Approximately four years into the process of the reinstatement of private labor in Cuba, official data acknowledges the existence of over 400,000 “self-employed” throughout the country, representing a percentage of workers that pay taxes to the State, a force to be reckoned with, given their great tax contribution to the State and the jobs they generate, that is, close to half a million individuals producing foods and services, offering income to others, and contributing to the country’s economy, supporting at the same time the State and its many institutions which are just as parasitic.
The authorities, through their media, have been insisting on how important it is for Cubans to gain experience and awareness regarding the “tributary culture” (paying taxes), since the era of “state paternalism” ended, along with its policies of subsidy; everyone should strive to earn a living based on their own capacity and resources to safeguard the revolution’s social benefits, namely the supposedly extraordinary standards of health and education that we enjoy on the Island.
Cynicism aside, the logic of the need for a tax culture is undeniable in any moderately functional society. But in the case of Cuba – are we ever going to stop being a “case”? — It appears that the tax culture that we now aspire to, which was destroyed by the government with the Revolutionary Offensive, is destined to flow in only one direction: from those who provide the tax to the tax institutions, but never the other way around.
Thus, a particular economic variant comes into play in virtue of which the producers must assume the burden of a heavy tax to the State, but the State is not required to report the amounts collected or the fate of the funds collected.
Silent taxes
But there are longer standing taxes whose fate is also unknown. For decades, Cubans have contributed taxes to the Sate-party-government through a system of evaluations from multiple quasi-State organizations that it created.
For example, if we use the official statistics, which indicate there are about 3 million State employees whose average salary is 400 pesos, and if we consider that they are affiliated with the Workers Center of Cuba and, as such, they donate one work day each year destined for a non-existent territorial militia, their contribution in this context would be about $50 million annually — about 16.66 pesos per capita — not counting what they pay in dues to their unions, which, paradoxically, represent the interests of employers, who benefit both from what the employees produce as well as what they pay into the unions.
Recently a friend and colleague speculated about the contributions of the 800,000 members of the ruling and only party. Using an extremely conservative estimate, my friend found an estimated 50 pesos per year per militant, which produced $40 million annually in contributions to the State.
In addition to these estimates, there are taxes collected from mass organizations, such as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the Federation of Cuban Women, a minimal amount, but significant because of large number of their affiliates, or the Young Communists Union, “the revolution’s youth vanguard”, in which both students and workers are active.
National Tax Administration Office
All these organizations, in turn, are supported by a monstrous (and expensive) infrastructure ranging from office buildings, furniture, fleets of vehicles, employees, materials and resources, even wages, fuel costs and electricity, etc., producing absolutely nothing.
As for the huge bureaucratic apparatus of government and its repressive forces, it is impossible to calculate their living costs. In this sense, many Cubans, especially the so-called “self-employed”, have begun to do their accounts and they wonder if it is not too much of a contradiction to help support the same system that plunders and represses and that, in addition, continues treating them like lepers.
Because, at the end of the day, the tax culture is not — as the government pretends — the imposition of a consciousness of servitude to the Master State in order to keep supposed supreme ideals that, so far, only benefit the State. The tax culture is born and consolidated from the self-awareness that individuals acquire when they reach economic independence, a road that sooner, rather than later, will have to start to flow in both directions.
The recent declaration of the birthplace of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (Camaguey, 1814-1873) as a National Monument on the 500th anniversary of the city’s founding, originally named Villa de Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe, (today, Camagüey) awakens in me the evocation of a special woman who has always resonated in my spirit.
Tula is that great poet who once chose the pseudonym La Peregrina to publish her poems, never imagining that over 150 years later, this obscure writer would borrow her familiar name to use as the distinctive signature of my own work. Because Tula Avellaneda was my first pseudonym as citizen journalist, a personal way to hide my identity behind the name of a Cuban for whom I have great affection, admiration and respect, as if she were a close friend. The strength of her dynamism was a kind of symbolic shield in the process of exorcism against the demons of fear. Tula is, in short, the only woman for whom I secretly keep a friendly complicity not devoid of a trace of envy.
Because, you know what? I’ve always preferred the Tulas over the Marianas. The nineteenth century was rich in extraordinary Cuban women. Most of them, however, went down in history for their relationship with the wars of independence, and in particular for their link — either maternal or marital- – to men who were the protagonists of these military contests. A few were warriors themselves, so they transcended as patriots for a nation that, unfortunately, has always rendered greater worship to violence than to poetry, love, and literature. continue reading
To date, the women warriors are “Marianas” (after the Grajales saga, enjoining her youngest son to grow up to go to war for an ever bloodthirsty Motherland), but, by the same token, they were relegated to the perfect stereotype of the patriotic stoicism that offers the glory of the memory at the same time that it strips away humanity, to such an extent that I can’t recall any portrait of Mariana Grajales where she is smiling, or at least with a kind and loving facial expression. In fact, her effigy was built more on hate for the enemy than on love of any kind.
A similar fate befell on the portraits of other famous and respectable matrons of the nineteenth-century’s patriotic altar: hieratic expressions, frowns, pursed lips. Such rigid perfection that it becomes alien and distant. Accordingly, they have been stored in our memories, but not in our hearts.
Tula, on the other hand, transcended through her human essence which ran over in her literary work and in her disobedient character which defied the conventions of her time. An intense, passionate and creative life was her personal crusade, breaking gender taboos. A single mom, passionate lover, free spirit and controversial, her tempestuous character shows through even after the majestic serenity of her portraits. She never felt sufficiently loved by those she loved — although she outperformed all — never understood by her contemporaries, she was respected and feared at the same time, and often condemned by the moral values of her time, but she prevailed over adversity and was a successful woman in a world where success was an eminently masculine scepter.
Her talent as a poet, novelist and playwright was the liberating gift of femininity sentenced to containment and censorship for women of her time. That was her way of transcending and rebelling, so her legacy goes beyond the narrow confines of her Nation and of a time, and she is remembered with pleasure and nearness. Tula was (is) beautifully imperfect, therefore credible.
Now, two hundred years after her birth, few Cubans know of her life and her work, but her house in Camagüey has been officially declared a National Monument. I don’t know whether, had she ever imagined it, Tula might feel satisfaction over such a late tribute as part of her city’s half-millennium celebration. Knowing her personal genius, I suspect that when she died she knew that she had constructed her own monument with the flair of her pen and the fiber of her peculiar nature.
Either way, I appreciate the opportunity that has led me to write this poor tribute to La Peregrina, my old and eternal spiritual friend, who scored, with her strength of character and the grace of her verse, the young soul of this fan who’s already traveling through the twenty-first century and, with much less talent but with equal passion, disobeys other taboos in the Cuba of today.
Cuban doctors arriving in Brazil. The joy of the escape.
In the nineteenth century, slave crews were rented out after the harvest to other landlords, providing the slaves a few trifles.
HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 12 — The recent “defection” of Cuban doctor Ramona Matos Rodríguez, who provided services in Brazil under an agreement signed between that country and Cuba, part of the program “More Doctors for Brazil” once again brings to the forefront the controversial topic of the exploitation of health professionals by the Cuban regime in its desperate race to obtain hard currency.
Matos’s claims are based on the deception which she stated she was victim of, since she was not aware of the two countries’ agreement providing for a monthly royalty payment equivalent to about $4000 per physician, of which Cuban doctors would only be paid $1000 each month, that is, approximately 25% of the total of the original contract.
Medical Sciences graduates. Professionals to export
In addition, the Cuban government would have violated the contract signed by doctors in Cuba prior to their departure to Brazil, since, in practice, they get just over $300 per month, while the Cuban bank holds back $600 to be accessed by the doctors with the use of a debit card on their return to Cuba three years after completing their “mission”.
A Longstanding Trick
The subcontracting system of Cuban doctors to other countries has become one of the most important sources of hard foreign currency for the Cuban government, plus an instrument of political manipulation for electoral purposes by some populist governments. In this sense, the olive-green caste behaves like the old slave-holding landowners in the nineteenth century Cuban sugar industry aristocracy, whose crews were rented out after the harvest to other landlords for dissimilar tasks, providing the slaves with a few coins of some other trifles. continue reading
Cuban doctors in Bolivia, instruments of populist campaigns by Evo Morales
However, manipulation of these services by the regime is neither really new nor limited to physicians. Other Cuban slaves are equally contracted out with unconscionable benefits for the regime, although the movement of physicians has been the most conspicuous and substantial. It began in the early and distant decade of the 1960’s by sending the first doctors to Algeria, and it was kept up more or less regularly in other places of the Third World, especially in African countries as part of commitments by the regime with Moscow.
They were mainly programs that responded to the political interests of the Kremlin, which Cuba was a satellite of, though back then doctors were deployed in small numbers without detriment to the health care of the Cuban people.
Since the 1990’s, rental of doctors increased with the pressing need to find alternative sources of income that would allow the alleviation of the crisis sparked by the disappearance of the “socialist camp”. Since then, the practice has been maintained at an increasing pace, with health care in Cuba rapidly deteriorating. The revenue from these contracts is not used for technological equipment, improving the infrastructure or other essential items to offer Cubans efficient and high quality service.
After “solidarity”, the facts
Nicolás Maduro has used the Barrio Alto program to win followers in the hills and villages in the jungle.
According to an undisclosed unofficial source, it is true that few Cuban doctors know how much they will earn in the countries where they provide services. “One thing is the ‘contract’ we signed in Cuba, usually at a mass meeting where they read us the ideological-political act and they presented us with paperwork which we had to sign in a hurry, without having read it and without receiving a copy, and another thing is what we will find at our destination, because sometimes reality is harder than what we imagined, and we find ourselves in a position of having to use our own funds in order to survive, or at least to improve conditions”.
Extreme violence is another danger faced by doctors in many destination countries, and their contracts, in which indemnification payments are not addressed, do not protect them against that.
An undetermined number of doctors have been murdered, while still others have been victims of assaults, aggression and rape. The lack of knowledge on the part of physicians, both about the exact amount of payments received by the Cuban government and what they will get is another trick of the regime to exploit, on a large scale, the qualified workforce that enrolls in these missions only to improve their living conditions.
Dr. Ramona Matos asked the Brazilian opposition party for protection.
Thus, the motivation of physicians is not just humanitarian but practical: to get material and financial benefits or to cover essential needs – such as purchasing what is needed to repair their homes, for example — that their income in Cuba cannot meet. “Otherwise, there would not be thousands of us willing to sacrifice, being away from the family and running many risks” said the source. There are also those who view the missions as a way to emigrate.
Our source philosophizes: “No teacher in medical school in the 1980’s explained to us that the Hippocratic Oath included abandoning the priorities of Cuban patients, but it is still difficult to talk about ethics in the current conditions.
As for the money, not all missions pay the same. For example, in Haiti, it’s the equivalent to $200 per month, of which it is necessary to disburse $50 per month for a low-quality meal, plus $30 a year for connection to the internet. At the end of one full year of work, we would have accumulated $2000 in a Cuban bank, paid out in CUC. Living conditions depend on where the doctor is providing these services: in Port au Prince it’s usually in a group home, while elsewhere it is in a tent. There is a great risk of contracting contagious diseases, such as dengue fever and respiratory ailments, etc. At the same time, extreme personal hygienic and sanitary measures must be strictly adhered to in order to avoid cholera.
Five more Cuban doctors have abandoned the Brazilian program.
Payment varies in Angola, but it averages about $600 a month, while in South Africa it’s $900 to $1000. Venezuela has been the most permanent destination, and though years ago it was attractive to Cubans because it allowed importing home appliances for some time; restrictions on imports have increased because the regime in Havana finds it more profitable to optimize extraction of hard currency of these “slaves-missionaries” through its own sales networks, at exorbitant prices.
Not all slaves qualify to be rented out. When asked about the requirements a doctor must complete to be selected for a mission, the source consulted ensures us that there is a selection process, but nobody knows the exact criteria and procedures to be followed. “There is a preceding decanting”.
For example, one does not necessarily have to be a member of the party and stand out as ‘fire-eater’, but any suspicion that they might be a possible emigrant because they have close relatives living abroad can result in cancellation of the mission. I know of many cases like this, but you are never told the reasons for the cancellation clearly. These are things that leak out. They aren’t always thorough in their research, and every once in a while, one slips by them. I don’t know who is responsible for conducting the “investigations” exactly, because they are not carried out by medical authorities, but they are done, and the methodology appears to be that of (State) Security. ”
Indignation without the indignant
Brazilian Public Health Minister, Alexander Padilha
Another specialist, in this case an instructor, details other aspects that the press has barely addressed and that constitute a serious problem: the impact the missions have had on shortages of doctors in clinics for the care of the Cuban population. Thus, at this time a very complicated process is underway consisting in taking out the “non-essential” physicians to occupy permanent positions in hospitals and offering them one of two options: go on a foreign mission or work in an office as a family doctor.
This has sparked the widespread discontent on the part of many doctors who, while they trained as required in general practice, at present they practice in diverse specialties, including surgery, from training in courses for preparation of the fulfillment of massive collaboration programs, such as Operation Miracle and others, which allowed them to rise in rank through their qualifications.
To leave the specialties they have achieved in order to handle consults in primary care means a significant setback as professionals. Some doctors comment informally they would prefer to stay at home and devote their time to private care rather than to accept such conditions. On the other hand, a significant group of physicians who finished their services abroad don’t feel ready now to repeat the experience, arguing that the risks and the sacrifices are greater than the obtained benefits.
“It’s a process of outrage, but with no outraged” a female doctor friend of mine tells me, referring to all the doctors who complain among each other about the treatment they receive from the Cuban authorities, which treats them as slaves or as basic resources, but who are not motivated enough to get organized and demand their rights.
Meanwhile, many “democratic ” governments complicity lend themselves to violations of the most basic labor rights of these and other Cuban specialists, and some institutions and international officials are pleased with the cooperation programs of the Castros and with the health rates coldly reflected in the official statistics of the dictatorship. Certainly, if there is something as vast and deep as the foundling of the people of Cuba, it’s the impunity of her government.
Raul Cast has the choice to either deepen the openings or go backwards. In both instances, he will have to face the consequences.
HAVANA, Cuba, January. According to Castro II, the General-President, the seven years he has spent as head of government have been, according to his own express desire, barely a “period of experimentation”, in which he has been forced to relax existing laws in an agonizing effort to “update” — not reform — a model that had demonstrated obsolescence since its inception.
At first glance, it would seem that we are in a continuation phase of the experiment that started in January 1959, and the period between July 2006 and December 2013 is just “more of the same” as some like to repeat. But there are certain details that dramatically change the setting, inconsistent with the intentions of the official plan and the results of the experimentation.
Self-destruction
The fact is that the “Raúl” phase of the experiment surrendered the foundation over which Fidel’s revolution was erected (except, of course, the power of historical and social control mechanisms, such as the monopoly of the press, information and repression), placing us in front of a curious process of self-destruction of the system from which, subsequently, the same class would emerge at the helm, but in a different political system. We would be thus helping an “experiment” called sweeping the last remains of the paradigm of Marxist breath by the same class which imposed it, to reinstate a market economy, paradoxically intended to perpetuate the power of the supposed enemies of capitalism. continue reading
The Cuban revolution, characterized by a series of improvisations and campaigns, did not found an ideology that would sustain it in theory, or an economy that would support it in practice. At present, it appears to be moving towards an incoherent scenario in which the ruling elite, capitalist in practice, though with a socialist discourse, would cohabit with the governed, subsisting under “socialist” conditions in practice, but with capital as their utmost aspiration.
A successor at age 75
Between the two extremes, a “buffer zone” would be made up of a managing breed, dispensable if necessary, though privileged in power with broad economic advantages and committed to it. It would consist of managers of emerging sectors with access to monetary and material benefits – such as travel abroad — and by certain executives who have been creating a gastronomic empire under the guise of “partnerships” since the 1990’s, for example some restaurants in Chinatown and other areas, and by the new, rich proprietors who have been emerging from the elite cultural sector.
Bankrupt Economy
In retrospect, one can say that, for better or worse, Cuban reality has changed more in the last seven years than in the previous 20 by a combination of factors that, nevertheless, do not depend on just the will of the government, and stem from the urgent need for changes due to the structural crisis of the system with a bankrupt economy. These changes somewhat break the monolithic immobility characteristic of totalitarian regimes and create elements that weaken it from within.
This applies, for example, to the official program of layoffs in many industrial State centers, unable to maintain subsidies and the inflation of the plans, in addition to the authorization and extension of the private labor market — euphemistically called “non-State forms of employment”, and more generally” self-employment” — having undergone successive changes from its original constraints, which officials have been forced to adjust, between advances and regressions, due to pressure from the new emerging and independent sector, which consider themselves as workers who contribute to the economy and to the State despite the controversial and abusive taxation system and the numerous restrictions that hinder their prosperity and development.
Raul and Obama at Mandela’s Funeral
Despite the slow pace of the program’s “update” and the many reforms that have been implemented, such as the distribution of land in usufruct — a form of leasing — to private farmers and successive concessions; the sale of homes, cars and other properties among individuals; the independent contracting of cellular phone service; the authorization to sell computers; the creation of an internet connection service, though riddled with surveillance checks and excessively expensive; the adoption of non-agricultural cooperatives and, most recently, the emigration reform and car sales by the State at absurdly high prices, among others.
The General-President has not managed to stop the deterioration or to advance the economy. He also has not been able to prevent the nascent exodus towards the provinces, featuring groups of self-employed who have begun to claim their rights spontaneously, and to express their dissatisfaction with the limitations of licenses and the repressive measures that restrict their activities.
In 2013 and already in the initial weeks of 2014 there have been several strikes and demonstrations in the interior, like the bus drivers in Bayamo and Santa Clara in 2013 and the small business owners who have carried out small strikes and demonstrations in several locations in Cuba — also in Santa Clara and Holguín — as well as in some municipalities in the capital, which are just a sample of the power of a private sector driven by interests that go beyond the frameworks of political and ideological commitments that can focus on rights that are eminently civic.
So 2014 could turn out to be an interesting and perhaps decisive scenario from many angles. After coming full circle, we should begin to notice the fruits of the government’s socio-economic strategy and enjoy some benefits, but it appears that the opposite will happen.
The government has the choice to deepen the openings and implement real reforms, or to go backward. In both cases, it will have to face the consequences. The “liberated” sectors that have begun to stir by themselves within a very limited space face the challenge to push and expand the gap. Meanwhile, the shortages within society are growing, there is increased repression, and discontent is growing. Maybe the General-President should consider taking a breather to meditate on the idea that speeding it up a bit would be healthy for all.
HAVANA, Cuba Just months after Graham Bell patented the telephone, an invention of the Italian Antonio Meucci, Havana hosted the first telephone conversation in Spanish, an event that took place in October 1877.
137 years after the event that would favor the island with the use of a device that definitively contributed to global development, and 132 years after the inauguration of the first telephone service in Havana, the monopoly of the totalitarian system of more half a century over communications and control of the telephonic infrastructure – besides being insufficient — has taken the Island to a brutal technological underdevelopment in this area.
On the other hand, cellular phone service, which has been implemented globally with all the features offered by the development of new information and communication technologies, remains a primitive and embryonic service on the Island, and despite that, extremely costly for most people.
Such a technological gap is not due entirely to the objective lack of capital on the part of the owner/State for investing in the necessary infrastructure to develop communications, but also to a policy bent on keeping Cubans outside sources of information and rights which in today’s world technology enhances. continue reading
Privilege of the Dictatorship
Despite this, there are those who think they see signs of change in official policy. I recently got a phone call from a radio station in a Latin American country.
The friendly colleague wanted to know my views on “the new provision of the Cuban state telephone ETECSA allowing payment from abroad for Cubans’ home phones”. Apparently, he considered this a very significant measure.
I offered some brief opinions, without much fanfare. The tendency to magnify the “reforms” or “flexibilities” of the Cuban government by some foreign journalists always amazes me, as if any of them really meant a remarkable achievement, an attempt to improve the living conditions of the population or major progress towards human rights.
The dictatorship’s privileges are: half a century of strict control over Cubans and the country, turning any crevice into an illusion of an opening. I would like to know if most of this reporter’s fellow countrymen have the ability or inability to pay their own phone bills, or if they require an authorization from their government so that they can be paid from abroad.
From my personal perception, every little step that the government takes towards what it has nicknamed “updating the model” — although no one knows exactly what model it is referring to — evidences, first, the accumulation of limits and boundaries that weigh over the Cuban people, asphyxiating their liberties and, second, their inability to afford their full practice.
In principle, any opening, however small, undermines the wall of totalitarianism to some extent, so it is positive, in that sense. However, pondering matters at their true value avoids the temptation to overvalue the facts and their scope.
Profiting from misery
Previously, Cuban wireless Telephone service (CUBACEL) introduced the option for recharging Cuban accounts from abroad — with regular “promotions” that double the phone’s call balance from a 20 CUC recharge — and we Cubans have benefited since then from the solid generosity of friends or relatives who have increased our ability to communicate in the midst of the Castro plateau, so that the current measure of allowing payment of land-line phones is an extension of the former, rather than a novelty.
Recently, an article published in the official organ Tribuna de La Habana stated, with a lot of fanfare, the coming implementation of internet and e-mail service through cellular phones, which is “mainly due to the inflow of fresh foreign funds into the country”, and also as the result of recharges from abroad.
Furthermore, they will make “adjustments in costs for voice, international messaging and local voice service…” We will have to pay attention to this announcement that will possibly imply an improvement on the technological possibility of Cubans, beyond whatever controls will be associated with it.
But it is actually the deep economic crisis and the urgent need for foreign exchange earnings which forced the government, first to “liberate” communications services previously available only to foreigners – such as cellular phone service contracts, up to then available only in “convertible” currency — and later to introduce these allowances with the misnomer of “reforms” that are only explained from the viewpoint of the expense they represent to the pockets of Cubans for sustaining a service that has no relation to the income or the purchasing power of the people.
Which is to say that the regime has literally scrounged profits out of Cubans’ misery, disguising as flexibility what is really shameful, and — even worse – it has found a certain audience to give it a round of applause. Cosas veredes, Sancho…* Apparently, in the midst of such shambles, not everyone realizes that the true secret of Raúl’s economic strategy is begging.
*”Something is surprising.” Though attributed to Cervante’s Quijote, ”cosas veredes, amigo Sancho, que farán fablar las piedras” (you see such things, Sancho, that will make stones speak) the phrase never appeared in the famous novel. Most likely, a minstrel voiced it in Cantar del Mio Cid quoting Alphonse VI “Cosas tenedes, Cid, que farán fablar las piedras”. (you come up with such things… etc.)
HAVANA, Cuba, December 2013 www.cubanet.org.- Some insist on denigrating us based on the longevity of the Castro dictatorship and our supposed inability to free ourselves from the yoke.
It is noteworthy that our most stubborn critics tend to be Spanish, which demonstrates not only faulty historical memory, but also the persistence of the type of the controversial love-hate relationship between Cuba and Spain, born centuries ago between a small colony that was able to thrive and generate great wealth thanks to Cubans’ tenacity, talent and labor and a decadent metropolis that -though one day it managed to own an empire “on which the sun never set”- never stopped being one of the poorest and most backward countries in Europe, an encumbrance lingering to date.
Perhaps the loss of Cuba in 1898, which marked the end of the once-great empire in whose dogged defense Spain squandered more resources and young Spanish lives than in the rest of the independence wars in other parts of Latin America, left a mark in its national psyche as the failure of the last stronghold of the Iberian symbol on this side of the Atlantic and the blow to her pride, finally defeated by the intervention of a nation that always valued work and technological advances more than titles of nobility, crests and coats of Arms: the United States. continue reading
Of course, the political incompetence of the Spanish crown back then is not attributable to her people, and the long years of Franco’s dictatorship is not a reflection on some type of handicap or limitation on the part of the Spanish people, with their share of repression, persecution of dissidents, executions, censorship, cult of the personality of a leader with alleged extraordinary capabilities and all the other ingredients typical of dictatorial regimes of any ideological color which ended only after the natural death of its leader.
The loss of the lives of tens of thousands of Spaniards due to massacres or executions, imprisonment and exodus were the dictatorship’s initial branding.
In the decades following permanent emigration the number of individuals reached almost one million, whose family remittances, in addition to foreign capital and tourism, became the main factors for Spanish economic growth from the 1960’s, with the added benefit of taxes that enriched the dictatorial power. Any similarity with the current Cuban reality is not purely coincidental.
There are many more similarities than differences between the dictatorial processes of both nations and the suffering of their people than the differences having to do with individuals. For these reasons, the disregard of Cubans by certain Spaniards turns out to be so surprising, and their imaginary civic or moral superiority is even more inexplicable.
Complicity with the regime
Perhaps it would be more consistent that those detractors who currently aim to lecture Cubans on democracy, the ones who approach us with offensive condescension and even attempt to instruct us on what we should do to overthrow the Castros’ regime, be responsible for thrashing Spanish entrepreneurs who invest their capital in Cuba, thus supporting the continuation of the dictatorship and the exploitation of Cuban employees and mocking the efforts and sacrifices of generations of opponents and the democratic aspirations of the majority.
That way, while taking advantage of the opportunities offered by democracy, they could be held accountable to many of its politicians, whose tolerance and even complicity with the regime of the Island has led them to smooth and elevate the path of the olive-green satraps in major international settings because no Spaniard who believes himself a free individual should keep silent or accept collusion with a dictatorship. Spaniards, least than anybody else, since they had to pay a high premium for the rights they enjoy today, and because they know that, under Franco, even the ideology of “the outraged” could not have been possible.
It’s possible that Cubans may still have a lot to learn about civil and democratic matters, let the intransigent Iberians who feel tempted to judge remember that it is not dignified for a proud nation to preach in her underwear.
“Reagan wears a skirt, we wear pants, we have a commandant whose balls roar!”(Revolutionary slogan made famous by Felipe Pérez Roque)
Sunday, January 19, 2014 | Miriam Celaya
Havana wakes up early, and before 8:00 am and there is a swarm of voices and movement. Old cars and buses rattle around the city, people crowd at bus stops and at the curb, the new day of survival sizzles. Just one block from Carlos III, a main avenue, dozens of teenagers huddle around the “Protest of Baraguá” middle school staving off morning classes as much as possible. Regardless of gender, lively, haughty, irreverent, almost all speak loudly, gesticulating and shouting from one group to another, from one sidewalk to another.
A neatly dressed and beautifully groomed student stands on her toes while she places her hands on either side of her mouth, like a megaphone:
“Dayáááán … Dayáááán ! Hey, you, don’t pretend you can’t hear me…I’m talking to you, what the f… is it with you?!”
The kid in question, half a block away, turns to the girl and laughs:
“Hey, Carla, what’s the problem? Did you catch the hash? Now you can’t stop itching and I gotta go and “scratch” it?”
“Oh, honey, you wish! You aren’t man enough for that!”
The brief dialogue is accompanied by exaggerated, lewd gestures.
Dayán approaches and they greet each other with a friendly kiss and much fondling. They join an adjacent group of classmates chattering among themselves. Every once in a while, strong words fly, like the morning sparrows in nearby trees. I look carefully at the big picture. Greetings among these young people can be a spank on the bottom, a kiss, or an expletive straight from a tavern of pirates, with an ease borne of habit. continue reading
I approach the group and identify myself as a reporter. I want to ask them some quick and simple questions before they have to go through the school gates. I make it clear to them that I will not need their names, that I will not record their answers and that I will not take their pictures if they don’t want me to do so. Some move away a little, just in case, but stay in close range, as if to hear everything. None wanted to be photographed.
Where did you learn to express yourself like that? Do your parents allow that at home and your teachers at school? Have you been brought up in a violent family environment? What is your interpretation of rudeness or cursing? How would you define the language you use? Is your vocabulary found in any of your Literature or Spanish Language books?
After some hesitation, it’s Dayán himself who breaks the ice.
“It’s OK, nuttin’, auntie, it’s normal. Everyone speaks this way and everyone knows what those words mean. At home, you have to be careful, because parents get upset if you swear a lot, but they do it just like nuttin’. Teachers rarely butt in. There is nothing wrong with that. Look, at home, there is no violence like that. I have never been hit. OK, so maybe I got smacked when I was younger and did something bad, but ‘normal’ like everybody else”.
Then others jostle to talk and offer their opinions, interrupting each other. All agree that what is happening is that in “my era” they did not talk this way because they were behind the times and there was less freedom, but “that was before”. Cursing is now “normal” (let’s say very advanced). It is true that our vocabulary is not found in books, but books are one thing and real life is another. The same is true of TV, for example. I dig a bit more and discover that not a single one of them has ever read a novel. They don’t even know about poetry. To sum it up, vulgarity is not so vulgar for them, and foul-mouthed expletives are the norm.
The school bell warns that morning classes are about to begin, and the kids push each other as they go in, laughing, having fun. I am obviously “over the hill”, kind of a brief anachronism for that day. Some, very few, say goodbye to me before turning their backs and walking away.
But just as not all young people are vulgar, the vulgar are not all young. The epidemic of rudeness that has become endemic is not a generational thing, but a systemic phenomenon.
In the afternoon, I go to a nearby avenue and skirt the lateral passageway of the Carlos III Market, by Árbol Seco Street, where taxi drivers hang out to gossip daily between fares. They drink espresso or refreshments for their parched throats. Every once in a while, profanities sprinkle the talks, especially in the friendly, loud discussions about national baseball series or car prices, whose sales were recently allowed by the State. Adolescence is far behind them; many have some gray hair to comb, others have even lost their grays.
I ask the area’s septuagenarian parking attendant if the regulars always use such foul language or if it is only in the thrill of the moment. “That is normal here. They always curse, even in the presence of women and children. There is no respect, and if you say something to them, it gets worse, so it’s better if you keep quiet”. I make it clear to him that I will not say anything to them.
Indeed, if I tried to complain to all those who express themselves using profanity, my whole day would be spent doing so, and would have gotten smacked more than once. In Cuba today, correcting someone’s manners and language is considered unjustifiable prudery: aserismo* prevails . But how and when did it all begin?
¡Asere, ¿qué bolá?!
Hey,you, wassup?
While it’s true that there have always been people who are vulgar and people without manners, only lately has rudeness invaded Cuban society, so much so that it is impossible to avoid. Contrary to the official discourse that advocates for education and culture of this society, vulgarity as a particular form of violence seems to be here to stay. From using the most foul language to the very masculine impudence to urinate in public and in broad daylight, our daily lives are becoming ever more aggressive.
If we were to explain the history of the empire of vulgarity on the Island using some of the prosaic words that have been incorporated into everyday speech at different times in these 55 years from vulgar egalitarianism imposed as state policy, probably only a Cuban brought up in this environment could understand something of the lexicon. Perhaps the story could be summarized as follows, and readers will forgive me, as I only intend to illustrate:
I just put them in my ears to protect myself from all the bad words you hear in the streets.
At first it was a guy who stormed a barracks with a group of ecobios, although when he left he was on fire when the shooting began. It became pretty bad and lacking in cold, and the ones who went to prison were better off. But, since they were such crazy dicks, at the end, they and the other cuties who joined them along the way took the bunch here, by their balls, gave Batista, who was a weirdo, a good poison, and that is how this dark affair began since here everyone is the same salsa, so whoever has an itch should scratch it, and if not….tump tu tum tump tum, bolá. Politeness and sentimentality ended, and shake it so it goes off* which one is it?
The spread of foul language and loss of good manners is already a feature of the Cuban society of the times, to the point that the general-president himself, Castro II, has publicly expressed alarm at such vulgarity. Social vulgarity, that sort of bastard child that the regime now refuses to recognize as its own, has passed out of the masses and reached the sacred threshold of its parents. And it scares them. What if one day such uncontrolled crudeness becomes violence against the throne?
Diligent criers, meanwhile, have responded immediately to the master’s whistle. Language, Did Good Manners Take a Trip? is an article where the official journalist Maria Elena Balán Sainz, after lamenting about the rudeness of speech and manners currently governing Cuba, especially among the young, delves into an analysis of the origin of the Spanish spoken in the Island and its lexical relationship with other countries in the region, on the evolutionary theory of language, its importance in human communication and care, about which she insists that, “Although it seemingly may fall on deaf ears, we cannot stop the battle for the proper use of our language, although there are marked tendencies in recent times toward popular slang language, occasionally with vulgar ingredients”.
Even she could not escape the clichés that in Cuba each issue becomes a “battle” and where all “official strategy” gets shipwrecked in sterile campaigns, though we can recognize the good intentions of her article. However, her article seems to imply that the vulgarity and crudeness emerged suddenly and spontaneously among us without cause or reason, as naturally as if it were fungi on animal feces in a pasture. Balán Sainz does not mention, even once, the coarse rusticity of revolutionary slogans, swearing in repudiation rallies, vulgarity in assaulting and beating by those who think as indicated by the olive-green creed, or rudeness stimulated and wrapped from power to try to nullify those morally different.
Those waters brought this mud …
Now, using my own words for the review, I’d say that, at first, it was the violence of a social revolution that came to power by force, which expropriated, expelled, sowed exclusions, for political reasons, of religious faith or sexual preferences, which imposed egalitarianism, condemned traditions, separated children from their parents’ home in order to indoctrinate them, fractured families, condemned prosperity, kidnapped rights, stifled the creative capacities and independence of individuals, standardized poverty, pushed an infinite migration that plagues and cripples us. I cannot imagine greater vulgarity.
Now, when Cuba looks like a scorched land, her economy ruined and her values misplaced among old slogans and constant disappointments, the regime is perturbed by the rudeness and poverty of speech, which move along proportionally with the system’s general crisis.
But Balán Sainz is somewhat right when she reminds us that our lexicon is a reflection of our social reality. Lowly, vulgar and violent language belongs in an impoverished country, where each day we can feel more and more the frustration, the precariousness of survival and the tendency for violence. It is part of the anthropological damage, so masterfully defined by Dagoberto Valdés.
Are there solutions? Of course, but they will not be spontaneous. Only the end of the rude Castro dictatorship could mark the beginning of the end of aserismo in Cuba.
*Kimba Pa’ que Suene : a raunchy Reggaeton (Latin Reggae) glorifying masturbation. Such music is currently outlawed by the government of Cuba.
Although several days late, I take advantage of a brief opportunity to connect to wish all readers a happy New Year and to wish them every success in 2014. As a special note, this blog is turning six years old around these days, so I intend to renew it in the coming weeks. I have been a bit away from this website due to other work commitments.
I was very busy during 2013 but greatly satisfied, including seeing the bookCuba in Focuspublished, which was co-edited by my colleagues Ted Henken and Dimas Castellanos and has come out in its English version. We aim to have it published also in Spanish, for better circulation in Cuba.
At any rate, we will continue move forward with our work, hopes and optimism. I wouldn’t know how to face life in any other way. I will return soon, eager with new passing pursuits. Thanks and a big hug.
HAVANA, Cuba , December, www.cubanet.org – After more than seven years since Castro I’s famous “Proclamation”, which marked his departure from the management of the government, Castro II’s performance has failed to find a path capable of leading to a happy port to end the cruise of a shipwrecked revolution.
A look at the socio-economic and political Cuban landscape lets us discern a confusing scenario in which no significant economic progress is taking place that allows for overcoming the permanent crisis, while the social sphere continues its decline, reducing the performance and quality of services, particularly in the areas of health and education, while, politically, the totalitarianism of the military elite continues. New regulations are being established that will attempt a “more flexible” system in order to wash the regime’s face and offer a gentler image outward, at the same time as repressive methods are increasing and extending inward, against dissident sectors and the general population.
The failure of the system has been sufficiently demonstrated after 55 years of dictatorship. However, the situation does not seem to point to its finale — in the face of the erratic government policies, the absence of independent institutions capable of influencing the most relevant changes and the lack of freedom of the press and information, among other factors — the reality provides an inaccurate picture in which the urgent need for radical change and the uncertainty about the future coexist simultaneously.
It is known that social transformations take place independent of the will of governments. However, these can slow or accelerate said processes. In Cuba, the tower of power has convincingly demonstrated its willingness to defer, as much as possible, a transition that would end up snatching its political power, so it is betting on a different type of strategy that will allow for its continuity beyond the changes that the system may undergo. A difficult challenge, but perhaps not so unlikely if -given the weakness of domestic civil society to prevent it- the international scenario feels complacent towards the regime or deems it propitious.
Post Totalitarianism
Many analysts agree in pointing out the unequivocal symptoms of the breakdown of the Cuban socioeconomic system as it existed under Fidelismo. Others, more optimistic, even claim that we are in a stage of post-totalitarianism. Right or not, the fact is that the Cuban reality is not the same as it was five years ago, and there is the impression that we are witnessing the end of a long period that will give way to a new era. For better or worse, Cuba is changing, but the relationship between the regime and society remain despotic and power at the top remains intact. What’s more, the historical gerontocracy seems to have found a way to perpetuate itself as a class by having mutated on itself, while avoiding a social mutation. Thus, two simultaneous and parallel systems are currently presiding in Cuba, wherein the rules of market economies, which benefits only the elite, coexists with a “socialist” distribution, which endangers the rest of Cubans. Such is the “transition” conceived by the government.
Now then, in its linguistic meaning, transition is the change from one mode or state to another one which is qualitatively different. In politics, it is the equivalent to the process of transformation from one system into another, and it has been widely used in the definition of a transition towards democracy after dictatorial governments or systems, independent of its duration and its varying repressive signs. Therefore, in the case of Cuba, it would mean a transition towards democracy, whose fruit would be the rule of law, with an inclusive constitution, not governed by political parties of ideologies of any kind, with separate powers and respect for social and individual rights, inasmuch as public power would be subordinate to a set of laws.
Autocracy in Perpetuity
Assuming this definition, it is obvious that the changes implemented based on the roadmap (“The Guidelines) born of the VI Congress of the PCC, don’t point towards a transition, but seek to legitimize the perpetuity of the autocracy. This is really an official strategy for sui generis continuity, where changes regulated by the government do not seek to preserve the system (so-called “socialist”) itself, but the political power and privileges of an elite class.
The success of this strategy would depend on the behavior of several factors, among which stand out, on the one hand, the growth and strengthening of the opposition and of independent civil society groups to the point of representing an alternative to power, and, on the other hand, the policies of democratic nations in their relation with the dictatorship or with the opposition. At present, the wear and tear of the regime and its lack of credibility are undermining its profile, both inside and outside Cuba, while the slow consolidation of the opposition and its related sectors does not indicate that foreign or domestic support will become more effective. This is equivalent to a relative stagnation in the overall situation, reflecting a precarious internal balance consisting in increases in social discontent, the growth of the opposition and its activities, and an increase of repression in varying degrees, from coercion to beatings, arrests and imprisonments.
In a general sense, and with Raul-style power nearing the end of its fifth year, the advances promised by the government have not taken place. Instead, Cubans feel that the grip of the general crisis of the system has worsened, while the government continues to score new failures in its main objectives: stopping and eradicating corruption, creating a strong inflow of hard currency and pushing forward the domestic economy, which not only makes an negotiated transition impossible to attain, but it also seriously undermines the aspirations for the continuity of the dictatorship.
HAVANA, Cuba, December, www.cubanet.org – During the days when the cruise ship Semester at Sea was anchored on Cuban territory, over 600 visitors, including students and teachers -mostly Americans– carried out a tight schedule of “meetings” with Cuban university students and toured “sites of historical and cultural interest”.
The December 11th edition of Granma published some of the opinions of the young northerners during “a brief meeting with reporters”: “I had never been so well received by the population as we were here,” commented a student from the University of Nebraska, while another one from the University of Virginia said that “Cubans are very welcoming”. But according to some in Havana who tried to contact the visitors, there was a strong undercover operation, with agents dressed as fruit vendors, pedicab drivers and even “pompously attired mulatto women” -those who dress in costumes around Old Havana to entertain tourists- monitored the area the whole time the cruise ship was anchored at port.
Other undercover individuals were posing simply as regular Cubans. However, Cubans’ sense of smell was not fooled when it came to identifying members of the pack of hounds.
Cubans who were interviewed by the visitors in each of the official program activities were selected among the most loyal communist militants, while Castro journalists covered the visit with their usual triumphalism, as if this were about another one of Castro’s achievement. But despite the careful planning of the visit’s programming by the Cuban authorities in the interests of the government’s political promotional agenda, and despite the students’ lack of contact with the population or with the diverse independent civil society, a group of them, despite controls of the political police, attended songwriter Boris Larramendi’s concert offered at the home of Antonio Rodiles (Estado de Sats), where they held a live dialogue with those in attendance, according to testimony of blogger Walfrido López, who was later detained at a police station after being violently arrested along with Rodiles and other activists and dissidents.
These students heard first-hand testimonials from those who are vying for a new Cuba, and they learned of repression and terror. They were also witnesses of the repudiation rally organized outside the home of Rodiles, in which the authorities had no qualms about using elementary school children, high school teens, and musicians who are eager to keep their perks and travel privileges, as in the case of Arnaldo y su Talisman. Arnaldo may need a huge talisman someday to explain his criminal complicity with those who repress other Cubans. There may probably be other trips and exchanges with these and other American students. Many of them reported the lack of information they have about the Cuban reality and about the true nature of the dictatorship. Hopefully these visits, laden with messages to the free world will recur. Totalitarian regimes don’t have antidotes against openness, and the satrapy will definitely not be able to keep hidden any longer the slavery and repression it has imposed upon Cubans for 55 years.
Time goes on and the funeral of the famous first black president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, still occupies the pages of the press. Almost everyone feels indebted to praise the infinitely glorious Madiba, re-editing, in countless paragraphs, the deceased leader’s life and seeking to enhance his virtues persistently, to the point that we no longer know for sure if Mandela was a human being or a saint on earth. It is praiseworthy to remember with admiration and respect people who have realized valuable deeds, but I don’t personally react well to icons, paradigms or however they are defined.
Well, then, for all good things Mandela did for his people, for his example of relinquishing power when he could have retained it, due to his charm and charisma, his ability to forgive, so necessary and lacking among us, and all the good things he did throughout his long life, but I prefer to remember him as the man he was, an imperfect individual, as all of us human beings are, which puts him in a closer and more credible position in my eyes.
So, in the presence of so many stereotyped speeches and so much politicking brouhaha deployed at the funeral of a deceased who may have wished less fanfare, I decided to honor him in my own way: celebrating his existence because he lived to fulfill such lofty mission as freedom and justice for his people, during the pursuit of which he suffered repression and imprisonment, just as Cubans aspiring to the same ideals for their people are still suffering, as those who have lived in the confinement and injustices of a dictatorship not just for 27 years, but for over half a century.
But I will allow myself a special tribute to Madiba by modestly imitating him in forgiveness and reconciliation: I forgive you, Nelson Mandela, for the friendship with which you paid tribute to the vilest dictator my people has ever had, and for the many instances on which you exalted him and gave him your support. I forgive you for having been wrong in granting privilege to the oppressor instead of the oppressed, for placing your hand –redemptive for your people- on the bloodied shoulders of the one who excludes and reviles mine. I forgive your accolade to the myth that was built on violence, although you were a symbol of peace for humanity. I forgive you for having condemned us though you hardly knew us, forgetting the tribute in blood that my people made in Africa for which you, like a fickle mistress, thanked the satrap, who has never had the dignity to sacrifice himself for us, for you, or for your kind.
I forgive you, then, and I am reconciled with your memory to keep remembering and respecting the best in you. I know many, with vulgar hypocrisy, will demonize me for questioning you, but they won’t hurt me, because my soul is hardened by virtue of having been attacked and criticized before. It is my hope that this time my detractors will be so consistent with your preaching of kindness they seem to admire so much that they will eventually forgive me. May you also forgive this Cuban’s audacity and irreverence, who believes in the virtue of the good works of men, because she has no gods, but I was not able to resist the temptation to also utter what’s mine in the hour of your death.
And if either you or the mourners of the day won’t forgive me, I don’t care. At any rate, it will be further proof that, deep down, you’re not perfect; at least we’ll have that in common. Don’t take offense, in either case, you were a great person, and I will never match any of your many merits. Rest in peace, sincerely.
HAVANA, Cuba, November, 2013, www.cubanet.org.- The present and the immediate future does not look very encouraging for the Cuban government. The socio-political and economic instability in Venezuela after 14 years of populism, the death of the partner leader and the arrival to power in that country of a president of proven ineptitude, signal a dramatic conclusion to the romance between Caracas and Havana. In fact, oil subsidies have declined because of the economic crisis in the South American nation, and collaborative programs with Cuba have also suffered significant cuts.
Castro II has failed at his attempt to implement economic reforms without the slightest change in the political system and without surrendering one iota of power and control. In fact, he has strengthened the ruling military class by granting it extraordinary economic powers, and by placing his most senior, loyally proven members on the forefront of all strategic development sectors.
The regime’s great deficiency, however, is the capital to finance a sustainable dictatorship, so that the ace up the sleeve of the General-President is to once more attract foreign investments. Hence the ZEDM and new legislation to “legalize” the satchels of capitalism in a system that declares itself as Marxist, to have unsuspecting investors feel a mirage of legal safety.
Legality and transparency
But, what kinds of guarantees could investments hold in a country that not only has repeatedly seized property and finances, but whose government also dictates and repeals laws and is, at the same time, partner in the investment, judge, and a piece of the business? Thus, what today is allowed could be eliminated whenever the government decides, according to its own interests and in the interest of international situations, whether or not they are favorable to the regime.
And when it comes to legality and transparency, potential investors should consider that conducting business in Cuba today also implies the violation of relevant international laws that condemn the working conditions of Cuban workers in those companies.
On the other hand, in an authoritarian system, and in the absence of rights for Cubans, investments are not only an important financial risk and a moral commitment to a military dictatorship, but reflect deep contempt toward Cubans and the genuine hope for change of large sectors of Cubans of all shores, who remain excluded from both, participation and the economic benefits of such investments, even though the émigrés capital supports Cuban families and yields permanent revenue to the government’s coffers, a factor that should be considered by foreign entrepreneurs seeking a long and prosperous stay on the Island.
Translated by Norma Whiting Cubanet, 25 November 2013
In numerous conversations with Cubans, émigrés as well as those “on the inside” (I share the experience of living every day under this Island’s sui generis [unique] conditions with the latter) surfaces a phrase, coined through several decades, whose credibility rests more on repetition by its own use and abuse in popular speech than on reality itself. “In Cuba, whatever is not forbidden is mandatory”.
I must admit that the former is true enough. If anything abounds in Cuba it’s prohibitions in all its forms: those that truly are contained in laws, decrees, regulations and other provisions of different levels, all aimed at inhibiting individuals and controlling every social or personal activity, what the coercive nature of the system imposes on us, even if not legally sanctioned, (for example, male students can not wear long hair, music of any kind may not be broadcast through radio or TV, people may not gather in certain places, etc.) and those we invent, that is, the self-imposed prohibitions of people who since birth have been subjected to fear, indoctrination, permanent surveillance and to the questionable morality of everyday survival that forces one to live thanks to the illegalities, that is, violating injunctions established by the government beyond common sense. It is natural that transgressions abound most wherever greater number of taboos exist.
Now, the “mandatory” is another matter. It is rather about a total legend that, be it through ignorance or for another number of reasons (irrational at that) it’s a legend that serves many Cubans to unconsciously justify their behavior and to embed themselves in the civic mess that is choking us. The list of “obligations” would be endless, but some of the handiest can be summarized as follows: belonging to organizations that are pure pipe dream, such as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the Federation of Cuban Women, Territorial Militia Troops, Cuban Workers Central, Pioneers Organization, High School Student Federation, University Student Federation, etc., all of them with payment of dues and attending different rituals according to the agendas, also supposedly of a “mandatory” nature.
But many Cubans seem to consider it mandatory to vote for the Delegate, attend meetings and accountability meetings, to shout slogans, sing the National Anthem, salute the flag, honor the martyrs of the revolutionary calendar, to sign political commitments, other documents and a very long list.
Actually, there is the assumption that failure to comply with these “obligations” would result in some reprisals, such as the loss of one’s job, our children not being accepted in some study centers, not being eligible for certain child-care or semi-boarding services for children of working mothers, etc.. However, many of us have found from experience that none of the above mentioned is in truth mandatory, but it constitutes the general answer to the fundamental prohibition that weighs over this nation: it is forbidden to be free.
Oh, Cubans! If ever the courage that drives so many to brave the dangers of the sea in an almost suicidal escape, to create a new life away from here, to survive in such precarious conditions inside, and to succeed against all obstacles outside of Cuba, could be turned into overcoming the fear of the regime, how different everything would be! If so much energy could be directed towards changing our own reality, we would make the world of prohibitions disappear in no time, that world that has kept us in chains for half a century, and we would stop feeling compelled to be slaves forever. It is not mandatory, but it is also not prohibited.
The recent election that resulted in Cuba joining the membership of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) for a period of three years has aroused contradictory positions in various opinion sectors, both within and outside the Island. No wonder, since it means the recognition of a totalitarian government that has curtailed all individual and collective freedoms for Cubans for decades, and even today continues to deny rights as essential as those of association, freedom of press, speech and information, just to mention some of the most hard to conceal.
Some optimists, with exaggerated candor, consider that the presence of representatives of the Cuban government – not “of Cuba” — in the HRC could be positive as leverage over the government, since the authorities would be subject to greater scrutiny from the organization, and to fulfill the obligations characteristic of democratic systems, which would lead to an eventual easing or transformation of the human rights situation in Cuba.
Pragmatists, however, are of the opinion that, up to now, belonging to international organizations and commissions that, at least de jure, and with varying degrees of success in advocating the defense of economic, political and social progress for Humanity, has not been an important or sufficient element to promote democratic change in Cuba.
In fact, as the official press release boasts, “Cuba was a founding member of the Council, where it remained until 2012, (…), so we are returning to the forum after a year as a State observer” (Granma, November 13th, 2013, p. 5) without an incidence of any sensible improvement on human rights in Cuba. Additionally, the Cuban government has received recognition in such sensitive areas as health, education and nutrition on more than one occasion, despite the deterioration suffered by the first two items and the chronic failure of the third. Many Cubans interpret so much recognition as a mockery of the plight in which they live and as an affront to decades of resistance, sacrifices and efforts by the essentially peaceful internal dissent.
Of course, the official press is ecstatic. A Granma editorial (Wednesday November 13th, 2013, front page) proclaims Cuba’s election to the HRC as an “earned right” and “a resounding recognition of the work undertaken by our country in this matter”. And, so there be no doubt that the government will persist in applying human rights their own way, using the same excuses as always, that edition’s page 5 editorial reprinted a statement by Anayansi Rodriguez, the regime’s ambassador to the Geneva-based international organizations.
She said that this “is a victory of the Cuban peoples that have learned how to withstand more than five decades the U.S. embargo”, and later warned that “there are no unique democratic systems. Each nation has the right to determine, in a sovereign way, what is the most convenient system for its full realization of human rights”, an ambiguous phrase that Cubans know how to clearly interpret as “the Castrocracy will continue using access to international agencies as another resource to legitimize the oldest dictatorship that the civilized world knows and adulates”.
This is nothing new under the sun, which sometimes seems to show more spots than light, as demonstrated by other obscure members also elected to the HRC on this occasion: Russia, China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, South Africa, Namibia and Mexico, countries in which, independent of nuances and gradations, violation of human rights is part of everyday reality.
Obviously, for the United Nations and its various forums, the precarious global balance requires certain concessions, even those that hurt democratic values. Thus, for better or for worse, the Cuban dictatorship will have another three years grace to try to destroy this international organization.
It is known that, beyond Cuba’s negligible human or financial support to the UN, the primary mission of Castro diplomacy is to jeopardize the functioning of all the forums created for the promotion of democracy, to thin out discussions, to distort agendas, to create antagonism, to polarize the minds and to make use of the venues as platforms to attack the governments of free nations, particularly the US, though that country – of its own choosing — does not belong to the HRC.
The democracy dreams of Cubans, orphans of rights, will gain little or nothing with this pat on the backs of the Castros. The consolation prize (for chumps) is that they will not win over the HRC or democratic countries with such dubious membership either. To some extent, except for the gaps, we will both suffer punishment and penance.
HAVANA, Cuba, November 2013, www.cubanet.org – It is known that cynicism is one of the handiest tools for dictatorial regimes, where democracy and demagoguery become synonymous terms to legitimize the interests of the authorities. It is a policy that could well be defined as “State cynicism”. While this aberration tends to increase towards the final stages of the system in question, in truth it becomes progressively ineffective when it appeals excessively to the feelings and emotions of the masses, even when it is evident that that leaders have lost the popular support.
The deep dichotomy between the official doctrine, the intentions of the ruling class, the social environs, the lack of rights and the alienation of ordinary people regarding politics emphasize the absurd, as evidenced by the words of Miguel Díaz-Canel, First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers, during his recent visit to the province of Las Tunas on Friday November 1st, where he met with members of the Associación Hermanos Saiz, university students and media workers.
An article published in the libel Granma (“Diaz-Canel Appeals for Promoting Dialogue,” Saturday November 2nd, 2013, front page), sketches Castro’s emissary in his visit to the province as something that led to “deep reflection as to how much can and should be done even in the whole country, in order to defend the true Cuban culture, confront social indiscipline, alien to the values of the Revolution, and productively address the best experiences…”
Diaz-Canel urged his audience to work together to “end the banality, vulgarity and indecency present in certain items as the expression of the pseudo-culture that the enemy is looking to impose through their programs of political and ideological subversion against Cuba”.
The government’s favorite ventriloquist did not offer any examples in this regard, but they can be inferred: There is concern and fear on the part of the upper echelons of power about new cultural trends being manifested in Cuba, especially in the capital, such as recent and spontaneous Halloween celebrations with costumes and candy, and the proliferation of 3-D movies and videogame screenings, which have spread among private businesses, escaping government censorship controls. Up until their recent direct ban and shutdowns, they were among the most accepted recreational options by Cubans.
The government, creator of vulgar repudiation rallies and the most indecent slogans, is repulsed by any influence of U.S. origin that filters through to Cubans, including holiday celebrations, which are difficult to avoid, given the steadily increasing number of Cubans living in that country with family ties in Cuba, as well as the taste of these peoples for that nation’s cultural goods, such as music, TV shows, movies, etc.
Since society’s growing discontent is known, in the presence of the permanent general crisis and the government’s inability to deliver solutions, Díaz-Canel seems to have been commissioned by the conclave of olive-green caste of elders to provide an image of democracy, strength and control. To that end, “he called on to generate an ongoing dialogue that will generate proposals” (a redundancy of Granma’s writer) and — something worthy of occupying the place of honor among the phrases generated by State cynicism — he urged to further tap “the broad potential of social networks and new technology to bring the Cuban reality to the world from all social and productive sectors”. All this was stated in one of the most backward provinces, and with the least connectivity, in a country already sharply disconnected from the world.
On the other hand, in Cuba, where there are only two completely unrelated parallel monologues – that of the elitist in power and the other one of the millions of dispossessed Cubans — dialogue has always been notably absent in the relations among both extremes, and recent events around countermeasures applied to the emerging private sector indicate that there is no real intention of dialogue by the authorities, not even with those sectors making financial contributions to the State.
In the midst of the transition to state capitalism XXI century style – a true sign of Raulism — official discourse distorts the image of the real Cuba. The un-government and the un-governed continue marching in opposite directions: the one, to the absolute monopoly of all the wealth and power; the other, to the greatest poverty and hopelessness with fewer rights. What about the “dialogue”? Just another euphemism in a channel of control that only works in one direction… forever downward.
Approximately four years into the process of the reinstatement of private labor in Cuba, official data acknowledges the existence of over 400,000 “self-employed” throughout the country, representing a percentage of workers that pay taxes to the State, a force to be reckoned with, given their great tax contribution to the State and the jobs they generate, that is, close to half a million individuals producing foods and services, offering income to others, and contributing to the country’s economy, supporting at the same time the State and its many institutions which are just as parasitic.
axes
