), Somos+, the Orlando Zapata Tamayo Front, the National Resistence Front and the Party for Democracy.

For its part, the Center for Cuba Coexistence, directed by Dagoberto Valdes, continues suffering its particular repression of police citations and interrogations.

The personalized repression and the measures controlling departures abroad have become the tools most used in recent times, which, according to the Observatory, “leaves exposed the absence of the government’s political will to change.”

This fact also is denounced by CCDHRN which maintains that while it was “permitted” that nine dissidents travel to Peru in order to participate in two academic events, another nine were impeded from doing the same on the basis of various pretexts or simply the use of force.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

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Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) Accuses The New York Times of Flinging "Crazy Theories" About "Sonic Attacks"

14ymedio, Havana, 3 September 2018–The Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) has accused The New York Times (NYT) of surprising its readers with a “crazy theory” about the supposed sonic attacks that harmed the health of various US diplomats stationed in the embassies of Havana and Beijing. The daily ran an article in its Science section on Saturday in which it quotes various physicians and experts who, discarding other explanations, point to microwave technology as the prime suspect in the health hazards inflicted upon the functionaries.

UPEC has published a letter by attorney José Pertierra — among the most popular pro-Cuban government jurists, and one who has a law office in Washington, DC — in which he classifies the article as “an example of poor journalism,” being based as it is on “pure speculation” and not exposing the cause of the possible illnesses. continue reading

“Every time that a witness makes unsubstantiated claims in a court of law, the attorneys are required to present the ’evidence’ and to ask a fundamental question: ’How do you know this?’ Unfortunately, The New York Times does not ask this fundamental question,” writes the lawyer, who is thus demanding that scientific or procedural criteria be applied to journalism.

The New York Times article says that the scientists believe that unconventional weapons which utilize microwaves are the most probable cause of the so-called sonic attacks. Although the report published in March by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) following an examination of 21 affected diplomats in Cuba makes no reference to this type of wave, the author of the study and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania, Douglas H. Smith, said in a recent interview that microwaves are now considered prime suspects in more than likely causing brain damage.

“Everyone was relatively skeptical at first, but now all agree that there is something there,” said the specialist, who added that the physicians jokingly refer to the injuries at issue as the “immaculate concussion.”

Discarding other possible causes such as sonic attacks, viral infections, or contagious anxiety, some analysts, according to the NYT article, now point to the “Frey Effect,” a phenomenon discovered decades ago by the scientist Allan H. Frey, which posits that microwaves can fool the brain into perceiving what might seem like common sounds.

These false sensations could explain the noises and buzzing sounds cited by the diplomats, which at first were thought to be evidence of attacks by sonic weapons.

While the US Department of State and the FBI are declining to make further statements about an ongoing investigation, a group of experts has collaborated this summer with the federal government in evaluating new threats to national security which, apparently includes the mysterious Havana embassy case and weighs various explanations, among which is the microwave theory.

Frey, the discoverer of the microwave phenomenon, who has worked as a contractor and consultant with various federal agencies, speculates about the possibility that Cuba allied with Russia could have executed these attacks with microwaves in order to damage the relations between Havana and Washington that began during the Barack Obama administration.

Frey explains that decades ago, during a visit to the USSR to give a conference, he was taken to a military base outside Moscow, whose government was “so intrigued by the prospect of mental control that it adopted special terminology for the general class of potential weapons, calling them ’psychophysical’ and ’psychotronic,’” according to the scientist as quoted in the NYT.

An infinity of home appliances, such as short-wave radios, kitchen ovens, and mobile phones emit microwaves in a harmless manner — but they are easy to manipulate and concentrate because of their small size. According to statements quoted by the NYT, it is believed that Russia, China, and many European states have the know-how to manufacture basic microwave weapons that could weaken, create noise and even kill.

Last October, the magazine Neural Computation published an article by Beatrice A. Golomb, MD and professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, that lays out the most detailed medical case for microwave attacks at the Havana embassy.

In her article, Golomb compared the symptoms of the diplomats on the Island with those reported by persons who are said to suffer from radio frequency illness, and she asserted that “numerous, highly-specific characteristics” of the diplomatic incidents “fit the hypothesis” of a microwave attack, including the production of perturbing, Frey-type noises.

The incidents at the embassy provoked the exit of non-essential personnel from the diplomatic headquarters–about 60%–and this has had significant repercussions on the daily life of Cubans, who have since had great difficulties in obtaining visas to the US, the county to which they have the most ties. Havana accuses Washington of inventing an excuse to obstruct the thaw, being that the cause and extent of the injuries suffered by the officials have yet to be determined.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

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