Malcom, the Generous Hand / Luis Felipe Rojas

It’s Monday the 19th, and it is the first day of school in the United States for my son Malcom. They have placed him in an excellent educational center. It is a preview of our lives here, but at the same time it somehow also connects with what we left behind. No one asked us for our party affiliation, and there was not a single director who demanded to see our proof of social integration. This is a sharp contrast, which we will be grateful for the rest of our lives.

What makes me the happiest about this course, which he has continued 90 miles from his first home, is that he doesn’t not have to lift his hand and put his thumb on his forehead and say that he wants to be like someone. In Cuba, when told, all students must repeat at the top of their lungs “Pioneers for Communism!”, and “We Will be like Che Guevara!” Here, they want him to be like himself, what they wish to see in his attitude is his capacity to demonstrate his talent and physical and intellectual abilities. This morning, he raised his hand to offer it in friendship to dozens of children from three continents. He made some cartoon drawings and excitedly brought them home. It was a new day, with no necessities to read him a manual about heroes chosen by a few, nor will they ask him to praise what he does not want.

A tricolor soccer ball rolled and  bounced off the ground and the steps of my son walked towards the field like someone searching for the world, with strength, with reasons and with desires of being the man who had his dreams interrupted a few years ago, but who stars again now as a simple schoolboy who will offer his generous hand and not a scream, a kick, or a slogan.

Translated by Raul G.

20 November 2012

Crossroads / Cuban Law Association, Wilfredo Vallin Almeida

By Lic. Wilfredo Vallín  Almeida

Three youths were arrested violently, forced into a police car, and taken to a national police station where they were held for about 24 hours under interrogation by the State Security.

The reason: Handing out leaflets for the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba which, weeks before, had been delivered by its developers to the People’s National Assembly where it was received and given the number 1207, on June 20, 2012.

Although police violence is a fact that occurs almost daily in our country — the record of it is shown in photos, videos and interviews by independent media, bloggers and others — this case in particular, by its connotation, deserves special consideration.

When we speak at the police station with the agents of the political police who handled this case, we noticed several things to be discussed below.

First they told us that these young people had been arrested “for distributing propaganda in the public street.” Although they didn’t use the term “enemy,” it was obvious that in referring to propaganda it had to be, because otherwise there was no justification for the arrests.

When we showed the agents that this document had been delivered to the National Assembly of People’s Power without objections on the part of those who received it, they then went on to say “they resisted arrest.”

We will not detail here the argument under International Law that an arrest that begins by being illegal it is not valid for the powers-that-be to later turn it into one that is. That is, at least for now, another issue.

What the agents seemed to look at most strongly was where those sheets had been printed. So what is “important” to them is the printing, not the content. And that can be logically understood because what really worries them is not the actual printing, but the issue that plays out on those sheets.

And the issue is the Covenant of Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Human Rights, both of the United Nations (UN).

And we can understand the official concern because:

Cuba is a member of the UN.

Cuba participates in the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

It is seen as an International Rights Organization violating rights, which they reserve to themselves.

There is a plan, for the second or third time, for a UN rapporteur for torture to visit the Island, it’s not known when.

The Cuban government signed its intention to introduce these Covenants on the island on February 28, 2008.

In the case of such documents they cannot characterize them as an “imperialist maneuver against the country” or something like that.

Nor can they imprison those who disclose these covenants or support this campaign because this act would be wholly inconsistent with the principles of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

They know that, across the whole country, if their content and perspectives are made know to Cubans, there would be countless citizens who would support that demand.

The problems with the UN are not the same as with the harmless, unarmed and defenseless peaceful Cuban opponents.

And this only highlights some aspects of the problem.

Now the question is, of course, very difficult, in the hands of those who can resolve it, or who can conceal it Cuba, if they continue to speak in the tone of arrogance and power with which they spoke with us at the Sixth Police Station.

I think that for those who run things in the government in the country, the defining word today is: CROSSROADS.

September 13 2012

Lessons and Elections / Rafael Leon Rodriguez

Source: “Wikipedia Kiwix”

A few days before the elections in the United States, on November 2, the newspaper Granma published a statement by Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Relations, where it again castigated the United States Interest Section — SINA — in Havana, accusing it of interference, for offering support to civil society and the Cuban peaceful opposition.

The issue of access to the Internet and providing free information at the embassy, which goes against the exclusionary policies of the totalitarian authorities of the archipelago, returns to the public arena. The invalidation of the Cuban opposition, by calling it mercenary, is repeated. The rejection of the proposal by President Raul Castro to hold talks with the U.S. government is put forward as a practice of the past Cold War.

And finally, the threat: “The Foreign Ministry denounces the illegal, meddling, offensive and provocative activities of the United States Interests Section and demands an end to its permanent incitement to carry out actions aimed at subverting the constitutional order that the Cuban people have chosen in a legitimate and sovereign way. The Foreign Ministry confirms that Cuba will not give ground to interference and will use every legal means at its disposal to defend the sovereignty won and to enforce respect for the Cuban people and the country’s laws.”

In Tuesday’s U.S. elections, on November 6, the Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama was reelected for a second term. The current Cuban leaders appear to take a deep breath following the results of these elections. Now it is not about apologizing to the free world, perfectible democracy and the American dream.

It is about asking ourselves, beyond any other consideration, how it would have been it we could not count on the solidarity and support of the people of the United States as represented by their leaders.

We must remember that, after furtively imposing a totalitarian system, alien to our culture, our traditions and the most legitimate interests of the Cuban nation, the totalitarian authorities could not care less about the fate of those not communing with their purposes. “We don’t want them, we don’t need them.”

Under this core belief of the Castro regime, more than two million compatriots were forced to emigrate, the majority to the United States, which welcomed them and where today the Cuban-American community is among the most significant.

And the emigration continues, even supported by the continuous requirements of the Cuban rulers to U.S. authorities, from whom they demand compliance with the immigration agreements and the granting of twenty thousand visas annually.

Ah! Because currently those who emigrate are classified by the authoritarian government of the islands as… economic migrants.

Some elderly say that to protect is one of the first responsibilities of a leader. Now, when we review the letters exchanged between Fidel Castro and Nikita Kruschev during the October Crisis of 1962 — five decades ago — published in Granma, with the same paper and the same ink as the declaration of earlier times, we understand how close we were to that improvised nuclear holocaust.

The Soviet premier said, in his letter of October 30, 1962:

“We have experienced the most serious moment, in which we could have triggered a world thermonuclear war. Clearly, in a such a case, the U.S. would have suffered enormous losses, but the Soviet Union and the entire socialist camp would also have suffered greatly. With regards to Cuba, it’s difficult even to say to the Cuban people that this could have been the end for them. The first flames of war would have incinerated Cuba.”

It seems a temperature overtook our environment during those days that still has not cooled after fifty years. And with reason. The United States government renews its government team every 4 or 8 years. In Cuba it remains the same and the exact same for over half a century.

The Cuban authorities propose talks with the Americans, when they have not been able to recognize, much less carry out, a dialogue with their own peaceful national opposition.

Raul Castro’s government already has a fiber optic submarine cable from Venezuela, which multiplies the internet capability. Yet Cuba remains among the countries with the lowest connectivity on the planet. And so the list of abuses of authority goes beyond reason.

We hope that the rulers of the archipelago take into consideration all that we lack here at home, in order to create reliable bridges to the outside.

It is useful to repeat that the ratification and implementation of the United Nations Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is the unobjectionable starting point for the necessary and urgent changes for the Cuban nation. Hopefully these  free, democratic and pluralistic elections held in the United States will serve as a useful lesson.

November 15 2012

The Empty Platform / Yoani Sanchez

Trains Havana-Bejucal 1835. Image taken from lacomunidad.elpais.com
Trains Havana-Bejucal 1835. Image taken from lacomunidad.elpais.com

The small train station bustles with life starting early. Students in the tightest uniforms pass by, and a newspaper seller announces the boring Granma every day. There are paper cones of peanuts, workers selling soft drinks, and several people who have slept all night on cardboard on the floor. The place — despite its insignificant architecture — could be a train station in any city in the world. There is only one thing missing from the scene, something that stands out by its absence: there isn’t a train in sight. The rails are empty and no locomotive can be made out, not even the sound of a whistle in the distance. At mid-morning a lone coach limps in, with the initials DB (Deutsche Bahn) still painted on the side. Passengers board with reluctance, although the odd child still greets them smiling from the window.

Cuba had the first railroad in Latin America, inaugurated in a November like this one 175 years ago. The Havana-Bejucel section was created a decade before Spain — then a metropolis — began operating trains in its own territory. But it is not just a question of dates, but that on this Island the rail lines spread out across the country like a backbone from which sprouted infinite branches. Life in many small towns began to be measured between the coming of one car and another, between the arrivals and departures that appeared on the notice board in each station. The everyday smell came from the “aroma” that arises from the friction of the metal of the wheels on that of the rails. But little remains today of that prominent railroad. One day we said goodbye from the platform to the last train where we felt comfortable, and from that moment climbed aboard another that was an uncomfortable, difficult and distressing experience.

Although in the past year repair work has been carried out on the routes, and the cargo moved along them has more than doubled, the damage suffered by the Cuban railroad system is of a seriousness that cannot be quantified in numbers. The main problem is not the lack of punctuality in the departures, nor the deteriorated cars, nor even the bathrooms so filthy they can’t be called sanitary services. Nor is it the systematic theft of the passengers’ belongings, the mistreatment of the clients by many of the employees, the constant cancellations of departures, or the alarming lack of safety reflected in frequent accidents. The greatest deterioration has occurred in the minds of Cubans, for whom the railroad has ceased to be the inter-provincial mode of transport par excellence. Those millions of people who no long measure the rhythm of their lives by the whistle of the locomotive, who no longer proudly salute from the window of a car. The hackneyed scene of the goodbye kiss in the station, the handkerchief waving from the empty platform, the decades long absence of the principal protagonist: a train about to leave, a long iron snake ready to travel the backbone of this Island.

20 November 2012

After Food, What Most People in Cuba Are Talking About / Ivan Garcia

God willing, before spring of 2013 arrives, Ernesto, thirty-five years old and the owner of a small confectionery business in the Havana neighborhood ofSanto Suárez, will probably be able to travel to Madrid. He will stroll along the Plaza de Cibeles, and buy something in an outlet store or a Chinese street market. And if his brother-in-law buys him a ticket, he will sit in the south end ofSantiago Bernabeu Stadium and see Cristiano Ronaldo and the rest of the gang play. It is his lifelong dream.

If, in spite of the monstrous crisis devastating the Iberian peninsula, his sister in Vallecas* is able to advance him a few hundred euros to buy the tickets and the Spanish consulate in Havana does not deny him an exit visa at the last minute, he will send an email to his relatives and friends in Spain saying, “Meet me at Barajas Airport.”

Right now the much discussed emigration reform is the second most important topic of conversation among Cubans after the headache brought on by trying to find enough to eat every day. The desire to emigrate to find temporary work overseas to make a few decent dollars or euros, whether it be cutting down trees in a dense Canadian forest, clearing snow in Berlin or selling ice cream in Seville, plays a part in the future plans of many Cuban families.

Some are able to do it because they have relatives who were part of the first red-blooded group to reach the other side of the Florida Straits. After spending money on medical exams and waiting for the green light from US authorities, they manage to finally arrive in the sun-drenched city. Each year more than 20,000 people are able to realize their own American dream in this orderly, legal and secure way.

But not everyone in Cuba has relatives in Miami. There are other ways to enter the United States. As a result of the Cuban Adjustment Act, a bizarre federal law that grants automatic residency to any Cuban who manages to set foot on American soil, people on the island find ways to reach El Dorado. They include tales of heroic exploits such as transforming a 1950s Ford truck into a motorboat, leaving on a surf board or hiding within the landing gear of a commercial jet.

Hundreds of Cubans have lost their lives trying to escape the Communist autocracy. There are no exact figures. According to the U.S. Coast Guard one in three balseros ends up as shark bait. The Cuban Adjustment Act is like a marathon; not everyone makes it to the end. It is like a game of Russian roulette in which you could lose your raft or your life. There are stories circulating on the web of people being swindled by bands of human traffickers. Numerous countrymen have seen their hopes dashed, dying of hunger and thirst on a mountain in Colombia while trying to get to Panama or to a desert on the Mexican border.

If we add to these the regime’s absurd restrictions, which grant it the right to authorize or deny Cubans permission to leave and reenter the country, we arrive at a devastating conclusion: In the past fifty-three years we have lived under a perpetual state of siege. There is always a sense of gratitude when some of these perverse prohibitions are lifted, but GeneralRaúl Castro’s proposed reforms have the whiff of moldy cheese.

The imagination of foreign correspondents comes as a surprise, when they write headlines that starting in January of 2012, Cubans can go sightseeing. How many in Cuba will be able to do that? I assure you that they are the minority. The mandarins and their kin, those yes. They’ve already been doing it. They go to Margarita Island in Mallorca. These “tourists” are the exception.

Most Cubans who travel abroad and whose stay is longer than twenty-four months want to work hard and save money to repair their dilapidated houses, or buy new furniture and a 24-inch plasma screen TV. Only if things are going really well will they think about staying.

We Cubans cannot travel abroad because, in the first place, the money the state pays us is worthless. Even if you worked and saved for several years, it would not be enough to buy a round-trip ticket. Unlike Paco from Andalucia, John from Nebraska or Pepe from Mantilla, we can only travel if an uncle from Hialeah sends us one or two thousand dollars.

Economic dependence on relatives living in the diaspora is almost total. Any good that comes to a middle-class families in Cubans who do not receive handouts from the government, or who are not famous writers or musicians, is dependent on those who live in the “Yuma**,” from where almost all the shoddy material entering the island comes. Improvement in the quality of life for the average citizen is intimately linked to the remittances and aid sent by family and friends living in exile. The same applies to one’s ability to travel. The expenses are covered by residents on the other shore.

We have not even talked about the restrictions contemplated in the new emigration reform with respect to professionals or dissidents.For Raúl Rivero or Carlos Alberto Montaner the regime will continue to deny them permission to visit their homeland. And a telecommunications engineer’s ticket will be cancelled by a grim emigration official alleging issues of national security.

The government washes its hands like Pontius Pilate by lifting restrictions on people like Ernesto the confectioner, with his plans to travel to Madrid. Professionals and dissidents, meanwhile, remain on the black list.

Photo: A street in central Havana,Laritza Diversent

*Translator’s note: A working-class neighborhood of Madrid.
**Colloquial name for the United Staes.

November 17 2012

Salary in Kilowatts / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado

He works driving a truck for the electric company. He is married, has three kids, and his wife is a nurse at the 10th of October Mother and Child Hospital, better known by its previous name of Daughters of Galicia. The petroleum truck that hedrives all day has no air conditioning, not even a little fan. The heat is great, and the pay is little. The co-worker that they assigned to work with him has a similar financial situation. “In Cuba salaries are symbolic,” they told me while they were getting thebulb out of its new, nylon, factory-packagedbox. That was in front of a house of a friend who paid 30 CUC (more than $30 U.S.) to those workers from the Electric Union (UNE) so that they would replace thebulb of the street light that is opposite her house and that has been blownfor more than two years.

The suicidal “move”took placeat two in the afternoon and soon attracted the attention of the president of the block’s Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, who directed herself to the workers “to communicate to them” that the posts on the corners also had broken bulbs and that it was better to replace those than to put one in the middle of the block.

“For today, we are finished, comrade,” they told her, “because this is the last one we have, but there is an order by the minister to change them all as soon as the boat from China arrives. So don’t worry.”

And the watchful presidentwent awaybetween satisfied and doubtful, because everyone knows that in Cuba general corruption exists, but that at that level it is only enough to survive. So the workers in Cuba go sidestepping the difficulties that the state economic helplessness imposes on them. The majority of those who are linked to the sectors that generate no income in convertible currency have to “invent” in order to be able to make ends meet. With thelow salaries that they receive in national money, they also have to engineer for themselves and buy hard currency in order to feed, clothe and buy shoes for their families.

An unpleasant situation is confronting some friends with the UNE. Their consumption is aboveaverage after the most recent increase. Summer is already past and they continue the same. I ask myself if the arrangements that they make with those who enjoy air conditioning in their homes “are taking by the guts” those who don’t have it.

The bill collector, the intermediary between the UNE and the residential sector, is the friendly face of that business, which undoubtedly must justify before higher agencies the quantity of megawatts that the township consumes.

According to my deduction, the kilowatts they readjust on the bills of those who possess a cooled air system, in order to charge them less and pocket a share of the difference, they must be obligated to distribute them among those who don’t have ar conditioning.

Tired of them taking the kilo in kilowatts, they went to protest at the municipal electric business which is located at Josefina and the 10th of October. Along the way they asked themselves how to defend their right to be charged withoutpenalties for what they consume without betraying anyone.

By luck, they had already hinted to the collector their suspicion of how they believed the mechanism worked so that he could alert his crew, and when they arrived there the clerks were very friendly.

They asked the UNE for areview of the meter and the electric bill and they ended up sending a technician, but he still has not appeared. Some days ago the bill arrived with an amount visibly smaller than the month before.

But the next months? My friends ask themselves if they are going to have to continuegetting annoyedand going to demand periodically that they not steal from them. It is not easy to beat your head without a helmet against the wall of corruption.

Translated by mlk

November 20 2012

The U.N. Covenants on Human Rights: A New Crime In Cuba? / Cuban Law Association, Wilfredo Vallin Almeida

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

As we have seen, there seems to be a new offense under the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Act (LPP), a “crime” that seems interesting to analyze with regards to what it might mean to the future.

And I begin this analysis with what — over so many years — has been understood to be a CRIME and when it does and doesn’t exist.

People like the Italian Cesare Bonesana, Marquis of Beccaria, with his famous book On Crimes and Punishment published in 1764, and the well-regarded author German Paul Johann von Feuerbach who, in 1813, issued the famous legal maxim Nullun crime, nulla poena sine praevia lege (“No crime, no punishment, without a previous punishment law”), gave a sharp twist to what was then called “criminal law.”

Those words of Feuerbach, translated into our language and brought to the present, mean that “for a person to be arrested for certain behavior, it is essential that their conduct is registered as a crime in the Penal Code prior to its commission. Otherwise, there is no crime. ”

Of course, in the case of an infraction, (I repeat, previously defined and sanctioned by law) it proceeds from the arrest of the person and taking him to a police station to clarify the facts… but I am referring to the violation of a REAL criminal standard, not an invention.

The Criminal Procedure Act explains, as the name suggests, the ways in which the authorities and the law enforcement agents can respond to criminal behavior.

Thus, in Title IV, Chapter I, Articles 241-244 of Cuba’s criminal statutes it states, clearly, the cases where an individual shall be arrested and, precisely by being defined in it, the principle of legality applies to everyone and we are subject to it without exception.

To detain someone, except in cases established by law, and inventing, for that purpose, “offenses” that do not exist in the Penal Code or situations not falling under the Criminal Procedure Act, is simply to invade a sphere that belongs only to the legislative body, which in the Cuban case is called, as far as we know, the National Assembly of People’s Power.

And that is precisely what happens when a citizen is taken to a police unit and there is no Act of Detention, or he is taken and what is written as justification for his arrest is … “Interest of CI (counterintelligence ),” a reason for detention that does not appear at all where it should be mandatory: in the aforementioned Penal Code.

We can not give legitimacy to bodies that take on a function that is not theirs and which is so important for social relations: the creation of law.

Moreover, lawyers for the Cuban Law Association have never seen a legal prohibition stating that the behavior of citizens urging the government to ratify the U.N. Covenants signed by a Cuban representative four years ago in New York City, is an offense of any kind.

But, as might occur with the regulations for whether to grant an exit permit — the so-called “white card” — to citizens who want to leave the country and that we have never seen, perhaps it is in these Covenants which we still cannot read.

If so, then please publish it so that we citizens will know that, in Cuba, there is a new conduct prohibited by law: that of invoking the UN Covenants.

September 10 2012

Who is Antonio Rodiles and What is “State of Sats”? / Yoani Sanchez

Hands clasped in front, deep breaths, the lights come up and the curtain begins to rise. The actor is not yet in front of his audience, but he’s already about to begin to speak, gesticulating in the voice and ways of his character.

He is in a state of “SATS,” a Scandinavian word that refers to that instant just before the theatrical action or the sports performance; the moment of greatest concentration that precedes the artistic explosion, the adrenaline rush of jumping, running. Those four letters, summarizing a turbulent journey from the depths of the self toward extroversion, have been adopted by a project of art and thought born in Havana.

State of SATS (Estado de SATS) was founded in 2010, taking off from an idea of Antonio Rodiles’ and two Cuban emigrants. It emerged as “an initiative of young artists, intellectuals and professionals in search of a better reality,” and quickly gained recognition and popularity. The best known work of SATS is centered on a program of reflection and debate–filmed in Rodiles’ own home–that circulates with great success on Cuba’s alternative information networks.

The most important social actors in Cuba today have passed in front of the SATS microphones, addressing essential issues, long postponed. Many of these guests remain silenced or stigmatized by the official press, while their analysis and points of view expressed in the SATS videos honestly delve into the most serious problems in our society, without discrimination against anyone. State of SATS has also brought the opportunity for other artistic, political and citizens’ projects, narrated in the first person.

But for more than a week now, the chair on that sober and democratic set usually occupied by Antonio Rodiles has remained vacant. He is under arrest by the Cuban political police. On November 8, this 40-year-old with a degree in Physics entered a dungeon from which he has not yet emerged.

Deliberate, analytical, and with a deep concern for everything that occurs in our country, the founder of State of SATS is now experiencing the most sordid side of repression in Cuba: a jail cell. And his main crime doesn’t seem to be the charge of “resisting arrest” alleged by the prosecutor, but rather the illegal act of thinking and opining on an Island where this “right” belongs only to the Party in power. Thus, to dream and debate about a more inclusive and plural country is an egregious crime here, as we all know.

Rodiles’ stay behind bars is the materialization of a premonition, of one of those painful predictions that many of us have while expressing our opinions and encouraging others to do the same. We see it as if one of those fireflies, attracted by the light of civic responsibility in which–sooner or later–Raul Castro’s totalitarianism will incinerate it.

His captors waited for the opportunity to trap him and this happened on a Wednesday afternoon when several activists demanded the release of Yaremis Flores, a lawyer and member of a free legal advice network who had been arrested near her home. Outside the feared Section 21 (the State Security department that monitors and controls regime opponents), a dozen people gathered. But instead of freeing the attorney, a group of agents in plain clothes violently rushed those making the demand and arrested them as well.

To the peaceful gesture they responded with blows, to the civic attitude they contrasted a repressive attitude. As if, with the arrest of Antonio Rodiles they wanted to teach a lesson to all of civil society. A dark autumn with dimensions much smaller than the Black Spring of 2003–but not, for that, any less frightening–it happened in a moment.

On balance, some thirty dissidents were temporarily detained, among them independent journalists, activists and alternative bloggers. I myself was held for about nine hours in a cramped room where three women and one man tried every verbal method to crush my self-esteem. But my mind was a thousand miles away, escaped to some beautiful place where they could not reach me.

I am almost sure that Rodiles is experiencing a similar situation, aggravated by his several days’ stay in the police station. I imagine they have said to him–as they did to me–that he should leave Cuba, get the hell out of here, because this Island “belongs to Fidel,” all the streets, the sidewalks, every tree and facade we know. Getting rid of their critics by pushing them into exile remains their most common strategy against nonconformists.

For sure they are mentioning to this Havanan who studied in Mexico City and taught in Florida the names of all his family members. A subtle method to let him see that they know everyone dear to him, they are aware of all their movements, that something might happen to them while they walk the streets.

If their strategy of interrogations is repeated, like the broken record of arrogance, then I envision how they end some of these questioning sessions. Perhaps they threaten him–as they have so many–with long years of incarceration in a filthy cell, stinking and violent. His police interrogators laugh through their teeth while making sexual, terrifying, allusions.

And it is in these moments when one sees the true face of Fantomas–that terrifying French serial killer–when one experiences first hand the absolute mediocrity under the skin of the executioner; when you reaffirm the idea of why you need to keep trying to change Cuba.

So that these censors of laughter and of freedom, these people who leap quickly from the penal code to the code of the neighborhood bully, cannot continue to lead this country. So that no one will fall–ever again–into the gap of legality where anything can happen.

I know that Antonio Rodiles will be strong, that he is, right now, like the actor who plunges within himself to explode into a freer state, into a state of SATS.

Here is a video from Tracey Eaton, reposted here so you can listen to Antonio describe his work in his own words.

Awaiting a Sign / Fernando Damaso

Photo Rebeca

The last days of October and the first days of November, besides Hurricane Sandy, have produced two electoral processes: one in Cuba and the other in the United States. The first, more formal than real, where the majority of citizens go vote because of inertia, convinced that their vote will decide nothing, like not electing some delegates from the base, without real power and lacking resources to solve anything, and with the important positions already decided beforehand (how else to explain the continuation of power in the same principal authorities for more than 50 years), happened without pain or glory. The journalists assigned to cover it, seemingly without much enthusiasm, did their jobs, pondering the supposed advantages of the Cuban electoral system, in contrast withall the rest of the world: the most democratic, popular, massive, just, patriotic, civic and all that occurs to them.

The second, in spite of being entirely the responsibility of the American people, seems to have had greater coverage: articles in the written press, television and radio analysis and even Roundtable TV shows. Some brainy journalists, not being able to show their analytical aptitudes in the Cuban electoral process (all is predicted and there are no surprises), didso withthe neighbors, where the voters had the last word on election day.

It is good to remember that, in the era of the republic, the American elections did not much interest us. A Democrat or Republican president was the same: Whichever won, the relations were of good neighbors. Interest grew after 1959. Since then, the American elections became a principal problem for the Cuban authorities, drawing up contingency plans for one winner or another. I am sure that they also have now.

We always hope, although the odds are small, that we will resolve the problems that we have created, and so, every four years, we look North, hoping for some sign, in spite of the fact that every day of the year we rant against it and blame it for all of our problems, the problems of Latin America and of the world.

The hurricanetheelections passed, our authorities will return to the international arena, demanding the end of the blockade (embargo), the liberation of spies imprisoned by the empire and millions in reparations. (In 2011, they valued damages at 3,553,602,645 total dollars, and in the past 50 years at 1,066,000,000,000 dollars. A marvel of calculation worthy of the best destiny!) They will also repeat other themes that have been political propaganda material for years, knowing that they will get nothing, but they will keep serving as entertainment for many gullible Cubans, which, in the first instance, has always been their true objective.

Translated by mlk

November 19 2012

The U.N. Covenants on Human Rights are Binding on States / Cuban Law Association, Argelio M. Guerra

By Lic. Argelio M. Guerra

The development in 1966 of the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, also known as the New York Pacts, has a close relationship with the gestation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. While the latter it not binding on States, the adoption of the Covenants came to bridge this shortcoming of the Declaration and, from the perspective of international law, establish legally binding obligations for States that become a part — through signing them — of such instruments.

And those conventions on Human Rights have a special feature given by the very nature of their object of protection, and that is that between the Parties there is a very different connection than what might be the result from a treaty in which the reciprocity of the compliance its obligations is what sets it apart.

Human rights treaties do not establish reciprocal obligations for the signatory states, but rather oblige them to achieve goals beyond their own material interests, and if they fail to comply with these obligations the offending State is called to respond to international organizations and the community of states.

September 5 2012

Currently, Havana Is Suffering the Same as the People of Santiago /Anddy Sierra Alvarez

In spite of the internationally offered help, Havana suffers because of damage in the province of Santiago de Cuba caused by Hurricane Sandy.  Food is in itself the major preoccupation of the Havanan.

The government has forgotten that it is in charge of keeping economic balance in the streets.  Chickpeas no longer circulate, nor beans in general, nor are there any state markets.

Nevertheless private individuals are those who have beans; black, red, kidney or white, garbanzos and lentils. But the unaffordable prices have risen, for example: The black bean, the one most eaten, costs 18 pesos a pound from 12 pesos that it used to cost and the price from the state is 8 pesos a pound.

We Havanans are at the disposal of the Santiago people, let there be not the slightest doubt, but our government’s lack of economic knowledge makes every corner of the country feel the crisis as if it were in the same location as the tragedy.

So, who controls the situation, the self-employed or the government?

Translated by mlk

November 12 2012

An Assessment of the Cuban Government’s Management Over the Last Six Years / Dimas Castellano

Four decades after taking power through revolution in 1959, the factors which made totalitarianism in Cuba possible have reached their limit. The populist measures imposed during the first years after the revolution were accompanied by the dismantling of civil society and a process of government takeover which began with foreign-owned companies and did not end until the last 56,000 small service-related and manufacturing businesses, which had managed to survive until 1968, were eliminated.

The efforts to subordinate individual and group interests to those of the state has led to disaster. The confluence of the breakdown of the current economic and political model, national stagnation, citizen discontent, external isolation and the absence of alternative forces capable of having an impact on these issueshave created conditions for change. On the one hand this has led to despair, apathy, endemic corruption and mass exodus, while on the other hand there has been an emergence of new social and political figures.

It was in this context that the provisional transfer of power from the Leader of the Revolution took place. The fact that this transfer was carried out by the same forces that led the country into crisis meant that the order, depth and pace of change were determined by the power structure itself, which explains the effort to change the appearance of the system while preserving its character – an unresolvable contradiction – doomed governmental efforts from the start. This process, now in-progress, has passed through three phases led by Army General Raúl Castro.

Phase One

On July 31, 2006, as a result of illness, the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, and Commander-in Chief, Fidel Castro, divided his multiple responsibilities and temporarily transferred them to seven party and government leaders.Raúl Castro was named First Secretary of the PCC, Commander-in-Chief and President of the Council of State.José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera was tapped to head the National and International Program on Health.Ramón Machado Ventura and Esteban Lazo Hernández were named to the National and International Education Program, and Carlos Lage Dávila became the driving force behind the National Program for an Energy Revolution. The programs for Health, Education and Energy were to be led respectively byCarlos Lage, Francisco Soberón (President of the Central Bank of Cuba), and Felipe Pérez Roque. These appointments marked the beginning ofRaúl’s administration.

In discussions, interviews and statements the new leader spoke of the need for change, including a willingness to normalize relations with the United States – an idea he expressed in an interview published inGranmaon August 18, and which he reiterated on December 2 of that year in the Plaza of the Revolution. Without blaming his predecessor,Raúl began discarding previous methods and plans. Military marches, secret trials and other politically motivated actions which made up the Battle of Ideas disappeared while strong criticisms were leveled at the inefficient agricultural production industry.

In the same vein, on July 11, 2007 the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP) raised the idea that “Each province should have its own builders, should have its own teachers, should have its own police… ” It criticized the bloated labor force (an artificial means of “reducing” unemployment to almost zero in order to demonstrate the superiority of the Cuban system). It called on retired teachers and professors to return to the classroom. It announced the elimination of improper free services and excessive subsidies. It set out to reverse the trend towards a reduction in the area of land under cultivation, which had decreased by 33% in the years between 1998 and 2007. Later, on July 27, 2007 inCamagey, he spoke of the need to introduce structural and conceptual changes. He emphasized the vital importance of manufacturing products in Cuba which are now purchased from overseas, and acknowledged that huge tracts of land are now overrun by the marabou weed.

Subsequently, he initiated the sale of computers, DVD’s, electronic equipment and access to mobile phones. He allowed Cubans to book hotel rooms reserved for tourists and to rent automobiles using hard currency. The licensing of private food vendors was expanded. Workers dining halls were closed. Cars, barber shops with up to three chairs and small beauty salons were rented out to workers. Regulations on the construction and repair of homes were relaxed, and the sale of fruits and vegetables from pushcarts was allowed.

Most striking was Decree/Law 259, which covered the leasing of idle land. It was an important but insufficient and contradictory measure. While it acknowledged that food production was a serious national security concern andrecognized the inability of the state to produce it, the law allowed the state to retain ownership of the land, thus reducing efficient producers to lessees.

Phase Two

As a result of Fidel’sdeteriorating health, the “Message from the Commander-in-Chief” was published on February 19, 2008 in which he permanently gave up his numerous positions. Five days later, on February 24, the ANPP electedRaúl Castro President of the Council of State, marking the second phase of his administration, which gave rise to a period of conjecture, desire, aspiration and hope.

The fragmentation of power that Fidel Castro had decreed in June 2006 was no longer in effect.Lage and Pérez Roque left the PCC, while the others quit their positions and assumed others in the new government. Among these wereJosé Ramón Machado Ventura, who became Second Secretary of the PCC and Vice-President of the Council of State, and Esteban Lazo, who kept his position as member of the Politburo.

This second phase began with the introduction of a series of measures that could be classified as a basic reform plan. It was limited to certain sectors of the economy and its goals could be outlined as follows: 1) To achieve a strong and effective agricultural sector capable of feeding the population and replacing imports, 2) to make people aware of the need to work in order to survive, 3) to firmly reject illegalities and other manifestations of corruption, 4) to reduce the state workforce, whose redundant job positions exceed one million workers, and 5) to jump start self-employment.

In the second half of 2011 various decrees and resolutions were issued authorizing the private sale of automobiles, the buying, selling, exchange and donation of homes, a relaxation in rules governing rentals, and the commercialization of agricultural production in the tourism industry. The credit policy was expanded to cover self-employed workers and small farmers, and restrictions on emigration from the countryside to Havana were relaxed.

Among other factors, this basic program of reform was limited by a kind of power sharing arrangement in which the new leader agreed to consult with Fidel on major decisions and the latter provided indirect criticism in the form published reflections and public statements. The most critical point in this duality came in the middle of 2011 when the leader of the revolution reappeared in public. On July 11 he appeared at the National Center for Scientific Research and on July 13 at the Center for World Economic Research, where he ordered that an urgent investigation into the post-war era be carried out. On July 15 he appeared at the National Aquarium and on July 16 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he met with Cuba’s overseas ambassadors. On July 25 he appeared in Artemesia on the eve of the anniversary of the assault on the Moncada Barracks, dressed in military fatigues. On the following day, July 26, he celebrated the commemoration with artists, intellectuals, members of Pastors for Peace and other invited guests.

Finally, on Saturday, August 7, at an extraordinary session of the ANPP, Fidel appeared to once again express his concerns about eminent nuclear war and relations with the United States. In his address he asserted that the world would be saved if it accepted the logical arguments he was espousing. Referring to President Obama, he said, “Perhaps he will not give the order if we can persuade him.”

In the midst of these activities, in a regular session of the ANPPon August 1,Raúl Castro announced the expansion of self-employment along with a reduction in the state labor force – something unprecedented in Cuba. On August 13 the release of six political prisoners was announced. These two events revealed two contradictions that could suggest a failure of government.

What is significant about this second phase ofRaúlCastro’s administration is that the measures, which were introduced in an unfavorable national and international economic environment and which no country could sustain indefinitely, made it impossible to return to the stagnation of the past.

Phase Three

At the Sixth Party Congress and the First National Conference of the PCC, which took place in April 2011 and January 2012 respectively, were defining events for change.

In a report to the Sixth Party Congress,Raúl argued that self-employment should become a facilitating factor for the building socialism in Cuba by allowing the state to concentrate on raising the level of efficiency of the primary means of production, thus permitting the state to extricate itself from the administration of activities which were not of strategic importance to the country. At the session he explained that updating the current economic model would take place gradually over the course of five years. He acknowledged that, in spite of Law/Decree 259, there were still thousands and thousands of hectares of idle land. He called on the Communist party to change its way of thinking about certain dogmas and outdated views, which had constrained it for many years, and declared that his primary mission and purpose in life was to defend, preserve and continue perfecting socialism.

The outlines of a basic reform plan, approved by acclamation at the party conclave, were codified in the Political and Social Guidelines, but constrained by the socialist system of planning which viewed state-run enterprise as the primary driving force of the economy.

Several days after the Sixth Party Congress had agreed to separate political from administrative functions, Machado Ventura began reiterating the following ideas at the fifteen provincial conferences of the PCC: “The party does not administer. That is fine, but it cannot lose control over its activists, no matter what positions they may occupy… We have to know beforehand what each producer will sow and what he will harvest… We must demand this of those who work the land.” These were arguments intended to keep the economy under the control of the party and to hamper the interests of producers.

It was in this context that, in the thirty days between Thursday, May 10 and Saturday, June 9 of 2012, Fidel Castro published four essays. Between June 11 and June 18 he then published eight short pieces – each forty-three words on average – onErich Honecker, Teófilo Stevenson, Alberto Juantorena, Deng Xiaoping, poems about Che Guevaraby Nicolás Guillén, the moringa plant, yoga and the expansion of the universe. Nebulous messages with no relationship to each other and divorced from our everyday reality. Since then there have been no more such writings, and their disappearance seems to have marked the end of the period of power sharing. Only now and not before are we able to talk aboutRaúl’s administration.

At a meeting of the Ninth Regular Period of Sessions of the ANPP in July, 2012, after Fidel’s essays had already been published,Raúl Castro returned to proposals he discussed in his report to the Sixth Party Congress, such as the increase in the amount of idle land. On July 26 in Guantanamo he once again took up the theme of relations with the United States. And on July 30 he led the Martyr’s Day march in Santiago de Cuba, which seemed to confirm that he had entered the third phase of his administration.

Results of the Three Phases

In spite of efforts to achieve a strong and efficient agricultural sector capable of providing Cubans with enough to eat,agricultural production fell 4.2% in 2010. GDP in 2011 grew less than expected. Food imports rose from 1.5 billion in 2010 to 1.7 billion in 2011. Retail sales fell 19.4% in 2010 while prices rose 19.8%. On the other hand the median monthly salary rose only 2.2%, a factor which made things worse for the average Cuban just at the moment that changes began to be introduced. The 2011-2012 sugar harvest, officially slated to produce 1.45 million tons, had the same disappointing results as in the past in spite of being able to count on sufficient raw material, as well as 98% of the resources allocated to this effort. It neither met its target nor was completed on time.

The proposal to make people realize they need to work in order to survive, an issue closely associated with illegalities and other forms of corruption, has gone nowhere. On the contrary, criminal activity has increased to such a degree, as evidenced by the number of legal proceedings that have either been held or are ongoing, that corruption, along with economic inefficiency, now threaten national security. The government’s response, which has been limited to repression, vigilance and control, has not been successful. Even the official state media has reflected in recent years on the continual instances of price fixing, diversion of resources, theft and robbery carried out daily by thousands and thousands of Cubans, including high-ranking officials who are now being tried in court. Nevertheless, the problem persists.

In regards to shrinking the state’s labor force, the limitations imposed on self-employment have prevented this sector from absorbing the projected number of state workers. Of the 374,000 self-employed workers, more than 300,000 are people who were either already unemployed or retired. Besides being unconstitutional–the constitution stipulates that ownership of the means of production by individuals or families cannot be used to generate income through the exploitation of outside workers–self-employment has absorbed less than 20% of state workers. The assumption that this measure would absorb layoffs from the bloated state labor force byallowing the state to focus on raising the level of efficiency of the fundamental means of production and permitting the state to extricate itself from the administration of activities not of strategic importance to the country have not yielded the expected results.

The implementation of the new measures which have been announced–among them, an income tax exemption through 2012 for businesses with as many as five employees, an increase in tax exemption of up to 10,000 pesos of income, a 5% bonus for early filing of income tax returns, the creation of new cooperatives and a new law which will relieve the tax burden on the private sector of the economy–will not resolve the crisis either.

The Real Causes

To deal with a profound structural crisis like Cuba’s, changes must be structural in nature. With the passage of time it has been shown that small changes in some aspects of the economy must be extended to include coexistence of various forms of property, including private property, the formation of small and medium-sized businesses, and the establishment of rights and freedoms for citizens. Proposals which try to preserve the failed socialist system of planning as the principal route for the direction of the economy, and the refusal to accept that diverse forms of ownership should play their proper roles mean that the economy–the starting point for any initiative–will remain subject to party and ideological interests, while citizen participation will be notable by its absence.

The failure of the totalitarian model has forced the Cuban government to belatedly opt for reforms that have already been introduced by Cubans operating on the fringes of the law. Updating the model has been more an acknowledgement of the existing reality than an introduction of measures arising out of a real desire for change.

The First Cuban Communist Party Conferencedefinitivelydemonstrated the infeasibility of the current model and the inability of its leaders to sever the ideological attachments preventing it from moving forward. Their refusal to consider citizen’s rights shut off any possibility of change. The delays in relaxing restrictions on emigration, democratizing the internet and reincorporating into Cuban law the rights and freedoms outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights are the principal causes for this failure.

Additionally, it must be added that time is running out. Now, with little time left, there is talk of going slowly and steadily, which clearly suggests a decision to not change anything that might threaten the grip on power.

Independently of the obstacles that have hampered General Raul Castro in the three phases of his administration, the decisive factor has been the infeasibility of the current model. Even if his management of the government had been carried out under the best possible conditions for implementing reform, it still would have failed due to a lack of freedom – something which is a prerequisite for modernity – and the lack of a high degree of political will to forge a new national consensus. Without these it is impossible to wrest Cuba out of the profound crisis in which it is immersed. The abilities and intelligence of one man or of his governing team, no matter how high they might be, are not enough to overcome the current situation. That is both the reality and the challenge.

Originally published inhttp://convivenciacuba.es/content/view/842/58/

November 5 2012