Cholera Came to Stay / Anddy Sierra Alvarez #Cuba

images
Avoid cholera. Wash your hands well.

With the outbreak of Cholera in the eastern provinces, to cite an example: Granma province.  Result of contaminated or stagnant water for several days.  Citizens obliged to store water because of declining supplies on the part of state entities.

When the outbreak’s development reached its peak, the government took small, practically secret measures.  Many of the Cuban citizens resident in other provinces, principally the Havanans, found out about the problems in the east of the country by rumors finally proven by an advisory notice from the Minister of Public Health, in which he said that there was a total of three deaths, all of them older (elderly) and several infections.  “But the outbreak was controlled,” said the source.

When the government decided to take measures on the trips from any province to the affected corners.  Already many Havanans with relatives came and went from the affected places.  Because of having taken the measure of suspending trips to the affected provinces, it was not the correct solution.  With a short note of important character, alerting Cuban citizens that no matter the means or how important the problems were, not to travel to the country’s east.  Because of having a Cholera outbreak in said areas.

The government knows that Cubans do not use the state transportation routes to the provinces. More trips occur on their own than as passage from the bus terminal, on trains, or the airport.

Today in the Cuban capital we are facing the same problems as in the east.  We have an outbreak of Cholera that the authorities have not wanted to recognize.  With meetings in the education centers alerting their workers that there is an outbreak of “acute diarrhea.”  A township like that of “Cerro,” already four known deaths from the virus.

How did said outbreak occur?

Preparation for years that the island had in losing little by little the public sanitation, the international doctors or the foreign students.  Many of them coming from poor places and away from civilization.  Where illnesses like Cholera, AIDS, etc., have developed strongly.

Drinking water contaminated by sewage water, result of the exploitation that the hydraulic networks suffer that on letting the water flow gives way to the entry of rubbish.  By having breakdowns in the main networks mentioned.

Today the country has a very poor public health service, the loss of customs on the part of Cuban society, bureaucracy that delays taking action to eradicate something.  They make of the locality an area where illnesses are favored.

Translated by mlk

January 21 2013

Raul Castro’s Government: A Crime Against Public Health / Juan Juan Almeida #Cuba

AguaWithout being very skilled in medical matters, and with onlyslight knowledge, I read that cholera is a very infectious disease, sometimes serious, produced by bacteria of the genus Vibrio. Itmanifestsas an epidemic where deficient sanitary conditions, overcrowding,war and starvationexist. And, its high mortality because ofdehydration is due fundamentally to the delay of patients in going to hospitalor to the lack of access to health services.

It was a sickness eradicated on our island, and according to information extracted by the Medical Sciences Information Center of the Matanzas Province, before this reappearance, the last cholera patient in Cuba was Manuel Jimenez Fuentes, who died of this illness August 3, 1882, when the island was still a colony of Spain.

Nevertheless, the number of people afflicted with this gastrointestinal infection exceeds four figures; and a well-informed friend from theMinistry of Health assures me that the institution expects this epidemic to affect more than 15 thousand people across the national territory because already the illness hascrossed the borders of the eastern provinces; today cases are reported in Camaguey, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Havana and Pinar del Rio.

The health authorities are urgently developing measures and, it is believed, a system of epidemiological vigilance over acute diarrheal illnesses. The international doctors arrived from Haiti have experience in treating patients with this disease. But this is not a task onlyfor the Ministry of Health; it should also include each and every one of the areas of government. They are all responsible.

It is true that with the absence of cholera cases on the island for more than a century, they managed to maintain in the population a low perception of risk; aside from the terrible conditions of national unhealthiness.

The fault, the abundant rains and high temperatures. In Cuba it has always rained cats and dogs, and the heat is geographic; the true cause is the lack of cleanliness, the lack of social awareness, and the inaccessibility of the population to information and themeans of prevention and keeping good hygiene. The epidemics are inextricably linked to — among other factors — the consumption of poor quality water, contamination, and thecrowding of the population in slums that lack basic infrastructure.

What is unfortunate and brazen is that Raul Castro’s government opts again for silence, complicity and deceit.

Why manipulate opinion and lie? Why say that they are working on the creation of a vaccine capable of fighting the epidemic if the available vaccines against cholera in the world only offer partial protection, 50% or less, and for a limited period (from three to six months at the maximum)? That is exactly the reason why immunization is not recommended, because it offers a false sense of security to the people vaccinated and, also, to the health authorities.

The most effective prevention in the face of an epidemic is personal and collective hygiene. Even so, this government applies taxes to imported hygiene and cleaning products, which makes them scarce, and basically they can only be acquired with convertible currency. For me, that is profiting from the health of the country; and in the penal code those are wellestablished as CRIMES AGAINST THE PUBLIC HEALTH.

I remind the General; for he who does not know how to lead, resigning is an excellent option.

Translated by mlk

January 19 2013

Of Euphoria in the Streets and the Cuban Reality / Juan Juan Almeida #Cuba

This Monday, January 14, many news agencies paid special attention to the implementation of the anticipated migratory relaxation that eliminates restrictions for Cubans to take trips abroad.

And it was logical, although I doubt that “the exit prohibition” will stop being applied by the Cuban government as a control, sanction or coercive measure to those citizens whom I will not mention now because you are quite familiar; it is interesting to know that Cubans may (at least according to the law), travel abroad with only their passport and, if appropriate, the visa that the destination country may demand.

But look, let’s put everything where it goes, we must not confuse this euphoria in the streets with the Cuban reality. The Government, using this measure as an anti-depressant for desolate times, is returning to its owners what it should never have stolen from them: the basic right to emigrate and to travel abroad. It is not a change of policy, it is a Kafkaesque metamorphosis.

Charity is good business. It is true that this measure seems an act of generosity, but it is purely economic. We are only witnessing another usual uproar of marketing and deception, organized by the same people who spent years trafficking mercilessly in the illusion of the Cuban people.

Let’s look at a little history. A while back the low demand of passengers and the worse direction of the country caused a big impact on the operational costs of Cuban Aviation. The country’s air transport was completely broke. Cuba was without airplanes and had to sell its sky, its transoceanic and domestic routes.

It was then that foreign businesses (and exiled Cubans) helped resuscitate a dead man who did not want to close his eyes. The matrimonial well-being of these foreign companies lasted a short while with the olive-green monarchy, on feeling itself reanimated but very pressured by international companies, and intense and voracious in their ambitions, remembered that its “business” was not in the price of the letter of invitation, the white card or the exit permit, but in the juicy earnings that the sale of passages in a monopolistic regime could bring in.

The refrain says it well, “The rooster never remembers when it was a chicken.” It is because of that that today, with the obscene quantity of millions of dollars annually that come from Venezuela, Cuba restores its air park and stimulates, through “the approval of this migratory maneuver publicized as human decency,” an urgent flow of desperate travellers obliged to buy round-trip passage.

And, being poorly planned, maybe that is why last November they withdrew the travel permits of the Airline Brokers agencies, whose company operated seven weekly flights from airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale to Havana and Cienfuegos; and of C&T Charters.

Does it seem a coincidence that, after thousands of Cubans have become nationalized Spaniards, Friday, December 7, the giant Iberia would announce the cancellation of its flights to Cuba because of poor passenger traffic heading to Spain?

No, it is all a question of money. I do not need to go to Africa to recognize these vultures who from the cross prefer the nails.

Translated by mlk

January 15 2013

About the Migratory “Reforms” / Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez #Cuba

In February 2008, the United States government granted me a special humanitarian visa for my consequent admission into Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami in order to treat my severe cardiovascular infection which I still have. Because I put as a condition real guarantees of returning as soon as I finished the examinations, and not accepting the humiliating condition of permanent exit from the country, the political police denied me the famous exit permit.

Friend who follows me on Twitter, it still has not occurred to me to reactivate my passport, foreseeing the little Castro-communist game. But if I ask myself, in the case of seeking it, will the tyranny permit me to leave to go to the hospital and then return, knowing that I will neither shut up nor leave?

Camarioca, in the ’60’s. Mariel in the ’80’s. The rafter crisis in 1994. And now, the migratory reformers: the escape valves continue, the strategies continue, the bleeding of our nation by the Castro-communist tyranny continues.

Alert, compatriots. Alert, compatriots. This can be a little game of incalculable and dire consequences for our nation.

Translated by mlk

January 15 2013

Patient No. 1 in Object 20 of CIMEQ Hospital / Juan Juan Almeida #Cuba

From: http://www.lanacion.com.ve
From: www.lanacion.com.ve

Since the Venezuelan president remains admitted in Havana, conjecture about his health seems to revert against the most conservative sectors, and to undermine the credibility of the serious enterprises dedicated to communication.  It is no coincidence, it is a very well laid out plan; because as my grandmother used to say, “In a game of patience, you have to think like a man who acts, and act like a man who thinks; when your exits are exhausted, the best thing is a strategy.”

About President Hugo Chavez’s state of health, we believe that we know a lot, but we do not know everything.  It is pure and simple manipulation; from one side, we have this reduced group with access to the commander that ably has decided to dispense the truth in order to gain time and legislate; and from the other, those that, consciously or unconsciously speculate with the information.

The Cuban government is expert in managing secrecy in order to boost with it the media roar and profitable mystery that death and immortality always create.  Its bunker par excellence is the quasi-inaccessible, impenetrable and murky “Object 20,” nestled in the labyrinthine CIMEQ Hospital, built in the style of Stalinist gigantism.

With audacious engineering and appalling decoration, since 1986 Object 20 has been a temple to the Egyptian belief in life after death.  A construction attached to CIMEQ Hospital but with its own autonomy, built for the purpose of satisfying the ego and paranoia of power and security.  My experience with that place is stormy; therefore, in my personal opinion, it represents a threat more than a seduction.

Object 20 is a kind of sanctuary. When we enter through the basement, we go directly to a spa designed in accord with the ludicrous taste of whoever still longs for the nights of the erstwhile Communist Moscow. Thick walls, soundproofed and fortified by immense slabs of Jaimanita stone darken the Olympic-sized pool, which the sun never touches; on the side a darkened and unused gymnasium fitted out as an Italian fashion statement follows a musical therapy space, two steam rooms, a sauna, two pools for contrast baths, a jacuzzi, equipment for hydromassage, an area to soothe stress, and a well-stocked pantry. All this is watched by four guards who stay on alert, in front of closed circuit cameras.

Exiting through the rear one finds a squash court and a running track. As the spa is built with very high ceilings, this place has no first floor; on the second are situated the intermediate and intensive therapy rooms.  And on the third and last level, after a room for bodyguards, an infirmary and a pantry, there are five patient rooms from which and through a wide, one-way window (of high impact and German fabrication) that they always keep spotless, one can see a pretty countryside with yagruma trees.

The strategical fort turned into a center of international political relations can only be accessed by obtaining authorization from the office of General Raul Castro. And to top it off, when there is a High class or VIP patient, as is the case, neither doctors nor nurses, service personnel, bodyguards, telephone operators – absolutely no one is permitted contact with friends or relatives, let alone with the outside. The comments that come out, either the Cuban government releases them in order to control opinion, or they are scurrilous inventions.

Of one thing you can be sure, the Venezuelan president is the best attended patient on the planet, with products ranging even beyond the world of medicine and pharmacopoeia. A competent team works unceasingly for his improvement. They know that if the Bolivarian leader were to die in Havana, the cause of death would be questioned immediately, divisions within the ranks of ALBA would be created and the little reliability that remains in the Cuban health system would be destroyed.

Translated by mlk

January 14 2013

The Castro Dynasty Turns 54 Years Old / Ivan Garcia #Cuba

fidel_and_raul_castro

January 1, 2013, the Castro brothers’ autocracy turns 54 years old. That leaves 20 years in order to equal the duration of a Communist Party in power, the CPSU, in the former Soviet Union.

Only North Korea, China, Vietnam or Mexico with the PRI, have been governed longer with the same party. In the succession of its governments, Cuba is comparable to North Korea. With the difference that the Sungs have governed since 1948. It is true that on the island the impressive cult of personality that exists in red Korea is not practiced. But what has made us emulators of the North Koreans has been the continuity of power in a single family. No other communist state has created a dynasty.

Fidel Castro is the indisputable leader of the Cuban Revolution. Founder of the July 26 Movement, no one — or few — knew who he really was when he entered Havana on January 8 of 1959. From his turbulent past, some historiansidentified him as a gangster gunman in his years as a university student.

If he was a Marxist, he never practiced the ideology openly. He did not serve in the Popular Socialist Party. Nor in his letters or dialogues with friends from that period has his support or admiration for the Soviet cause been demonstrated. More likely he was a home-grown guy. Future history will tell us what was his true motive for turning 180 degrees in his democratic and liberal discourse of 1959 and making a giant leap, enlisting in the socialist bloc of eastern Europe.

Anyway, Fidel Castro is a quite anarchic Marxist. At his whim, he conciliated the discourse of the humanist Jose Marti and the quotes of the general Antonio Maceo. And he tried to give his support to the Communist ideology bypromoting and supporting with weapons and money the armed struggle in Latin America and Africa.

Despite Castroism not being a recognized ideology or doctrine, nor existing a text that explains to us what it deals with, in Cuba its followers call themselves “Castristas.” A dangerous cocktail of fanaticism, authoritarianism and personal loyalty. If the leader, as they still consider him, tells them they should mobilize for a war against gringos, here go his partisans to build anti-aircraft refuges and to train with AK-47s. In his name and his revolution, thousands of Cubans were disposed to immolate themselves in the missile crisis of 1962. Or they departed for unknown places in Angola and Ethiopia and involved themselves in civil wars.

For the official discourse, Fidel Castro is synonymous with Fatherland. Whoever opposes him is a traitor and can go to jail. Then in 2006, because of illness, Fidel saw himselfforced to cede power to his brother Raul, a clear dynastic intention pervades the air of the Republic. If the sons and nephews of Castro I, in appearances, are not installed in the estates of power, the offspring and relatives of Castro IIdo have intentions of controlling the State.

Now the brothers from Biran are two grandfathers, 86 and 81 years of age, in full retreat. Cuba’s luck will be decided in the next decade. Maybe sooner. The economic monopoly exercised by the military entrepreneurs and the control of special services by Raul’s son Alejandro Castro Espin permit glimpses of the succession within the power apparatus.

With an illegal, hounded and weakopposition, the designs and plans of the Castro brothers to “perpetuate their revolution” are not preposterous. It remains to be seen how long Castroism is capable ofsurviving when its creators no longer live. It is complicated to make predictions about Cuba’s future. It’s the same for an unexpectedsituation changing the path of the island towards democracy, so in 2059 thousands of Cubans may gather in the Plaza in order to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the revolution.

January 1, 1959, few on the island and in the world thought that a bearded young man of 32 years of age and his retinue of guerrillas would occupy power for the next 54 years. No statesman or dictator in the 20th century governed as long as Fidel Castro. A world record thatnow belongs to him.

Ivan Garcia

Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images. Taken from Global Post.

Translated by mlk

January 6 2013

A Painter’s Christmas in Taguayabon / Mario Lleonart

Last Sunday the 16th in our church in Taguayabon we celebrated a Christmas concert that we dedicated to the whole town.  From the doorway of our temple the musical group “Alabanza DC” from “The Trinity” First Baptist Church of Santa Clara offered the most recent of its musical productions in relation to this special season that celebrates the birth of Jesus for all of humanity.  It was exciting to see the front of our church full of people who became partakers of the good news through the musical message as on the original occasion the chorus of angels did for the humble shepherds.

Today Tuesday the 25th, Christmas Day, we again dress in our best.  This time in order to, with our own resources, present the classic Christmas drama “A Painter’s Christmas,” written by our beloved brother Luis Bernal Lumpuy, a Cuban exiled in the United States.  It is now the second consecutive year that we present a work of his.  Last year it was “A Musician’s Christmas” about which we all still have such good memories.  Between the choruses and creative movements a group of amateur actors will give their best to present the beautiful story of a father who returns home for Christmas.  I hope also that on this Christmas so many needed miracles will be performed and so many wrongs will be righted.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Translated by mlk

December 25 2012

Again Something From the “Wild West” / Fernando Damaso #Cuba

Photo: Rebeca

Three years ago I went with Rebeca to greet the New Year at some friends’ house, located on Águila Street in the Central Havana district. What happened to us there became the basis of a post in her blog in which she described events in what had to be called the “wild west.” We decided not to repeat that unpleasant experience. This year she is travelling, and since “man is the only animal who trips over the same stone twice,” I accepted our friends’ invitation.

At twelve midnight, at least on Aguila street, the savagery of three years ago was not repeated; this time only water was thrown. Nevertheless, when after one in the morning I decided to retire, I found some adjoining streets — Neptune, San Miguel, San Rafael and others — besides being wet, had bags of waste and other objects scattered along them: the old and healthy custom of throwing water on the streets in order to dispose of the old year, has degenerated, for some, into this barbarity.

The renowned writer Leonardo Padura, wrote an article series not long ago, calling attention to the ruralization of the city of Havana, which has accelerated its deterioration and lack of hygiene. I would go a little further and speak of its marginalization. Abandoned by many of its children — those born here — and occupied progressively by immigrants from other provinces — with natural exceptions, not precisely in many cases their best exponents –it has been subjected to looting and destruction by those who lack emotional ties like identity with the city, and vulgarity, social indiscipline, disorder, physical and verbal violence, mistreatment, lack of respect, rudeness and many other negative phenomena, previously unknown,having prospered. The terrible thing is that all this happens before the complacent gaze of authorities of all levels, who do nothing effective to eradicate it, and also of many Havanans, participants and accomplices in the practices.

Havana is ceasing to be the capital of all Cubans, as the propaganda of a well know local television station says, in order to become the capital of all the marginalized. Do you doubt it? Walk any day through Downtown Havana, El Cerro, Diez de Octubre and other townships, and even through Old Havana, through the non-tourist streets. Like here, officially, the old year is not dismissed nor is the new one received, but only a new year of Revolution — with a little number and everything — and that in itself constitutes a social phenomenon linked to violence. Won’t this be, for some, a popular and original way of paying homage to it?

Fernando Damaso

Translated by mlk

January 1 2013

Christmas Yesterday and Today / Yoaxis Marcheco Suarez #Cuba

By:  Yoaxis Marcheco Suarez

I often remember the lyrics of that song by Carlos Varela, hummed by many of my generation:  “I had no Santa Claus, nor Christmas tree. . .”  And I remember it not only as the popular song from that time in my life, but as the social reality that surrounded my adolescent years.  I have always believed in the Biblical God and of course in the story of his Son who was born in the humble and almost forgotten village of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ.

Although I know that Santa Claus and the Christmas tree are not elements of that first and authentic Jewish Christmas, from childhood they were for me symbols of celebration and joy, like the little hats and the pinata that no child should miss on his birthday.  But in those first years of my life, in Cuba, Christmas decorations and cuttings were strictly prohibited.  It was a capital offense to turn on colored lights in public establishments, whether markets or any other entity, and whoever did it at home ran the risk of being frowned upon by Committee for the Defense of the Revolution neighbors and then that the chief of the block would not recommend them for university study or to get jobs.

Celebrating Christmas was synonymous with being a believer, and being a believer was indicative of being disaffected with the Government, unsuitable for the system, and also discussed by Marxists as: ignorant, incompetent, a person of numbed reason and low intelligence.

Still and all, in contrast with Carlos Varela, I was able to enjoy the emotion of those trees made of natural branches, that started green and ended the Christmas season totally dry, but always full of life, illuminated with dozens of incandescent, 60-watt bulbs, painted with vinyl paint and many times fixed, without being able to blink, because they did not give us resources for so much.

Between the leaves and at the base of the tree, big strips of white cotton simulated snow, and on the top an enormous star, made of cardboard and colored yellow, almost gold, imitated the bright star that shone on the happy night of the birth of the Messiah.  There were no presents, they were times of many needs, although the more ingenious brothers did make little dolls of cloth, small Santas that we children could take home in order to daydream about the chubby little man who rode a sled pulled by reindeer and travelled throughout the world distributing gifts to well behaved children.

I remember the question that one of my childhood friends asked her mother on the occasion of the Day of the Kings:  Santa does not see me behave well, why else does he forget my presents?  I confess that I was incredulous with respect to Santa, although I have always enjoyed the Day of Kings remembering the gifts that the Magi from the East put at the feet of Jesus.

As a girl, it was impossible to believe in the little fat man in the sled, the presents conspicuous by their absence, but in spite of that it was good to see the lights shine on the tree in church and to hear the Christmas carols.

Today when the colored lamps and garlands adorn government agencies and stores, when having a little tree at home is not out of this world, when at least once a year the “militants” from the Council of Cuban Churches offer radio homilies, and televised Christmas concerts within the well controlled framework of official television, it seems that everything is smooth sailing in terms of State-church relations.

Those relations, which are not as smooth as they seem and let alone at at full sail, just let the wise understand that the current Cuban state saves the vinegar for churches and that a considerable number of these last just try to survive and readapt to the apparent coverage that is offered them.

In my own case I long for those dry branches filled with yellowish bulbs, but with churches truly healthy in spirit and centered on Christian love.  Churches that were powerful in little and that gave valuable lessons in courage and dignity when they were voraciously attacked by the revolutionary government.

Still today the same political system of yesteryear prevails in Cuba, it conveniently tries to change its facade, and even go to the extreme of denying what history has left in the mind and memory of many Cuban believers from those fateful times.

But although Christmas has never been allowed to be celebrated in Cuba at any price for sincere believers committed to the faith, Carlos Varela and his famous song continue as a living and unquestionable testament to the not so distant past, when humming a Christmas carol, lighting a tree or putting out a nativity scene, was more objectionable than robbing a bank.

Translated by mlk

December 22 2012

Why the UBPC Cooperatives Failed / Dimas Castellano #Cuba

cpa peopleindexLast August, the Cuban Council of Ministers approved a new General Regulation for the Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC), which was complemented by a packet consisting of 17 measures. The purpose, according to the daily Rebel Youth on September 23, consists of liquidating the dependency of those with respect to state enterprises.

The original Regulation issued in 1993, although it did not recognize the legal character of the UBPC, which is to say, the capacity to acquire rights and contract obligations, stipulated in its foundational points the correlation between production and income and the effective development of management autonomy.

The breach of those and other positive aspects was reflected in the poor results. Of the 170 thousand hectares that the existing 1,989 UBPCs possess, almost 40% of their lands remain idle; although their extent represents 27% of the agriculture surface of the country, they produce only 12% of the grains, tubers and vegetables and 17% of the milk; only 27% have satisfactory results; the rest, to greater or lesser extent, present difficulties; in the year 2010 15% of the UBPCs closed with losses and another 6% did not even present a balance sheet; and their losses exceed 200 million pesos.

The UBPCs were created when it was demonstrated that the concentration of the country’s arable land in the hands of the State had generated disinterest of the agricultural workers, the generalized debasement of agricultural products and enormous expansions of vacant lands infected with the marabou weed. A deplorable picture aggravated by the loss of the subsidies provided by the socialist countries of Eastern Europe.

In that context the country’s authorities decided to convert a part of the unproductive state lands into cooperatives, but without giving the requisite freedoms nor waiving the monopoly of property. The ignorance of the essence of cooperativism and the subordination of economic laws to ideology explain both the cause of the failure and the effort to repair that decision with the recent measures.

The Declaration of Cooperative Identity, adopted in 1995 in the 2nd General Assembly of the International Cooperative Alliance (ACI), defines the cooperative as an autonomous association of people who voluntarily join to address their economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations by means of a business of jointly and democratically controlled property.

In accordance with this definition — of an organism like the ACI, that since1985binds and promotes the cooperative movement in the world — the UBPCs are not classified as true cooperatives since they were not created voluntarily by the owners of land and means of production but emerged from an agreement of the Communist Party.

In spite of the new General Regulation (Resolution 574 from August 13, 2012) the UBPCs will count on legal personality; the power to elect the administrators for the majority of the General Assembly of Partners; to buy products and services from any legal or natural person; to establish direct contractual relations with the input provider companies; and to decide the percentage of the utilities to distribute among the partners; other vital aspects are still missing.

Again it is the State and not the agricultural workers who make the decision to join in cooperatives. If it is added to that that those workers are not owners but usufructuraries (a kind of lessee) of a state property, it is not difficult to envision that we are facing the beginning of a new failure and therefore the need to implement new reforms, good for the current government or good for the successor, until the UBPC members become collective owners of the land they work.

The virtual lack of agricultural cooperatives before 1959 is understandable because of the advances in the sugar industry since the end of the 19th century which had generated enormous landholdings through the dispossession of thousands of small owners. What is absurd is that with a revolution that declared itself socialist, cooperativism, akin to that social system, has been absent and in its place they have experimented with arbitrary and subjective forms applied vertically by the revolutionary State.

Before 1959 there were in Cuba some hundred thousand landowners, to whom were added another hundred thousand to whom the Revolution delivered ownership titles with the First Law of Agrarian Reform of 1959. Those two hundred thousand farmers constituted the basis for the development of a true cooperative movement. Nevertheless, the concentration on the part of the State of 70% of the arable land was a coup de grace to a process of association that had contributed much to the Cuban economy and society.

The first manifestation of state arbitrariness in the agriculture cooperativization was the creation in March 1960 of the sugar cane cooperatives in areas that previously belonged to the sugar mills. Nevertheless, the decision to monopolize landownership made these businesses become property of the State. Then the true cooperativism was limited to a few associations formed over the base of private farmers.

Fidel Castro himself once expressed: “those cooperatives have no real historical basis, given that the cooperatives are really formed with the farmer landowners. In my judgment we were going to create an artificial cooperative, converting those agricultural workers into cooperativists. From my point of view, and maybe applying some of the verses of Marti, slave of the age and the doctrines I favored of converting those cooperatives that were worker cooperatives and not farmer cooperatives into state enterprises.”

Not satisfied with most of the soil in the hands of the State, instead of promoting voluntary cooperativsm, there began a process aimed at diminishing the quantity of independent farmers. In May 1961 the National Association of Small Farmers was created, and a policy aimed at trying to “cooperativize” the 200 thousand farmer owners began. Farmer associations were created, then came the Mutual Help Brigades and next the Cooperatives of Credit and Services (CCS),made up of farmers who maintained ownership of the land and the means of production but lacked legal character.

cpaindexAfter 1975, with the thesis of the 1st Congress of the PCC concerning the need for cooperativization of the land, the development of the Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CPA) were promoted, formed by farmers who united their farms and other means of production “voluntarily” as a means of socialist development of the countryside.

At the end of 1977 the number of CPAs was 136 and in June 1986 it was 1,369, representing 64% of the farm lands, at the same time that state ownership had increased to 75% of the arable land due to the reduction of volume of land in the hands of private farmers.

The results were not long in coming; Cuba has to buy from outside agricultural products that are perfectly growable in our soil, as is the case with the coffee that we have had to acquire in Vietnam, a country that Cubans taught how to reap the grain. That’s why insisting on reforms of the cooperatives without permitting the farmers to be the ones to voluntarily organize and without counting on the collective ownership of the land that they work, is to insist on failure.

Published Wednesday, November 21, 2012: http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/14133-por-que-fracasaron-las-cooperativas-castristas

Translated by mlk

November 26 2012

Part Seven? / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado #Cuba

I do not understand how it occurred to the Sunday staff of the “Art 7″ movie theater to exhibit, on December 9th, an Indian film just when the 34th edition of the Latin American film festival is being celebrated in Cuba! I know that my compatriots from that environment have a high level of professional and cultural instruction and that in order to work in Cuban TV the aspirants must pass through several filters of ideological verification in order to prevent “politically disagreeable accidents” in that vital medium of mass circulation for governmental propaganda. As we all know, to err is human, and that program’s collective committed a blunder like anyone. I just want no upstart to want to take advantage of that slight fumble in order to go whisper in some intolerant ear abouthidden subtexts and intentions where perhaps there are none. Or are there?

Translated by mlk

Spanish post
December 19 2012

The Effect on My Life of the Death of Oswaldo Paya / Mario Lleonart

opindexThe sacrifice of the precious life of Oswaldo Jose Paya Sardinas and of so many other martyrs that have preceded him in this type of targeted assassination, far from terrorizing me, stimulates me to continue forward in my ministry which cannot exclude the condemnation of this despotic regime.

When I said goodbye to my friend Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, beaten to death in May 2011, I was already asking who would be the next victim in one of the posts that I then wrote, and we have buried after him Laura Pollan (October 2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (January 2012) and now Paya (July 2012).

I am heir to an uncountable multitude of martyrs who preferred dying over refusing to preach or live the liberating faith of Jesus Christ, the same faith that motivated the life and work of the irreplaceable author of Project Varela.  In this sense, as a follower of a Jesus who gave me an example by not shunning the cross, and who asks us to follow him also carrying ours, I do mine, as also Paya did his, his own responding words before the death threats sent by Herod:

And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets. (Luke 13.32-34, KJV)

But throughout history what tyrannies never seem to learn is what Paya himself had already noticed about tyrants:  Be careful with those you kill, they might spur the people’s yearning for liberty.

Translated by mlk

November 21 2012

Primary School in Cuba: Crisis or Regression in Quality? / Ivan Garcia #Cuba

I have a nine-year old daughter, and due to the laxity in primary education, her mother and I have seen ourselves obliged to invest more time and money than we would like in order tostrengthen her knowledge.

When she was in first grade, her teacher, 18-years-old with poor teacher training, used corporal punishment against the students every time she lost her patience. The mistreatment happened often. The girl was vulgar and angry. Besides, she scarcely had any culture and little or no teaching vocation.

Repeated complaints to the director of the school and letters sent to theMinister of Education by some parents provoked a transfer of the teacher to another school. The logical thing would have been to expel her from teaching. But the lack of primary teachers in Cuba caused the educational authorities not to take drastic measures.

My daughter came home fearful because of the screams, blows and insults of her teacher. She began to reject school. She barely progressed in reading and math. After her school day, her mother and I reviewed with her for two hours daily.

For 10 convertible pesos, half the salary of a professional in Cuba, we hired an experienced, retiredprimary school teacher for the purpose of elevating the quality of her instruction. Also, we paid 3 convertible pesosmonthly to an English teacher.

My daughter’s situation is not an exception in Cuba today. I would say it is the norm. Many families surely have a history of complaints to tell about faculty mismanagement.

According to the official press, there is a deficit of 14 thousand teachers in primary and secondary teaching. Fernando Ravsberg, reporter for BBC on the island, says on his blog that it takes great abilityto write an article of 1,400 words about the scarcity of teachers and not oncementionthe low salaries that they earn.

The regression in the quality of education is intimately tied to the ridiculous salaries. A teacher does not earn more than 500 pesos. He receives no extra money in currency. And his social recognition has fallen precipitously. When a young person chooses the teaching career, it is almost always because he has failed in his effort to pass entrance exams in other degrees considered more “prestigious.”

To be a teacher is the last card from the deck. Many men opt to study in lightening teaching courses as a way of escaping military service. It is not rare to see a former primary school teacher washing dishes in a luxury hotel or preparing homemade pizzas in a private business.

A good teacher is one of the most valuable contributions to the country that the GDP does not usually pick up. Who does not remember superb classes in history or literature by a virtuoso teacher? The good teachers are never forgotten and they are not only thanked for what welearned, but also for the way in which they taught us. Behind great professional and honest men, there is always the hand of a great teacher.

At this point we are going backwards. Right now, in the homeland of Felix Varela, Jose de la Luz y Caballero and Maria Luisa Dolz, among other outstanding educators, being a teacher is somewhat trivial. An office of last resort to notswell the unemployment statistics.

If in Finland, a European nation in the vanguard of education in the world, they assign the highest level teachers to primary teaching, in Cuba the opposite happens. The statistics reflect that on the island there are more than a million university graduates. Thousands of technicians. Zero illiterates.

It is laudable. An achievement of Fidel Castro. With his stains: teaching is highly ideological. And on the higher level, if you openly demonstrate your political discrepancies, they might throw you into the street.

In his timid and incomplete economic reforms, Raul Castro must have contemplated an important improvement in the salaries of primary and secondary teachers. An official from the Ministry of the Interior or the Revolutionary Armed Forcesearns a thousand pesos a month. They have a mobile telephone paid by the state.

They can get goods at cost in exclusive stores for officials. And every year they go on vacation at military villas where they pay for their services with very little money. The generals’ club enjoys greater prerogatives. On the other hand, Cuban teachers earn miserable salaries, and their work is not recognized by the government.

Low quality education is now reaping its fruits. Mediocre professionals, with spelling mistakes and incorrect use of language. Youngsters without morals or civics whom school does not motivate. The refrain, you can never know too much, fell into disuse.

The qualitative regression could be stopped if the State dignifies the teaching profession and its role in society. To the contrary, the educational crisis will continue to become more acute. We are going down that path.

Photo:Year 1950-51. Third grade students in Public School No. 126 Ramon Rosainz, located at Monte and Pila, Havana. They appear with their teacher, Miss Ines. At that time, teachers were very valued and respected by society. Before 1959, in public and private schoolsin Cuba, individual photographersmade portraits similar to this one, which were sold to parents for 50 cents or a peso. The first on foot on the second row, to the left, is Tania Quintero, my mother, then 8 years of age.

Translated by mlk

December 12 2012

Strange Christmases / Rebeca Monzo #Cuba

Workshop of Rebeca

From girlhood, the happiest time of year for me was Christmas. Maybe because the general atmosphere that surrounded that date was happiness and relaxation. All the adults became friendlier, maybe because they received their “bonuses,” which generally equaled another month’s salary,making them more tolerant of the smallest and youngest of the family and of the neighborhood, who back then were like an extension of this.

I always observed with curiosity, but also with the naiveté of a girl, that my aunts and my mother, days before the key dates — Christmas and the day of the Three Kings — would restore old toys and dolls, cleaning them and making them new clothes, so that everything was shiny. I remember that one of my aunts made tin soldiers, which my grandfather later took charge of painting suitably. All this process of pouring the melted tin in the molds fascinated me, and I watched with delight. I never associated this busy workshop with anything but another chore, in a home where everyone was very hard-working. It was not until my cousin Ignacito, the most mischievous of us, approached me in secret and told me: “Cousin, the parents are the Kings. If you want to prove it, the night before stay awake like me to see my father dressed as a King, placing the toys around the Christmas tree.”

After he made this confession to me, I realized that these restored dolls and toys had become the property of other children in the neighborhood from families with fewer resources than ours.

I adored my cousin, he was my hero, and tried to follow him in all his antics. I joined him the night before the anticipated day. Trying to fight sleep, finally Morpheus overcame me before I could see my fantasy shattered. But now things would not bethe same, and in later years, I did not feel like leaving water and straw for the camels. Nevertheless, I do not know for what hidden reason, I continued believing and feeding that illusion for several more years.

I grew, and with my adolescence came the year fifty-nine. The first thing that I saw vanish was that pretty family that I had always so much enjoyed: my aunts and uncles and with them my cousins. That was a strange pain that I had never before felt, as if something was broken inside of me. Later my friends left. No more walks to window shop, no more scent of fresh pine in the doorways of the stores, no more garlands or toys. All that disappeared. I never again heard those Christmas carols and songs, not in the streets or on the radio, much less on television: they were replaced by marches or anthems.

For more than fifty years I longed to again hear a Christmas carol or song. This never happened. Nevertheless, this year, with the new boom in the small businesses and the ingenuity of the self-employed, we have spent the whole summer, until today, listening to the improvised ice cream carts, announcing themselves with music of carols, which evidently (because everyone has the same) have been incorporated, possibly with the music that comes with the garlands, which are sold at the currency raising shops — as we call the hard currency stores.

This has become something like that “you did not want soup, but you drink three bowls.” Nothing, that for more than half a century was a shortage, now has become an overdose. The only signs that it’s Christmas are those little carts and the paladares, the private restaurants.

Translated by mlk

December 8 2012

Eagles Don’t Eat Bird Seed / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado #Cuba

Tío Sam
Taken from “Wikipedia Kiwix”

It is a secret to no one that the Cuban government has fixed its attention on the possibility of negotiations with the United States that could be advantageous to them.  To divide a part of that society and its US investors who want to trade with Cuba seems to be the strategy designed to keep them entrenched at the head of the Antillean country without the threat of politically binding commitments.

They have outlined a plan of selective commercial bites that permit them to have lucrative benefits with capitalist associates, who worry about the enlargement of their bank accounts and are not interested in other matters that could affect their ties with Cuba. That is why they silence we Cuban dissidents who are committed to a process of normalization of relations with the giant from the north.

It is like the irony of asking the United States to lift the embargo, but only that part that impedes their obtaining earnings, not in a complete way. Sometimes it even seems to me that they are thinking of doing the same thing with respect to the Common Position of the European Union, where they prefer to take care with its dividends so that “they do not risk their businesses with inappropriate petitions for rights and freedoms for Cubans.”

It is possible that the planned and “shiny” package, also includes the intention of creating controversy and debate within the US and European societies, in which it is an advantage to them to be treated as an underdeveloped, small, blockaded country, that “fights strenuously to move forward.”

That seems to be the motto they have been repeating for years to the rest of the world, including fundamentally to Washington and Brussels. No one mentions the dictatorship or the embargo on civil and political rights and liberties that the government imposes on its people: whatever does not suit them does not exist. They are victims before the foreigners, victimizers with their fellow citizens; they are humanitarians with others, but with us they have been a barbed whip in almost all aspects of society.

In the almost 54 years of this model, we have learned that they are only effective at militarization, political discourse — not always well founded — strategies for permanent command and control. The militarism established in the early years made it possible for them to be rapacious with their compatriots in the exercise of power and facilitated their systematic violation of the fundamental rights of Cubans.

In the present, they are taking steps in issuing, revising and repealing some laws, and although they are not making all the progress that we need, at least it means a small advance in dismantling old structures and procedures that anchored and formed mentalities with which they cannot advance towards a model a little more human, which seems to be the objective of the leadership of Raul Castro.

They want to reestablish relations with the United States — clearly with conditions — and they were working to pierce the nest that they publicly despised and verbally attacked so many times — and still do — by which they trampled their rights — as well as with those of many Cubans — by confiscating their property without compensation.

It seems that so many years in power have deluded them so much that they believe they can fool their opponents with some few moves on the bilateral political chess board, like easily defeating an opponent with a bishop check. Today they present themselves to US society as innocents and tempting prey, but they only offer bird seed to the rich descendants of the bald eagle, which as everyone knows, are also carnivores.

Translated by mlk

December 6 2012