Month: October 2015

The estimated amount of bribery charges exceeds five million pesos (US$188,679) and is expected to continue being sniffed out; right now there’s an impasse in the legal process.

By decision at the highest level of Government, the affair acquired a “character of secrecy” in order to not tarnish His Holiness’s visit to the island, to not give a bad impression to possible investors, and, furthermore, because it involves several officials whose names don’t appear on the list of those implicated.

A BIT OF HISTORY

Camajuaní is a small municipality, founded in the 19th century, located in the northeast of Villa Clara, right at a crossroads and railroad lines. This easy public thoroughfare converted it into a settlement for merchants and traders.

Because of this, decades of a planned economy and “revolutionary” experiments (half revolutionary, half communist) didn’t manage to keep the entrepreneurial spirit from passing, like DNA, from generation to generation.

In Camajuaní, the footwear industry is the local engine of growth. So an important number of artisanal shoemakers are members of the Cultural Goods Fund, a State institution that has the peculiarity of permitting artisans to break the State’s monopoly on imports.

The artisans in the Fund can leave Cuba and buy raw material, machines and/or tools to use in production; they can import quantities of material from specified countries by making use of a special document called the “Importation Document;” and they can sell their products to people, businesses and/or ministries.

This may seem simple, but no: This sector of Cuban entrepreneurs also has to face the general corruption in a narrow legal framework and a widespread social prejudice. It’s very easy to offend when almost everything is prohibited.

So, faced with increasing demand, these artisans, in order to expand production, and because State procedures are so cumbersome, falsified the Importation Document.

Others, more astute, began to alter the import permit and their productive capacity by bribing Customs bosses and agents, MININT officials and important executives of the Cultural Goods Fund, who permitted them, in exchange for green bills, to change the classification “artisanal machinery” to “industrial equipment.”

A secure market. The boots bought by the Armed Forces and the Youth Labor Army normally are made by COMBELL, a depressed company that tries to guaranty a supply to the military.

But when this isn’t achieved, a practice that appears premeditated, the Armed Forces impresarios open up a bidding in which the artisans participate.

The Cuban authorities presume that these operators, now in prison, won the bidding after buttering up those in uniform with decision-making power, along with National Bank officers, who, after receiving a commission, gave preference to the Fund.

What’s bad is that the private workshops that gave a living to a good number of people, including former workers from the health industry, who before earned a laughable salary and, today, as private individuals, can earn 100, 150 and even 200 pesos daily, will have to close for lack of raw material; it’s only a question of time.

The Camajuaní municipality has a population of under 60,000 inhabitants. It’s worrisome to know that an important part of them will be left unemployed; and, logically, this will cause major problems.

Translated by Regina Anavy

His Holiness Pope Francis helped to forge the historic rapprochement between the United States and Cuba. His pastoral visit to Havana, and even more his later travels around the island, awakened special interest in all sectors of the country.

It was, undoubtedly, a delicate moment that was calculated with the precision of a Swiss watch, so that no one, beginning with the head of the sacred Catholic Church, nor any members of the retinue accompanying him, including the foreign press and parishioners, would receive more information than what was previously determined.

The priority was to hide what was ugly and shameful for the Cuban Government’s propaganda. The alarm went off when the Government-Church Commission designed the itinerary for the papal visit.

Immediately after they knew of His Holiness’ plans, on Monday, September 21, to visit the province of Holguín, there was an urgent “flash,” and as required by the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba for disasters, the Council of Defense had a meeting, and in coordination with all the competent authorities in every corner of Holguín, ordered that an exhaustive analysis be done of the health situation in the province.

And later, armed with the evidence of colossal chaos, even more with the need to hide their own responsibility, they elaborated a plan of action with specific guidelines, not to solve the problem, but to cover up that which must not be shown.

Poverty can’t be seen when it’s generalized, but the overwhelming number of those sick with cholera and dengue in Holguín’s Vladimir Ilich Lenin General Hospital, jumped out like dynamite in the middle of hostile terrain.

Controlling that immense truth necessitated something more than whitewashing the facades of the streets through which, presumably, the Holy Father’s caravan would pass. So, not to take any chances, it was also ordered that the patients be hidden by moving them to less accessible and, of course, less visible centers.

It’s been approximately a month since the dengue patients have been returned, without the required antiseptic conditions, to the poorly adapted rooms in the province’s nursing school, and to the classrooms of the ancient school for social workers.

For their part, those infected with cholera found a “new hospital bed” in one of the rooms in the old renal building, in equally bad condition, located next to the surgical clinic.

It’s a Hippocratic cataclysm and an extravagance of governmental hypocrisy; nonetheless, it’s good to know that, miraculously, in none of the cases has the relocation of patients been implicated in the elimination or loss of their records; and, according to information coming from overseas, the provincial health department’s data base from last Wednesday reports a discreet decrease in the population hospitalized for cholera and dengue in Holguín.

Luck or disinformation? I don’t know, because I don’t believe the Cuban Government even when it’s telling the truth.

Translated by Regina Anavy