A Brief Dictionary of Cuban Newspeak / Regina Coyula

Production — that is true production — this country does not produce, but in the matter of being creative with language, we are champions.  Psychologists are at the head of the invention of words, as if our language were sparing of synonyms.  The bureaucracy cannot be more creative with abbreviations, but the press, the press has specialized in euphemisms.  I invite you to add words to this incipient list.

Newspeak / real meaning

jinetera (jocky) = female prostitute

pinguero (penis provider) = male prostitute

to struggle = to steal

diversion of resources = embezzlement

missing = misappropriation

extractions = evictions

physical disappearance = important death

self-employed = private worker

factors = participants

internationalism = Cuban participation in other countries’ issues

interference  = foreign countries’ participation in other countries’ issues

temporary facilities = ¿housing?

semi-bus = truck used to carry passengers

modernization = leave me alone and go play somewhere else

Translated by mlk.

11 March 2014

If this country needs a “Revolution” it is not in industry but in Human Rights / Angel Santiesteban

The New Container Terminal at the Mariel Special Development Zone

There is no economy without liberty

The last visit by the Brazilian ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to the Mariel Container Terminal, accompanied by the dictator Raul Castro — in order to learn of the advances of the large-scale work carried out thanks to a credit awarded by his country, and which began during his first term — was totally wrongheaded.

Raul Castro, Lula da Silva, Fidel Castro

Lula da Silva committed several errors; the first was, according to what he said to the press after the tour through the finished areas, that the terminal “represents for this country the possibility of an industrial revolution.”  We totally disagree given that this country, if it needs a “Revolution,” it is not in industry but in Human Rights, because of the deep and complex violations of the same, and in particular, against the political opposition.

One must recognize that the social achievements of the Castro brothers, in power for more than half a century, are not sustained or justified when the price for them has been the loss of freedom of association and free expression.  The magnitude of their punishments, prisons and deaths, has been and is immense.

Another blunder by Lula da Silva was to assert that — after the completion of construction of said container terminal — “now we just need to overturn the American blockade so that Cuba can full develop itself.”  Mr. Lula da Silva, no industry will be prosperous while a totalitarian regime commands it because wealth itself is in human beings, in those to whom it falls to stimulate that development, and we have spent exactly 55 years in frank decline because we Cubans are not happy.  One pretends to be happy because the cruel boot of the repressive machinery of the Castro brothers is ready to crush everyone who raises a voice against their omnipotent power.

It is no secret that the Castro brothers, for decades, bet on armed struggle in the world, advising and investing our economy in it, which is why today it is so badly battered and unhealthy.  But for the last 20 years, on learning that the times were changing, they began to sponsor leftist revolutions with which to bring future presidents to those countries, hence the appreciation of these on their arrival to power, a regional variant of the Cosa Nostra.

The greatest good that Cubans can wish for is that principled nations refuse to negotiate and use that marvelous terminal until they restore our rights and we Cubans determine, in free elections, who will be the leader to govern our nation’s destiny.

Meanwhile, not a thousand terminals like the Mariel will be able to wipe away the tears of the families and make the national economy prosper.

Sign the petiton to Amnesty International to declare Angel Santiesteban a political prisoner.

Translated by mlk.

5 March 2014

Cuban Dissidents Prepare for the Future / Ivan Garcia

Carlos Millares, Frank Abel García y Tamara Rodriguez

Carlos Millares, Frank Abel García y Tamara Rodriguez

While 17 young Cuban dissidents attend advanced courses to master the tools of leadership and business at a university center in Miami, in Havana, the newly formed Fundación Sucesores, imparts courses to the civil society in Havana. Run by sociologist Carlos Millares, 65, Fundación Sucesores has been giving classes to the nascent civil society since December of 2013.

“We told students the location at the last minute, so that the State Security wouldn’t put any obstacles in our way, preventing classes,” said Millares. The group has a collegiate direction. Besides Millares, the group is integrated by Frank Abel García, Daniel Palacios, Tamara Rodríguez, William Cácer, and Luis Alberto Diéguez. With the exception of Millares, everyone is between 26 and 40 years old.

“Since the second half of January, we’ve been teaching two courses: one for the formation of leaders, and another one for journalists and photo journalists. Each course has 10 students,” said Frank Abel.

Most of the participants are young people that recently became involved with political activism or independent journalism. The classes are ambulatory and secret.  One week, they can be at a room in ruins at the old part of the city and outside the capital limits the following week.

The leadership course lasts six months and among other subjects teaches history, law, social media, and public speaking. Intellectual dissidents such as Manuel Cuesta Morúa, lawyer René López, Julio Negrín, Arturo Torrecillas, Daniel Palacios and Carlos Millares, teach the classes.

Desks consist of seats at a dinner table or a bed. The students copy the content of the classes in flash drives. Professors only have one laptop. “We don’t have all the necessary resources, but the lack of resources cannot be an impediment to create and prepare people within the incipient society in Cuba,” said Millares.

The course of journalism lasts four months and includes 20 topics. Four of the six members from the board of directors from Successors Foundation became dissidents after they worked in State institutions.

Millares has the most experience of all. He has been part of different dissident organizations for the last 25 years. He was a curious and polemic general secretary for the Union of Young Communists in the faculty of medical science in the University of Havana.

His journey to the pacific opposition was a slow and painful process, like surgery without anesthesia. Frank Abel worked as chief of staff in Radio Rebelde, a radio station symbolic of the revolution. Abel became a provincial delegate at the radio station. He was involved in a case orchestrated by the cultural authorities against young intellectuals from OMNI Free Zone. His sense of justice made him break from the regime.

For eight years, Daniel Palacios was a sports chronicler from the official newspapers Trabajadores and Juventud Rebelde. He had a spot in the capital radio station COCO, in which along with other reporters, he tried to break with the government censorship. Palacios gave out the results from the games of the Major Leagues during his time on air in radio, and remembered that before the Castro dictatorship from 1962, there was a glorious past in baseball, Cuba’s national hobby.

“One afternoon, I received a call from Pelayo Terry’s office, who was then director of the newspaper Juventud Rebelde. Two men from the State Security threatened me and showed me mail that I had exchanged with Wilfredo Cancio Isla, a Cuban reporter from Miami. After my expulsion from my position as a journalist, they have continued to harass me,” Palacios said.

His exit from official journalism had repercussions for his family life. He lives away from his wife and daughter because he doesn’t have a place of his own. Most of his colleagues from within the state journalism have turned their backs on him.

“It has been hard but I feel good about myself, which is the most important thing,” Palacios said. Now, besides teaching journalism classes, he writes for Café Fuerte and Diario de Cuba.

Tamara Rodríguez was a commercial specialist at CIMEX, a military corporation that collects convertible pesos for the government. They tried to embroil her in a corruption case after she started to make friends with women from the Ladies in White.

After she broke ranks with the government, she became part of the group. Since the beginning of 2013, Frank Abel went to the home of sociologist Carlos Millares and told him about his interest in turning young dissidents into leaders.

Through different paths, opposition organizations in Cuba or in the United States decide to take dissidence as an option. Perhaps, today’s dissidence is uncomfortable for many exiled people from Cuba, due to their distinct pacifism and inability to create a powerful lobby group in the neighborhoods of the island.

Havana is far from being Kiev or Táchira. In Cuba, the opposition from the barricades suffers the worst. But the future could be different.

When new times arrive, nongovernmental organizations would have materialized the initiatives toward young Cuban dissidents, who have had trouble accessing a college education because of their political views. Some of these organizations are the Human Rights Foundation from Florida, in collaboration with Miami Dade College, which work with funding from private donations and the United States government.

From this side of the world, some people do not sit back. They start initiatives to promote values of democratic leadership and the use of journalistic tools among young activists.

The Fundación Sucesores is one of those initiatives. According to its members, this initiative is about a new Cuba, who above all, needs people qualified in the art of politics, democracy, and modern journalism

And that future is around the corner.

Iván García

Photo : Frank Abel García, Carlos Millares and Tamara Rodríguez talking to Iván García. Fundación Sucesores is also the name of the blog they have created.

3 March 2014

Havana: A Guide for Tourists / Ivan Garcia

Useful advice for tourists who visit the last bastion of the Cold War in the Caribbean

Useful advice for tourists who visit the last Communist barricade of the Cold War in the Caribbean

If you speak Spanish, it’s advisable to get to know Havana by taking private taxis. In a rented car, air-conditioned and with a map of the capital, it’s more pleasurable, but also more expensive, and you wouldn’t be able to chat with the habaneros.

If you know the city only through the guided visits to museums or cigar factories, organized by tourist agencies, you will have good photos when you return to your country, but you will only have seen a postcard of Havana.

You can decide to drink mojitos, stroll on the Malecon, flirt with prostitutes in a cafe where you need hard currency to listen to a duo singing Compay Segundo’s Chan Chan at your table. Or you can discover the other face of Havana, ignored by the official press. Then, first hand, you will know the priorities of ordinary Cubans.

The capital of Cuba has in its favor the fact that it still is not as dangerous as Caracas, Medellin or Michoacan. You can walk through rough and poor neighborhoods without fear of being assaulted (I advise you to go during the day).

Better than reserving a hotel is renting a room in some private home. For your trips around the city, the ideal thing is to move around in the old U.S. cars known as almendrones.

And talk to the passengers. There is no platform more authentic and liberal in Cuba than the private taxis. As in any capital of the world, the Havana taxi drivers possess a culture of speech and an acceptable level of information.

You will find out that many of the Cuban taxi drivers are doctors, engineers, retired military men or professionals who, after their work day, sit at the steering wheel, trying to earn some extra pesos that will permit them to complement their poor salaries.

The Havana taxi drivers seem to be dissidents when they speak, but they’re not. They, like numerous people you find in the lines or in the streets, openly criticize the government.

The list of complaints about the state of things on the island is extensive. Traveling in a 1954 Ford, with a South Korean motor and a Japanese gear box, you will know first-hand that people aren’t applauding Raul Castro’s reforms with much enthusiasm now.

Be prepared to listen to a dissertation on the daily hardships. One suggestion: before your trip around the city, in your backpack carry deodorants, tubes of toothpaste or soap to offer to the people you talk to. Right now, these articles are scarce in Cuba (see the Note at the end).

Havana taxis are a microphone open to different political opinions. And in their interior there is more democracy than in the monotone national parliament. In the almendrones there are usually people who think differently. Each reveals his opinion. Loudly and gesticulating with his hands, typical of Cubans.

Upon arriving at his destination, the passenger who supports the Regime says goodbye amicably to the one who wants profound changes in his country. Two details: the old Havana taxis don’t have air conditioning and the drivers listen to reggaeton or salsa music at exaggerated volume.

If you get into a jeep, which can fit up to 10 people, the trip is uncomfortable. But there is no better way to make people-to-people contact than to travel in private taxis. And they are very cheap. For 50 cents or a dollar on longer journeys, you can get to know the other face of Havana. It’s not recommended to take the urban omnibus: owing to the bad service and overcrowding, what should be an exploration of the city and a motive to make contact with its people can become a torture.

Iván García

Photo: Taken from Panoramix.

Note. In Cuba something is always lacking. Sometimes the scarcity is most visible in the capital, but usually where you find a lack of most products, food or hygiene, is in the interior of the country. After writing this piece, independent journalists were reporting that “eggs were missing.” I don’t know if eggs have reappeared, but now salt is missing.

On March 5, Ernesto García Díaz wrote in Cubanet that salt was hard to find in the grocery stores, markets and hard currency markets (TRD), where a kilo nylon bag of Cuban salt with the stamp “Caribeña” cost 45 cents (10.80 Cuban pesos). In the Ultra TRD [the government-run “Hard Currency Collection Store”], an employee told the journalist that “it’s been some time since we’ve had Caribeña salt. We are selling a fine Andalusian salt of the brand “Aucha” at the price of 1.65 CUC ($US 1.58) a kilo.”

In Cuba there are five saltworks that supposedly should guarantee the distribution of salt for the ration book, at the rate of one kilo for a nuclear family of up to 3 people, every three months. But because they haven’t managed to extract more than 400 million tons annually, the government has had to import salt, as occurred in 2008, when they bought 30 million tons of salt at a cost of 9 million dollars (Tania Quintero).

Translated by Regina Anavy

8 March 2014

Another Dream Come True / Rebeca Monzo

We left very early from Miami, a name which in the Tequesta language of its original inhabitants means “Place of Many Waters.” My friend, her daughter and I were headed to Key West. The trip was surprisingly fast thanks to the wonderfully maintained freeways.

We made our first stop at Islamorada to have lunch at Wahoo’s, a typical wood-framed restaurant anchored on the coast, where dozens of pelicans were having a quiet nap on the yachts moored there.

After enjoying a tasty and reasonably priced seafood lunch of oysters and fish, we continued on toward our destination.

The landscape of blue waters on either side of the bridges, interspersed with tiny emerald green islands, brought back memories of those famous paintings by the Cuban artist Tomás Sánchez in which water plays a key role.

We shed some tears in the car while choruses and clapping to the music of Rapture and the song “Bridges” by Ricardo Arjona (see above). We arrived at the impressive Seven Mile Bridge, along whose sides old structures built of iron and wood miraculously still stood. Through them the old railroad connecting southern Florida with Key West had once passed.

So, intoxicated by our own joy we finally arrived, charged with lots of energy, at Key West.

After enjoying the air, its old buildings, today almost all its museums, parks and beautiful and luxurious hotels, we headed down Duval Street, the main artery of the city.

We made a quick tour of the main tourist sites and cultural attractions: the Club San Carlos, in whose premises still breathe imprint Marti, Ernest Hemingway’s house where the descendants of his six-toed cats still live. In Margaritaville, where we tasted their famous cocktail listening to Jimmy Buffet music, art galleries, souvenir shops, until we stopped to drink a delicious coffee at Croissants de France, a family pastry shop from 18…

Afterward we took the typical photo at the place that marks 90 miles to Cuba, while we fantasized about future bridges that could shorten once and for all this distance that cruelly separates our two shores.

We returned to retrieve our car, parked in front of the beautiful and eclectic mansion of the López Ramos family, the “southernmost house” (the house furthest south in the USA), as it is known, to say goodbye to this wonderful place.

23 February 2014

Leopoldo Lopez’s Strategy / Juan Juan Almeida

Leopold Lopez giving himself up for arrest in Caracas

The name of Albert Einstein was considered for a time to be synonymous with academic failure; Thomas Edison too, who studied for only two years in the formal education system; also Beny Moré, known to all Cubans as El Bárbaro del Ritmo (The Rhythm Barbarian) and who, with a lot of effort, learned to read the notes on the musical stave.

These, and other examples, tell me that I form part of that group of persons who, without scientific evidence, consider that you are born with your talent; and then later, as it should do, the education system refines your innate abilities.

In politics, in my opinion, the same thing happens, since I don’t accept the notion that a leader is developed from nothing. Leadership is the ability to communicate with a group of people, influence their feelings so that they let you lead, share the group’s ideas, stick with them, and carry out those actions or activities necessary to achieve one or more objectives.

For example, and with respect, in my country (I am referring to both the ranks of the government and the opposition) I can see heads; but not leaders. In Venezuela, it’s a different story; Leopoldo López, great great grandson of Concepción Amestoy Palacios (niece of Simón Bolívar), and of Cristóbal Mendoza (first president of Venezuela), was born with a political predisposition and with leadership in his genes.

I am not trying to put myself up as a historian, I am not, or to relate the details of why we are now fixing our attention on Caracas; but I do want to say that in a similar situation, any hysterical fool, irresponsible bigmouth, or prominent sick person could have dragged that country towards a civil war and an irreparable bloodbath. But only a political tactician is able to take a government which is powerful, arrogant and ruthless to the position of checkmate.

Calling a historic march and delivering it, Leopoldo López showed his individual vulnerability; making it evident that his defence does not depend on the much overvalued cyberspace, but on the real world, on a popular mass, above all students, who live outside of the computer screen and of the “liking” of the social networks. So much so that, after he was put in prison, we have seen a considerable increase in real people protesting on the streets of Caracas.

The president Nicolás Maduro, is on the point of getting burnt by the hot potato in his hands. He knows that if he sets López free, he runs the risk of demoralisation, and the feared result of loss of control; but if he leaves him in jail, and the protests continue, the danger could be even greater.

Calling for dialogue was an important and very helpful decision by the Bolivarian bus driver, who, for the moment, counts on the support of the armed forces and institutional power; but now the opposition possesses the switch which can ignite the extremely powerful and explosive popular bomb.

The official forces stomp on the thousands of young people in the streets, who are not afraid and appear to shower themselves with Red Bull. I think that we have come to the moment for sitting down and discussing everything. The freeing of Leopoldo López, the unification of a divided country, the urgent recovery of a people … and including a negotiated exit for Maduro.

This time Venezuela will win, thanks to the opportune action of a wise and intelligent leader.

Translated by GH

4 March 2014

Hospitals, “You Are on Your Own” / Julio Cesar Alvarez

About 50,000 patients get some kind of infections annually. Lack of running water in bathrooms, clean linens, surgical gloves and even lack of brooms are among the causes.

HAVANA, Cuba. -Approximately 50,000 patients get some kind of infections in Cuban hospitals; 16,500 could die from that cause. Being admitted in a hospital is considered “more dangerous than an airline flight,” according to the World Health Organization.

More than 8 millions patients die because of a severe infections every year around the world associated to medical attention, meaning one person dies every four seconds. In the USA 1.7 million infections are reported in hospitals, causing 100 thousand deaths. In Europe, 4.7 million are also reported in hospitals with a 37 thousand death toll, according to World Health Organization.

Every year government officials in Cuba report low child mortality rates, data that  makes the Cuban Health System look great. However the numbers of infections, or deaths caused by hospital infections are not published, that could be a good indicator to measure health services quality in the island.

A hospital that has a high rate of infections among patients admitted, is not considered efficient. Even with no official data available, Dr. Rafael Nodarse Hernandez– a Microbiologist Specialist Grade 2 who works for the Dr. Luis Diaz Soto Military Hospital–confirmed in Havana that 50,000 people catch infections  every year in Cuban hospitals, as he stated to a Cuban Military Medicine magazine.

That statement was validated in a study issued by Masters in Science Luis Eugenio Valdez Garcia and Tania Leyva Miranda, from the local Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology Center in Santiago de Cuba.

In an article titled “Endurance of infections associated with health services in Santiago de Cuba local hospitals,” published by the digital site Infomed, Masters Valdez Garcia and Leyva Miranda stated: “Santiago de Cuba province has an average of 2,500 to 3,000 people  that get infections in the very hospitals they are admitted to. As of 2011, reports show 2,717 events documented, meaning 2.4 cases per 100 patients released from hospitals”.

Bathroom
Bathroom at Freyre de Andrade Hospital. Photo: Julio Cesar Alvarez

Taking as reference the 33% mortality caused by hospital infections according to Master in Science Epidemiologyst Ileana Frometa Suarez, from Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospitals, mortality would be 16,500 deaths a year.

Some doctors consulted consider this rate of infections quite high, but confess they have no idea of the number of deaths caused by hospital infections, nor the exact number of people that got infected in the hospitals they work for.

Hygiene

The key element in hospital infections spreading is the environment. Hygiene is the Achilles heel of Cuban Hospitals, not only regarding surgical instruments and medical staff, but the actual hospital buildings in which patients are admitted, especially those recovering from surgery or accident victims, and those recuperating from burns.

Hygiene has declined dearly in those institutions not frequented by the government elite or tourists. Running water is not available very often in such hospitals. Patients’ relatives must collect fresh water from tanks available in the building.

That is the way they flush toilets, bathe or clean their sick relatives. Often the rooms are cleaned by relatives of patients admitted because of lack of cleaning staff or neglectful employees. Cleaning products, clean bed linen, medical gloves and cleaning equipment are very scarce in hospitals.

In addition to the poor hygiene in all institutions, infections spread mainly through health personnel; they transmit the germs when they come into contact with patients. Relatives are a source of infections as well, when acting as improvised nurses due to inefficient health services.

According to a report issued in 2010 by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and the American Cleaning Institute (ACI), chances of washing hands are higher in a public restroom than in a hospital. According to the World Health Organization, 60% of health professionals do not comply with the requirement to wash their hands so it is easy to get the picture on how many patients’ relatives do not comply, either because of lack of publicity or because of a non-existent hygiene culture in that regard.

With such negative picture of Hygiene in our hospitals, it is not overstated that hospital infections are one of the biggest challenges for Cuban Health System, even if government officials do not talk about it or publish actual statistics.

Calixto Garcia Hospital ER. Havana.

Cubanet, March 5th, 2014,

Translated by: Rafael

Alcohol for Everybody / Juan Juan Almeida

The workers of the Nauyú distillery of Ciego de Ávila, every day produce some 50 thousand litres of alcohol by making the best use of the final syrup of the sugar industry.

In spite of the fact that the factory has been running for seven decades, without proper maintenance, its collective has committed itself to producing 90 thousand hectolitres this year, a great achievement. They envisage installing a turbogenerator and a boiler this year in order to guarantee continual production after the end of the in-crop season. The Nauyú distillery is one of the best in Cuba in terms of preparing the highest quality alcoholic drinks, up there with Varadero and el Mulata Silver Dry rum; which are famous in the national and also the international market.

Super production and super publicity, understanding that alcohol is important so as to have a confused population, but where is the promised milk for the children? And who cares about it?

26 February 2014

Cuba and the European Union: A Change of Tone and a New Dynamic / Dimas Castellano

cuba eu flagsindexIn a statement issued on Tuesday, February 11th, Rogelio Sierra Diaz, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, reported that the Council of Foreign Ministers of the European Union (EU) had authorized the European Commission and the EU’s senior representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Catherine Ashton, to begin negotiations on a political dialogue and cooperation agreement with the Republic of Cuba. He added that “Cuba will consider the invitation from the Europeans in a respectful and constructive way and within the context of Cuba’s sovereignty and national interests.”

This represents the possible start of negotiations on a bilateral agreement, which depends on the Cuban authorities’ willingness to accept the invitation. In this regard Catherine Ashton said, “I hope Cuba will take up this offer and that we can work towards a stronger relationship,” but added “the decision is not a policy change from the past,” which can be interpreted as a change of tone, not of substance. Meanwhile the EU ambassador to Cuba said that the policy is the same but there is “a new dynamic” and called the decision a “big step forward for a possible agreement,” adding that the agreement would “formalize cooperation at all levels on a firmer legal and policy basis.”

Transitions towards democracy are dependent on both internal and external factors, with the latter assuming greater or lesser importance in relation to the strength or weakness of the former. In retrospect we can see that this has been exactly the case with Cuba.

When revolutionary forces came to power in 1959, they became the source of all laws and led the country towards totalitarianism. The constitution of 1940 was replaced with the Fundamental Law of the Cuban State, which allowed the designated prime minister to assume the role of head of government and the recently created Council of Ministers to take over the functions of Congress. Subsequently, power became concentrated in the hands of the strongman and property in the hands of the state. Civil society was dismantled, and civil liberties and human rights were restricted. As a result Cubans were relieved of vital tools and opportunities for civil discourse, which meant losing their status as citizens.

In 1996 the countries of the then European Community, which maintained bilateral relations with Cuba, established the Common Position in order to “encourage a process of transition to pluralist democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as a sustainable recovery and improvement of the living conditions of the Cuban people.” That decision, which provided moral support to the island’s opposition, sharpened differences between the EU and the Cuban government. When the European Commission delegation took up residence in Havana in 2002, it  welcomed Cuba’s request to sign on to the Cotonou Agreement (1), opening a new stage in bilateral relations. However, the imprisonment of 75 peaceful dissidents in 2003 and the execution of three young men who attempted to commandeer a boat to escape the country led the European Union Council (2) to reaffirm that its Common Position remained valid and in force.

In 2008, when hurricanes deepened the country’s internal crisis, the government signed an accord restoring relations with the EU and agreed to restart a political dialogue. The European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba issued a statement announcing the decision, with the Spanish government playing a key role, repealing the Common Position. However, just as Spain assumed the EU presidency in 2010, two events dashed the arrangement: Cuba refused entry to Spanish EU deputy Luis Yanez and the Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo died the following month of a prolonged hunger strike.

If the Cuban government were now to accept the EU’s offer, it would have to agree to a dialogue on the subject of human rights and proceed to reestablish what it should never have abolished in the first place. Interestingly, we are not operating under the same conditions as in the past, when then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Felipe Pérez Roque, said in reference to the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, “If the EU were to drop its insistence on a sterile and confrontational voting procedure, then Cuba would be inclined to sit down with the EU to work out a plan.” He added that Cuba “would feel a moral responsibility to abide by the European decision and would sign the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights the next day, indicating that we had entered a new stage in our relationship.”

Judging from the words of Catherine Ashton, certain demands would have to be on the table for EU countries to agree to negotiations.

She noted that, first, Cuban statutes would have to be brought into compliance with the United Nations Charter and all its instruments of international law such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 30 of this document states, “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as conferring any rights to a state, group or person to engage in any activity or perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.” It is a provision that for Cuba has special significance, as it was one of the sponsors of and signatories to this important document. Secondly, it would  also have to ratify human rights conventions it signed 2008, which form the legal basis for the principle of personal dignity and guarantee that the planned changes will have a positive effect on Cuban society.

To meet the first requirement, the Cuban government would have to halt political repression and summary imprisonment. EU countries would encourage exchanges with civil society so that Cubans might gradually emerge from the political margins to recover their status as citizens. This would help promote popular sovereignty so that Cubans might become the protagonists of their history and destiny.

In addition to other issues on the table there should be a requirement that the soon-to-be drafted Labor Code once again include the right to form free trade unions and the right to freely hire workers, two things that were part of the Labor Legislation of 1938 and the Constitution of 1940. Similarly, the new Investment Law should allow participation by Cuban nationals since the programs in which foreign investors are being invited to participate will be worthwhile only if Cubans benefit from these changes by having their rights restored. In the case of the Mariel Special Development Zone, the project will be of enormous benefit to the Cuban economy provided it helps lead to the country’s democratization. Otherwise, these steps will only strengthen the current economic and political model and condemn Cubans to continued civic, political and economic poverty.

(1) A comprehensive partnership agreement between the EU and 79 countries from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Article 9, paragraph 2 states: “The Parties undertake to promote and protect all fundamental freedoms and human rights, whether civil and political or economic rights.”

(2) Name for the European Community’s heads-of-state and heads-of-government summit, which takes place regularly, at least every six months.

From Diario de Cuba

14 February 2014