Image found on Wikipedia Kiwix offline

I won’t judge the politician or military man, I’ll identify with the man, the son, the father, the grandfather, the Venezuelan leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the idol of his supporters: Hugo Chávez died, the 52nd president of Venezuela. On February 2, 1999 he became the elected ruler of his country and this past October 2012 he was reelected one more time for another term. Beginning with his arrival at the throne of government, he tried to goodly prolong his stay in power and to accomplish this he was behind a ’just’ referendum and modified the constitution — a practice repeated in other so-called revolutionary processes — to guarantee the continuity of a small group at the head of the country and to eternalize himself in the job with the “revolutionary” pretext of developing his programs of government.

Fidel Castro took note of him in February 1992 when he headed a “justified and good” coup d’etat against the constitutional president Carlos Andrés Pérez. For that event he spent two years in prison — had he done so in Cuba, they probably would have sentenced him to more than three decades (although it’s speculative there are certain precedents) or condemned to death — and he was invited by the Cuban government to visit our country.

Here they treated him like a head of state and apparently arrived at commitments that marked his journey in politics, which culminated with his arrival at the presidency of Venezuela, his eternal thanks to the Cuban ex-ruler sealed publicly and repeatedly. Nobody has described the genesis of the political marriage between a high-ranking official of the savannah like Chavez with a mountain fighter like Fidel; between a man from humble roots like Chávez and one of bourgeois origin like Castro; between a dictator who killed the liberal structures of Cuba and the commander with the most democratic image recorded in the history of Latin America.

A form of government has to be created in the countries of our America in which the leaders who come to power democratically defend the maintenance of the mechanisms that made it possible for them to get there; no political system that sustains itself on duress, physical or verbal violence, the violation of rights, or on the denial of freedom of expression on the part of the people, and fear can really consider itself free.

Although I never sympathized with the ideas and plans of Chávez’s so-called Boliviarian revolution — so similar to those that have impoverished Cuba for over 54 years — I lament his death and identify with the pain of his family, and with that of the millions of followers who still mourn his physical loss.

Translated by: JT

14 March 2013

Image downloaded from http://puentelibre.mx

The third World Baseball Classic ended early for the Cuban team and left many of us with wishes to see them win over their neighboring ball club and Cuban sports narrators with wishes to travel to the Californian city of San Francisco in the United States.

If the Classics have brought us anything positive, these have been the possibility of seeing good stadiums on television, quality officiating — despite the fact that it’s not perfect — and the possibility of comparing averages and the conditions of our stars with the records and the caliber of the ballplayers of other latitudes. Nobody understands why only they permit ours to contract with leagues from other countries like Venezuela, Mexico,  Dominican Republic etc.; or why, when they retire, that they pay much less than to active ballplayers. To what or to whom do we owe this bad idea?

This Classic has been exceptional in that the games were broadcast of our teams and our commentators refer to them with respect . Could this be the preamble to a change of mentality or of flexibility of sports politics followed until now? A very little while ago we learned that the authorities respected their right to visit their country and the province of Pinar del Río, for pitcher José Ariel Contreras, who stayed abroad* on one of the trips with the Cuban baseball team and was contacted by the big leagues.

The “balls and strikes” athletes in my country play for love of the sport and in deplorable conditions in comparison with many other teams of the world. They train like professionals, but they are treated almost like slaves. All to defend an amateurism that played its propaganda role during the so-called revolutionary era, but in reality is erratic and oppressive.

Fields aren’t in optimal conditions, balls are counted and used too many time in each game, the officiating is horrible, and those chosen to make up the team that represents us internationally are victims of different pressures: seen off in political acts of our country’s leaders, “commitment to the Motherland”, speeches, display of the flag — as if they were going to war — and now, at last, also subject to the despotic attitudes of their manager.

I’ll continue defending my thesis that to be a manager you don’t have to have tyrannical characteristics or roots. In a frank summary of stress, personal needs are also present; the pressure of finding the time to go to the store to buy a team to replace Cuba’s broken one and other compromises. And to do it watched over by maybe it’s that the “guardian angels” that always accompany sports delegations which guarantee their safety suspect that it’s a pretext to stay abroad and act “in consequence”, as usual.

I can only imagine how our ballplayers feel interacting with those of  the other countries in hotels and stadiums: like orphan children whose wealth is the “dignity” of playing according to the managers and the whim of a small political group and its political model in decadence. Beyond who ends up the winner of the Classic, there will also be the Cuban fan who will have won, who has expanded his culture of baseball, enjoyed other styles of play, of management, batting and pitching coaches, and above all, better conditions in which to develop, play, and enjoy our national pastime.

*Translator’s note: These ’defections’ of Cuban sports figures have been seen as treasonable acts by the Cuban Government in the past. The fact that a defector would be allowed to visit his family home is remarkable.

Translated by: JT

16 March 2013

Graphic downloaded from “deconceptos.com”

Yamile Bargés Hurtado is a 48-year-old woman who was put through a legal process which leaves us feeling defrauded. In 2003, she traded an apartment in the Bahía neighborhood for a similar one in El Vedado with Mrs. Teresa Luisa Rivero Domínguez, co-owner of the building located at 355 3rd Street at the corner of Paseo and 2nd. Both were one-bedroom, small square footage residences; but Yamile’s was in perfect condition (new) and that of Teresa Luisa in ruins.

In 1998, Mrs. Rivero became widowed and was awarded the residence her husband, Baltazar Toledo Rodríguez, willed to her and whose title she shared. Later, the grandson of the deceased Toledo, Eliazar Yosvany Rivero Toledo, argued that the (grandparents’) marriage had broken down, and sued his grandmother that he should be registered as a co-occupant, although he had never slept in the apartment; and so it was done. The grandson never spent a night in the house, according to testimony Yamile Bargés obtained from her neighbors in the building.

Since moving to the apartment, Bargés Hurtado made huge sacrifices to improve its condition. She arranged and expanded it to be more comfortable — now it has another bedroom and more than double its original square footage — she obtained the legal licenses and subsequently, legally added the modifications to the property. In doing so, she converted a little one-room apartment — originally valued at 806 pesos by the community technical architect — into a property priced at $5,408.24.

In 2008, five years having passed of living there, after having done all remodeling and following the death of Mrs. Teresa Rivero, Bargés discovered that a dispute existed over the property. If the trade had been a legitimate fact and both women were owners of their dwellings, Yamile (her name is written without an accent) didn’t understand how someone could question her rights.

In the year 2006, the Provincial Court passed final judgment on the complaints against Mrs. Rivero Domínguez who, at the time, was in serious (medical) condition. The Court mentioned that she had lost her rights because neither she nor her notary appeared on either occasion it had summoned her.

Teresa Luisa’s son, after having been cited himself, said that he had submitted a certificate that would testify to Rivero Domínguez’s inability to appear. Without review and in absentia, the legitimate award of her house — which came to her on her husband’s death, and of which she was co-owner — was cancelled.

In the heir’s declaration — apparently altered, with blanked-out lines and in a different font — the name of the litigant grandson does not appear. The children of Mrs. Rivero swear that he was taken into account and was part of the same. Why did he not appear in any written documentation? Where does one go to look for the original file if there is inadequate manipulation of the documents?

One supposes that Burgés would have been named as one of the affected parties, but this wasn’t so. In 2006, the cancellation of the deed to her house had been finalized, and she didn’t find out about it until 2008, when she was notified of the lawsuit. A record dated 2002 alleged that the grandson had been asserting his right as “former heir” for years, violations of which do not expire. It is worth adding that in all the ordinary proceedings 114/08, they never mentioned the co-owner character of Mrs. Teresa Luisa Rivero, who’d always been referred to as “the widow”. To top it all off, she had an attorney who didn’t adequately defend her rights; to the contrary, she seemed to be allied with her opponents.

After 4 years of judicial dispute, the People’s Supreme Court confirmed the Provincial Court’s findings in favor of the plaintiff Eliazar Yosvany, to whom was awarded the residence. Next November 15th the principal victim and her daughter must abandon the building in which they have resided for almost ten years.

This is a proceeding in which there are many victims, but one of Teresa’s children, age 70, lives in the apartment passed down by his mother, and now must abandon it so that Yamile Bargés can return to her original place. Or maybe, pretending to defend the supposed rights of a grandson, they violated the rights of a dead owner and her children. What is the value attributed to a will in Cuba?

The character of a widow of Teresa Luisa wasn’t worth anything — the award of her residence was cancelled — neither was her condition of co-ownership, nor the will she left to her descendents (all this is said to be in favor of Eliazar Yosvany, but there is nothing in writing), nor the privileges of her inheritors or those of Bargés Hurtado. How many rights have been trampled upon? Beyond current law, a new legal ethic which restores citizens’ faith in the upholding of law and procedure is both necessary and possible.

In this case there is no doubt that, to honor the old refrain “the laws and its traps were made together,” the number of arbitrary acts seen seem to go beyond legal norms and have left Yamile Burgés a serial admission in the psych wards of Calixto García andManuel Fajardo Hospitals. Fortunately, Yamile keeps photocopies of each one of the papers or documents issued and required for the lawsuit.

I have no legal aptitude nor knowledge of the legal resources that should compensate all parties, but I feel obligated to give my opinion of a process I won’t say is corrupt, but that stinks badly enough.

Translated by: JT

November 6 2012