Havana: Castro-McDisney Theme Park / Luis Cino Alvarez

HAVANA, Cuba- Some years ago the American sociologist George Ritzer adopted the perspective of the “McDonaldization of society.” Within this, and thinking of the Disney parks, he coined the term, “McDonaldization of tourism.”

It would be interesting to know Ritzer’s opinion about the great theme park that Cuban has been turned into. Or the several sub-parks that it’s divided into, according to the interests of the visitor.

For ideological tourism, Cuba continues to be the mecca of the world left, now before than yesterday, in the face of the proto-capitalist reforms, they call them “Guidelines,” updating the economic model or as they call it, taking it apart and auctioning off the pieces.

Then, they rush to make the pilgrimage before the Revolutionary story is exhausted, the almendrones (the old American cars) stop rolling, before they tear down the old buildings and the prostitutes and pimps adjust their rates to those of Bangkok or Amsterdam. continue reading

Of the Revolutionary utopia, all that’s left is what the tourists see, planned in advance, and that’s exactly what the guides show them. The tourists don’t like unpleasant surprises or upsets. Before, with unpredictable people, they could ruin their day talking about their troubles; the tourists prefer to talk with happy, helpful people, salsa dancers like they expect them to be, although they can get rude about the tip.

The do indeed assume that here the Revolution doesn’t abandon anyone to their fate, instead of certain crazies and beggars who roam the street, the tourists prefer to take pictures of those who resemble the Comandante, those old guys with the long beard, olive-green shirt, military cap, and licensed by the City Historian as “extras.”

The Havana on sale from Eusebio Leal is like that recorded by Landaluze. A shed to raise hard currency. Tourist postcard folklore. Orthodox mosque and cathedral without worshipers. A garden-cemetery for the rich, with colorful earth and the shadow of a convent. Black-robed fortune tellers with Bayajá scarves.

A virtual Havana, sepia, Technicolor or olive-green: of the wallet and the private taste of each person depending on how they color it.

Cohiba cigars, mojitos and Cuba Libres without Coke. Artisans, guerrilla berets and posters and T-shirts with the fiercely dreamy face of Che Guevara. Pseudo postmodern and almost post-Castro art, just enough to sell well. Salsa and son. Girls and boys for rent: sexy, tanned, healthy and educated at bargain prices.

A picturesque scam just meters from the deep, real Havana. The one that talks loud and swears so as not to explode from rage. The city that smells of the rum and roast pig of hard currency restaurants, with stinking sewers, sweat, grease, coffee mixed with God knows what, dirty reefs and uncollected garbage.

In the midst of the Havana tournament for the crumbs of tourism, foreigners wander around sunburned and laughing, as if they were in the best of all worlds. That other that says it’s possible and that they seem to see embodied in Cuba, where the only annoying thing is the heat.

They roam between the columns, gratings, establishments with first world prices, and buildings in ruins. Dour police in black or grey berets everywhere they look, with their rubber nightsticks and unmuzzled dogs, keeping order. If they exaggerate the task, no matter. They are the guardians of the park, don’t forget, and the place is also under siege by the Yankees, which explains any inconvenience.

Cubanet, 25 February 2014 | 

luicino2012@gmail.com

Jurassic Cuba / Miriam Celaya

Mass demonstrations in Venezuela. Image taken from Internet

The news agencies don’t have a moment’s rest these days: a satrap in Ukraine has been overthrown through demonstrations and street protests amid the harsh winter, people stand on long lines to see with their own eyes the pomp and pageantry in which the ex-ruler, an ally of Russia, lived.

In Venezuela, student demonstrations continue, supported by opposition leaders finally came together to confront the Maduro government. In Ecuador, the opposition has just delivered a commendable blow to the government authorities by winning an unquestionable majority vote during local elections this Sunday February 23rd in important places like Quito and Guayaquil, putting the brakes on the rampant President of the “citizens’ revolution.”

The world is moving at breakneck speed, changing scenarios and uncovering new players, while we in Cuba remain in the political Jurassic era, with a government of dinosaurs perpetuated in power. continue reading

Judging by the official Cuban press, external reality does not seem to exist, so the “events” may be a gray “syndicate” congress in a country where no syndicates exist, a few “reforms” that do not reform anything, or whatever is dictated by a government that misgoverns a colony of ants that spends its days striving for sustenance, untouched by the joy of the liberated, ignorant of the will and courage of the opponents of Nicolas Maduro, the civility of Ecuadorians who opted for the polls to control the excessive power ambitions of a thug vested as president, and of everything that happens in the world beyond the reefs of a damned Island.

Venezuela hits us especially close, because of its shameless sponsorship by the Cuban dictatorship, obsolete and ruined, extending its evil shadow over a nation rich in natural and human resources. Fortunately for them and for us, Venezuela is not a country of zombies. Nevertheless, it causes sadness and apprehension all at once to see evidence that other peoples are capable of what we are not.

Pity our country, Cuba, whose children choose silence and flight instead of exercising their rights against the olive green satrapy that condemns them to slavery and poverty.

Translated by Norma Whiting
24 February 2014

Communique from the Venezuelan Resistance / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Sunday, February 23, 2014

OFFICIAL COMMUNIQUE NUMBER 1 FROM THE VENEZUELAN NATIONAL RESISTANCE

Resolution concerning the position of Venezuelan citizens who continue street protests against the Castro-Communist regime that operates illegally in Venezuela.

WHEREAS:

The noble people of Venezuela, sick of the treason by the militaristic cabal and Castro-Communism agents who control power, went out February 2, 2014 in the state of Tachira to protest against insecurity, inflation, scarcity and plundering of Venezuelan resources and were repressed and attacked by the repressive forces of the regime, causing dozens of injuries and several detentions.

WHEREAS:

The national discontent, in the face of the oppressive economic crisis unleashed by the Castro-Communist Agent Nicolas Maduro Moros, after the devaluation of the currency, permitting the monthly plundering of a billion dollars in order to maintain and reconstruct the economy of the island of Cuba, attacking and destroying Venezuelan enterprises, subjecting the people to outrageous shortages that keep them demoralized and frustrated in long lines in order to obtain basic products, caused the rest of the country and some 50 cities to join a national protest today converted into a RESISTANCE. continue reading

WHEREAS:

The military, Diosdado Cabello, which occupies the presidency of the National Assembly and the engineer Rafael Ramirez, in the presidency of the PDVSA, are co-authors of the nation’s economic damage, after being the executive arms of each measure that directly benefits them and their corrupt groups embedded in the exchange control authorities.

WHEREAS

The protests that have had a peaceful character and that have been attacked cruelly by armed groups of mercenaries and assassins in the pay of the regime, gathered in the so-called social collectives, identified as Tupamaros, La Piedrita, Carapaicas, and another 92 groups with an average of 100 to 120 members each, have caused hundreds of injuries, damage to private property and residences throughout the country, student deaths, which demonstrates a Terrorist and Assassin State with the purpose of generating fear and chaos in the civil population that today heroically RESISTS in the streets the crimes against humanity to which they have been subjected.

WHEREAS:

Already ten Venezuelan citizens, students, have been assassinated in the streets of Venezuela in the middle of civil and peaceful protests.  Crimes committed by the regime’s mercenaries, calling themselves “collectives” or the Bolivarian National Guard, bodies that act together and are what sustain the criminal and traitorous cabal clinging to power.

WHEREAS:

There are hundreds of complaints of unlawful arrests, outside the legal order, warrantless searches, torture of detainees, students subjected to reporting regimes, the illegal incarceration of the citizen Leopoldo Lopez, national leader of the Popular Will party, attacks on political parties and persecution.

WHEREAS:

Amid the regime’s desperation it has sought to develop with the political agents of the opposition, gathered in the Board of Democratic Unity, who call for deposing the civil street protests, offering A DIALOGUE as the only exit from the massive social, economic and political crisis that Venezuela is living through and that said political agents have failed in those efforts.

WHEREAS:

The regime has implemented a ferocious censorship and media manipulation in order to prevent Venezuelan citizens from being up to date on the reality of events, subjecting dailies to newsprint shortages, purchasing through intermediaries audio-visual means of communication, radio and written, using Conatel as a censor entity and repressor of radio broadcasts in almost the whole country in order to try to hide from the world the crimes they are committing.

RESOLVED:

FIRST:

We decide to maintain, intensify and redouble the efforts of the protest action, now become NATIONAL RESISTANCE, until the following objectives are reached:

a) We demand that the members of the armed collectives and those loyal to Castro-Communism be disarmed, investigated and incarcerated and that the para-military action of these groups, which has cost lives, be stopped.

b) We demand that citizens Jose Gregoiro Vielma Mora and Francisco Ameliach, both governors from the states of Tachira and Carabobo, respectively, be subject to immediate investigation for being the masterminds and around whom revolve the action orders of the collective mercenaries who kill students in cold blood.

c) The RESISTANCE in the streets will continue in protest, the petition for SURRENDER AND JAIL for the citizens mentioned in point (b) of the First Resolution.

d) We demand at stop to the regime’s attack on all the productive enterprises established in the country, in all areas. The primary sector, manufacturing and commerce, so that the lines of production may be re-established and to avoid the famine that Venezuela has entered.

e) We demand the criminal and independent investigation of citizen Diosdado Cabello who has been at the front of the military operations of the Bolivarian National Guard against the noble people of Venezuela, committing crimes against humanity, registered and documented, carried out by officials of said repressive body.

f) We demand the removal of all the high command of the Bolivarian National Guard, chiefs of the various detachments, to submit them all to investigation as being suspected of committing war crimes against the people of Venezuela.

g) We demand the removal and criminal investigation of citizen Rafael Ramirez, president of PDVSA, primarily responsible for the economic debacle that lives on in the country, who is at the head of the regime’s economic decisions by being the vice-president of the economic area of the PSUV, singled out as promoting and being part of the corruption in Cadivi, the shipment of oil tankers without any record to criminal regimes like that of Syria, producing inflation and poverty in Venezuela.

h) We demand the irrefutable and non-negotiable surrender of citizen Nicolas Maduro Moros from position as president of the Republic, who must submit himself to investigation and first of all demonstrate his authentic Venezuelan nationality, clarifying to the country with reliable proofs all the events related to the physical disappearance of Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez who held the presidency in order to clear the legality of his ascendance to power being Vice President in the administration of the deceased President.  To be investigated in relation to Cuba and the rest of the Latin countries that receive oil perks from Venezuela in order to buy political consciousness and votes in the Organization of American States (OAS). To be investigated for his participation in orders centered on the mercenary collectives to massacre Venezuelan citizens.

i) We demand the FULL LIBERTY of all fellow students and civilians detained in the protests and the investigation of each case of torture, raid or persecution and to establish responsibility and criminal punishments for each soldier implicated.

j) We demand full freedom for all citizens considered political prisoners for years, including the leader of the Popular Will and the end of the persecution of the rest of the leaders of that party.

k) We demand the dismissal of the entire board of directors of Conatel and their prosecution for violating Human Rights in accessing the information of every citizen, after the repressive censorship that it has imposed on the people in the last two weeks.

l) We demand the mass surrender of the High Military Command, generals traitorous to the people of Venezuela, repressors and assassins, suspected of being narco-traffickers, submitted by the foreign military and civil forces of occupation from Cuba.

m) We demand the immediate expulsion from Venezuela of all the Cuban Castro-Communist agents present in the operations against civil, political and economic liberties of Venezuela.

SECOND:

We demand the creation of an Independent National Commission for Criminal Investigation, legally binding, with protection so that it may carry out the investigations that they manage to take before national and international justice according to each case of those responsible for the destruction of Venezuela and the crimes against humanity.

THIRD:

We declare that the Democratic Unity Board (MUD) is not representative of the NATIONAL RESISTANCE, we hold political support in that instance, nevertheless all the protest and resistance operations do not depend on any policy of MUD, by which none is authorized by the demonstrations in the streets to establish dialogues or negotiations with the regime in the name of the RESISTANCE. Any kind of decision that MUD wants to express before the regime must be framed with these points:  a through m of the Number One Resolution of this communique.

FOURTH:

We reaffirm that the RESISTANCE will not cede before any kind of negotiation that involves the traitorous members of the country maintaining their positions in power and establishing negotiating tables to investigate and establish penalties. The people of Venezuela remember that this tactic was applied in the 2002-2003 crisis, manipulated by José Vicente Rangel, when he established the Negotiating Table, not allowing the so-called “truth commission” to investigate the events of April 2002, rather they used it to unjustly imprison scapegoats, political prisoners today.

FIFTH:

We urge all civilians, doctors, teachers, professors, public employees, workers, employees, independent civilian, grassroots residents, middle class and wealthy to  maintain RESISTANCE IN THE STREETS WITH PEACEFUL PROTEST METHODS AND THAT ARE THAT ARE PART OF THE OPERATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED TO RESIST THE CRIMINAL SCHEME OF THE CASTRO-COMMUNIST REGIME WHOSE FACE IN VENEZUELA IS NICOLAS MADURO MOROS.

In the streets of Venezuela, on the 23rd of February 2014

 Translated by mlk

24 February 2014

Havana Hustling / Ivan Garcia

oficios-de-buscavidas-620x330This time the phone call came in the middle of the night and the message was grim.

Edania, a retired teacher who has set up a small business of making phone calls and taking messages for the neighborhood, hurried to give the bad news to a family that lives two doors down from her house, in the rundown neighborhood of La Cuevita in San Miguel del Padrón, in the northern part of Havana.

“The thing is taking off like wildfire,” says Edania. “The retired people can’t afford it, so I decided to take advantage of the fact that I’m one of the few people with a phone in the neighborhood. I started charging one Cuban peso to pass on messages and two pesos for local calls in Havana. If the call is outside the city, I charge 3  pesos per minute. Many people are providing this service, which is one of the officially recognized self-employment businesses, but I have no intention signing up at the tax office. I only get 150 or 200 Cuban pesos per month [$6-8 USD], which barely supplements my meager pension. I don’t charge for funeral news.” continue reading

In the interior of the island as well as in the capital it has become common for neighbors who have telephones to charge for calls. Richard, a retired resident of the Diez de Octubre district of Havana, has a small money box next to his phone with a list of the various call charges.

“I also sell mobile phone cards. I buy them for 10 CUCs [about $11 USD] and sell them for 11; the ones that cost 5 I resell for 6. But apparently someone in the neighborhood has been talking, because the state inspectors have visited me, demanding that I legalize the business. I told them to go to government offices and demand better pensions for the old people, and then come back and see me,” says Richard.

After the vaunted economic reforms in Cuba—an exotic blend of wildly exploitative state capitalism mixed with Marxist speeches and slogans by Fidel Castro—a torrent of quirky trades flooded the Havana neighborhoods.

The elderly are the losers in this wild mixture of everything from sidewalk pastry vendors to high-quality eateries. In the world of self-employment, everything is available.

From people who offer pirated DVDs of Oscar-nominated movies for 25 Cuban pesos, to elderly public-restroom attendants.

In this spectrum of emerging trades, you find “experts” in umbrella repair, button-covering, funeral cosmetology, matchbox-refilling, and shoe repair. For 50 Cuban pesos they’ll carry buckets of water and fill your 60-gallon tank.

Havana is a tropical bazaar. A hive of hustlers. On the avenue that encircles the old port of Havana, a diverse group of citizens converges to try to earn a living.

Right next to Maestranza children’s playground, Delia, decked out in a floral costume, works as an itinerant fortune teller. “I charge ten Cuban pesos for each card-reading. If you want an in-depth session then the price goes up to 25. It’s even more expensive for foreigners, who can afford more.”

Several tourist buses stop at Avenida del Puerto. As the visitors take photos of the Bay and the Christ of Casablanca statue, street musicians sing old boleros and guarachas, trying to attract their attention.

Leonel is one of them. “For 20 years I’ve devoted myself to making soup (singing while the customers ate). There have been good and bad days. But I’ve always made more than the wages the state paid. When no one in Cuba remembered Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, or Pio Leyva, God rest their souls, they also had to work as lunchtime entertainers, and to sing in seedy bars. They were lucky that a producer like Ry Cooder lifted them out of poverty,” Leonel said, playing a ranchera as he approached some Mexican tourists, hoping to pass the hat.

A dilapidated port-a-potty, serving as a urinal for the customers of three bayfront bars, is looked after by two rickety old men.

They charge one peso to urinate, three to defecate. “It’s because the toilet is clogged. We have to carry a greater quantity of water,” they say. They get the water for flushing right out of the bay, with a can tied to a rope.

“It’s hard work. We’re here up to twelve hours. But when I get home with 10 or 15 CUCs, I ask the Lord to give me strength to live a few more years so I can help my wife, who’s bedridden after a stroke,” says one of the old men.

The buses are now gone. A quartet of street musicians, all elderly, lean against the sea wall, waiting for new tourists.

“It’s been a long journey to return to the beginning. Before the Revolution I was already a soup peddler. For me nothing has changed. Except that life is more expensive and I’m older,” says the singer and guitarist. His dream is that on some tourist bus, a guy like Ry Cooder will come and rescue him from oblivion.

Iván García

Photo: In central areas of Santiago de Cuba, which like Old Havana are usually frequented by tourists, musicians also look for a living in streets and parks. Taken from Martí News.

Translated by Tomás A.

17 February 2014

Venezuela Now Has Imported Blackouts / Ciro Javier Díaz Penedo

This video is under two minutes long.
We have re-posted it given what’s going on in Venezuela. The subtitles appear to have stopped working. Here are the lyrics in English:

IMPORTED BLACKOUTS – An original song by Ciro Diaz

Ohhh…. Fucking up a little island is nothing
Anyone can fuck up a little island
With few natural resources it was easy, to drown it in misery
But Fidel Castro loves the hardest efforts
That’s why he made friends with Chavez
To see if he could fuck up Venezuela

It looked like it would be hard
Because every time they dug a hole
They found every imaginable mineral
And the oil never stopped gushing

Only a president truly idiotic
Would allow his plans to embrace
The foolish ideas of Fidel and Cuban counter-intelligence.
And just like that ten years later, the job seems to be completed

Venezuela now has blackouts, blackouts imported from Havana
Venezuela now has blackouts, our experience was useless to them
Venezuela now has blackouts, blackouts imported from Havana
Venezuela now has blackouts, if they don’t hurry they will be left with nothing.

Another Inconsequential Congress / Fernando Damaso

One of the main problems confronting Cuban workers is low salaries, an issue that affects manual, service, technical and professional workers alike.

The current annual monthly salary of 440 pesos (some 20 dollars) means that many people are able to survive only by resorting to collateral activities, both legal and illegal. It matters little if there is more than one wage earner per family since, as the number of family members increases, so do the costs. As the saying goes, “If there is only enough for one, there won’t be enough for two, much less three.”

Until now the government’s response has been one-sided, claiming that “before raising salaries, production must first be increased.”

Among the issues to be addressed at the 20th Congress of the Cuban Central Workers’ Union (CTC), however, this does not appear to be one of them. It seems priority will instead be given to ratifying of the so-called Labor Code — drafted by government officials and put up for discussion by workers — though it is no secret that such discussions have always been and continue to be mere formalities. As in similar instances, once approved, it will be a dead issue. (Such was the case with the so-called Family Code, Civil Code and Governmental Ethics Code, among others now forgotten.)

The new CTC statutes to be discussed will address such things as how to increase production, conserve resources, replace imports, be more efficient, encourage strict compliance with existing legislation and collective agreements, fight corruption, restore discipline and preserve moral values — topics that address the interests of the State more than those of workers.

Cuban workers need labor unions that will truly represent them, with leaders that emerge from their own ranks and are democratically elected, not hand-picked by the Communist Party. Rather than be a governmental organization, the CTC should instead serve as a counterweight restraining the excesses of the state and its leaders who, even when drafting and implementing measures which disadvantage workers, claim they are acting in those same workers’ behalf.

Currently, the Cuban workers’ movement lacks a key battle weapon: the right to strike. Last used on January 1, 1959 to consolidate the gains of the insurrection, it was completely banned by the new authorities.

This is a one of numerous taboo subjects that will not be discussed at the workers’ congress.

It is striking that this has never been a cause of concern to the many union activists from overseas who have been invited to previous congresses, though it is a tool used routinely in their respective countries to defend their rights. It is safe to assume that it will be of no concern at this conclave as well. Do they really believe that here it is the workers who are in charge? Well, anything is possible in such a complex world.

Officially, the congress “will be a great success” and the workers’ delegates — carefully chosen by the party — will unanimously approve the accords being submitted to a vote, including the obligatory clauses calling for the release of “the Cuban Five” and a “lifting of the blockade,” in yet another “demonstration of the unbreakable bond between the “workers and their government.”

It will all be done for benefit of the authorities and their foreign guests who — after much celebration, special treatment, fine dining and sightseeing, with all expenses paid by Liborio — will return to their respective countries, touting the marvels of Cuba, of its unique system, of its “original workers’ movement” devoid of demands, demonstrations or anything of a similar nature.

This will ensure they are invited back to the next congress… assuming there is one.

Diario De Cuba, February 19 2014, Fernando Damaso

Tax Culture in Totalitarianism / Miriam Celaya

Estado-ladrón-MiriamApproximately 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 tGaceta-oficialaxes

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
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.

Cubanet, 20 February 2014, Miriam Celaya

Translated by Norma Whiting

 

File 444: New Proof of My Innocence / Angel Santiesteban

Cuban police, according to the TV series “Patrol 444.”

The accusations against me began a few months after I opened my blog, The Children Nobody Wanted. And when the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) informed State Security that they were handling an invitation for me to attend the Festival of the Word in Puerto Rico, I was immediately summoned to the police station to impose on me a bond of 1,000 pesos, to prevent me from participating in that cultural activity. I remember that while I refused to make the payment, a Major who casually answered to the name Kenia — like my accuser — picked up the telephone to call Miguel Barnet, the President of UNEAC, so he would help convince me to pay, and make me give way before my defiant attitude of preferring to be in prison.

I had been accompanied by a writer friend, a brother, one of those whom life presents and who suffers for you more or as much as those who were born from the uterus of my mother. With the best intention, he pleaded that I accept payment of the bond before the threat of being sent to the cell. Finally I accepted that bond months after the accusations, and the file was archived for being considered insufficient, corroborating the constant contradictions of the prosecutor, who was changing statements, enlarging them, taking them away, and lying openly, because that was the way to silence the possibility of being denounced from abroad.

Years later, precisely during those days of the Festival of the Book in Havana, I approached the bank to collect the bond, placed by the one who paid it while I was detained in the police station: The bank denied the payment and sent it to the police station and from there to the prosecution, to discover – as if there weren’t sufficient proofs presented of my innocence – that the ones who imposed the bond, and so took possession of the bureaucratic paperwork, was State Security.

My writer friend had called me alarmed, impressed by the scarce decency and the rough methods used against me. I was punished as a common prisoner, my friend told me, but in the main chamber of State Security’s Provincial Tribunal, in the special venue for distinguished cases of Carmen and Juan Delgado. Now he confirms that the bond was imposed by the “political police”; he said he was impressed. I learned that my case was numbered “444″ like a television serial that is shown these days. My friend is sad. I laugh at such ridicule, such cowardice, and I imagine the day when the truth will come out into the light and unmask the cunning politics. What would they think, those people who support the government or stay silent in order avoid prosecution?

Time and patience, my mother counsels me. Today I oblige her.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement. February 2014.

 Translated by Regina Anavy

24 February 2014

The Dysfunction of the Racketeering Government / Juan Juan Almeida

Consular services suspended until further notice

If there is something that terrifies me about the Cuban political class, it is the colossal ability they have to manipulate events and invent crises without the slightest decorum, like the pain of separated families, and to employ it as a shield against the United States.

The new show is regrettable, or disguises secondary intentions, through a press note where it’s reported, that the Cuban Interest Section in Washington is obliged to suspend consular services.

With Dantesque ease, agonizing creativity, impressive tranquility and more desires  of common sense, the note refers to the statement published 9 December 2013, which reported on the new deadline given by “M & T Bank” for the conclusion of banking services to the Section and the Cuban Permanent Mission to the United Nations. It fixed 1 March 2014 as the deadline for the closure of the accounts, and the February 14 as the deadline for deposits.

Understandably, following the protocol, the State Department assists the Cuban Interests section to find a new bank to resume their functions, but it is outrageous to learn that the island government rejected the options and with shameless impudence, like someone going for a walk, and they hung a sign on their webpage saying “Consular services are suspended until further notice.”

It may be that, although these banking problems have nothing to do with the half-century dispute, nor with the embargo (or blockade, call it what you like), starting now it stimulates the conflict that besides being premeditated, arouses a kind of structured social alarm for Cuban bigwigs wanting to make into a main priority the fact of feeding these disagreeable inconveniences that this new situation causes Cuban citizens, travelers, users of consular services such as renewing or issuing passports, certifying documents, etc. As well as cultural, scientific, academic, sports and every other kind of exchange between Cuba and the United States.

Clearly it’s annoying, the racketeering government creates law and liberty, and continues making us dance to whatever tune they decide to play; but a bank hold can’t paralyze the consular services of a huge mass of Cuban exiles and immigrants who live in the United States, we need — forgive the repetition — consular services that aren’t only centered in the consulate in Havana or Washington DC.

We live in the era of the Internet, in a globalized world. This Cuban community doesn’t depend on this consulate, it is it and all the officials who depend on us. We should not longer fall into the sophistry of ignoring that Cuba has consulate representatives in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Mexico, Veracruz, Monterrey and around almost the entire planet.

There is not a single reason, then, that obliges me to support the sovereignty of a government that proves it wants to use the Cuban family drama for its own convenience, trying to say it’s politics; far from political, it’s a simple banking breakdown. This text shows my absolute disagreement.

23 February 2014

Castro Logic? Covering up an Injustice by Making it Worse / Angel Santiesteban

Neither the righteous nor the sinners

The settlement where I find myself detained is a fine example of the slave labor that exists in the Castro brothers’ dictatorship.

The prisoners are up at five in the morning, and they keep them going almost until midnight, or perhaps longer, according to the immediate work needed. The food, in addition to being scare, is poorly prepared and sometimes rotten: acid picadillo, raw undercooked chicken and, countless times, stale bread. Eggs, rice and a tasteless, colorless soup is the constant menu.

These prisoners endure the long march because it offers them the possibility of visiting their family every 27 days for 72 hours. They go from one pass to another, moreover enduring bad treatment and the usual blackmail that can make them lose the pass if they don’t complete their work in the time demanded.

In my case, as I don’t collaborate with the reeducation program, my regulation pass for my punishment is for every 70 days. State Security suspended my last passes. They don’t want me immersed in civil society; I represent a great danger. It wasn’t just for the fun of doing it that they constructed my crime.

Really, as I made known to Major Cobas and the rest of the repressors who accompanied him, “You will not be able hurt my ideas in any way.” When I preferred to be taken prisoner rather than emigrate on a boat to Miami, it was because I felt fortified for the experience that awaited me. The worst thing about hired assassins is that their injustice is without limits, and to justify my not leaving, they have withheld the pass from these ruined hands that remain captive, without carrying about the extreme submission, that they accept full-time.

To cover up the injustice committed against me, they have made it greater. I would have to decipher the true intention they pursue; perhaps it’s to provoke criticism of me by those prisoners and at some moment generate some retaliation upon seeing me at fault for their punishments. I remain alone awaiting their reactions. The dictatorship observes. They are interested only in maintaining power for the dynastic clan of the Castro brothers. What’s certain is that nothing provokes me to break. Their abuses redouble my resolve.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement, February 2014

Please follow the link to sign the petition to have Angel Santiesteban declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

Translated by Regina Anavy

7 February 2014

“Intellectuals in Defense of Humanity” Annoy Families of Cubans Working in Venezuela / Luis Felip Rojas

As the world shouts itself hoarse over what’s happening in Venezuela, the Cuban Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity assures us that this is nothing more than a ruse of the “fascist right” and they’ve launched a tirade in very bad taste from the site “Segunda cita” (Second Quote), belonging to singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez (the worst taste yet).

Making it all worse is that this Network (hopefully not of the Wasps*) totally ignores mothers, daughters, sisters, loved ones, gossipy neighbors and relatives of another ilk who are in suspense for their loved ones in Venezuela. The brave and harmless Cuban workers (for example doctors or the sports instructors of the “Blas Roca” contingent) are trapped in the midst of violence and despair because they’ve been momentarily caught in their flip-flops between Caracaibo and Corralillo, or in the flow of laptop parts between the state of Lara and the town of Majibacoa, in Las Tunas. Their families in Cuban are screaming blue murder and now these intellectuals have come to “fuck it all up,” as a young Guantanameran has written to her boyfriend working as a nurse in Caracas.

“Finally, we call on international solidarity to squelch any attempt to impose violence in a country which is advancing firmly toward a society of justice, equality and peace,” concludes this letter from the “professionals of simulation**”, among whom are poets fighting for their literary event, historians praying to God not to take away their European fellowships, and musicians who aspire to give a concert in the hills of Caracas to put a sound track to the fists of the National Guard and the truncheons wielded by the brave boys of the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN).

Translator’s notes:
*A reference to the Wasp Network of Cuban spies stationed in the United States.
** A sarcastic reference to those who “simulate”… or pretend to believe… so as not to lose their perks.

22 February 2014

The Day Fidel Castro Eliminated Private Businesses / Baldomero Vasquez Soto

On 13 March 1968, on the steps of the University of Havana, Fidel Castro delivered a speech where he announced the so-called “Revolutionary Offensive” stage, a speech that we consider — from the ideological point of view — as the most important among his countless speeches.

In retrospect, that date represented the final lift-off of the tragic journey, with no return tickets. which would lead the Cuban people to socialist totalitarianism, toward the hell of misery and repression in which we are still living today. For decades, until today, we would also feel the catastrophic consequences on the Cuban economy of the measures announced and implemented by Castro, which swept away the productive fabric of the small urban businesses of the country.

The Commander in Chief announced, to the leaders of the Communist Party, of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, student leaders, the unions, and the Women’s Federation, that the time had come: “this moment is one for embarking on an all-out, powerful, Revolutionary Offensive.” continue reading

Leaving aside the previous manipulations and deceits, where he swore he wasn’t a Communist, he knew he could reveal the intentions that always his between his bushy beard because he already controlled, the press, radio, television, unions, universities and all the other institutions of the country, aside from the Armed Forces.

The objective of the Offensive was to built socialism, communism in Cuba; and to do this, he said, “Capitalism his to be uprooted.”

What the dictator had in mind, he said without mincing words: “It must be said that there will be no future in this nation for private business, the self-employed, private industry, or anything.”

What he proposed, then, was to remove the entire small private commercial sector left on the island, since the large and medium enterprises had always been expropriated. He would confiscate all the small urban businesses and they would become state property, and he would turn the business owners into state employees, or his, which is all the same.

To discredit the office of the small businesses, and expropriate them, Castro classified commercial activity as unproductive and parasitical. He said:

“There still remains among us a real scum of privileged persons, who live on the work of the others and who live considerably better then the rest. They are drones in perfect physical condition who put up a stand or open a small place and earn 50 pesos per day…if people were to ask what kind of revolution is this that allows these groups of parasites.”

The Revolution against the bars

Posing as a moralist, as a good Communist, Fidel Castro justified the guillotine that he applied to small businesses, based on surveys of the Communist Party about the bars of Havana and about small businesses in general.

We quote verbatim for the unbelievers:

“We see incredible things … there still remain in Havana… 955 private bars making money hand over fist and selling everything.”

And the figure is stressed with the histrionics that he always performed: “Nine hundred and fifty-five bars!”

The “investigation” of the bars inquired about data such as gross revenues and profits (55% had insignificant earnings of 25 pesos a day), Revolutionary attitude (72% didn’t support the Revolution, hence Castro’s interest in ruining them) and the type of clientele that frequented these businesses (which was classified derisively as antisocials). Based on this information, the study recommended that “the bars should be operated or closed.”

The Revolution against all businesses

The survey of the Communist Party of the small businesses in Havana yielded data about the legality and hygienic conditions of the businesses, but also about their owners: how many asked permission to leave the country and how many ran their companies directly.

The data did not support the savage expropriation carried out against all businesses: 72% were legally constituted, 50% had good hygienic conditions, only 5.8% of the owners had asked for permission to leave the country and 88% of the owners worked in their businesses. But, none of this mattered because Cuba’s owner made his decision. He expressed it with the following phrase:

Gentlemen, we did not make a revolution here to establish the right to do business! … When will they completely understand that this is the revolution of the socialists? That this is the revolution of the communists?

The fatal “Cuban March” of ’68

So, to do away with the “privileged,” “parasites” and “lazy,” in March of 1968 Castro attacked small private businesses, to confiscate them all:

“There were 55,636 small businesses, many operated by one or two people. Among them 11,878 grocery stores (bodegas), 3,130 butchers, 3,198 bars, 8,101 food establishments (restaurants, friterías, cafeterias, etc), 6,653 laundries, 3,643 barbers, 1,188 shoe repairs, 4,544 auto mechanics, 1,598 artisans, 3,345 carpenters.” [Source]

This commercial raid has been the principal cause of the impoverishment that Cuban people are suffering even today, and not the embargo by the American imperialists, as the Castro propaganda manipulated in his complaint the UN since 1992, and which had echoed through the Left throughout the world.

Cuban Script in Venezuela: War on private companies

Agnes Heller reminds us that “history, for good or ill, is a learning process.” We learn from the ill-starred experience of Cuban socialism and recognize the importance of the private sector to generate employment, income, goods and services that improve the standard of living of the population. We don’t cultivate our anti-merchant prejudices, product of nationalized oil, because we play the socialist government’s game of war against the businesses. We must openly defend private enterprise to stop Venezuela from being turned into a socialist hell like that the bearded dinosaur established in Cuba.

Heller suffered Communism in Hungary. Given our circumstances, I conclude with some guiding words of this author:

“When the majority of the population choose these strategic options (like socialism) they have not had any personal experience with them, and later they no longer have the slightest possibility of changing their mind.”

Cubanet, 19 February 2014,

Opponents’ Attorney Can’t Practice / Lilianne Ruiz

Abogada-Amelia-Rodríguez-Cala_foto-Jorge-Ignacio-Pérez-300x200
Attorney Amelia Rodríguez Cala in Miami, July 2013, photo by Jorge Ignacio Pérez

HAVANA, Cuba – The attorney Amelia Rodríguez Cala, hired by Gorki Águila to conduct his defense — in a trial against him still unscheduled since it was postponed on 11 February — has been suddenly sanctioned to six months without the ability to practice her profession in court. For this reason, the singer of the punk band Porno para Ricardo will have to find another attorney to represent him.

Although Cubanet could not obtain statements from Rodríguez Cala, this information was provided first by Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello and confirmed by Gorki Águila and Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, who told this paper she had hired Rodríguez Cala on 27 January to represent her before the courts of the Department of State Security, responsible for looking that organization’s headquarters on 3 January, a judicial action without precedent since 1959, according to Soler.

She also said that her attorney had taken her investigation to the Picota police station where they had taken the various items stolen from the headquarters that day at 5:30 in the morning, but there they told her everything was in the hands of Villa Marista, main interrogation headquarters of the Cuban political police. continue reading

The labor sanction against Rodríguez Cala also left incomplete the process initiated by Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello to ask the court to revoke her parole or immediately cease the physical and psychological attacks, the siege and the police cordon that surrounds her own house and that flares up every Wednesday to prevent her meeting with Network of Community Communicators, over which Roque Cabello presides. The answer of the Court, so far, as been that it “has no evidence” to proceed.

Roque Cabello says that the attorney Rodríguez Cala has defended her since 1997, and she especially remembers the time before the trial began that would once again send her to prison in March of 2003, when the attorney for the defense hugged her, visibly moved, to tell her that they hadn’t even allowed her to see the file against her.

During the 3 days that the so-called Black Spring trial lasted, Rodríguez Cala defended 25 of the 75 accused. In total, she has defended 150 dissidents in her career.

Gorki Águila, meanwhile, faces a trial still without a date and now without an attorney, where he would submit the complete documentation stamped by the Notary Registry of the Mexican Department of the Interior and the Cuban Consulate in that country, which proves that he takes the two Tradea pills that the police found in his backpack on prescription.

The prosecutor — because of the police complaint — seeks to try Águila for “production, sale, demand, trafficking, distribution, having illegal drugs, narcotics, psychotropics and other similar effects.”

In Section 191, subsection C, under which they want to condemn him, reads: “The mere possession of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and other similar effects without due authorization or prescription, is punished: -C) with privation of liberty of three months to a year, or a fine of one hundred to three hundred shares* (…)”

According to Águila, Rodríguez Cala showed she was sure of being able to free him from prison, thanks to the documents proving his innocence.

Gorki Águila shows his documents. Photo by author.
Gorki Águila shows his documents. Photo by author.

Because of the summary nature of the trial against Águila doesn’t allow the defense to produce proofs until the moment of the trial. Numerous of the singer’s friends on the social networks remain alert and have opened the website: La Libertad de Gorki es la de tod@s! [Gorki’s freedom is everyone’s].

Finally, Rodríguez Cala also was the writer of Review Appeal document for Angel Santiesteban. The award-winning Cuban writer being held at military forced-labor center in Havana. On 28 February he will have been in prison for a year. The document intends to demonstrate that his trial was spurious, without due process, in which the defendant was defenseless.

The Minister of Justice has not responded regarding whether he will order the promotion of the Review Appeal initiated by Cala Rodríguez

As of now and for six months, the attorney has been demoted, with a much lower salary than she had as a professional, to a technical position (which in practice is carried out by an associate), fetching and carrying papers for other attorneys, in a Legal Collective in La Lisa Municipality.

*Translator’s note: The Cuban legal system establishes fines as “shares” so that the actual amounts can be administratively adjusted over time without having to change the underlying laws.

22 February 2014

The Internet Isn’t Eaten, But it Feeds / Agusto Cesar San Martin

HAVANA, Cuba – In the first half of the year the ironic character of the restoration of some of the people’s rights will be perfected with Internet for cellphones. Cubans will have access to the network from our cells, in proportions equal to the costs of unattainable hotels, real estate and cars.

The government announcedthat the cost of activating the service will cost 5.40 CUC. The cost exceeds the 4.50 CUC Cubans have topay for the same concept to connect to the Internet in one of the navigation rooms.

In its 54th edition of 11 November 2013, the Official Gazette of the Republic of Cuba established official service prices. Every Kb downloaded will cost 0.0005 CUC, which is 5,000 CUC (125,000 Cuban pesos, more than $5,000 USD) per gigabyte.

El servicio que ofrecerá la única Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba (ETECSA), no solo inspira en los cubanos la crítica negativa de los precios. Existen dudas sobre la afirmación oficial de que el servicio multiplicara el ancho de banda y alcanzara velocidades semejantes al resto del mundo. La desconfianza de un servicio óptimo se sustenta en la tecnología GPRS instalada en el país que ajusta la capacidad hasta 2 Mb.Un ex funcionario de ETECSA, que solicitó omitir su nombre y profesión, explicó al

The service offered by Cuba’s only Telecommunications Company (ETECSA), not only inspires negative critiques of the prices. There are doubts about the official statement that the bandwidth and speeds will match those of the rest of the world. The lack of confidence in an optimal service is based on the GPRS technology installed in the country that adjusts the capacity up to 2 Mb.

An ex ETECSA officia, who asked me not to mention his name explained, “If you have 2 Mb in optimal conditions (which he clarified there never are) and three people connect with you to the GPRS, and you divide 2 MB by 4, you have 500 Kb.  A low bandwidth because what the towers permit is very limited.”

“You have a 4G phone in Cuba and the most you can get is 2 Mb because the cellphone transmission system is GPRS,” he adds. To the specialist, the service announced is not only limited, it’s one more highway robbery of the user.

“In Italy the LTE norm of 100 Mb costs a flat fee of 30 euros. At that price you can download whatever you want simultaneously,” and he added. “To install LTE in Cuba, they have to change the antennas, the base radio, the central…”

Terrifying prices

To inquire about rated we talked to ETECSA’s office of commercial information. The official identified as Lucia alleged she had no information about it. For her, the topic is an unknown.

“… We have no information for the user about what is going to happen in the future, nor when it could be (the Internet) for cellphones… Martha, Lucia’s supervisor, explained that there is still no “guidance” to explain to the users about the information offered by the Official Gazette and the Round Table on television.”

ETECSA sources unofficially revealed that the prices announced by the government could be open to discussion. For Cubans to download a page of 1 Mb could cost 5.12 CUC, perhaps a few cents less if it’s HTML, just text. A modest volume of downloads of 10 Mb a month would cost 51.20 CUC (1,280 Cuban pesos).

Robbing the poor

The disinterest and ignorance of people about a service that they can’t afford makes it hard to talk to them about it on the street. In a four of the so-called cellphone clinics visited, those present were unaware of the details published about our new service.

Raul, a sports teacher, referring to the prices announced for cellular Internet, said, “They remove the prohibitions from the legal point of view and establish them from the economic side.”

A Chinese tourist named Kwang, said that in his country there were plans for contracting Internet service on a cellphone. He added that he pays 7 dollars (42 yuan) a month for the service. “I never focus on the kilobytes I download, I just have it,” said the foreigner.

Josvany, 24, who sells TV antennas in the street, explained his interpretation of the prices based on what people are saying in the street. “You put 25 CUC into an account, and in four months you have to recharge it even though you haven’t spent it.” According to the young man the recharges are made from abroad.

With prices so far from people’s reality, the government returns services that have been prohibited for years. The right of Cubans to stay at hotels on the island, to have a cellphone, to sell their property (houses and cars), and the Internet, to mention a few.

In this respect, Osvaldo, an unemployed restaurant worker, summarized in his opinion, that of the people. “They can’t eat cars or the Internet. They have to start lowering the price of food… They (the government) want to fill their pockets with the poverty of the people.”

Cubanet, 20 February 2014 |