Last Friday, May 17, I was led to the punishment cell.
In the morning I was visited by the prison director, Lieutenant Colonel Villarrueta Reinaldo Vargas, Chief Interior, Major Erasmus, and First Lieutenant, serving as Duty Officer.
They took me out of the cell and I was told that my belongings would be searched. What they were looking for was nothing more than my writings, letters, in short, they wanted the complaints, the future posts.
Faced with my silence, they dug through, with exquisite interest, paper after paper. Power allows them to abuse. They read my personal letters from my family and friends sending me strength.
Some letters were seized, one from my daughter, my sister, a mason, all of Antonio Rodiles’s and some others from inmates who wrote to me from other barracks in Prison 1580.
“A lot of inmates write to you!” the Director commented.
“People don’t know how to relieve their pain,” I responded.
They continued digging, slowly reading even what a girl of 15 told me about her life, about her excellent grades and her assurances that she is very proud of me.
“I’ve read your complaints, that there is torture here,” the Director said, turning back to me.
“Of course,” I said, “there are brutal beatings here, I have seen ten guards beat a handcuffed man, the living conditions in here are torture, the lack of general hygiene, bed bugs everywhere, bad food, badly prepared, and lack of vital medicines for the mental stability of inmates who need psychiatric drugs, and who, from not taking them, are altered and are punished in cells with charges of indiscipline filed against them.”
But he wasn’t listening to me, he continued to look for information, trying to prevent the world from knowing about the excesses committed in Cuban prisons, which disprove the version of Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, who mocked the Human Rights Council, based in Geneva.
The Director found an old manuscript, a draft of some post already published.
“This already came out,” he said, and tossed it.
At that same time, the inmates of my barracks went out for a reward visit and were searched physically in a way they never experienced in all their lives as prisoners. They were stripped, ordered to squat, spread their buttocks, lift their scrotum, armpits, mouth, show the soles of the feet. All to prevent their collaborating with the cause and sending out my writings.
On Friday, the 24th, will be the regular visit. They showed me the card where I wrote the names of those who would come to see me. And I found they denied permission to nine of the thirteen people I requested. Each name had a signature and a NO, including Antonio Rodiles and Ailer González, and of course, the mother of my daughter and my friends.
So it goes in the prison, the struggle, the censorship and the grim power of the Castro brothers.
An officer I’ve never seen before assured me that I will not get out of this alive, and that after a lot of scandal, nothing will happen; “Accidents are accidents,” he tells me laughing.
In which a visit to a Hollywood mall feels more “real” than the Metropolitan Museum of Art. From Sampsonia Way Magazine.
I walk into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and everything seems very false. It must be a trauma that I’ve dragged along with me from Cuba’s totalitarianism. Mummies, jewels, paintings, masks: Hundreds of objects that I previously knew only as photos in newspapers and books. When all of a sudden they appear before me in real life, none of the artifacts seem real. So I leave with a sense of failure, of incredulity, and with fewer dollars after having donated some to the museum for my visit.
Is it worth-while to focus on the last images and letters coming from the inside of the last living utopia on Earth? Is Cuba by now a contemporary country or just another old-fashioned delusion in the middle of Nowhere-America? A Cold-War Northalgia maybe? Can we expect a young Rewwwolution.cu within that Ancien Régime still known as The Revolution? I would like to provoke more questions than answers.
A few days later, I’m lucky enough to have switched coasts and to be glimpsing the USA’s other ocean. There, in a mall in Hollywood, I manage to make up for that bad first impression. They too are showing off treasures from Egypt and almost all the other empires of antiquity. But the impression I get from those kitsch capitalist trinkets is that each piece represents a unique, invaluable, original style.
Thus, one of the greatest museums in the world comes across as a mausoleum of untruths, as the domain of that fraud whereby History uses Beauty to hide its genocidal nature (with the museum as the house of Evil). The Hollywood mall, on the other hand, in all its warehouse monstrosity and its consumerist candor, seems more like a vortex of desires and interactions, of wanting and participating, of life dramatized, but true, in which anything is still possible. Whereas in the museum, even memory is repressed by the guide’s intentional omissions.
I know that these are delirious ciphers, but they are perfect for writing my monologue as a tourist terrified in the face of Liberty (as a people, while we Cubans cry out for change, we seem to avoid it more and more): “The Museum not as a metaphor, but as castrating Castroism in itself,” I write with irony in my diary. “The Mall not as exile experience, but as a post-historical hope.”
I still haven’t seen my grandparents and other family members. The change is huge, I don’t see Cuba the same way. I see it much more destroyed…opaque… // Nothing compares with the love of family. The hugs and kisses of my father and girlfriend change the effect of 4 hours of “routine inspection.”
After traveling widely in Europe and the United States, Eliecer Avila returned to Cuba yesterday.
I have lived in Nuevo Vedado since I moved here in 1971, the result of a fortuitous permuta or house swap.* My new apartment is on the top floor of what was a modern three-story structure in 1958, built by a family who intended to live in it. The building has only three very spacious apartments, one per floor.
Faced with the abrupt changes that had occurred in the country and the unequivocal signals of “what was to come,” the original owners decided way back in 1960 to leave it all behind and move to the United States. After being “abandoned,” the building was sealed. It was located in what came to be called a “frozen zone,” like so many others in the city. These apartments were given to people who, for one reason or another, had ties to the regime.
A tailor who sewed things for “high-ranking government officials” and his wife moved into the first floor. On the second floor there was a historian for the Communist Party Central Committee and his family. On the third floor, where I currently live, were two members of the Ministry of the Interior and their two ill-behaved children, thanks to whom this opportunity arose and from which, by sheer luck, I benefitted. I traded them a lovely little cottage with a patio and garden, exactly what they were looking for, where their children could run free. The couple took care of all the paperwork so that the swap would take effect as quickly as possible.
Over time those who occupied the premises prior to 1959 began dying off, leaving the property to their descendants. In general these are young people who, it would seem, have little interest in the appearance or cleanliness of the building, only in their apartments’ interiors. As a result we have had to put up with many inconveniences in order to maintain the garden and hallways, as well as to keep the stairways clean.
Becuse of a water leak in his apartment over a year ago, our first-floor neighbor broke through the wall that faces the entry to the building, leaving a gaping hole that went unpatched for many weeks. After talking to him on several occasions about this matter and seeing that he was not about to fix it, my husband decided to cover it up with a piece of cardboard mounted on a stretcher for support. With leftover paint he found in the garage, he quickly simulated an abstract painting in a size large enough to cover the unattractive hole. This avoided giving a bad impression upon entering the building.
Anyway, just as Fernando was leaving the building today, a man was driving by in his car and saw part of the painting through the half-open doorway. He pulled over to the curb and, addressing my husband, said he was a buyer of paintings and old books.
“I am interested in that ’irregular’ old painting from the 1950s in the entryway,” the man told him.
Stifling his laughter, Fernando said, “The painting is indeed irregular, but it is not old, much less from the 1950s.”
A bit embarrassed, the man in question drove off and my husband nearly “died of laughter” as he told me the story.
*Translator’s note: Until recently a homeowner in Cuba who wanted to move could not sell their houses and buy another. They could only trade their homes for one of equal value in an exchange called a permuta.
The still man. A vendor of images, a being who poses for entertainment of others. The image of the type petrified against the walls of this city that we lose and win daily in the image, in the memory, in the myth of a Havana that is no more because every day it is regenerated again and again.
The harlequin approaches and doesn’t ask, doesn’t beg. He is a man who like the light comes out to meet us so that we know life goes by and doesn’t, that life is a party that some just totally believe in. The guard snoozes amidst the Havana torpor. Under the soft foliage of O ‘Reylli Street, the model cars, books and cookies under his custody were free at least once a day.
Wontons, delicious wontons to sweeten the taste buds. A few pass by and resist, very few at the delight of the taste, color, smell and sound of the rich cry, “Wooontoooons, yummy wooooontoooons!!!!”
Depending on the region of Cuba, there are different names for the rich treat of ice sweetened with strawberry syrup, cola or even mint. When chopped ice and sweet wyrup is known as: “raya’o” slushie or frappe.
The wheel of life doesn’t stop turning: Luis Pavon Tamayo died in Cuba, one of the Torquemadas of the infamous Five Grey Years.
One Year Later: Originally posted in January 2008
What pushed me to this adventure of writing a Blog was the bad taste left at the end of the controversy of the intellectuals in January 2007. On an afternoon like today, the 30th of January, we waited – a group of young people – to be able to enter the conference: “The gray five years, reviewing the term.” The meeting in the House of the Americas would try to channel and institutionalize a debate that had been raising the temperature of Cuban emails for a couple of weeks already. A select list of guests began entering the “Che Guevara Room,” while our “group of impertinents” watched, from outside, as midnight arrived.
We were there, obviously protestors, blocked by the custodians and the bureaucrats from entering, to debate and discuss our encounters with censorship and dogmatism. We put a rhyme to a cadence as an appeal to the main organizer of the event: “Desiderio, Desiderio, hear my opinions,” but that didn’t work either. Inside, the voice of the Minister of Culture repeated the idea that in a place under siege, dissent is treason. Meanwhile, on the same corner of G and the Malecon, the frustration of those who were not heard disintegrated into exhaustion and a mass return home.
A year later, I don’t know what we have left of those “Words of the Intellectuals” exchanged by email. What is left to us from that package of complaints and demands that started as criticism of the political culture of the revolution and grew to a questioning of EVERYTHING? I sense that the debate was hijacked by the institutions, jailed by an academic world full of concepts and fancy words, and condemned to take the course of the imminent conference of the UNEAC [Cuban Writers and Artists Union].
However, we were left – at least those of us who were outside – with the conviction that we can’t wait to be allowed inside the next debate. To me, personally, it added a definite push to start this exorcism called “Generation Y.” It gave me the spatula for the long contained vomit (sorry for the nasty metaphor) that has fallen resoundingly over this Blog.
Here is a small text about the “Intellectual Debate,” a point of rupture that marked my life in Generation Y. // The punishment of the censors, of the Torquemadas from so many eras, is the in the end some of their victims end up being more free than them.
In January and February 2007, a series of texts circulated through emails among many Cuban intellectuals. These emails formed a virtual historic debate on Cuba’s cultural policies over the previous 48 years.
The digital magazine Consenso collected this email debate and posted it in one place. This site will provide, email by email, author by author, an English translation. This debate is an invaluable resource to observers and scholars of Cuba. Those who want to help complete the translations can click HERE to translate.]
The following text is a translation of the Introduction to the Intellectual Debate posted on the Consenso website.
Introduction from Consenso website
As is well known, it all started when the young writer Jorge Angel Perez sent a message expressing his surprise and displeasure at the appearance on Cuban television of several people who, in the decade of the 1970s, played a leading role in one of the darkest periods of national culture. Almost immediately the essayist Desiderio Navarro, the art critic and writer Orlando Hernández, and the writers Antón Arrufat, Reinaldo Gonzalez and Arturo Arango joined the controversy by sending emails that circulated among hundreds of addresses within and outside Cuba.
The portfolio shown here contains over one hundred participants, many of whom sent more than one message. Appearing here are those who wrote from within Cuba, and those who joined in from abroad, the signatures of leading figures as well as those of the unknown, along with no shortage of pseudonyms. There are texts, photos and cartoons; they are from academics, the passionate, and people from every side. The sources are varied, from the newspaper Granma to the digital magazine Encuentro en la red, but fundamentally we have received the generous help of friends who have passed on the messages they received.
To facilitate searching, each debater has a page with all of their messages organized chronologically, and from within each page the reader will be able to see a dynamic index of the other participants, organized alphabetically by first name.
A note on the translations
These translations have been prepared by volunteer translators working through the HemosOido.com cooperative translation site. These texts are, in many cases, written at least in part in the “formalized” language of intellectual debate. They also include numerous references to people and events not introduced or explained here. And, of course, they are rich with “Cubanisms” and playful use of the language. All of this is a huge challenge to our volunteers, and we are all doing “the best we can.” We welcome comments, corrections, clarifications. Please consider these translations no more than a “rough guide” to the debate, which certainly merits the skills of professional academic translators; hopefully one day that, too, will come to pass!
That said, there are many who have questioned why we are even bothering “to translate these old emails no one cares about.” Because WE care about them and think they are an invaluable resource for a broader understanding of Cuban history.
(Meanwhile, a special thanks to Regina Anavy who has taken on this project with great energy and who is the translator of about two-thirds of the completed posts.)
The anniversary of the Cuban Republic passed on May 20, and if something was written or said in the official media it was, once again, to criticize and make a big deal out of it, charging it with every possible evil and a few impossible ones.
In addition to calling it a pseudo-republic, media-created and neocolonial, the highlight was classifying it as not independent because of the existence of the Platt Amendment for more than three decades, until it was abolished in the ’30s through an agreement between the governments of Cuba and the United States.
This ideologically manipulated history is well-known. According to it, Cuba was only truly independent starting in January 1959.
However, the assertion is not completely true: it ignores the “Brezhnev Amendment,” which for more than thirty years as well (until the disappearance of the USSR), held Cuba under the aegis of the Soviet Union, followed by the “Chavez Amendment” which extends to this day.
During the first, Cuba was not independent, as its actions and policy responded, first, to Soviet interests, including an article of submission in the 1976 Constitution [from 1959-1976 the Castro regime governed without any constitution at all]; nor was it independent during the “Chavez Amendment,” as it responded to the interests of “Chavism,” a mixture of populism and anti-Americanism.
In other words, if earlier, according to government propaganda, Cuba was not independent, then after, it has not been either. It’s as simple as that.
Any object has its history. In Cuba, the country I come from, the flag should be for everyone’s use, but in the case of controversial citizens, on occasion they forbid us to display this patriotic symbol. My friend Caridad Caballero Batista gave me this, twice they confiscated it and twice I managed to get it home again.
Along with the plants I watered daily so they would flourish and give light.
A few years ago the list of twitterers from Cuba had barely a dozen… and now?… many more! [CLICK ON IMAGE TO GO TO LIST.]People who from Cuba send tweets into cyberspace.
HAVANA — For the second year in a row the London-based organization, Save the Children, has identified Cuba as the best country in Latin America to be a mother. I suspect that the author of this report visited a Cuba on another planet rather than the one in which the mother of my children has to get up every morning.
Millions of Cuban mothers, having embarked on the heroic task of raising their children in a country in ruins, will celebrating Mother’s Day this Sunday. Thinking about this, I decided to investigate how much it really costs to bring a child into the world in the Caribbean’s largest country.
The findings explain in part why the Cuban population remains almost unchanged at around 11,000,000. The annual growth rate in 2011 was 0.6%, the first increase since 2006 according to figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONE). Projections indicate that the population with continue to decrease and that by 2025 the island’s population will still be under 12,000,000.
Pregnancy
A woman can count on regular medical attention from the moment her pregnancy is officially confirmed. Each expectant mother receives a daily dose of iron along with a vitamin supplement called Prenatal.
However, a prescription for these vitamins is usually not issued until after the second trimester of pregnancy rather than before. This is the opposite of what is customary in the world’s most medically advanced countries. Physicians themselves advise, “If you get prenatal medications from abroad, throw out the ones you were given here,” casting some doubt on the quality of the tablets Cubans receive. continue reading
A ration book or ration card will indicate that pregnant women are “entitled” to three or four pounds of beef a month as well as an equal quantity of fish.
The deterioration of medical facilities throughout the country makes childbirth a nightmare for most women.
Last year I was surprised to read a comment that got through the filter of an official website, Cubadebate, in response to an article from Save the Children praising Cuba. A respondent, identified as MG, wrote:
“Has anyone visited the maternity hospital ’Fe del Valle’ in Manzanilo, Granma Province??? Because anyone has been there, anyone who has had to put up with its conditions, anyone who has spent any time in childbirth would realize that this article makes absolutely no sense.
“My twin daughters were born last October in this HOSPITAL. There wasn’t enough bed space so they put TWO pregnant women in the same bed (I know that people won’t believe me, but it’s true). There are no washbasins to rinse your mouth in the morning. You have to drain the bathtubs by carrying buckets of water because the toilets are not connected to a drainage system. Just looking at the bathrooms makes you nauseous. The lobby and dining room have been converted to hospital rooms due to lack of capacity. For those accompanying women having Caesareans, there are no chairs in the recovery area in which to rest, so they have to stand during the entire six-hour recovery period.”
The gift basket
Mothers-to-be are considered “worthy” of a basket of baby goods which include a sheet, and a handful of products. A typical basket consists of three pillow cases, two medium-sized towels, two baby bottles, two little rubber toys, a pantie, a pullover, four bars of soap, an eau de cologne, one tube of cream, one bottle of baby oil, ten muslin diapers, ten yards of sterile diaper cloth and some socks, all for around 85 Cuban pesos (CUP).
A basket of goods provided by the Cuban state.
If you work at a location affiliated with the official trade union, the Cuban Worker’s Central or a government ministry, these organizations will provide you with a more “enhanced” basket on a specific date if it is your first child.
How does one acquire all the products that are needed for a baby’s first year? The average monthly salary in Cuba is around 455 CUP, the equivalent of $20 or 20 CUC (convertible pesos).
Prices for the two most important items — diapers and milk — are exorbitant. Disposable diapers are not produced in Cuba and the purchase price in dollars — between four to twelve dollars a package — makes this product unaffordable for the vast majority of Cubans.
Baby formula is only sold to women whose doctors have confirmed they are unable to breast feed. In hard-currency stores a jar of the baby formula Nan costs a little more than 4 CUC. Other brands sell for 5 CUC.
Exorbitant prices
In the network of government-owned stores, very few of which sell only baby-related goods, prices greatly exceed the average monthly salary.
“Most people do not buy baby articles in the state-run stores. Instead they get baskets sent to them from overseas,” says Marianela Frómeta, a housewife from Central Havana.
In government-run stores a sheet for a crib costs between 8 and 10 CUC while the crib itself varies from 100 to 120 CUC. A mattress to go with it will add about another 50 CUC. The cost of a stroller varies between 50 and 180 CUC, depending on the features.
But it is not just the “heavy artillery” that is costly in Cuba. Onesies (one-piece outfits called enterizos in Cuba) cost between 3 and 7 CUC. Underwear for either sex costs the same but can go for as much as 10 CUC.
A parent’s stress increases as a baby’s first birthday approaches. Baby shoes alone can cost up to 20 CUC, depending on the size and brand.
“In my case I put together my own basket with things from private stalls combined with what they gave me. I also had seamstresses sew things for me. It was the only way we could afford it,” says Marlom Silvera, a worker at an ironworks factory.
A parallel market
One of the best sources for acquiring a newborn’s necessities at lower prices is the parallel market. One of the most reliable is a place in Havana on 21st Street between 4th and 6th in Vedado. A private establishment with a wide range of products at more reasonable prices than the chain of state-run stores, it is still expensive for the average Cuban.
“We get most of our products from people who don’t need them anymore and/or who want to sell them, as well from traders who bring thing from Ecuador, the United States or Venezuela. We also have seamstresses who supply handmade items which are much in demand,” says the owner of the business, who does not want her identity made public.
As the owner explains it, the advantages for her customers are considerable.
“In the state-run stores a baby bottle costs between 1.50 and 5 CUC. Here they’re all 2 CUC. That’s why we have more customers. We also have items that you normally cannot find, like pacifiers, playpens and other accessories,” she says.
In the interior of the country mosquito nets are sold in the parallel market for 300 pesos (12 CUC) and muslin diapers for 6 pesos apiece.
The drama of food
This is one of the most critical subjects during a baby’s first months of life. The cereal supply is limited in the extreme and, when it is available, costs between 5 and 10 CUC a box.
“I think the most expensive thing about having a child is Cuba is his feeding. Produce and meat quickly eat up a month’s salary,” notes Joel Gutiérrez, a self-employed worker.
“At the local store they give you milk that is not of very high quality and some baby food that I it pains me to feed him,” he adds. “Sometimes you’ll get an imitation cereal called Fortachón, but it’s not enough. When will it all end?”
A similar opinion was echoed in remarks by the respondant “MG” in Cubadebate. He writes, “I am the father of twin girls and earn a basic monthly salary of 432 pesos. Do you know how much Nan-Pro baby formula costs? In the hard currency store one can sells for almost 5 CUC. That’s 125 pesos. When the girls were born they were not getting the formula they needed because in all of Granma (Province) this product, which is sold in pharmacies, was in short supply. The girls’ mother recently graduated, does not work and does not earn a salary. Do they think I can support two girls on my salary alone? You’ll spend an entire month’s pay on food for just one child in one or two weeks.“
Adding up the prices for a baby’s basic necessities after visits to various stores, we were able to calculate that the initial costs for raising a child in Cuba in the first six months of life vary from 700 to 750 CUC (depending on the prices individual stores charge).
Other prices in state-run hard currency stores:
Mosquito net: 30-40 CUC
Wash basin:5-12 CUC
Walker: 18-25 CUC
Baby bag: 20-25 CUC
Baby wipes: 1-3 CUC
Large towel: 10-12 CUC
Gerber baby food: 0.80-1.20 a jar
Nestlé cereal: 3-5 CUC
Toys: 5-30 CUC
Baby powder: 2-6 CUC
Playpen: 15-20 CUC
Infant medications from international pharmaceutical companies: 9-15 CUC
This article is the result of an investigation lasting more than six months and carried out in collaboration with the editors of Café Fuerte.
Translated from Café Fuerte. Originally posted 11 May 2013.
Yesterday, May 15, an emotional meeting of the Holguin CID delegation remembered the birth of the martyr Orlando Zapata Tamayo on May 15, 1967. The story of his humble and courageous life stressed the authenticity of his patriotism. To him the country was sacrifice and duty. His clash against tyranny involved no desire for publicity nor even the slightest trace of a dubious role.
The testimony of those who were his fellow prisoners, as in the case of Ricardo Santiago Medina, member of the National Executive Committee of the CID, is that of a true Christian who knew that the freedom of Cuba could only be achieved with evolution and boldness.
The day of his death on February 23, 2010, after a more than eighty day hunger strike without proper assistance, OZT carried a cumulative sentence of 36 years in prison for peaceful protest that in any democracy wouldn’t even lead to a fine.
The regime thought that because of was a poor and unknown black man his murder would go unpunished. They never imagined that given the seriousness of her son’s condition, Reina Luisa Tamayo’s desperation touched the hearts of millions of people. Nor did they calculate that once they consummated the crime, Reina would write one of the most moving and courageous pages in the history of Cuba denouncing the tyranny in the streets of our country.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo was a legitimate opponent. He always put his life on the frontline. He had the courage to maintain his dmeands and his opposition to the bitter end. Orlando was a direct incarnation of the historic political prisoners, the ones who when no one in the world listened maintained the dignity of the struggle for democracy at the cost of extraordinary personal sacrifice.
For those involved in the final battle against the Castro regime and to all the people of Cuba who aspire to the change that is coming, Orlando Zapata Tamayo should not be a patriotic memory, but a living example by which we must measure all the pretenders to leadership.
On the afternoon of May 14 a meeting was held at the University of Camaguey with students and teachers, led by former G2 agents along with other higher level officials from Cuban Counterintelligence.
All this focused on the issue of ideological subversion with the objective of showing the students supposed CIA cables leaked to G2, to try to counter the discontent and the new mentality that is taking hold of young people in the face of the current political-social situation in the country.
I was invited to this event so that, in some way, the information presented would influence my ideas and political positions taken in recent years.
Something that is intolerable and never tolerable is how they criticize, demonize and mock great people (among these there is a major emphasis on Yoani Sanchez, Antonio Rodilies and Eliecer Avila) without giving them the chance to enter into an open debate, and denying the public the chance to decide which arguments they believe and which they don’t.
I would like to touch on so many other topics, but the inequality of the coalitions obliges me to be precise in the face of an action so hugely unjust. Simply touching on the topic of plurality, of the right of the accused to defend themselves in public, and also to criticize. This action generated a series of controversies some of which are expressed in my Twitter account (@reyneraguero1).
As with everything, something useful comes from all this. I confront a fear I had never before thought I had the courage to face. Among the arguments, many found reason in my words to the point that a dean (a woman Doctor), after expressing that “Cuban and the universities must be only for the Revolutionaries,” recognized her failure to express the maxim of Jose Marti, “With all and for the good of all.”
Then she defended my right to take part (in a particular way), and in the form of a harangue cried that they never should have expelled me from the university. The applause of the crowd followed, apparently unaware that I had been prohibited from studying in my country.
Later different people took the floor but with very little chance to respond to them. However, I was more satisfied than ever for having launched my grain of sand in the Plural Cuba that so many of us want to build.
(Forgive the editing errors for lack of time and connection problems.)
The April 14 elections in Venezuela should have strengthened the Castros’ influence in the South American country. The one chosen, Nicolas Maduro , was Havana’s man. The electoral victory would legitimize him in Venezuela, in the world and within the ranks of the Chavistas. The Venezuelan opposition would be demoralized. They would not have to use violent repression to neutralize it. The dictatorial machinery would drown it slowly drown.
There was no reason to doubt the election results. On the death of Chavez the media and pollsters reported that the popularity of Maduro assured him the presidency by a substantial margin. The Castro regime ruling elite was happy, Venezuelan oil would continue to maneuver a transition the Vietnam model.
With the triumph of Maduro the Cuban democratic opposition would be demoralized. Immigration reform and the exit of dissidents would leave the impression that the era of change had begun. Eventually the Obama administration would allow U.S. Tourism to travel to Cuba to spend billions of dollars. Then they would lift the embargo and investments coming from the United States would save the recycled dictatorship.
Then the unexpected happened. Maduro’s campaign began to take on water while Enrique Capriles improved his position. Nor did the pre-planned fraud scheme ensure victory for Maduro. The Chavista power elite was forced to resort to crude methods of intimidation and fraud. And they still didn’t win, they had to steal the election.
The rest is developing day by day. Nicolas Maduro has been losing prestige inside and outside of Venezuela. The Venezuelan opposition has acted very cleverly to demand a vote recount and calling for international solidarity.
Raul Castro and his octogenarian never imagined a scenario as unfavorable and potentially unstable. Definitely not the victory they planned, expected and needed.
In the expanded meeting of the Council of Ministers held on Friday May 13, the head of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment reported on the irregularities in the operation of businesses with foreign capital and international contracts; the Minister of Economy and Planning spoke about the irregularities and criminal activity in the marketing of fuels; while the Comptroller General of the Republic recognized that although there are improvements in the evaluations with respect to previous reviews, serious problems and vulnerabilities persist.
An objective analysis on the subject should begin to banish the use of euphemisms to sugarcoat reality. It is not about irregularities, but rather a marked deterioration of ethics, of corruption, which if it didn’t begin in 1959, it was after that date that it expanded from the political-administrative sphere to all social relations to become a culture and to act as a brake on government projects themselves.
This phenomenon, which starts in the economy and even reaches the spirituality of Cubans, is one of the factors that shows the structural character of the current crisis and explains the failures in the attempts to overcome it with limited changes to the economy.
Among the factors that condition this reality is the disappearance of the tens of thousands of proprietors who were replaced by “bosses,” the total implementation of the “property of the whole people” and the failure of wages and pensions; it was a combination of harmful agents that have led to robbery, theft, bribery and deception in order to survive. It is also because the moral standard is a collection of socially accepted norms, that change depending on purposes, interests and social conditions, such that survival is a form of morality that emerged from the profound structural crisis we’re immersed in. continue reading
The changes that are being implemented in Cuba under the label of the Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Communist Party, are faced with the worst situation in respect to moral conduct that our history has ever known. Survival, reflected in multiple frustrations, has generated disinterest, hopelessness and escapism reflected in a morality that employs a patriotic vocabulary with a distinct content. Now the struggle, is not designed for the purpose of abolishing slavery, achieving independence and overthrowing tyranny, but rather to survive; nor is it about “Freedom or Death” or “Fatherland or Death,” but about “Life or Death” which is the slogan of the survivor.
The explanation of the former lies in that the first human morality is the preservation of life and when social conditions close every possibility of realization, people have only two paths: renounce life or survive. Thus, in the face of inadequate wages, Cubans respond with activities at the margin of the law; to the impossibility of being entrepreneurs, through the State track, that is, government expenditures and utilities in particular; the shortages, theft from the State, which is ultimately the property of “all the people”; the shutting down of all possibilities to escape to exile; the so-called ideologies, with the apathy; meanwhile the verbs escape, struggle and resolve, designate the actions to acquire the necessary “extras,” that is, to survive.
Official journalism does not seek the causes
Given this stubborn reality, the State limits itself to repression: more police, surveillance, restrictions and inspectors; all actions about the effects without taking into account the causes, among them the shift toward totalitarianism that erases the citizen from the Cuban scene. But what strongly draws our attention, as we see in the following and small sample of articles, is the insistence over the years on the effects and the ignorance of the causes:
The May 22, 200 issue of the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) published “The Hunter of Deceptions,” referring to a popular inspector charged with detecting violations in quality, weight, price and the selling items of outside the unit. According to this inspector when the evidence of the crime was placed before the the offender, some consumers are bothered and defending their own victimizer. That is, the “victims” defended their victimizers, a fact demonstrative of the social acceptance of the morality of the survivor.
On Saturday November 28, 2003, the newspaper Granma published “Violations of Prices and the Never-ending Battle,” in which an official of the Department of Price Supervision of the Ministry of Finance, said that in the first eight months of this year, in 36% of establishments inspected they found irregularities; in the case of markets, fairs, plazas and agricultural outlets, the index was above 47%, and in food it reached 50%.
On Saturday December 24, 2005, Granma reported that at the regular session of the National Assembly of People’s Power, Pedro Ross, then Secretary General of the CTC, said: “There are workers who react, but others don’t and continue to justify the theft and other misconduct.”
On Monday, February 16, 2007, Granma’s article “Cannibals in the Towers,” addressed the theft of the structures that support the high voltage electric transmission network. In 2004, 1,648 of the structures disappeared on the 220 thousand volt network, and 545 in the 100 thousand volt network; in 2005 they stole 532 and 544 respectively; in 2006, after strengthening surveillance, technical measures and sanctions, 267 and 1,827 disappeared. There was a decrease in 220,000 network only because the bolts were welded up to 6 yards high, but then the daring fighters climbed above that height. Similarly the conductor cables were stolen, to sell the aluminum and copper contained in them.
On Friday, October 26, 2010 Granma published “The Price of Indolence.” It turns out in the commune of Corralillo, in Villa Clara, more than 300 homes were built with stolen materials and resources. In 240 of the homes inspected over 10,000 feet of rail tracks had been used, and in 82% railroad tracks from the Ministry of the Sugar had been used, which came from the dismantling of over 15 miles of railway lines, and pieces from over 59 high voltage towers were also used.
More recently, in Juventud Rebelde of February 19 and 26, 2012, the Comptroller of the Republic said in an interview: “In our experience, the causes of corruption range from the fact that there was no control of the contracts, because those whose job it was didn’t do it, and those who had to audit it either didn’t audit it or didn’t do so in depth.”
And to all this must be added the constant diversion of resources, countless lawsuits, including against senior government officials.
What neither Granma nor Juventud Rebelde have established, as journalists, is the relationship between, corruption on the one side and on the other absolute state ownership, poverty wages and the inability to be entrepreneurs. What they have done is demonstrated the futility of repression, if not accompanied by measures to address the causes, then, surveillance, police, simple inspectors, comprehensive inspectors, or inspectors of the inspectors, are Cubans with the same needs as the rest of the population and therefore practitioners of the predominant morality.
To change the course of events they will have to extend, although quite late, the economic changes to other social spheres, which means returning civil liberties, without which the formation and the predominance of the civic behavior required by present and future Cuba will be impossible.
