Category: TRANSLATORS

Despite certain inaccuracies arising from the exclusion of important parameters, such as gender and child violence, or the dubious reliability of data and sources in the case of some countries – for example, Cuba – the GPI has great referential value, not only for being the first to identify the elements that intervene in peace, but for constituting a permanent record that allows us to observe the mobility in the levels of peace of the different countries and regions that make up the list, where the lowest scores correspond to the most peaceful countries, and vice versa.

Collaterally, the GPI research establishes a clear correlation between levels of peace and levels of income, education, transparency, corruption and democracy in the countries analyzed.

Due to its methodological contribution and its systemic nature, which facilitates the evaluation of advances or setbacks in terms of peace over a period of time and in specific territories, the GPI established an inescapable precedent for any subsequent proposal and for the ability to trace political strategies in pursuit of the conquest and sustainment of peace.

Peace… in Latin America?

Seven years after the first report of the GPI, 33 member-countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), meeting at its Second Summit held in Havana (January 2014), unanimously declared this Region as a Peace Zone, allegedly “with the objective of promoting cooperation and maintaining peace and security in all orders among its member countries.”

The aforementioned Declaration was not accompanied by a strategic design that would explain the criteria or parameters followed by those 33 leaders in order to consider as a “Peace Zone” a region permanently crossed by the conflicts and violence imposed by guerrilla wars, drug and human trafficking, gang violence, disappearances and kidnappings, human displacement due to poverty and crime, constant migration, border crises, paramilitaries, assassinations, corruption reaching even the highest political strata, human rights violations, offenses against freedom of press and expression, repression against demonstrators, and an countless crimes that depict in somber tones a geographic and political scene diametrically opposed to what might be called Peace.

Neither did the CELAC establish in its Second Summit a program of proposals to overcome regional problems that threaten peace, methodology to measure improvements or retractions in each country, nor a special commission charged with supervising a joint project of the member countries to guarantee results that might turn Latin America into a true “Peace Zone.”

In fact, today’s stubborn reality indicates that violence and conflicts in our region, far from diminishing, have the propensity to increase. The political and social instability that already existed in Venezuela before 2014 has been joined by the political crisis in Brazil, and more recently in Nicaragua. Mexico continues to exhibit staggering crime rates linked to drug, arms, and human trafficking, gender crimes and targeted killings, amid a climate of insecurity augmented by swift impunity; criminal gangs continue to spread terror in Central America, while the Peace Accords – also signed in Havana – between the narco-guerrillas of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government of that country are very likely to end up in a complete failure.

And as if it were not sufficiently spurious that such a Peace in the abstract should be declared in a happy conspiracy of all the democratic governments of “our America” with this hemisphere’s longest dictatorship – responsible, directly or indirectly, for several regional conflicts and incapable of propitiating spaces of dialogue and harmony with its own people – these days Havana is, once again, the base and guarantor of another “sham peace process.” which this time will take place between the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army, the Communist guerrilla organization that persists in armed violence.

Now that we have heard the evidence, it is obvious that the dreams for regional peace are just another kind of Latin American myth, something like the legend of El Dorado or the Fountain of Eternal Youth: a promise full of frustrations that transcended into just a fantasy.

Translated by Norma Whiting

In defense of this purported transitional agenda – to date more desired than possible – to which some seduced foreign media refer, it could be mentioned that there are in today’s Cuba, in effect, socio-political similarities with countries that carried out processes of democratic transition after long dictatorships in the last third of the XX century, among them, Portugal and Spain, the longest-lived dictatorships in Europe, although not as long-lasting as the Cuban one.

In fact, the Castro regime’s almost sexagenarian autocracy is but a failed attempt at a transition that ended up being betrayed: the drift of the pro-democratic revolution came to power in January 1959 under the pretext of overthrowing the previous dictatorship, which was imposed by Fulgencio Batista’s coup d’état in March, 1952. This awards Cubans the dishonorable privilege of having lived uninterruptedly under conditions of two consecutive dictatorships for the past 66 years.

However, and except for the reasonable variations of nuances, among similarities of the current Cuban reality and the conditions of the aforementioned countries at the moment when their respective transitions took place, there is the presence of an autocratic power based on a unique and egocentric ideology, the intense and permanent propaganda of governmental thought, coupled with the most inflexible censorship on any alternative political opinion or current alternative politics, the official worship of the leader, which is intended to extend beyond his death in the Cuban case, the exaltation of a heroic historical past that supposedly justifies the ideology and leadership of the dictatorial Power and that, moreover, defines the national standard up to the present and towards the future, social control through the repressive political police and the pro-government organizations (selective repression to sow fear and silence in society), and the State’s economic corporate doctrine, which in Cuba is, all at the same time, Government and Single Party.

However, the differences, though fewer in their quantity, are more profound and decisive in explaining the delay, or rather, the non-existence, of the long-awaited process of democratic transition in Cuba.

In the case of Portugal, the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship was the result of a military uprising that would become known as the Carnation Revolution (April 1974), led by the Movement of the Armed Forces (MFA), a rebel faction of the army led by a group of officers dissatisfied with the government, fundamentally due to the stalemates in the wars in the Portuguese colonies of Africa and East Timor.

Precisely because of the importance of the military elite in perpetuating ownership of the colonies, the army was an important political pillar for the Portuguese government, hence the possibility of a military conspiracy of great proportions in Portugal not only seemed contradictory or almost impossible for the regime, and thus was able to take by surprise the powerful political police, the most effective guardian of the Salazar regime. The capacity for organization, military discipline and the extension of the MFA, made it possible for the dictatorship to be overthrown in just a matter of hours, and after two years of political turbulence, democracy was established in the country.

The Spanish transition, meanwhile, started in 1975 after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, and was a complex civil process. In addition to the changes ordered by King Juan Carlos I as successor, previously appointed by the old head of the State as its leader, the broad support for the King played an essential role, both among a major sector of capitalists within Spain and among many Western countries, and led to the consensus reached by the political parties of the most dissimilar ideological tendencies – including elements of the old Franco regime – which eventually contributed to the creation of the new constitution, the referendum that approved it, and its enactment as the official precept of the government on December 1978, the rule of law being enshrined.

It is true that pitfalls were not lacking throughout the process, but the success of the Spanish transition also played a fundamental role in the support of sectors and personalities of the old Franco regime, who bet on the peaceful and gradual evolution towards democracy and worked towards its consolidation.

A glance is sufficient to discover that, while the similarities between the current Cuban reality and the scenarios that favored the democratic transitions of Portugal and Spain have been determined by their respective dictatorships, the departure of the autocrats from power and the processes of evolution to democracy in both European countries were made possible by social and political actors that do not exist in Cuba, or at least that have not been revealed to date. Namely: elite sectors of duly organized disgruntled military willing to change the political order, reformist elements within the political power itself that favor an orderly transition, national economic power groups capable of influencing pro-democracy changes, an opposition duly articulated and willing to generate political consensus in the interest of a common democratic destiny and, not least, an international community positively interested in supporting the emergence and consolidation of a true democracy in Cuba.

Faced with the lack of rights and the civic squalor of Cuban society, and given the lack of consensus among the opposition sectors, the Castro regime of late, now represented by a new generation of servants, holds all the trumps for a prolonged stretch in Power. To do this, it is ready to legitimize the new era of the dictatorship through a new constitution that must be submitted to a referendum in the future, and that – as expected – has already begun to notch another schism among the opposition: on the one hand, those who take on the challenge as an opportunity to say “NO” to the regime, to one party and to compulsory socialism; on the other, those who not only deny that possibility, but choose to wear themselves out in the disqualification of the former, accusing them of trying to “legitimize” the dictatorship.

It does not seem reasonable, in the midst of such a regrettable scenario, to speak of a Cuban transition. As far as many Cubans are concerned, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez is nothing more than the heir and follower of the dictatorial regime until he demonstrates otherwise. In any case, what is currently offered is a “transition, Cuban style,” a process equivalent to transition from a dictatorship of a life-long government to a government with handovers of power, but a dictatorship nonetheless.

Except that (who knows!) along the way, new actors and circumstances may appear, the miracle of a consensus among the Cuban democrats may take place and, surprisingly, the dreamed about transition to democracy might yet begin in Cuba

But those enthusiastic colleagues of the foreign press, as divorced from the aspirations of Cubans as they are ignorant of our reality, should note that until such a wonderful moment arrives – if it does – it is neither legal nor realistic to talk about a political transition in Cuba.

Translated by Norma Whiting

The recent imprisonment of former FARC guerrilla leader Jesús Santrich, accused of having links to drug trafficking, and his possible extradition to the United States – a situation that, as the high commissioner for the Peace of Colombia has declared, should be clarified judicially and not through debates between the government and political actors – deepens the doubts about the seriousness and veracity of the commitment of the leaders of the now called Common Alternative Revolutionary Force (FARC) to leave behind a past of violence and war that marked half a century of national Colombian life.

However, this episode is just another nail in the coffin of a handful of Agreements that evidently lacked the broad popular support that was attributed to them from the beginning, as demonstrated by the results of the October 2016 plebiscite, and more recently, with the popular rejection that the FARC leader received in his political campaign tour related to the presidential elections, from which he chose to withdraw.

On the other hand, public opinion is not greatly surprised by the arrest and incarceration of Mr. Santrich. It was an open secret that, after losing the financial and logistical support of the former Soviet Union, the Marxist fighters of the Colombian jungles, once champions of the cause of the poor, had rapidly evolved into narco-guerrillas.

The trafficking of cocaine and the extraction of gold which, it is claimed, were always part of the fighters’ “self-financing”, thus became essential sources for the economic and material support of the war and, at its core, for the enrichment of the members of its power elite.

It is not surprising, then, that after the signing of the Havana Peace Accords, the FARC leaders – far from looking like the leaders of an army made up of peasants, workers and other poor and “oppressed” sectors of society – in truth were transformed into administrators of goods and assets of about $345 million, according to an estimate from a list delivered to the Government of Juan Manuel Santos by the UN Mission in Colombia in August of 2017.

However, it is baffling (at the very least) that instead of the gang of the needy one would expect from those who, in theory, have suffered the privations of war and jungle, the harshness of fighting and the persecution of the army, the cream of the crop of the former guerrilla force are in a position to fulfill the obligation to have gold, money, land, livestock, means of transportation and other assets to pay to the fund for reparations to the victims of the armed conflict, as settled in the Agreements.

In this way, due to these difficult paradoxes of reality, the fruits of systematic crime, kidnapping, extortion and terror which was planted in Colombian society for decades, is today part of the safe-conduct for impunity that, though not necessarily forced or required, leaves a bitter taste on the mouths of the victims.

That is why it is even the more brazen that the cynicism with which the FARC – and here I refer to the “political party” – pretends to pose as a victim of political persecution, when one of the members of its clique has been caught in flagrante delicto of drug trafficking, according to the Colombian authorities, breaking with what was agreed in the Peace negotiations.

These days, his colleagues in arms and misdeeds affirm that poor Santrich is in his 15^th day of a hunger strike, which “has begun to wreak havoc on his health” and one we hope he is determined to continue to its ultimate consequences.

Since the accused does not have the one act-farce style, so often used by the regional left when defeat circles its wagons, this angelic image that’s being offered of a poor, unjustly incarcerated blind man (and two other companions (cronies?) locked up in the same prison), who is willing to sacrifice his life to prove his innocence, denied the assistance of his own doctors by the authorities, is almost tender. It would seem that those kidnapped and murdered until recently by FARC guerrillas had received a lot better treatment and considerations.

But perhaps such a plaintive stance only tries to mask, as far as possible, the ramifications that drug trafficking reaches among that dark amalgam of Marxist-drug-traffickers-guerrillas-politicians, for whom perhaps the failed Peace Accords – not coincidentally negotiated in Havana’s Palace of the Revolution by their historical allies, the Castros – are too much like a capitulation of their olive-green glory days, when they camped at will, kidnapping, extorting, trafficking and murdering in the jungles and towns of Colombia.

Translated by Norma Whiting

If the fissures and struggles between two tendencies of the Power cupola – one “Raulista” and the other “Fidelista”— are true (and certain signs suggest that they are), it is certain that such discrepancies were not reflected in the results of the ballots voted by the 604 deputies who participated in the “election” of the CE. But by themselves, these results do not deny the existence of such a crack, rather they suggest the possibility of agreements between both tendencies in order to safeguard economic, political, and even personal interests and privileges which are common to them, since they are a class that has held power for six decades and that has direct responsibility in everything that happened during that time and in the deep socio-economic crisis that suffocates the nation.

The election process initiated in the month of October 2017 culminates in these two days of sessions of the Ninth Legislature of the National Assembly. However, they were not exempt from surprises, among which stands out – with differences – the strange and unexplained exclusion of Marino Murillo, a member of the Political Bureau and Head of the Implementation and Development Committee of the new CE.

His absence seems all the more confusing because in his inaugural speech the new Cuban president expressed the will and commitment to continue with the implementation of the Guidelines and the Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030, drawn up by his mentor and predecessor, Raúl Castro, to whom – by the way – he dedicated an exaggeratedly laudatory segment.

Murillo should be, at least in theory, an important player with regards to the “continuist” economic policy announced by the incoming president, so his elimination from the CE – without any announcement of his transfer to “other important functions,” as explained in the case of Mercedes López Acea, following the official jargon’s cryptic style – opens the door to speculation about this high official’s possible fall from grace.

Another curious fact in the composition of the new CE is the almost nonexistent presence of any active military. Beyond the symbolic olive-green uniforms of the historical old commanders Guillermo García and Ramiro Valdés – ratified among the five vice-presidents of the CE – General Leopoldo Cintra Frías has been the only minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces who was ratified as a member.

No less notable was the postponement of the election of the Council of Ministers until the next ordinary session of the National Assembly, scheduled for July 2018 as proposed by the president himself, Díaz-Canel, taking into account the country’s complex current circumstances. The proposal was approved unanimously, in accordance with the tradition of the Assembly.

In general, and contrary to what one would expect from these momentous days, when after almost sixty years the departure of the Castro clan from the presidential armchair has finally happened, there are more unknowns left to unravel in times to come than there are certitudes that the new Cuban president had to offer.

His speech held no promises, certainties or proposals for a more promising course for the millions of the governed, who – for their part – lack hopes or expectations for the “new” government. Perhaps the only miniscule novelty of the presidential discourse was the mention, on two occasions, of the word “prosperity,” towards which, according to the “young” ruler, socialism must lead us.

Nevertheless, in spite the heir’s manifest orthodoxy, his language of the barricades and his frequent attacks against anything that differs from the path marked by the leaders of the “Revolution,” we will have to carefully watch his next steps. Rehashing old speeches is not the same as facing the reality of a country in urgent need of deep changes or refusing to take the necessary steps to reverse the calamitous legacy he has just been handed. Because changes in Cuba are not just an option, but a requirement, beyond the interests of the Power claque, its tendencies, its interests or the desires of the brand-new, freshly unveiled, president.

Going forward, what Raúl’s dauphin “says” will not be as important as what the Cuban president “does.” Without a doubt, the shadows of the two Castros – one a ghost, the other a phony reformer – will continue to perniciously influence his mandate for a time. Unfortunately, “time” is not what this new honcho has a lot of, and betting on continuity and pauses, he could end up as the scapegoat of the Castro regime. His only options are to leap forward or bear the entire responsibility for the bad works and ineptitude of his predecessors, while maintaining the balance between the factions of the old power. He won’t have it easy, but this is what he wished for. Meanwhile, for ordinary Cubans, the horizon continues to be as gloomy today as previously, but, at the end of the day, April 19^th was the first day of a government without Castros. And only that minutest circumstance is, in itself, good news.

Translated by Norma Whiting

If Brazil reached a relevant position in the world economy in just eight years, and if ever the developing countries looked with hope at what was known at the time as “the Brazilian miracle,” it is largely due to the political talent and the economic reforms promoted by Lula, which explains his enormous popularity in his country and the considerable political capital which he still has, even in the midst of the judicial process – a corruption plot not yet concluded – that has landed him in jail.

But, along with all of Lula’s merits listed above is that other essential component of the best exponents of political populism: a mixture of charisma and histrionics that the former President, now a defendant, has deployed astutely, in the purest style of the television soap operas produced by his country, to manipulate the exalted spirits of his followers in his favor. Staying in the political game, despite everything, is one of the most common tricks of populist leaders, regardless of their ideological alignment.

The hoax reached its climax precisely at the end of the 48 hours of the weekend in which he remained resistant – self imprisoned, it could be said – in the face of the order to surrender to the authorities to begin to serve a 12-year prison sentence, when, surrounded by militants of his own party (Partido de los Trabajadores, PT) and other allied parties – among which the everlasting scarlet shadow of the Communists could not be absent – Lula used popular sentimentality to invoke the memory of his late wife on the first anniversary of her death, with a Catholic mass that served to close a chapter in what promises to be an extensive and complicated saga.

Afterwards, before surrendering to the authorities, the beginning of messianism and megalomania surfaced in one who, now purified by his punishment, assumes himself as metamorphosed into the Illuminati of the poor, to harangue his enlightened discourse, with a mystical touch: “I will not stop because I am no longer a human being, I am an idea (…) mixed with your ideas.” And “in this town there are many Lulas.” Apotheosis of the peoples. The crowd cheered deliriously, tears flowed and hugs for the martyr abounded. Curtain down.

It is not personal. It is known that the defense of those who are condemned must be allowed, even from the guillotine, and that those who are hanged also kick about. However, as far as it has transpired, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was prosecuted with the corresponding guarantees under the Brazilian judicial system rules, and he is being convicted of corruption, not because of his political ideas.

Ergo, even though Lula’s downfall benefits his political adversaries, it was Lula himself who, in committing the crime, deeply harmed the PT and dirtied the “cause” of his followers. It is not, then, a “political trial,” as his regional leftist allies want others to believe, and some of them are beginning to fear they could also be splashed by this great mess of putrefaction.

Beyond all that Lula did well, no one is above the Law. After all, whoever is corrupt should be prosecuted and imprisoned, especially those who hold political office. It is true that, in good faith – and judging by the corruption scandals that are being uncovered in recent years among the political classes of any alignment – it would be said that, in order to imprison the dishonest public servants, prison capacities would have to be expanded rapidly, especially in Latin America.

In fact, the history of our region is so lavish in examples of political and administrative decay at all levels that this last uncorking, which continues to expose long chains of corruption and to implicate numerous high level politicians, should not surprise anyone. The novelty – and this, only to a certain extent – is that they are being judged, condemned and imprisoned.

We must not forget the case of the former Brazilian president Fernando Collor de Mello (who governed between March 1990 and October 1992) as the young politician who assumed the first presidency of a democratic Brazil. He won the elections in the second round – precisely against Lula da Silva – for the right-wing National Reconstruction Party, with the promise of ending the illicit enrichment of public officials.

Paradoxically, just over two years later, Collor de Mello was forced to resign because of investigations of corruption – acceptance of bribes in exchange for political favors – and influence peddling, followed by a Congress that officially requested his dismissal. A technicality in the court process prevented his being found guilty of political corruption, and that saved him from prison. However, Congress did consider him guilty and condemned him to eight years of suppression of his political rights. So far, Collor de Mello has not succeeded in his political career, although he has again attempted to venture into it.

Now, Collor de Mello’s asking his supporters back then to publicly demonstrate against what he called a “coup d’état”, seems to be part of a desperate recourse followed by presidents fallen into disgrace, beyond their political color. Years later, Dilma Rousseff took that same stance when facing her own destitution.

And these are only Brazilian references. We can also mention recent cases of fallen angels in other countries of the region, such as the left-wing Argentine president, Cristina Fernández – also said to be “persecuted politically,” the poor thing – or the right-wing Peruvian president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. It has been said that corruption is not an ideological disease, but a moral one.

And while the spiral of corruption continues to expand, dragging more and more prominent figures of regional politics in its dizzying cone, Latin Americans who are followers of one leader or another – or one party or trend or another – continue to show civic immaturity and the proverbial political infantilism.

So, instead of taking on the challenge of the moment and embracing the end of impunity as an essential principle that, without distinction or privileges, will reign over all public servants, they prefer to project themselves as if this were all a brawl between street gangs, where what really matters is not to prove one’s innocence but to accentuate the guilt of the adversary. It isn’t so much that “mine” is corrupt, but that “yours” is more so. And so it seems that we will continue to the end of time.

To paraphrase a well-known Cuban poet: It’s Latin America, don’t be surprised at anything.

Translated by Norma Whiting