Under the Chimney / Yoani Sanchez

Photo: Luz Escobar
Photo: Luz Escobar

The trajectory of a place is always a mystery, its possibilities a mystery. The soaring chimney of El Cocinero will soon shelter another kind of process, less industrial, but more creative. In a few days its main facility will open as a space for concerts, exhibitions, fashion shows and performances.

Havana was missing its “Rote Fabrik,” one of those sites where sweat and production once played their part that now vibrates with musical notes, the audacity of artists and the applause of the public. Art taking over what was once purely industrial territory. Thanks to X Alfonso, this absence is about to be filled. The singer has been deeply involved in preparing this place with an enormous potential but in desperate need of repair. It is the culmination of months of hard work.

Red brick over red brick, soaring ceilings and a roof with an unusual view of over the mouth of the Almendares River.

“This will be a site that doesn’t quit,” the ingenious author of disks like Reverse and Revoluxíon has declared. While he says this he’s wearing pants splattered with cement and putting the finishing touches on his new creation.

This time he has not composed the soundtrack for a movie nor won a Goya for it. However, on seeing his project through he will have the gratitude of many here in Havana and countless Cubans.

10 February 2014

Building Collapse in Havana: One Dead and Serious Injuries / Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello

Rosario Álvarez. 96, victim of the collapse
Rosario Álvarez. 96, victim of the collapse

Rosario Alvarez, 96, who died in the collapse, had repeatedly complained to the authorities that her home was in the process of falling down.

HAVANA, Cuba. – At 6:30 in the evening on February 7, the partial collapse of a three-story residential building at No. 5 San Carlos, between Morell and Iznago in the Santos Suarez neighborhood, 10th of October municipality in the city of Havana, caused the death of Mr. Rosario Alvarez Alvarez, age 96, who was sitting in the dining room of her apartment when the incident occurred.

The original information was provided to the Network of Community Communicators by the victim’s great granddaughter, Jessica Almeri Canal, age 14, a junior high school student, who was in another room in the house and was unharmed.

According to the source, the dining room floor of the apartment on the top floor gave way and fell on Alvarez Alvarez’s apartment and, as a result of the impact, she fell into the garage on ground floor of the building.

Álvarez Álvarez remained under the rubble for five hours before being found dead by rescuers. Her lifeless body covered with bruises was taken directly to Legal Medicine for the autopsy. The family members of the victim were doubly outraged because the official cause of death, according to the Legal Medicine authorities was a “heart attack.”

The was a wake for the body at the Santa Catalina and Juan Bruno Zayas funeral home, in the Havana neighborhood of Santos Suárez, and burial was scheduled for 4 pm on Saturday.

More serious injuries

Sitting in the room where the collapse occurred was a young woman, family of the victim, who miraculously suffered no serious injuries, and her son Diego Rodríguez Antonio Amador, age 2.

The boy suffered serious injuries to his face, knocking his eye out of its orbit and his cheekbones were operated on. As of now he is in intensive care at Juan Manuel Marquez Children’s Hospital, located on Ave. 31 and 76, Marianao, Havana, and his condition is reported as serious.

Another victim who was in the building is Bárbara Danay Canal Aramburu, whose scalp was torn off and who suffered fractures in her left arm. Canal Aramburu had emergency surgery and remains hospitalized at the Calixto Garcia Hospital, Havana, reported as serious.

Also in the room was in Mrs. Lidian Juana Quevedo Quevedo, 54, grandmother of the child, which is also at Calixto Garcia Hospital.

The Director of Calixto Garcia and the President of the municipal government, who presented himself at the Hospital were talking to the victim’s great-granddaughter — source of this information — to inquire about the situation.

We have not been able to obtain images of the disaster because the place is occupied by officials and senior military and access to the site is not allowed.

Background

On 17 January this year, Julia Estrella Aramburu, a reporter for the Network of Community Communicators, had published in Redecilla, the Network’s newsletter, a note of complaint warning that this building was in the imminent danger of collapse.

The complaint was made by the victim who is now dead, in the hopes that the authorities would stop ignoring her pleas for help and do something about it before the disaster, which happened yesterday, finally occurred.

Following is the full text of that report in Redecilla :

Partial Collapse

By: Julia Estrella Aramburo Taboas

The lady of 96, Rosario Álvarez Álvarez, living at No. 5 San Carlos Street between Morell and Iznagas, in the neighborhood of Santos Suárez, 10th of October municipality, wanted to tell us her sad story.

She is a pensioner and has repeatedly complained to the President of the government of the municipality about the condition of her, which is in danger of collapse: already there has been a collapse with the roof of one of the rooms falling in. As a result of this the neighbor on the top floor fell, but fortunately was not injured.

The answer I got last December 22 was that they would go to visit in early January to see what they could do with her case, but so far nothing has happened and the house of the the elderly lady Rosario is slowly collapsing.

8 February 2014

Books in Cuba: When a Preface Steals the Limelight / Juan Juan Almeida

Over-fulfilling the goals of the books programmed to be delivered to the printer, now they’re regulating the presence of the second edition of “History of a Liberator, 1952-1958″ in all the independent book stalls, libraries, whether they’re provincial, scholastic, universities and even childcare centers, bookstores and Cuban consulates abroad.

The reason: Ex-president Fidel Castro edited the preface of this sleep-inducing volume that, boring as a funeral, was written by Georgina Leyva Pagán, the wife and life companion of Julio Camacho Aguilera, a member of the Central Committee of the Party and octogenarian constituent of the so-called Rebel Army, whom many people from Santiago surely remember for his inefficient management as first secretary of the party in Santiago de Cuba, between 1985 and 1987, as much as the fact that he generated a contagious conga popular in the teasing style that said, “Ay Camacho, Camacho, we are drunk all the time”.

Such an epic reference book isn’t an analytical study (or auto-analytical) about the harmful consequences that the indiscriminate use of alcohol causes to the intellectual health of a state official. It’s a selective compendium and testimony in which, scarcely separating guilt and innocence, emerges a series of data that with extraordinary invention, stained with something of imagination, permits the reader to confuse once again the spirit of that group of men who decided to twist the economic, political and social direction of our Caribbean island in an evil direction.

With theatrical gestures, like some impressive disciple of Bertolt Brecht or Konstantín Stanislavski, the publisher of such an ominous tome didn’t read the fragments of the same but centered her attention on the ceremonial torch of an inevitable preface. “Gina, in her book, helped me to remember and understand with more precision the thinking that propelled me in those intense years I lived, although, yes, I’m aware that more than a preface I’m writing a chapter of history.”

Anyone could predict what would happen later. The ex-leader and convalescent, but still powerful preface-writer, usurped with grotesque impertinence the leadership of the author, who, trembling, could only conclude, “The Commander-in-Chief, with his prologue, saw the long view of my humble book.” And naturally, the surrounding biodiversity, with its habitual dose of consideration and drama, applauded.

It was no surprise that the launching of the deafening preface, since the book passed to a second level, was attended by José Ramón (El gallego) Fernández, the ex-minister of education and immodest professional wreck, José Ramón Balaguer, an excellent practitioner of karate, but a man skilled in measuring the pressure of national politicking; and Guillermo García Frías, who in reality, owing to his constant lack of literary receptivity, no one knows even what he’s doing in a bookstore, which he proved by serious cracks in his strategy of control.

Perhaps Guillermo only was practicing his usual quiet subversion.

Also present were Miguel Barnet, Abel Prieto, Rafael Bernal and other exploiters who, captive of a useless sytem, in order to coexist at the margin of popular necessity, opt for pretending and/or forming part of that great herd of sheep who obey the voice of the shepherd, even when he is absent.

Translated by Regina Anavy

3 February 2014

Irony / Regina Coyula

A fine irony is my having seen the documentary Gusano* (Worm) the same day I heard the news that this Monday the European Union could take definitive steps to lift its Common Position on Cuba.

The measures adopted by the European countries in 1996 have to do with respect (or rather disrespect) for Human Rights in our country, and in essence little has changed.

No one doubts the diplomatic success of the Cuban government which, in addition, less than two weeks ago, brought together 33 Latin American and Caribbean presidents and the secretaries general of the Organization of American States and the United Nations respectively, without the issue of Cuban Human Rights going beyond a formal mention.

Now the European Union will go on a tangent, and all this without any advances in the area of civil liberties. Clearly, this isn’t Syria or Chad; it’s not even North Korea, they will say on Monday in Brussels.

Ah! the economy, how many crimes are committed in your name!

*Translator’s note: This video will be available with English subtitles in the coming week.

7 February 2014

The Submissive Members of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba / Angel Santiesteban

Abel Prieto is second from left.

What could you hope for from an intellectual movement of a country that is convened to sign a book supporting the shooting of several youths who tried to abandon the country by taking boat passengers hostage? It’s worth adding that they didn’t hurt anyone, and that the foreigners who lived through the experience later demonstrated against the death penalty for those who were sentenced. However, through telephone calls, cited them to provide their signatures, nothing more and nothing less, to show they accepted these deaths.

The cowardice of the Cuban cultural movement was never more miserable than in those days. When I received the call and said no, I could note the confusion of the functionary who called. It was as if he didn’t understand the forthright negative answer with which I answered him, and taking advantage of his hesitation I told him to let me know if other books to sign for those who didn’t agree. Precisely in his confusion, I understood that prior to this he hadn’t received any other negative response. At most, some shielded themselves behind the invitation and accepted, saying they’d to to UNEAC (National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba) office at some point.

I didn’t have to assure myself that many who signed were in total disagreement with the extreme measure. But — miserably — they confessed to me, and thus I make it known, that many recognized and signed because the measure augured extremism and possible persecution against those who didn’t show their sympathy and support for the plans of the Castro brothers. The majority justified that the measure was to save the “Revolution,” since if plane and maritime kidnappings continued, it could start an invasion of the island. In a certain manner, all the signers splashed themselves with blood when the bullets were fired and broke the skulls of the prisoners.

But no one was like the poet Roberto Fernández Retamar, a member of that Council of State, and thus one of those who pulled the trigger against those young people, who didn’t have any other longing than to attain a future far from the misery they lived in their short years of life, understanding that the future didn’t look any better.

From that same house of the mentioned poet, UNEAC planned the public attack against me at the suggestion of the ex-minister of culture, today the advisor to Raul Castro: Abel Prieto, who obscurely handled and manipulated the cultural sector in order to counteract international discomfort at my imprisonment.

Before long they will celebrate another Congress of UNEAC, like the ones that went before, and no substantial change will happen beginning with the proposals that they will discharge there. “It will pass through our lives without knowing what they passed.”

As the great writer Virgilio Piñera predicted, FEAR has been the spirit that has accompanied the cultural sector for the last 55 years.

We already know the answer to the initial question.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement, January 2014

Please sign the petition below to have Amnesty International declare Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience. Follow the link here.

Translated by Regina Anavy

5 February 2014

Trying to Communicate / Reinaldo Escobar

Following the best tradition of Cuban humor, based on mockery and desecration of the human and divine, we have baptized the Cuban Telecommunications Company SA (ETECSA) with a different interpretation of its initials: We are Trying to Establish Communications Without Trouble*.

The assignment of the nickname is based on the slow, deteriorating, negligence and other known evils of the State sector that weren’t left behind with the old “13th of March Telephone Company” which, despite the clarification, it was never explained to the people why the entity was stripped of its patriotic name referring to the date a group of revolutionaries attacked the Presidential Palace in 1957.

However, I have to confess that we fall short in the joke because ETECSA goes far beyond technical failures and human forgetfulness. Whenever some event is held in the country that attracts international attention, whether it’s the arrival of the Pope of the holding of a high level meeting, the fixed-line and cellphones of certain people begin to suffer from unexplained interruptions. For example, they can’t get calls from abroad, they lose the ability to send text messages, and in extreme cases the line goes down.

This method of repression leaves no physical mark on the victim and so is practically unprovable for the purposes of a complaint and demand. It’s so slight that it’s barely worth complaining if we compare it with beatings, raids, repudiation rallies, arbitrary detentions, and other variables to which opposition leaders, civil society activists, independent journalists, bloggers and the whole family of protestors have become accustomed.

At the moment there is nothing nice that occurs to me to rename ETECSA once again, perhaps We are Trying to Establish Communication Without Authorization, but it doesn’t sound original and, what’s worse, it’s not funny.

*Translator’s note: Following the Spanish initials it is Estamos Tratando de Establecer Comunicación Sin Apuro.

7 February 2014

The Trials / Lilianne Ruiz

Gorki Aguila (in glasses) and Porno para Ricardo

Ángel Santiesteban, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, and Gorki Águila have in common that they dissent from the Cuban regime. The first was tried in a court so lacking in due process guarantees that he was declared by his attorney to be in a state of defenselessness, based on Cuban law.

The witnesses for his defense, who could have declared that they were with him at the time when, it was said, the events occurred, were dismissed. His son, a minor, gave a confusing statement that his father wasn’t in the house the day Santiesteban’s ex-wife alleged he had attacked her. (Clearly he was somewhere else, in the Masonic Lodge with his brothers who were later his defense witnesses.)

The first declaration of his ex-wife spoke of a fight, the second day it appeared she had been sexually attacked, and by the end she accused him of nothing short of attempted murder. There was no evidence of any of these three things.

The only prosecution witness appeared in a video confessing that he had been given a mobile phone and some clothes so that he would lie. To they eliminated the charges of rape and attempted murder, but not the one of attack, for which there was no evidence at all.

They called in an official forensic handwriting expert, who said that the slant of Santiesteban’s handwriting indicates a violent personality, and with this the trial ended. continue reading

Santiesteban is in prison, where he has been exactly one year as of this February. The woman with whom he has shared his life for five years never doubted his integrity and visits him in prison. His ex-wife who is the one who accused him is also the mother of his son and everything indicates she acted out of spite and passionate vengeance to the life and successful relationship of her former spouse.

The case of Manuel Cuesta Morúa is recent. He has been charged under the offense of “Dissemination of false news against International Peace.” His trial is pending despite the irrationality of the whole thing.

Gorki Águila, the lead singer of the band Porno para Ricardo (Porn for Ricardo), will be subjected to a summary trial this coming Tuesday. He gave me an interview that was published in Cubanet and also reproduced in this blog some months ago.

In it he said that he was sitting on a wall of a central Havana street in the company of a friend, when a police patrol stopped in front of him and, just like that, said he was being arrested. In his backpack they found two Tradea pills, a medicine for epilepsy, which he has suffered from for 20 years.

At that time at least Gorki was able to get the doctor who gave him the prescription, in Mexico, to expedite a clinical history explaining why he takes this medication. This document was endorsed by all the relevant Mexican authorities and delivered by them to the Cuban embassy in Mexico.

Despite this, the authorities, who are covering up something more sinister, insist on holding the trial. We, his friends, are worried and have no confidence in the summary proceeding to be held against him on Tuesday, 11 February — at the Court at 100th and 33rd in Marianao — because on occasions the judgements are dictated before the trials.

The attorney defending him will only be able to see his case file at the time of the trial, has had to prepare his defense in the abstract. The good news is she is confident that there is no way to prove that the Tradea was anything more than what it is: a medicine indicated for the disease suffered by the accused.

But we are in Cuba. It is a Kafkaesque reality. We are immersed in it; it’s a nightmare we want to wake up from. Many lives have been arbitrarily destroyed. The worst form of the evil complicit with the Havana regime is that contributed by the Leftists worldwide.

Even the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Secretary General of the Organization of American States didn’t have the courage or ethical commitment to look and address themselves to what is behind the discourse of the Cuban dictators, at the recently completed 2nd Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

I cling to the hope of a stroke of luck, that would have nothing coincidental about it but when it looks so bad, our liberation has to be possibly precisely because it seems impossible.

7 February 2014

The Silent Successes of the Cuban Dissidence / Ivan Garcia

Gustavo-Arcos-Bergnes-620x330Before the olive-green autocracy designed economic reforms, the peaceful, illegal opposition was demanding opportunities in small businesses and in the agricultural sector as well as repeal of the absurd apartheid in the tourist, information and technology spheres that turned the Cuban into a third class citizen.

General Raul Castro and his entourage of technocrats headed by the czar of economic reform, Marino Murillo, were not the first to demand changes in national life. No.

When Fidel Castro governed the nation as if it were a military camp, the current “reformers” occupied more or less important positions within the army and the status quo.

None raised his voice publicly to demand reforms. No one with the government dared to write an article asking for immediate economic or social transformations.

If within the setting of the State Council those issues were aired, we Cubans did not have access to those debates. The tedious national press never published an editorial report about the course or changes that the nation should have undertaken. continue reading

Maybe the Catholic Church, in some pastoral letter, with timidity and in a measured tone, approached certain aspects. The intellectuals who today present themselves to us as representatives of a modern left also remained quiet.

Neither did Cuban followers of Castro-ism in the United States and Europe question the fact that their compatriots on the island had no access to mobile telephones, depended on the State for travel abroad or lost their property if they decided to leave the country.

Who did publicly raise a voice was the internal dissidence. Since the end of the 1970’s, when Ricardo Bofill founded the Committee for Human Rights; in addition to demanding changes in political matters and respect for individual liberties, he demanded economic opportunities and legal changes in property rights.

Independent journalists have also, since their emergence in the mid-90’s and, more recently, the alternative bloggers. If the articles demanding greater economic, political and social autonomy were published, several volumes would be needed.

Something not lacking among the Cuban dissidence is political discourse. And they all solicit greater citizen freedoms, from the first of Bofill, Martha Beatriz’s, Vladimiro Roca’s, Rene Gomez Manzano’s and Felix Bonne ’s Fatherland is for All, Oswaldo Paya’s Varela Project, to Antonio Rodiles’ Demand for Another Cuba or Oscar Elias Biscet’s Emilia Project.

The local opposition can be criticized for its limited scope in adding members and widening its community base. But its indubitable merits in the submission of economic and political demands cannot be overlooked.

The current economic reforms established by Castro II answer several core demands raised by the dissidence. No few opponents suffered harassment, beatings and years in prison for demanding some of the current changes, which the regime tries to register as its political triumphs.

The abrogation of absurd prohibitions on things like the sale of cars and houses, travel abroad or access to the internet has formed part of the dissidents’ proposals.

Now, a sector of the Catholic Church is lobbying the government. A stratum of intellectuals from the moderate left raises reforms of greater scope and respect for political differences.

But when Fidel Castro governed with an iron fist, those voices kept silent. It will always be desirable to remind leaders that Cuba is not a private estate and that each Cuban, wherever he resides, has the right to express his policy proposals.

But, unfortunately, we usually ignore or overlook that barely a decade ago, when fear, conformity and indolence put a zipper on our mouths, a group of fellow countrymen spent time demanding reforms and liberties at risk even to their lives.

Currently, while the debate by the intellectuals close to the regime centers on the economic aspect, the dissidence keeps demanding political openings.

One may or may not agree with the strategies of the opponents. But you cannot fail to recognize that they have been — and continue to be — the ones who have paid with jail, abuse and exile for their just claims.

They could have been grandparents who run errands and care for their grandchildren. Or State officials who speechify about poverty and inequality, eating well twice a day, having chauffeured cars and traveling around the world in the name of the Cuban revolution.

But they decided to bet on democracy. And they are paying for it.

Iván García

Translated by mlk.

6 February 2014

From the Cosmos to the Absolute Limit / Juan Juan Almeida

One 29th of January, but in 1942, Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez was born in the city of Guantanamo, Cuba, the first Cuban, and the first Latin American, cosmonaut.

What Cuban doesn’t remember the joint Cuba-USSR flight undertaken in the Soyuz 38 space craft commanded by the Russian Yuri Romanenko on 18 September 1980?

Obviously the man with the fridge isn’t Tamayo, but another Cuban who with sweat and toil is attempting to conquer his cosmos.

Translated by GH

30 January 2014

#FreeGorki: Defense exhibits that he is both artist & musician

Free Gorki: Defense exhibits that he is both artist & musician

Click here for the 26 videos

Screen Shot 2014-02-06 at 10.39.24 PMGorki Luis Aguila Carrasco is the lead singer of the Cuban Punk rock band Porno para Ricardo. He has been targeted in the past for his political beliefes and threatened with prison. On September 30, 2013 agents of the Castro regime arrested Gorki and confiscated medication prescribed to him by a Mexican doctor for epilepsy that the Cuban punk rocker has suffered with since childhood. In a Cubanet interview on October 16, 2013 Gorki explained his situation: “I don’t know what they accuse me of, nor do I have a trial date.” That has now changed. On a citation for summary judgement dated January 27, 2014 Gorki is called to attend a summary trial on February 11, 2014 where he will stand as the accused. Under the rules of the game of the Castro regime he is already guilty. It is up to all of us to campaign for his freedom. Follow the hashtag #FreeGorki on twitter. Please sign the Avaaz petition that is circulating. Castro apologists claim that Gorki is not a musician and that is the reason for this playlist to demonstrate that they are lying.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION

Raul Castro on a Tight Rope / Miriam Celaya

raul-castro-mano-en-el-cuelloRaul Cast has the choice to either deepen the openings or go backwards. In both instances, he will have to face the consequences.

HAVANA, Cuba, January. According to Castro II, the General-President, the seven years he has spent as head of government have been, according to his own express desire, barely a “period of experimentation”, in which he has been forced to relax existing laws in an agonizing effort to “update” — not reform — a model that had demonstrated obsolescence since its inception.

At first glance, it would seem that we are in a continuation phase of the experiment that started in January 1959, and the period between July 2006 and December 2013 is just “more of the same” as some like to repeat. But there are certain details that dramatically change the setting, inconsistent with the intentions of the official plan and the results of the experimentation.

Self-destruction

The fact is that the “Raúl” phase of the experiment surrendered the foundation over which Fidel’s revolution was erected (except, of course, the power of historical and social control mechanisms, such as the monopoly of the press, information and repression), placing us in front of a curious process of self-destruction of the system from which, subsequently, the same class would emerge at the helm, but in a different political system. We would be thus helping an “experiment” called sweeping the last remains of the paradigm of Marxist breath by the same class which imposed it, to reinstate a market economy, paradoxically intended to perpetuate the power of the supposed enemies of capitalism. continue reading

The Cuban revolution, characterized by a series of improvisations and campaigns, did not found an ideology that would sustain it in theory, or an economy that would support it in practice. At present, it appears to be moving towards an incoherent scenario in which the ruling elite, capitalist in practice, though with a socialist discourse, would cohabit with the governed, subsisting under “socialist” conditions in practice, but with capital as their utmost aspiration.

A successor at age 75
A successor at age 75

Between the two extremes, a “buffer zone” would be made up of a managing breed, dispensable if necessary, though privileged in power with broad economic advantages and committed to it. It would consist of managers of emerging sectors with access to monetary and material benefits – such as travel abroad — and by certain executives who have been creating a gastronomic empire under the guise of “partnerships” since the 1990’s, for example some restaurants in Chinatown and other areas, and by the new, rich proprietors who have been emerging from the elite cultural sector.

Bankrupt Economy

In retrospect, one can say that, for better or worse, Cuban reality has changed more in the last seven years than in the previous 20 by a combination of factors that, nevertheless, do not depend on just the will of the government, and stem from the urgent need for changes due to the structural crisis of the system with a bankrupt economy. These changes somewhat break the monolithic immobility characteristic of totalitarian regimes and create elements that weaken it from within.

This applies, for example, to the official program of layoffs in many industrial State centers, unable to maintain subsidies and the inflation of the plans, in addition to the authorization and extension of the private labor market — euphemistically called “non-State forms of employment”, and more generally” self-employment” — having undergone successive changes from its original constraints, which officials have been forced to adjust, between advances and regressions, due to pressure from the new emerging and independent sector, which consider themselves as workers who contribute to the economy and to the State despite the controversial and abusive taxation system and the numerous restrictions that hinder their prosperity and development.

Raul and Obama at Mandela's Funeral
Raul and Obama at Mandela’s Funeral

Despite the slow pace of the program’s “update” and the many reforms that have been implemented, such as the distribution of land in usufruct — a form of leasing — to private farmers and successive concessions; the sale of homes, cars and other properties among individuals; the independent contracting of cellular phone service; the authorization to sell computers; the creation of an internet connection service, though riddled with surveillance checks and excessively expensive; the adoption of non-agricultural cooperatives and, most recently, the emigration reform and car sales by the State at absurdly high prices, among others.

The General-President has not managed to stop the deterioration or to advance the economy. He also has not been able to prevent the nascent exodus towards the provinces, featuring groups of self-employed who have begun to claim their rights spontaneously, and to express their dissatisfaction with the limitations of licenses and the repressive measures that restrict their activities.

In 2013 and already in the initial weeks of 2014 there have been several strikes and demonstrations in the interior, like the bus drivers in Bayamo and Santa Clara in 2013 and the small business owners who have carried out small strikes and demonstrations in several locations in Cuba — also in Santa Clara and Holguín — as well as in some municipalities in the capital, which are just a sample of the power of a private sector driven by interests that go beyond the frameworks of political and ideological commitments that can focus on rights that are eminently civic.

So 2014 could turn out to be an interesting and perhaps decisive scenario from many angles. After coming full circle, we should begin to notice the fruits of the government’s socio-economic strategy and enjoy some benefits, but it appears that the opposite will happen.

The government has the choice to deepen the openings and implement real reforms, or to go backward. In both cases, it will have to face the consequences. The “liberated” sectors that have begun to stir by themselves within a very limited space face the challenge to push and expand the gap. Meanwhile, the shortages within society are growing, there is increased repression, and discontent is growing. Maybe the General-President should consider taking a breather to meditate on the idea that speeding it up a bit would be healthy for all.

Cubanet, February 4th, 2014 | Miriam Celaya |

Translated by Norma Whiting