The Era Is Giving Birth to a Bicycle / Pablo Pascual Mendez Pina

DSC06967Faced with the debacle of urban transport, the Government will implement an emergency plan that includes the use of bicycles as an alternative for personal mobility, a measure that dusts off the bloody years of the “Special Period.”

In the Council of Ministers meeting held on Saturday June 29 in the MINFAR (Ministry of the Armed Forces), Vice President Marino Murillo Jorge analyzed the deterioration of the technical condition of the equipment and described the reordering of urban transport in the Havana as “unstable, insufficient and poor quality,” while recognizing “fare evasion on the part of the passengers, and stealing — with impunity — part of the fares collected by the transport workers.”

The Raul’s regime economic czar assessed as “poor” the efforts of the bus companies, including the boats that cross Havana Bay and the limited railroad employment, noting that the main inputs for this work — fuel and spare parts pp are acquired on the black market and the state system itself serves as its main supplier.

The members of the Council of Ministers, along with its president, proposed to redesign incentive systems with bonuses, tax exemptions and even subsidies to avoid price increases in transportation.

The meeting took place less than fifteen feet from a parking lot car crowded with the cars of the latest generation, intended for use by members of the presidential cabinet of Raul Castro.

Look at the street

In the capital, the vehicles are not in such great shape, modern Chinese-made Yutong buses, imported during the years 2005 and 2006, and parts of their bodies exhibit scorched by the rust while their exhaust systems give off black smoke from poor combustion.

The private vehicles used for passenger transport have been in use for more than thirty years. Many have been re-powered to use diesel fuel in order to travel more kilometers per liter, and in the case of the “almendrones” (cars from the first half of the twentieth century), most of their bodies have lost their lines as a result of adjustments to increase the number of seats.

The buses on the routes “P”, which provide better service in the state-owned “Metrobus,”can be up to 40 minutes late at the stops, while for others such as the routes 8 and 34 the delay can exceed an hour.

Requesting anonymity, a former official of the Ministry of Transport claims that the Government acquired more than 900 buses in the markets of China and Ukraine, whose wholesale prices were negotiated for the trifling amount of $30,000 each, despite their cost on the world market being about $100,000.

The Cuban side began defaulting on payments and the supply of spare parts was cut off by creditors. “Thus began the urban transport problems,” said the former official.

An example is that at interprovincial transport base Augusto Cesar Sandino, located at 20 de Mayo and Patria streets in the Havana municipality of Cerro, vehicles began to be idled for petty faults, such as oil filter exchange.

Soon the process of “cannibalism” began (extracting parts or pieces to repair other equipment) which ended up severely spoiling more than 70% of the fleet without it having fulfilled its useful life. “The paradox,” the source added, “is that Cuba has not yet paid for those buses.”

Glimpse into the past

Buenaventura Martinez is 86 years old and lives in Cerro municipality and was one of the drivers who worked for the Allied Bus Cooperative (COA) before it was nationalized.

He treasures a package of a yellowish papers with data from the company, which came to pay annually more than 20 million pesos to its approximately 12,000 employees.

He says the company was perfectly organized. Its leadership team created workshops for body and engine repair, and the transport sector contributions were destined solely to the Ministry of Public Works for the improvement of roads, as these ensured the maintenance of equipment.

In the 50s, the company renewed its fleet with the acquisition of more than 600 buses General Motors brand. According to experts, this generation of buses was the most modern and efficient that American industry had built. 600 bus in front of the 900 acquired more recently acquired, and Havana by then had a population of about 800 000 inhabitants, less than a third of today.

For a prosperous and sustainable bike-socialism

For Felix Chamizo, 57, an industrial electrician, who put down his pliers and screwdrivers to get behind a counter and sell churros on his own, the collapse of public transport and the proposed use bicycles as an alternative, means “the second part of the Special Period horror film will start shooting soon.”

He says that in 1992 they sold him a Chinese bicycle at his workplace and since then he’s used it to get around the city. However, it seems a mockery to him to make an aging population ride bikes again; 60% of Cubans are over 40.

Felix avoids the buses and rides his bike only now and again, as he’s already showing signs of prostrate inflammation. He suggests it’s necessary to eat well to have the energy required to pedal, which is a problem in Cuba given the scarcities and high prices of food.

And when informed that, according to studies by British scientists, the food deficit and excessive exercise Cuban population suffered during the bloody years of the “special period” decreased the risk of cardiovascular disease and overall health benefited population, Felix replied, “These scientists are sons of p …”.

From Diario de Cuba

13 July 2013

Change by Attrition: The Revolution Dies Hard / Antonio Rodiles

From World Affairs

hp.07.24.13.WAJRodilesBy Antonio Rodiles

Five years ago, hopes were high among Cuba watchers when Raúl Castro officially succeeded Fidel. There was particularly intense speculation about who would be named the next first vice president of the Council of State. Bets focused on two candidates: Carlos Lage Dávila, a bureaucrat in his late fifties, and José Ramón Machado Ventura, an apparatchik in his late seventies who had been a captain in the guerrilla war that brought the revolution to power in 1958. Which of the two men was chosen, observers theorized, would suggest Raúl Castro’s orientation over the next five years and give a clue about whether Cuba’s course would be Raulista (reformist) or Fidelista (status quo).

The answer came when Lage and his friend Felipe Pérez Roque were ousted along with other senior officials. Despite his substantial portfolio—he had initiated a series of reforms that gave standing to small private businesses and had negotiated a supply of subsidized oil from Venezuela—Lage was stigmatized for deviation from communist principles and especially for trying to consolidate a base of personal power. It later emerged that on several occasions he and Roque had mocked the Castros as dinosaurs of a prior age.

In 2008, the international context was different from what it is today. Raúl Castro was attempting a modest rebranding of the Cuban government with the signing of the United Nations human rights covenants in New York. Hugo Chávez had become an inexhaustible source of resources and support for the disastrous economy Fidel had bequeathed to his brother. Barack Obama was emerging as the probable next president of the United States whose election would, according to Raúl’s calculations, increase the chances of ending, or at least relaxing, bilateral differences with the US without requiring that too much would have to be given up. The stakes were raised that same year when three hurricanes lashed the Cuban island, depressing its precarious economy even further.

Still, despite diplomatic encouragement by the new US administration, the Cuban government gave little evidence that it actually wanted a new dynamic. Clinging to a society totally controlled by State Security and a huge army of informers, the Raulistas instead sent a signal of their own in 2009 by arresting American Alan Gross, a subcontractor for the US Agency for International Development, for allegedly passing satellite phones and computers to members of Cuba’s Jewish community.

As the status quo regained its critical mass, Cuba’s democratic opposition increased its activities. Guillermo Fariñas’s hunger strike, activism by the photogenic Ladies in White, and the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo after his own prolonged hunger strike all combined to create strong internal and external pressure on Raúl’s regime on the issue of political prisoners. A recognition that the situation must be dealt with led the government to enlist the intervention of the Catholic Church as liaison between the regime and the pro-democracy forces.

All during these crises, the government maintained that its “reforms of the economic model,” supported by Venezuelan subsidies, would bring about neo-Castroism at an “adequate” pace, without creating social tensions or breaking continuity with the founding principles of the revolution.

However, the much-publicized transformations of the economy never happened. Foreign investors have not queued up to invest in the Cuban future. First abject economic dependence on Venezuela (an echo of an earlier dependence on the USSR) and then the death of Hugo Chávez, “the brother from the Bolivarian country,” have upset all the nomenklatura’s rosy scenarios for transition without change.

As it confronts what is likely to be a bleak future without the support of Venezuela, which must now turn inward to deal with its own soaring inflation and the legitimacy crisis of Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, Cuba needs to look once again and more realistically to the US and to what it would take to get a relaxation of economic sanctions. The release of Alan Gross would be a sign of weakness, but it would at least remove one key obstacle in the way of dialogue.

But the regime’s room for effective maneuvers—maneuvers that would give hope for recovery without causing a crisis of legitimacy for the Communists—has narrowed. As all the early expectations created by Raúl Castro fade to black, the government looks for steps it might take to allow Cubans to breathe a little more freely and lower their demands. Relaxing the controls of the iron-fisted travel and migration policy, in hopes of easing the growing shortages suffered by Cubans, is one of the “audacious” steps the regime has taken.

It is also naming “new” figures to fill the senior government posts who are actually part of the ancien régime. One of these, Esteban Lazo, was named president of the National Assembly. Symbolizing everything about the system that is old and unworkable, he will take the reins of an assembly that has never had a contested vote, not even on the very trivial issues which that body is allowed to discuss. Lazo is part of a retaining wall to block any initiative that might arise or come to this governing body.

Substituting Miguel Díaz-Canel for José Ramón Machado Ventura—as first vice president, and presumptive heir—is an attempt to provide a Potemkin succession. Díaz-Canel, younger, obedient, lacking in charisma, and without his own power base, will depend entirely on the consent of an entrenched military apparatus to keep his post. As in the case of Lazo, his appointment is another indication that the old dynamic has not been discarded but merely given a face-lift. Both men will improve the image of the ruling elite but in no way diminish its power or control.

Given the likely governmental schizophrenia that lies ahead—trying to create a narrow opening to the US while also making sure that any change in the upper echelons of government is only cosmetic—the opposition inside Cuba could begin to play a more crucial role. The collaboration among different opposition groups is more cohesive than in the past. The emphasis in recent months has been woven into a campaign called “For Another Cuba,” which demands the ratification and implementation of the United Nations covenants on human rights as the first step in a transition to democracy.

How the opposition plays its cards could influence the form the government’s Plan B ultimately takes when all else fails, as it certainly will. In the near term, however, it can be assumed that the government, looking ahead to the end of the Castros, will continue to assign key positions to its most reliable cadres, people who will guarantee that “neo-Castroism” is the only alternative. It will also try to create the illusion that the faces it presents to the world as its new government are not actually Castroistas in sheep’s clothing.

This narrative of rejuvenation will, however, require an economy that can afford it. And that is the sticking point: How can a completely disjointed and broken economy be repaired without fundamental change? It is hard to see how such a rescue operation could take place without a huge injection of capital, an injection that today could come only from Cuba’s northern neighbor.

The US embargo and the EU’s Common Position are key pieces in the political chess game now taking place behind closed doors in Havana. If the government manages to pull off the magic act of getting the embargo dropped and securing an infusion of resources without first installing the basic reforms that would in effect toss the old regime on the ash heap of history, it would be able to keep its repressive apparatus intact—and we could say goodbye to any dreams of democracy. When I hear several pro-democracy figures advocate an immediate and unconditional end to the US embargo, therefore, I wonder at their naïveté.

If on the other hand the international democratic community signals to the totalitarians in Cuba that ratification and implementation of the fundamental rights set out in the UN covenants is the only path to solving the Cuban dilemma, and if it conditions any measure relaxing the economic sanctions on the fulfillment of those international agreements, it will not take long to see results.

The Cuban government has not been and is not reckless, despite the provocative behavior it engaged in when it sheltered under the Soviet umbrella. The elite want to maintain power, but not a brief, après moi le déluge power that lasts only for their own lifetime, with family and close friends inheriting a wasteland.

The vast majority of the opposition, for its part, continues to hold the line by promoting peaceful change that transitions to a true democracy with the full and absolute respect of individual liberties and that will stand as a moral and political measurement of whatever status quo the government settles on in a desperate attempt to maintain its power.

One subtle sign that this change is on the way, even if there is not immediate economic reform or political liberalization, will be the disappearance of the metaphors of combat as Cuba’s lingua franca: “heroic territorial militias,” “socialism or death,” “impregnable bastions,” etc. These clichés represent the necrosis of Castroism; their disappearance will mean that the head has finally gotten the message that the body of Cuban communism is dead.

July/August 2013 Issue of World Affairs

Why Not Just Dissolve the CDR? / Regina Coyula

Stewpot on the anniversary of the founding of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (MARTINOTICIAS)

Comments on the recent speech by General-President Raul Castro can be heard in a pharmacy line as well as in an almendrón.* People in general are pleased that the country’s top leadership is finally acknowledging the presence of the invasive social weed that until now seems to have been growing unnoticed. Cubans, with our ability to adapt and to forget, are happy that the government is now taking steps, as any recently elected government would, to address the problems inherited from its predecessors.

Many claim that the deterioration in our social values is no worse than in other countries, which probably is true. But they forget this laboratory was supposed to be the breeding ground for the “New Man” — someone who would be generous, honest and hard-working. By now, several generations should have given birth to this New Man, of whom so much was expected. But as in the Michael Keaton comedy Multiplicity, each new version was even worse than the last.

As we have seen, experimenting with cows can leave you without cattle, but when you experiment with instruction, the repercussions for society can be quite profound, as is evident today. The family itself has been a tragic protagonist in the Cuban social experiment as well. Nevertheless, neither official acknowledgement of the litany of social transgressions nor popular enthusiasm are enough to resolve a problem that has done nothing but grow.

More than fifty years ago a grassroots organization was created, which later evolved into a non-governmental organization (though we all know this distinction is merely one of semantics): the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution or CDR. Its nation-wide framework stretched across the island’s geographic confines. It was designed from the ground up to “deal with” issues that encompassed, among other things, healthcare, education, sanitation, beautification, raw materials and, most importantly, surveillance. Inevitably, one has to ask: Where were the activists of this enormous organization — one which just concluded a nation-wide conference whose conclusions were overwhelmingly positive — while the bad behavior and criminal activity recently outlined by General-President Castro were proliferating?

In spite of many years of efforts, the CDR guards, the “My Happy Pretty House” activities, the Parents for Education movement, the anti-malarial campaign, the Clic Patrol and the drives to collect raw material have not been successful at molding the social clay we needed to create the twenty-first century man.

An apt example of something where we are instructed but not educated is the party to celebrate the anniversary of this mass organization. On the eve of September 28, surrounded by smoke and rum, people set up makeshift wooden stoves in the street to cook a hodgepodge broth with a lot of ingredients but little substance (usually provided by a pig’s head) which is eaten at midnight from plastic cups. Shirtless men, their tongues loosened by the alcohol, listen to reggaeton music at full blast while people feel forced to socialize so as not to appear apathetic. This celebration of “popular support” offers an all too obvious example, which often ends with neighbors feeling disgusted.

To control social disorder the government is faced with a dilemma. It can enforce the law with strong disciplinary measures by extending its repression beyond dissidents, white-collar criminals and petty thieves caught in the act. Or it can leave it to others — to fate, the church or the family perhaps — to eventually restore lost values.

If we are to rescue good social conduct (as we should) and favor education and good behavior, erroneously deemed bourgeois rather than correct, there is no reason to keep the CDR alive. It has become synonymous with filth and environmental contamination, with theft and embezzlement, with illegal construction, with alarmingly high crime rates and other problems which I leave for the reader to recall.

This has led to a decline in its prestige, a lack of interest from citizens, and a sense of resignation with which the corralled members of the Juventud (the Youth) and the Party accept their appointments. It is the natural result of placing the interests of the government over those of society, rendering the CDR obsolete and burdening the state budget with a bloated bureaucracy which is only partially self-supporting.

Social organizations that arise in a natural way and with natural leaders respond to the interests of their environment, they are the ones who should address these problems. And above all (and when we say all we mean all) the law, with a Defender of the People and a Court of Constitutional Guarantees that citizens can turn to with the confidence of not finding themselves unprotected.

Regina Coyula | La Habana | 20 Jul 2013

*Translator’s note: Cuban slang for a type of large, antiquated American car used as a private taxi.

Translated from Diario de Cuba

20 July 2013

The Crisis of the Sugar Missiles: Scenario and Possible Solution / Yoani Sanchez

6a00d8341bfb1653ef01901e67ea1d970b-550wiThe unforeseen, situations that nobody predicted, are for politics like pepper on food. When it appears that all the possible variables of a scenario are on the table, an event sneaks in among them that changes everything. Such is the case with the diplomatic crisis generated by the arms transported from Cuba in a North Korean ship, discovered in the Panama Canal.

After years of trying to clean up its act before international bodies, this incident sets Raul Castro’s government back decades, returning it to the era of the Cold War. There is no time left for the octogenarian politician to reverse the effect of such a a misguided operation. Between now and his announced retirement in 2018, there are not enough days to make people forget the bungling of those missiles hidden under a cargo of sugar. Someone else, in his position, would renounce or remove the Minister of the Armed Forces, but a play like that has no precedent in the Castro regime.

On hearing about the trafficking in this arsenal of war, the question that immediately jumps to mind is how many times have operations like this been carried out without being discovered. The testimony and speculations about Cuba’s sending troops and arms to countries in conflict abound.   It is symptomatic that on this occasion the contraband has been intercepted mid-journey, which raises a new question. Why in this case has it come to light? Clumsiness or intention? Bungling or being out of touch with the workings of the real world? The questions will be asked, but the answers are known only to a few.

The truth is that these events confirm the denunciations of those who, for years, have documented the support of the Plaza of the Revolution for guerrillas, insurgents, destabilization groups, and governments sanctioned by international organizations. Wrapped in the halo of “proletarian internationalism,” the help offered in most cases was hidden with subterfuges, such as merchant ships transporting soldiers or military equipment on the sly. It was the era when the sharp eyes of the satellites didn’t track the planet with such precision, and the Soviet bear was there to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for its outstanding disciple in the Caribbean. A bygone and remote era.

If Cuban political leaders believed they could still hide planes and missiles on a ship, send it through the Panama Canal and successfully arrive at a North Korean port, it is proof of their great disconnect from the reality of the world they live in. The statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also a part of this anachronism, attempting to explain the cargo as a shipment of “obsolete” military equipment off to be repaired in the country of the Kim dynasty.

The justifications or falsehoods that were once effective, fall on the ears of the citizens of this third millennium like bedtime stories for unsuspecting children. Their naiveté was left behind in the 20th Century and it’s a good thing, because the leaders can’t fool us as easily as before. In fact, the performance of the Cuban authorities has displayed such stupidity that it suggests it was an operation prepared by the Castro regime itself, in order to be caught red-handed.

Every time that relations between Havana and Washington seem headed for a rapprochement, some event generates an abyss between the two governments. The most famous example was the shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in February 1996.

Could it be, on this occasion, that the orthodox within the power structure are dynamiting what they perceive to be Raul Castro’s weakness in trying to talk to the neighbor from the north? Or is it the General-President himself who has built this scandal to try to avoid getting to the negotiating table? The “conspiranoia” is infinite.

However, there could be a simpler answer behind all this, as incredible as it seems: the Cuban leadership really believed that it could still continue playing with toy soldiers and ignoring the provisions of the United Nations, without being discovered. Holding power for too long makes those who exercise it into a species of autistics, disconnected from reality. So this could be one of the most chronic cases of political autism we now have in our global village.

In the midst of the complex situation in Cuba, why would the government dare to undertake such a ridiculous operation? After so many efforts to appear before the international community as a country transitioning through a process of openings, where does this “sugar missile” piece fit? Well, it doesn’t fit!

Evidently the relations between old ideological allies are still placed above pragmatic diplomatic strategies.  Old comrades are still prioritized, although to the eyes of the world they are seen as a family dynasty, a recalcitrant violator of the human rights of their citizens, constantly threatening the rest of the planet with nuclear conflict. The fellow travelers support each other, so they have to violate the same UN resolutions to achieve it.

Now that the boxes of missiles are discovered — the MIG-21 airplanes and the rocket batteries — it remains to be known how Raul Castro will get out of such a delicate situation. An apology would not be enough, because the government would still have to comply with some diplomatic sanction resulting from its actions. Acting the fool and reaffirming their “sovereign right” to send arms to be “repaired” in North Korea, will further isolate the island’s authorities at a time when economic support from abroad is urgently needed.

The insolence will also conspire against a possible loosening of the European Common Position, and against the easing of the American embargo. To reply with a barrage of government attacks against the president of Panama won’t accomplish much, because this problem involves other nations who don’t appear willing to forget so easily.

So, then, how does the Castro regime turn the page, minimize what happened, and present the world with a real posture of mea culpa and peaceful engagement? The only solution that remains is to announce political change, the opening so often demanded by its citizens and by international  agencies and governments.

The only thing they can do to overcome this huge mistake is to focus all attention on the total decriminalization of dissent in Cuba, the legalization of other political forces and the final dismantling of totalitarianism.

From “Cuba Libre” in El Pais.

23 July 2013

Savagery to Strays / Fernando Damaso

Photo: Rebeca

In Cuba, although before there was, currently their appears to be no effective organization to protect animals, although there is talk of one, Aniplant (Society for the Protection of Animals and Plants), which doesn’t appear in any telephone directly, and whose activity is so non-existent it lacks a presence and activism.

The outrages committed daily, mainly against dogs and cats, caused anger and pain to sensitive citizens in the face of their helplessness to avoid them. The so-called stray dogs and cats that roam our towns and cities trying to survive — many of them abandoned to their fate by their original owners, who use them as pets when they are young and then when they grow up and require responsibility dispose of them like a useless old shoe — are the objects of absurd beatings, tortures and even acts of vandalism that kill them, as denounced on Tuesday the 15th in the Rebel Youth newspaper under the title “Diary of death and kindness,” without the authorities of public order, or any other, taking action on the matter, nor those responsible being prosecuted.

This reality, palpable at any time in the streets of our neighborhoods, shows the  citizen ignorance that exists, regardless of the vaunted but very questionable education we are said to possess, which seems to leave much to be desired and be more bark than bite, considering the serious problems in education for years now.

Oddly enough, it is precisely the youngest (teens and even children) who are involved in these inhumane acts, with the complicity or indolent gaze of adults, which, rather than stop them and get their attention, often to find it funny or participate in it.

Among the many evils present, dozens of them denounced recently by the highest political authority, the lack of animal protection, with institutions and laws that safeguard the street stray, is one more, which must not be allowed not to escape our attention, if we live in a civilized society.

20 July 2013

Prison Diary XXXVII: Cowardice Disguised as Naivete / Angel Santiesteban

The naiveté of Cubans on the island sometimes dresses itself up and asks my family if they’d really tortured me in prison.

I remembered when, on the first beating, back in 2009, they fractured my arm, many doubted that fact because, some told me, State Security didn’t behave this way, given the scandal it would mean to publicly beat a writer. Other colleagues questioned the incident, and the then Minister of Culture, Abel Prieto, appointed a commission who investigated the events.

I have said previously that another of the ways they harassed me was to stop friends who visited me at home, hold them for hours, asking them if I received foreigners in my house, or if I met with them somewhere else; if I received money from abroad and so on.

When I denounced the proceedings, all thanks to my blessed blog, they began to deploy their agents disguised as artists, that the incident that had happened to me was personal and had nothing to do with the State.

I was never said what definition the investigative commission arrived it, everything was forgotten and my fracture was “forgotten.”

I remember that at that time I published how they were going to find themselves.

On November 8, 2012, State Security beat me savagely, the following day, inside the cell, they beat me harder; only this time, a dissident had the courage, the audacity and ethics to divulge the horrors of the dictatorship, by filming the event.

I always wondered if those intellectuals, having seen the brutal beating, were then convinced that State Security did act that way, and what they think of their own silence back then, when they doubted, and now that they know how is it possible that they can continue to remain silence. Do they know that if they speak up they’ll get the same? Do they know if they talk they will come to this prison where I am?

Here, they have beaten me, forced me to eat food against my will, food that stinks and is colorless and tasteless. They torture me psychologically at all times. What do they need? Another video?

Their cowardice disguises their naiveté, it will be veil that accompanies them until they die. Thus, they will be collected by History.

I don’t understand how they can sleep.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, Prison 1580, July 2013

22 July 2013

Warning Signal / Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez

Archive photo

By: Jorge Luis García Pérez Antúnez, Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance and Civil Disobedience Front. FNRC-OZT

Attention, attention: Never has Cuba been so close to freedom, but never like now has danger loomed that can be cut short and mediated by opportunistic efforts, lacks of faith and even the occasional traitor added to this clear and shameful pact with the Castros…

If we do not stop this dirty and unpatriotic plot in time the results will be the huge fraud-change fraud where the continuity of the Castro regime will be guaranteed when descendants of the leaders of the regime and certain opportunists from here and there will divide up the nation like the booty of corsairs and pirates.

We won’t allow them to eliminate the Cuban resistance. The memory of our fallen and the sacrifice of our compatriots deserve respect and they can’t sit at a negotiating table. I speak on behalf of those who are opposed to a reconciliation without justice first.

As one of the most important Cuban resistance slogans say: I do want real change.

Placetas, 18 July 2013.

19 July 2013

Castro vs. the Cuban People: Where was the President? / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Photo courtesy of Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Photo courtesy of Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

With a speech that lasted 35 minutes, Commander in Chief Raúl Castro destroyed the very last traces of the New Man that would complete the 1959 Castroist revolution. In doing so he created a paradox in which a leader accused the masses of living without moral and civic values: Without honesty or decency or shame or modesty or honor or sensitivity or solidarity.

Raúl Castro (who is also the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party and President of the Council of State) made this condemnatory speech on July 7 during the 8th Legislature of the National Parliament. At times, the General seemed to be on the verge of ordering an ethnic cleansing of the Cuban nation. He threatened to impose discipline at any cost, even though we Cubans are used to that after more than half a century of watching the government use repression as a mechanism for creating consensus and governability.

So, the governing elite is now discovering that the island is in ruins, and that its raw human material is reprobate at best, guilty of: Theft, impunity, squatting, black-market dealing, noncompliance with working hours, illegal slaughter of livestock and endangered species, breeding animals in the city, hoarding products in short supply and reselling them at higher prices, illegal gambling, bribery and perks, harassment of tourists, computer hacking, drunkenness, swearing, and littering in public (as well as defecating and urinating in parks and on the street), graffiti, pounding music, academic fraud, vandalization of phone booths and pylons and even drains and traffic signs…

For speeches similar to Raúl Castro’s most recent one (what we can call a Cubanicide), many people who are critical of the socialist system have been officially punished with ostracism, stigmatization, jail, exile, and death.

The question that never gets answered is this: Where were brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro while Cuba was falling to pieces? Were they ignorant or inefficient or indolent?

From Sampsonia Way Magazine

22 July 2013

One Year After the Scaffold / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Oswaldo Paya at the entrance of the National Assembly of Popular Power in Havana. (CUBAOUT.WORDPRESS.COM)
Oswaldo Paya at the entrance of the National Assembly of Popular Power in Havana. (CUBAOUT.WORDPRESS.COM)

I waited until the end of the line, after hundreds of mourners had filed past his casket. It was the month of July, criminally hot. In the Savior of the World parish in Havana’s Cerro municipality, the wake was being held for the founder of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL): Oswaldo Payá, 1952-2012.

I bent over the glass of the humble box. There was the national flag, with its ever repressive geometry of blue and white bars, and that red triangle with the star like a predatory eye. The odor of dead flowers was unbearable, along with the hypocritical incense of a Church whose Cardinal is today almost a minister of the already fifty-year-old Communist government, turning his back to the faithful as at so many other times in our national history.

I looked at the face of Oswaldo Payá. He had a bruise on his left cheek. Among the Cuban exile, he was accused of being a supporter of the Castro regime for working for a peaceful transition to democracy :from law to law,” one that would redeem the truth and not end up in the fraud-change of exchanging one military caudillo for another in a suit in tie. In the ranks of the opposition, he was criticized for the virtuoso vehemence of this convictions. The loneliness of that fresh corpse was typical of our martyrs.

I thought about how the life of the young MCL leader named Harold Cepero had been claimed along with his. And at this point it was as if Oswaldo Payá looked at me with guilt, without needing to open his eyelids, heavy as backdrops.

At that moment I had a sweeping vision, inspired by the radio address I had just heard in the voice of his even younger daughter, Rosa María Payá, who announced to the world, with pain but great self-possession, that after decades of surveillance and constant threats, her father had been attacked, as demonstrated by the text messages sent to Sweden and Spain by the two foreign survivors of the “accident.”

In my vision, Oswaldo Payá was taken from the rental car he was traveling in and tried in situ by a military court, which condemned him to death without letting him speak, to satisfy the old personal vengeance of the Commander in Chief of the Revolution who never forgave him for being a free and happy man inside Cuba, capable of collecting more than 25,000 signatures against him, of speaking without fear but without hatred in his heart on receiving the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, and being on the point of receiving of receiving the greatly deserved Nobel Peace Prize (a title that Fidel Castro always coveted for himself).

Then, a trickle of blood began to flow from the left ear of Oswaldo Payá, streaming down his neck to settle in the pocket of his shirt. No one else saw it in the church packed with opponents of the regime, foreign press and infiltrated secret agents (all indistinguishable in more ways than one). Without realizing it I started to cry. The tears ran down my cheeks, I was powerless to control them. People called me from abroad and I reported crying, although I wouldn’t say I felt sad; I was just devastated. What had begun with some guerrillas who executed without trail since long before 1959, now ended with a State assassination, meanwhile investors in the free world are already counting their money to invest, seeing themselves investing as the saviors of the last totalitarian utopia on Earth.

The MCL’s Varela Project, the idea of reducing the tyranny by ordering it to comply with its own legislation, still exists today, and no Cuban official (not today and not tomorrow) will have legitimacy as long as the National Assembly of People’s Power does not comply with what it stipulates, and recognizes that this citizen’s petition came to them from within the framework of the constitution. This legacy of Oswaldo Payá will survive the Castro brothers. And even the capitalism-without-human-right that is being tested today in order to enthrone it after the Castros.

It is quite possible their crime will go unpunished in legal terms. But the lives of Harold Cepero and Oswaldo Payá (having been torn away as in my vision or in some other cruel way) are already a living gospel, patrimony of all Cubans, so that the violence of the State will be incinerated in Cuba along with the last of the green-executioner uniforms of State Security.

Translated from Diario de Cuba. Note: This is a longer version of an article that appeared a few days ago in the Prague Post.

22 July 2013

Just Another Sunday / Rebeca Monzo

Due to media secrecy, which is institutionalized here on “my beloved planet,” we have had to find out about this mess, involving Cuba’s “sugary missiles” on board a North Korean ship, in snippets from here and there.  Naturally, this has exacerbated our native tendency towards speculative imagination.

In the end, another Sunday has caught us by surprise which, for me, is the most boring day of the week.  I always promised myself that if one day a gentleman suitor should approach me named Domingo*, and I like him so much that I couldn’t leave him, I’d call him Tito.  Maybe something similar happens to you, especially in the evening hours, when the imminence of a new Monday at work approaches us.

Well, if you’re also a member of the club for those who can’t stand Sundays, why not spend a little time today on your family and flatter them with a simple yet delicious recipe made by your own hands, thus turning Sunday into something less ordinary?  Here you have my suggestion:

Coffee custard

Ingredients:

1 liter of fresh milk

1 cup of sugar

4 tablespoons of cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

4 eggs

1 demitasse of brewed instant coffee

1 cinnamon stick

1 lemon peel

Procedure:

Boil the milk together with the cinnamon and lemon peel.  Lower to medium heat and add the four egg yolks and cornstarch, which should be dissolved in a small amount of milk or water.  Pour this mix into the milk, while gently stirring it with a wooden spoon to prevent lumps from forming.  Once you have a smooth consistency, add the vanilla extract and coffee, while gently stirring.  Lower the heat.  Make a meringue with the egg whites of the four eggs.  Remember: it’s two teaspoons of sugar for each egg white.  You can add lemon zest.  Once it’s ready, bring small dollops of the meringue to a flame with a fork, to make toasted meringues to decorate the custard with.

Bon apétit!

* Translator’s note: Domingo is a common first name in the Spanish-speaking world ; domingo is also the Spanish word for Sunday.

 Translated by: Yoyi el Monaguillo

21 July 2013

Waiting for “the boat” / Miriam Celaya

Ghost ship. Graphic taken from the internet

These days, mothers of babies are in search of disposable diapers, missing from almost all stores of Havana. Shortage crises of such articles take place every once in a while, a product that is so useful, and needed so desperately by mothers today, and despite being marketed only in convertible currency. Gone are the days when women had to boil with soap again and again our children’s antiseptic cloth diapers, and hang them in the sun to keep them pure. Fortunately, these days women have left behind slave labor to take up, as far as possible, the benefits of innovations, however expensive that may imply in Cuba.

But the same is true with other essential items, such as sanitary napkins and cleaning articles like mopping cloths, descaling products, toothpaste, detergents and toilet paper, among others, whose intermittent disappearances from store shelves become a nuisance to the people, given how much time is wasted in pursuing such products, going from store to store, many times without results.

On the other hand, some other popular products that are more “economical”, such as butter — for months absent at the foreign currency stores, the only place where it could be purchased — some chopped poultry (such as Canadian chopped turkey, the most popular), hot dogs, and many others, without any explanation on the part of store management… and even fewer explanations through the official “information” media.

Cubans, with a deep awareness of insularity, sown from the very beginning of the colony, without information about what drives these empty spaces on store shelves, and for decades used to not having anything produced here and everything coming “from outside”, have coined a phrase, half joke and half truth, to explain the shortages: “the boat has not arrived”. A kind of imaginary vessel that could come full of anything that has disappeared, from flour, needed to make bread (oh, the favored bread, the first point in the Cuban political agenda!) even the spices that caused so many wars in antiquity and, for many here, almost entirely unknown, or oil with which we cook our humble daily rice. Just comment anywhere that there is a shortage of anything for the popular answer to make its appearance: “they are waiting for the boat…”

A grocer in my neighborhood is of the opinion that we don’t need for the boat to arrive, but a flotilla to take us all out of this Island, while an illegal loudmouthed street vendor of air freshener and clothespins disagrees and has an easier solution: “Nah, with just one boat they can take all of THEM and their relatives, and you will see that then there won’t be any shortages!” In our Cuban cryptic language we all know who “THEY” are. These are quaint touches of everyday life that begin and end in such a castaway complicity as sterile as the system itself.

So, these days, Havana mothers anxiously await “the boat” of disposable diapers with which to alleviate, at least to the extent allowed by each pocketbook, the burden of keeping babies clean and neat, without ruining hands, nails, and wasting time in the process. And meanwhile, they pray that soap and many other cleaning products won’t fall in the cycle of disappearances, just in case the ever-awaited “boat” is delayed.

Translated by Norma Whiting
19 July 2013

Dances / Regina Coyula

Young people want a break in the routine. They are on vacation. What are the options?

Rafael, 19, is a student. His Federation of University Student (FEU) card facilitated his entry into some places for a lower price. La Cecilia, El Diablo TunTun, Café Cantante at the National Theater are in this category, but if you don’t arrive early, other more savvy college students fill the FEU quota of five or ten Cuban pesos (~ 20¢ to 40¢ USD) per person, and the entry fee stays the same but in Cuban Convertible Pesos (about $5 to $10 USD).*

Several places are the trendsetters. Once a month Parque Villalón brings together the lovers of electronic music with the DJ Lejardi y Analógica with their Fiestas Uniks. It’s a public park, it’s free, and the urban tribes of G Street go down to Villalón for lack of anything better. Both projects have spaces in the Tropical Gardens for twenty pesos.

The rock is concentrated at the Maxim Rock, with an almost always metalcore sound, and the Yellow Submarine and Stairway to Heaven has nostalgic rock. Cover bands alternate with recorded music, there are also bands with original music. In these places the entry price between 30 and 75 Cuban pesos.

The Alamar Amphitheater and the Metropolitan Park are places for hip hop. Apparently, they are the least favored, with both places weather dependent.

The young trova have the Casona de Línea. Trova and fusion music alternate in many places: Café Cantante, El Sauce, La Cecilia, Morro-Cabaña Park, Barbaram … At Café Bertolt Brecht and La Zorra y El Cuervo mix jazz and fusion. Entry is between 25 and 100 Cuban pesos.

Projects like PMM, Havanashow, Fiestahabana, with recorded music, powerful equipment, smoke machines and foam are a good party idea for many young people. The Copa Room of the Riviera, El Pedregal, at 3rd and 8th and at 7th and 22nd are some of the places where these projects are presented. The price of these parties varies between 3 and 5 CUCs, although they usually have more economical presentations for youth activities.

Timba and reggaeton dancers have the Salon Rosado at the Tropical, and the Casa de la Musica on Galiano with live groups; here the prices are from 50 Cuban pesos at the Salon Rosado, up to 10 CUC in the Casa de la Musica, if the artists are famous like Baby Lores or Gente d Zone.

Private businesses begin to appear in the list of preferences. Buddha bar at the back of La Cabaña with an excellent price (25 Cuban pesos) and good atmosphere, is very popular despite its remote location.

The nightclubs in the hotels and recreational centers are big. You can also forget about distance and the carrying on if you get a stereo, put the amplifiers facing the street and torment the neighbors according to the decibels your equipment puts out. It’s free and all, ‘n’ nothin’ happens.

Translator’s note: The average monthly wage in Cuba is less than 500 Cuban pesos. 1 CUC is worth about 24 Cuban pesos.

19 July 2013

Cyber-bembes / Rosa Maria Rodriguez

On June 4, the 118 Internet centers that had been announced in the State press begin operating in Cuba. As I receive the newspaper Granma on Mondays I get Juventud Rebelde, Trabajadores and Tribuna de La Habana, several days earlier I began to search the newspaper, which should have information about the places that would offer the services, the addresses, but as of the writing of this text, nothing has appeared; why?

The downpours of the five days prior to the date in the western provinces drowned my ability to access the network during that time in places where usually I connect and so I do not know if in the foreign press showed the list to which I refer. Maybe the leaders hoped that foreign tourists come to navigate the Cuban cyber waters and for this they maintained discretion.

The fact is that the government media did not pay much attention to the issue. It could be that the silence that is due to a Party direction, perhaps thinking, from their disconnected cloud, that it might produce social congestion at these access points and are trying to avoid it with silence.

It is also possible that, on the contrary, they forgot to coordinate with the newspaper editors — which is unlikely — in order to “give abundant air” to the news in question. There is also possible, even more remote, if we take into account the tight control over the media by the authorities, and that the indifference is due to how distant the Internet is for the majority of the citizens, the excessive process of computer and telephone equipment, and that computers are almost never offered for sale in this country. Generally computers are imported by the minority of Cubans who can travel abroad.

The so-called southern television (TeleSUR) that is weighs on me to mention, committed and manipulated and whose north is leftist propaganda, mentioned the fact with great media fanfare on one of their news broadcasts, and assured that the opening of these cyber centers is part of the process of the “computerization of Cuba.”

If in the national media they claim there are already around two million cellphone users, why not include these potential navigators who already have the tools to set sail? As always happens in dictatorships, the paralyzing fear, secrecy, rights violated with extremist caution, and the unjustified deception on the pretext that “the enemy is listening,” are already very fragile arguments in a globally interconnected world.

This Monday the 10th the newspaper Granma mentioned for the first time that there was a cybercafe in the Focsa Building, with 9 seats for internauts. Where are the others?

The bembé is a religious festival of the Yoruba pantheon inherited from ethnic groups uprooted from Africa and we incorporate it into the Cuban cultural monuments. The news of cybersurfing points, however, wasn’t the celebration that many had anticipated. We’re left, then, with continuing the long and patient wait because everyone uses that service with the tools at their disposal, without ridiculous prohibitive pattakíes or discrimination, to celebrate with all Cuban users the respect of one of the fundamental rights on the part of the Cuban dictatorship, which constitute a real national celebration.

11 June 2013