14ymedio

The Lynching of Mauricio Rojas*

The President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, greets Mauricio Rojas in the Moneda Palace.
(La Tercera)

14ymedio, Álvaro Vargas Llosa, Santiago de Chile, August 20, 2018 — It is not easy to assimilate that what just happened to Mauricio Rojas occurred in Chile at the height of 2018, after less than a fifth of the 21^st century.

Almost one century after the trials in Moscow, the Chilean intellectual has been submitted to an attempt at destruction of personality, a negation of a whole life trajectory, a traumatic deformation of his thought and actions, a stripping of all dignity and humanity, with the purpose that such a condemnation—so empty of content, so morally and psychologically ruinous, a death sentence (in this case expulsion from the city, to use the classic formula)—be something that the condemned man himself demand of his judges, convinced that his existence is useless. The only thing missing, to complete the Stalinist montage, was that Rojas beg of Chile: Shoot me, I am, in effect, a non-person, a non-man. continue reading

The Right and the Left have killed many people throughout history, and it’s hard to make a definitive accounting of who has killed more, but the Left has an overwhelming advantage in moral destruction, dehumanization by way of personality assassination of the real or supposed adversary. When the Right massacres someone, it gains moral standing, because the right is the incarnation of evil; when the Left massacres someone, it is freeing humanity of an enemy. Mauricio Rojas was the enemy from whom the Left had to liberate public life and the Chilean State.

The essential campaign against Rojas consisted of attacking his strength, which is his moral authority. That moral authority came from two things. First, his former militancy in the Revolutionary Left Movement, the violent MIR of the ‘60s, and his later conversion to liberalism, a process derived from experience, the most powerful thing that can cause someone to come to a conviction and then communicate it to his fellow human beings. To this was added a second source of moral authority: his denunciation, in the name of freedom, of all forms of political violence, abuse against human rights and authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. His books, articles and conferences have been for decades a denunciation against dogmatisms of the Left and the Right, against ideologies that justify vile methods with the pretext of accomplishing noble ends. His texts are available for anyone who takes the time to go to a bookstore, search on Amazon or look them up on the Internet.

This double source of moral authority made Rojas a problem. It was very difficult to throw away his reflections on the contribution of the fanatic Chilean Left of the ‘60s and ‘70s, or on the 1973 Military Coup and the bloody dictatorship and, thus, his present criticism of the dangerous radicalization of the Chilean Left in recent years. After all, this criticism came from the experience and the confession of a convert to liberal democracy, not from a Pinochet supporter.

It’s not difficult to understand why Rojas’ history, his life adventures as well as his discourse, profoundly offended the New Left, which looks very much, mentally, like the Left of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and which contributed much less than what Rojas contributed, between the end of the ‘80s and the decade of the 2000s, to making Chile the most successful country in Latin America.

Once he was named the Minister of Culture, it was essential to destroy his moral authority, that intellectual solvency that stemmed from his personal testimony and his intransigent liberalism in the face of the excesses of the Right and the Left. He only had one way to end the insolence of that nomination that the Executive Power enthroned, and in a position of high visibility to such a dangerous enemy for the strategy of the Chilean New Left. That way was to destroy his moral authority by distorting his double history—his life and his discourse—and converting it, literally, into the opposite of what it really was, into self-negation.

A quotation taken out of context about the Memory Museum was converted into a perfect casus belli for this operation. Anyone who would have taken the trouble to read Dialogue of the Converts would have understood that Rojas himself qualified what Pinochet did as “State terrorism,” and he affirms that nothing justified what happened. Anyone who would have deigned to make a few “clicks” on the Web would have obtained flagrant proof of what Rojas was thinking and continues to think about Pinochet. Among the many texts that would have appeared on the screen is, for example, his article, Revolutionaries and September 11, published 40 years after the Military Coup. There, once again, he speaks of the “horrors of the crimes of the dictatorship.”

If anyone had made a minimum effort to be informed about what the Chilean intellectual thinks about the Memory Museum it would have been enough to prove that his criticism had nothing to do with denial, since on various occasions he made it clear that the brutality and cruelty of the dictatorship that is plotted in the museum reflect facts that truly happened and should never be repeated. It would have informed anyone, also, of the true nature of his criticism of the museum, that can or cannot be shared, and that doesn’t emerge from the negation of the crimes that he himself fought from the first day and that he continues repudiating. At his trial, there was an incomplete version of that black period in the country’s history, because it left out a fundamental teaching that every new generation should learn: in the destruction of democracy, the radicalization of the Left played a decisive role, with its scorn for democratic institutions and the rule of law.

Saying and thinking similar things does not mean justifying Pincochet or that Rojas prefers the crimes of the Right to those of the Left, but rather to work so that never again will such a traumatic, painful and bloody experience be possible, such as what that dictatorship represented. If the antecedents and context of what happened in 1973 are put aside, it is, in the opinion of Rojas, dangerously mutilating the story of that historic stage. To argue this is a form of patriotism, in addition to being an exercise of high intellectual honesty on the part of a man who confesses to having contributed to that state of things from his own ideologization and acceptance of armed struggle as an instrument of justice. Why patriotism? Because he understands that it’s the best way for future generations to free Childe from the bitterness, the polarization and the hatred that led the country to a sinister Military Coup, which in another context surely would not have been viable.

I hope that those who attack the museums of memory in other countries do it in this civilized, reasoned and solid form. In Péru, for example, those who vilify the Museum of Memory are all sympathizers and, at times, servants of fujimorismo, and they do it from denial. For these critics there was no systematic violation of human rights; the figures of deaths are invented; and the story of State violence is an ideological lie of the Left.

Is there any book, article or conference of Mauricio Rojas that has ever argued the monstrosity that Pinochet’s crimes didn’t exist, that the State didn’t violate human rights during the military phase and that the falsity of the Left’s narrative consists in inventing abuses that didn’t happen? I spent many years hearing him speak before different audiences (we often met frequently at public events), and he never argued or even joked about such an imbecility.

Do his critics know this? Of course they do. Those who didn’t know were those numerous Chileans for whom Rojas wasn’t yet a household name, a public man fully recognizable, or he was someone whom they vaguely knew about. Because this easily manipulated public didn’t have an educated idea about Rojas, his detractors tried to convince them that he was aligned with State crimes. And something more: that he was an imposter who invented his biography for convenience.

It wasn’t enough to fabricate the idea that his thinking was like Pinochet’s in order to destroy his moral authority. It was also necessary to reveal his imposture, to convince themselves and outsiders that his life was a farce from beginning to end. Thus, one or another MIR figures were paraded through the press who insisted that Rojas never served in that organization. It didn’t matter that those who said this had responsibilities in the MIR much later than when Rojas was involved, or that many young Marxists of the ‘60s were close witnesses of his ideological radicalism and adherence to the MIR, because, after all, it wasn’t a matter of verifying the truth. The important thing was to advance the lie that then would make any contrary testimony unbelievable.

His detractors didn’t exhaust their methods in this operation. It was indispensable that they assure themselves that, if President Piñera decided against all odds to give Rojas tenure, his performance in that role would be impossible. He had to disavow his representative as a high-level member of the State and reject him as a player. It didn’t matter that Rojas would have announced that one of his great missions was to “democratize culture” to bring it everywhere, including to the poorest and most vulnerable, something that if the Chilean Left had been tolerant, they would have recognized as a goal in tune with their own aspirations (the Left used to talk about democratizing everything: property, credit, services and, horror of horrors, culture, precisely so these things wouldn’t be privileges of an elite).

Nor does it matter that, in the last five months, since his appointment as Presidential Assessor, Rojas had worked to bestow more social sensitivity on the Chilean Right and limit its rough edges. Today these qualities make him someone even more dangerous. The world of culture denies him the possibility of doing his work by using a systematic boycott against him and converting him into a non-person. It is not a lesser irony that, in its actions, the Left thoroughly gives Rojas justification for revealing that it is acting in the dogmatic spirit of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

His detractors think they’ve won the war against Rojas. In reality, they have won only one battle. Like so many converts of the last century (Carlos Alberto Montaner has recalled, speaking of himself, Malraux, Koestler, Semprún and Paz), he is much closer to the truth than his enemies. This should give him, in this moment of ingratitude, strength to win future battles.

(Published previously in La Tercera, one of the major newspapers in Chile. It is reproduced here with the author’s authorization.)

*Translator’s note: Minister of Culture, the Arts and Patrimony of Chile August 9, 2018 – August 13, 2018. He was fired for criticizing the Museum of Memory, commissioned by former President Michelle Bachelet after the Country’s Truth Commission issued a mandate to “account for human rights violations” committed during Pinochet’s dictatorship. In Rojas’ youth he was part of MIR, a revolutionary left-wing movement, and he was exiled to Sweden. He has since become more conservative. In an interview in 2016 with CNN, Rojas said the Museum of Memory gave a false version of history. Francisco Estevetz, the Executive Director of the Museum, says its creation was necessary to guarantee that the abuses suffered under Pinochet will never happen again.

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Four Cuban Rafters Rescued on the High Seas

Cuban rafters being repatriated by the United States Coast Guard. (EFE /Archive)

14ymedio, 5 September 2018 – A Norwegian Cruise Line ship rescued and handed over to the authorities this Sunday four Cuban-born rafters, a spokesperson for the company confirmed to 14ymedio.

After leaving Miami, and about 40 miles from Key West, the cruise ship found four people in danger who “were safely and immediately taken to the medical installation of the ship for evaluation and were provided with clothing and food.” continue reading

The Bahamian Maritime Authority and the Coast Guard were informed by the captain of the vessel, who received instructions to disembark the rescued people at the port of Costa Maya, making them available to the Mexican authorities.

“We are very proud of our team for executing a successful rescue of these people,” said the Norwegian Cruise Line spokesman.

After the end of the dry foot/wet foot policy in 2017, which allowed Cubans who reached dry land in the United States to legally reside in the country with protective measures, the number of people who throw themselves into the sea fleeing Cuba has decreased drastically.

I am currently on Norwegian Getaway and some passengers noticed a flash in the middle of the ocean. They then told the cruise workers and they stopped and it turned out to be four people from Cuba which they rescued. Other videos coming now @OfficialJoelF pic.twitter.com/nc6XeaQis5

— Pico (@alberto__rpr) 4 de septiembre de 2018

Since last October 1st, 331 Cubans have tried to emigrate to the United States by sea compared to the 1,989 recorded in the entire 2017 fiscal year, according to figures from the Coast Guard

The authorities have warned that all Cubans who try to enter the country clandestinely, either via the land border or by crossing the Straits of Florida, will be returned to the island.

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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The Eclipse of ALBA

Family photo of the 14th ALBA-TCP Summit, in Caracas. (@ALBATCP_Cuba)

Carlos Malamud, México | 27 August 2018 — The Venezuelan migratory crisis, aggravated by events and with an expansive wave of continental reach, has claimed a new victim: the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA). The cause, the departure of Ecuador from the organization, a decision that seriously compromises its future.

The motive offered by the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister was the “lack of will” on the part Caracas to resolve the delicate situation that has been created throughout the region. Subsequently, additional motives were added: the social upheaval in Nicaragua and the high price paid in human lives at the expense of government repression.

Since its creation in 2004, what was then called the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas, had been constantly expanding from its two founding countries, Cuba and Venezuela. Bolivia was added after the arrival of Evo Morales to power. Together with these three, Nicaragua and Ecuador constituted the hard core to which were added a series of small Caribbean countries such as Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname, all of them attracted by the cheap oil of the once almighty Venezuelan oil company Petrocaribe. continue reading

The point of maximum expansion was achieved in August 2008 when Manuel Zelaya decided to add Honduras to the group. In January 2010, after the coup that took him from power, the new Honduran government decided to withdraw. Thereafter, the decline began, aggravated by the death of Hugo Chávez and the absence of alternative leadership. Venezuela’s economic problems and the continued decline in oil production made things worse.

ALBA is no longer what it once was. The prosperous Latin American dawn that Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro predicted when they set it up as an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has ended up eclipsed. At that time David — that is ALBA — liquidated Goliath — FTAA — with the help of Néstor Kirchner and Lula da Silva, and the collaboration of Diego Maradona once again playing his starring role as the buffoon.

The moment is critical. Not even the efforts of its executive secretary, former Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca, famous for not reading books and extracting his knowledge from rocks and the wisdom of the ancients, have been able to rescue the institution from the paralysis in which it found itself. One by one the integration organizations promoted by Chavismo have collapsed: CELAC, Unasur and now ALBA.

All of them were products of what many academics pompously called “post-neoliberal integration,” when they were just empty shells, as the passage of time has shown. And their failure was not due, as they will want us to believe again, to the effect of diverse conspiracies hatched by imperialism, but to their incapacities and the lack of a serious project of regional integration, aggravated by the shipwreck of the “Bolivarian Revolution.” The eclipse of ALBA has marked the decline of the so-called “dream of Bolívar,” the construction of the “Great Homeland,” leaving orphaned, now, of powerful supporters.

Note from the Editor: this analysis has been previously published in El Heraldo de México. We reproduce it with the authorization of the author.

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Requiem for Transport

Gladys Carbonell’s grandson and great-granddaughter spent 24 hours on a Via Azul bus to Santiago de Cuba (FLICKR)

14ymedio, Gladys Carbonell, Havana, 4 September 2018 — In addition to the terrible catastrophe of the plane crash in Havana, there have been many road transport accidents in Cuba lately, in which, unfortunately, people of all ages have died, including children which is the worst and most heartbreaking. There have also been many other accidents in different provinces of the country.

I would like to relate what happened to my grandson a few days ago on his trip to Santiago de Cuba, when he was taking his 7-year-old daughter home from her vacation in Havana to the place where she lives. My grandson lives in Havana and makes these trips often to fulfill the sacred duty of taking care of his daughter on vacation and spending time with her as he wants to do after his divorce. As a grandmother, and because I can take on the expense of these trips, I help him to fulfill his function as father and give the child a chance to enjoy being with him, for which I pay the Government the approximate sum of the almost 300 Cuban convertible pesos (CUC) that these trips entail.

There are no planes and there is no chance of getting a space on bus if you are paying in Cuban pesos (CUP). The only alternative if you need to move between the two most important cities in the country are the Vía Azul and Transtur companies, initially created to transport tourists or residents who are living abroad. continue reading

It took my grandson and his daughter 24 hours to arrive via Vía Azul in Santiago de Cuba. A trip that should last about 15 hours lasted 24, because they left the terminal on August 28 at 6 in the morning and arrived in Santiago de Cuba on the 29th past 6 in the morning. It was an endless journey and full of many needs, something normal when you take a child.

The reason for the delay was that the rubber on the left front tire of the bus peeled away in Ciego de Ávila, which could have caused the bus to overturn which probably would have caused the death of several people. Who knows if it would have fallen to me to mourn the death of my grandson and my great-granddaughter.

As always happens, the company did not have the spare part. They sent it to look for it and, finally, the person who was supposed to bring this part to the place where the bus was parked, forgot where it was.

A month or so ago, the same thing happened when a son of mine returned from Santiago de Cuba to Havana. The bus that left at 10:30 on the night of July 26 broke down as it arrived in Palma Soriano, shortly after leaving Santiago, and they had to go back and to get on another bus to get to the capital. How is it possible that it broke down so soon after starting out? Is it possible that these vehicles are not checked at the maintenance base before leaving? Don’t they care that people could lose their lives?

How many CUC does the Government collect for that simple trip by bus on Vía Azul, which is sure to be full and where there are children? Which of those revolutionary leaders that supposedly must watch over the well-being of their people travel or live an experience like that? Which one pays for terrible service, the price of which is almost six times the monthly retirement income of any Cuban professional? Please, do not blame the ’blockade’ for this. Any other argument, even if it seems like a lie, I could believe it.

Translated by Jim

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Repression Does Not Rest in Summer

Alejandro Pupo Echemendía, who died in police custody. (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Havana, 3 September 2018 — The two main human rights organizations in Cuba published Monday their reports about repression during August.

The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), with headquarters in Cuba, puts the number of arbitrary political arrests at 219 in August. For the CCDHRN the most serious event last month was the death of Alejandro Pupo Echemendia, arrested on the 9th and declared dead hours later while in police custody. The activist was taken to the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) station in the city of Placetas in Villa Clara, and relatives and witnesses assert that the body showed signs having been brutally mistreated before his death.

“Official responsibility must be revealed in this flagrant case of another citizen who dies in police custody,” demands CCDHRN. continue reading

On the other hand the organization applauds the announcement of the opening of a trial against some twenty officials and other citizens who are accused of bribery, document fraud and other crimes aimed at facilitating the “illegal” relocation to the capital of people who live in other provinces, building a criminal network.

CCDHRN thinks that the government intends to keep the detention figures low, but in the face of this, it increases control over people and has carried out at least 21 acts of harassment and four physical assaults against opponents.

Moreover, the Cuban Human Rights Observatory (OCDH), with headquarters in Madrid, has accounted for at least 208 arbitrary detentions in Cuba during August, a figure somewhat higher than that set out in July.

The organization highlights the harassment and arrests suffered by several independent artists on the 25th when they held a concert against the approval of Decree 349 which increases censorship of the sector. The non-governmental organization Amnesty International has pronounced itself against that day’s arrests.

The activist network of OCDH accounted for 133 repressive actions against women and 75 against men on the Island, at the same time that more acts of harassment and intimidation were brought against members of civil society and activists throughout the Island.

Another of the punished sectors last month has been the milieu of the political movement Somos+ whose activists were victims of arbitrary arrests when they tried to meet to debate the draft version of constitutional reform.

Add to these two groups those who habitually suffer the harassment methods of State Security and the Police, among them the Ladies in White who continue to be most affected by the brief detentions, the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), Somos+, the Orlando Zapata Tamayo Front, the National Resistence Front and the Party for Democracy.

For its part, the Center for Cuba Coexistence, directed by Dagoberto Valdes, continues suffering its particular repression of police citations and interrogations.

The personalized repression and the measures controlling departures abroad have become the tools most used in recent times, which, according to the Observatory, “leaves exposed the absence of the government’s political will to change.”

This fact also is denounced by CCDHRN which maintains that while it was “permitted” that nine dissidents travel to Peru in order to participate in two academic events, another nine were impeded from doing the same on the basis of various pretexts or simply the use of force.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

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Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) Accuses The New York Times of Flinging "Crazy Theories" About "Sonic Attacks"

14ymedio, Havana, 3 September 2018–The Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) has accused The New York Times (NYT) of surprising its readers with a “crazy theory” about the supposed sonic attacks that harmed the health of various US diplomats stationed in the embassies of Havana and Beijing. The daily ran an article in its Science section on Saturday in which it quotes various physicians and experts who, discarding other explanations, point to microwave technology as the prime suspect in the health hazards inflicted upon the functionaries.

UPEC has published a letter by attorney José Pertierra — among the most popular pro-Cuban government jurists, and one who has a law office in Washington, DC — in which he classifies the article as “an example of poor journalism,” being based as it is on “pure speculation” and not exposing the cause of the possible illnesses. continue reading

“Every time that a witness makes unsubstantiated claims in a court of law, the attorneys are required to present the ’evidence’ and to ask a fundamental question: ’How do you know this?’ Unfortunately, The New York Times does not ask this fundamental question,” writes the lawyer, who is thus demanding that scientific or procedural criteria be applied to journalism.

The New York Times article says that the scientists believe that unconventional weapons which utilize microwaves are the most probable cause of the so-called sonic attacks. Although the report published in March by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) following an examination of 21 affected diplomats in Cuba makes no reference to this type of wave, the author of the study and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania, Douglas H. Smith, said in a recent interview that microwaves are now considered prime suspects in more than likely causing brain damage.

“Everyone was relatively skeptical at first, but now all agree that there is something there,” said the specialist, who added that the physicians jokingly refer to the injuries at issue as the “immaculate concussion.”

Discarding other possible causes such as sonic attacks, viral infections, or contagious anxiety, some analysts, according to the NYT article, now point to the “Frey Effect,” a phenomenon discovered decades ago by the scientist Allan H. Frey, which posits that microwaves can fool the brain into perceiving what might seem like common sounds.

These false sensations could explain the noises and buzzing sounds cited by the diplomats, which at first were thought to be evidence of attacks by sonic weapons.

While the US Department of State and the FBI are declining to make further statements about an ongoing investigation, a group of experts has collaborated this summer with the federal government in evaluating new threats to national security which, apparently includes the mysterious Havana embassy case and weighs various explanations, among which is the microwave theory.

Frey, the discoverer of the microwave phenomenon, who has worked as a contractor and consultant with various federal agencies, speculates about the possibility that Cuba allied with Russia could have executed these attacks with microwaves in order to damage the relations between Havana and Washington that began during the Barack Obama administration.

Frey explains that decades ago, during a visit to the USSR to give a conference, he was taken to a military base outside Moscow, whose government was “so intrigued by the prospect of mental control that it adopted special terminology for the general class of potential weapons, calling them ’psychophysical’ and ’psychotronic,’” according to the scientist as quoted in the NYT.

An infinity of home appliances, such as short-wave radios, kitchen ovens, and mobile phones emit microwaves in a harmless manner — but they are easy to manipulate and concentrate because of their small size. According to statements quoted by the NYT, it is believed that Russia, China, and many European states have the know-how to manufacture basic microwave weapons that could weaken, create noise and even kill.

Last October, the magazine Neural Computation published an article by Beatrice A. Golomb, MD and professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, that lays out the most detailed medical case for microwave attacks at the Havana embassy.

In her article, Golomb compared the symptoms of the diplomats on the Island with those reported by persons who are said to suffer from radio frequency illness, and she asserted that “numerous, highly-specific characteristics” of the diplomatic incidents “fit the hypothesis” of a microwave attack, including the production of perturbing, Frey-type noises.

The incidents at the embassy provoked the exit of non-essential personnel from the diplomatic headquarters–about 60%–and this has had significant repercussions on the daily life of Cubans, who have since had great difficulties in obtaining visas to the US, the county to which they have the most ties. Havana accuses Washington of inventing an excuse to obstruct the thaw, being that the cause and extent of the injuries suffered by the officials have yet to be determined.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

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Stupid Governments

The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, remains in power after one of the bloodiest crisis in the history of his nation. (EFE)

14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 2 September 2018 – I’m told that Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan dictator, ordered a discreet survey to find out what percentage of the country supports his continuing to lead the government. Daniel was enraged when he learned the results: only 9% support him. He is two points below Nicolás Maduro. Those who consider themselves Sandinistas were 25% of the survey, but the Danielistas are a handful that tends to shrink as the crisis intensifies.

And the crisis is unstoppable. It consists, essentially, in the absence of investments and the paralysis of economic decisions. That is fatal for any government. The good functioning of societies is based on trust, and trust, in turn, depends on the soundness of institutions. You would have to be absolutely crazy to take a dollar to Nicaragua. What sane people do is take their savings to Costa Rica, Panama or Miami, where there are guarantees that they will not be confiscated by the governments of those countries.

Faced with this reaction, stupid governments accuse those who behave rationally and protect their capital of being traitors. But they do something even more serious: they steal the independence of national banks, they intervene in bank deposits, they create so-called corralitos and freeze deposits, they devalue currencies to liquefy debts, they seize the dollars or euros of remittances sent by long-suffering emigrants, and they punish businesspeople by invading their properties or confiscating them, although in the rough hands of the government these properties usually have a very short life before they begin showing losses, a prologue to their ultimate closings. continue reading

All this increases uncertainty and distrust. Those who do not have access to dollars acquire valuable pictures, precious stones, gold or anything that retains some international value. I have seen fortunes in postage stamps, spurs for fighting cocks, race horses and even curious relics, false or real, like the fragments of Napoleon’s testicles, carefully amputated by Dr. Francesco Antomarchi in Santa Helena, the Mallorcan doctor who autopsied the corpse and ruled that the emperor died of stomach cancer at age 51.

What is Daniel Ortega’s next move? He knows he has to face the polls, but he is waiting for his image and that of his Government to improve. That will never happen. The problem is that everything he does aggravates and worsens his personal situation and the perception of his regime. The Organization of American States (OAS) ruled that it is a repugnant dictatorship that kills without compassion. The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), after a visit by its president, reported that the rights of the people are violated without compassion. There is no human way to improve that image, unless he announces his decision to advance the elections and leave the country or stay, if he has the delicate talent that is required to agree on a negotiated solution with the opposition.

Although it seems incredible, the worst is yet to come. And the worst is the nationalization of Nicaragua’s weak productive capacity. I do not know if Daniel still believes in the Cuban model of the eighties, which was in force when he first took power with the Sandinistas, because he was a very ignorant young man, but Cuba, which has lost its compass after 60 years of failures, no longer believes in it and is trying various formulas to bury the Revolution without it being noticed and without losing power, two impossible missions.

If I were a Nicaraguan, along with the departure of Daniel, I would be thinking about what to do to prevent further revolutions and setbacks. A substantial part of what was achieved after the defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990 has gone by the wayside. All of the work undertaken to overcome Nicaragua’s bankruptcy, to straighten out its finances, to end hyperinflation, to fix the wounds and to begin to grow again, has been lost.

It is a shame that every so often a catastrophe like this occurs and overthrows coexistence. Well-functioning nations have remarkable human capital and functioning institutions. They are not governments of special men, but of laws that apply to everyone equally and in which one ascends not by one’s connections but by one’s merits.

Is there a country that has shined a light on this exhausting exercise? Yes. Switzerland did it in 1848, after the liberal revolution. They decided never to export mercenaries, to participate in wars, or to become poor again. They dropped out of stupidity. Today very few people know the name of the president of Switzerland. Nor do they need to.

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Havana Marabou

The invasive marabou weed has spread from the Cuban countryside and invaded Havana (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernández, Havana, 30 August 2018 — On both sides of the Central Highway and the National Highway there is no other plant that dominates the landscape as much as the invasive marabou weed (called marabú in Cuba, and also called sicklebush in English). However, this thorny bush — which has become a plague in the fields of the island — is no longer just an element of rural zones but has also extended its presence to urban areas.

In the central Havana intersection formed by the streets Carlos III, Infanta and Ayestarán, a marabou bush grows defiant a few inches from where collective taxis circulate and tourists take pictures. The majority of passers-by do not realize the presence of the plant, others joke about the progress of its invasion into the cities and a few remember that currently the invasive plant is not seen in a bad light.

What until a few years ago was considered an undesirable species has become the raw material of charcoal that the country exports to the US, Europe and other regions. The authorities recently commissioned China to manufacture a prototype marabou harvester to alleviate the hard work now carried out by brigades of men with gloves and machetes. Some craftsmen also use it for wood carvings and accessories, while more than a few farmers consider it an insurmountable barrier that prevents trespassing by strangers to their lands.

Thus, slowly, after displacing the Royal Palm in the countryside, the marabou has managed to get people accustomed to its presence and to begin to take advantage of its thick branches. It has won the battle against the other plants, the insults and the state plans to finish it off.

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"The Work of the Century" is Now a Ghost Town in Cienfuegos

14ymedio, Justo Mora, Cienfuegos, August 30, 2018 — Pedro Albaladejo arrived in Juraguá 31 years ago. At that time he didn’t have as much gray hair as he does now, nor did he let his beard grow more than five days. He was a strong young man, with a tanned complexion, who at 35 made his living as a builder.

One day he received an offer to be part of the group that was going to build “the work of the century” in Cuba: the nuclear power plant that would provide electricity to the industrial center of Cienfuegos. He exchanged his ranch in Las Tunas for a temporary hostel and ever since has lived in the vicinity of what the locals call the CEN, the ruins of the mammoth project of the National Electronuclear Plant.

“Before, this place was full of people who came to work. Trucks never stopped arriving. It was another time. The Soviet Union supported us and here there was hope that life would get better,” he says as he pastures a herd of goats among abandoned blocks of concrete. continue reading

“So many people without houses in this country, and here they have left a ton of apartments unfinished. That’s a crime, boy,” a neighbor laments. (14ymedio)

$1.1 billion was invested in the construction of the reactor, and more than 10,000 workers, engineers, and architects worked on the project. Dozens of Russian specialists worked together with the Cubans on the projects of the Nuclear City.

Fidel Castro made an agreement with the Soviets in 1976 to build two nuclear reactors of the VVER-400 V316 type, but the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 slowed down the Russian nuclear program, and the end of Soviet subsidies to Cuba ended up paralyzing the project in 1992.

The first houses in the Nuclear City, developed in the Soviet style, were turned over in 1981. “We built these buildings ourselves,” says Albaladejo, pointing out a block of five-story apartments. Empty. “So many people without houses in this country, and here they have left a ton of apartments unfinished. That’s a crime, boy,” he laments.

Around him are the ruins of what in the past were hostels, warehouses, offices, dozens of buildings abandoned and cannibalized by the “stonepickers,” as the locals call the people who devote themselves to pulling out blocks, rods, and slabs from the ruins.

“Homeland or death! We will win! Socialism or death! Resist and win!” The old slogans painted on the buildings and the portraits of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara resist the passage of time. A completely abandoned 18-story building and various apartment blocks without doors or windows remind one of Pripyat, the nuclear city that the Soviets built nearby Chernobyl which was evacuated and abandoned after the explosion of a reactor on April 26, 1986.

“No one wants to live here. Young people leave for Cienfuegos or abroad because there’s only work here as a guard, in the private hospital, or as a teacher. There’s almost never water and in the buildings it rains more inside than out because of all the leaks,” he laments.

In the Nuclear City and its vicinity around 9,000 people live, according to the most recent official figures. After the disaster of the atomic plant, the Government created a tobacco factory and promoted agriculture as a source of jobs.

“A while ago the Government built a hydroponic facility here. They figured that we would be able to eat vegetables from there at low prices. The only thing remaining from the venture is the name because there’s not even a plot, no way,” says Albaladejo.

Yasniel was born in the Nuclear City and has never left the province. He’s 13 and has the look of someone who has already lived a lot, despite his young age. In the afternoons he goes out to fish with two friends on the pier. He dreams of having his own boat when he’s an adult, but the prices are through the roof, he says.

“I sell the fish to other fishermen, and they resell it in Cienfuegos. The truth is that there’s not much to do here. Sometimes at night I go to the Circle (a recreation center) to listen to music.”

His school is destroyed. After Irma, the last hurricane that affected Cienfuegos, pieces of windows and part of the structure are on the ground. “It [the school] is a disaster. There aren’t even teachers,” he says. Where there used to be laboratories and classrooms, there are now only piles of debris.

Yasniel says that he would like to be like the Olympic boxing champion Robeisy Ramírez, native of the Nuclear City. “That kid was a great boxer, but here they don’t give life to anyone. He did well to stay in Mexico.”

When he gets together enough money, Yasniel takes the opportunity to connect to the internet in one of the City parks.

“There’s nothing else to do around here,” he says resignedly. “Whenever I can, I chat with friends on Facebook. A bunch of people from the CEN live in the US and some were friends of mine before they left.”

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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More Than 20 People Tried for Alleged Falsification of Internal Migration Documents

The trial against the alleged network began this Tuesday at the Provincial Court of Havana. (tsp.gob.cu)

14ymedio, Havana, August 29, 2018 — This Tuesday at the Provincial Court of Havana, the trial began against more than 20 people accused of participating in an alleged network of migration document falsification so that provincial residents would be able to reside in the capital of the island, Diario de Cuba announced today.

The network, which allegedly operated between 2013 and 2016, “was centered around the Housing Office of the municipality of Cerro, according to the official record of the case,” said the independent medium in the statement.

According to authorities, this group’s procedure consisted of identifying individuals who needed to go through the process urgently and who were exhausted by the bureaucracy necessary to complete it. “Many people arrived at the workplace of the accused officials and agreed on an amount that, in general, would be paid in two halves: the first at the beginning and the second once the required Resolution was delivered,” explains DDC. continue reading

The main defendents, Sonia Milagro Barban, a lawyer at Cerro’s Municipal Housing Department since 2012, and her friend, Iluminada Machada, ex-employee of the Havana Provincial Administration Council, allegedly charged between 40 and 150 dollars, mostly to young people seeking to reside permanently in the capital or who needed an address change to be hired for a State job, as is required by law.

Both women face sentences of between 8 and 15 years in prison for the crimes of falsification of public documents and bribery. Another five accused, “among them office workers and citizens who allegedly benefitted economically from the group engaged in corrupting documents,” may also be sentenced to 3 years in prison, in addition to being disqualified from future employment in public administration.

According to the Attorney General of the Republic’s report, Machado and Barban joined together “with the purpose of making an illegitimate profit, with Barban taking advantage of the power of the position which she held.” In this way, the applicants, some of whom are also accused in the trial, arrived at the workplace of the officials facing trial in order to settle the process.

A third member of the alleged plot, a technician withTerritorial Planning Marily García, could not be tried, as she committed suicide in Havana in November of 2016, a few days after being notified that she would be subject to an inestigation regarding the internal migration records that she managed.

The fall of this group was preceded by complaints of irregularities by officials of the Offices of Housing Processes and supervisors of the Offices of Identity Cards in the municipalities of Regla, El Cotorro, San Miguel del Padrón, La Lisa, and East Havana.

Additionally, according to the case file, the quality of the falsifications was poor, due to having been made on household printers, without the reliefs or special inks required for the official emblems. Finally, the criminal expert’s report was able to confirm that the network had made at least more than twenty false change of addresses, but according to a lawyer consulted by DDC there could have been more, given the high demand for this process.

According to the Population and Housing Census conducted in 2012, 11.2% of the Cuban population is made up of interprovincial emigrants and almost half of those are settled in Havana. 24.8% of the Cuban capital’s population is made up of immigrants from other parts of the country.

Since 1997 a Legal Decree has established internal migratory regulations for Havana that prohibits Cubans who come from other areas of the country from establishing residence or living permanently in the capital without authorization. The strict legislation has created a framework of marriages of convenience, false work permits, and bribes to get identity cards with Havana addresses.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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The Cuban Economy is Not Taking Off, According to Cepal

Vendors at the Vedado Farmers’ Market in Havana (El Nuevo Herald)

14ymedio, Havana, August 29, 2018 — Cuban experts consulted by 14ymedio agree that the predictions of Cepal (the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) confirm the stagnation of the national economy. Some even doubt that the growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reaches the 1.5% announced last week by this body of the United Nations.

According to Cepal’s report, GDP will grow an average of 1.5% on the whole continent, far from the 2.2% that it predicted in April.

“Instead of surpassing 2017 figures, Cuba is stagnating,” says the economist Elías Amor Bravo, who also points out that the Cuban government itself has set 3% as the necessary growth to overcome its external and internal structural problems. continue reading

For Amor Bravo, president of the Cuban Center for Human Rights (OCDH), based in Madrid, there are two causes that have led the Island to have one of the lowest prospects of growth in the region: on one hand, there is deficient investment in infrastructure, communications, energy, or housing, and on the other, there is a high public deficit, more than 11.5% of the GDP in 2017.

The Cuban researcher Pavel Vidal, professor at the Universidad Javeriana de Cali (Colombia), warned during a conference in Miami that the decapitalization of the Island’s economy and the fall in productivity have opened a “breach” with Latin America that can only be closed with a raise in the investment rate to around 10-15% of the GDP. This figure is far out of reach according to Amor Bravo, who maintains that the prominence of investments in the Island’s GDP has been only around 9% between 1995 and 2017.

2018 has been a difficult year for the Cuban economy, especially due to a 6.5% fall in tourism in the first half of the year, attributed by the Government to the fall in trips from the United States because of the restrictive measures of Donald Trump’s Administration, especially the restrictions on American nationals staying in hotels managed by the Armed Forces.

In contrast, the number of visitors arriving on cruise ships has grown, but this is a tourism that generates little income in the country. If, in 2016, a foreign tourist spent on average $765, a cruise passenger would spend only around $50, according to a report from The Havana Consulting Group.

“This year is going to be very negative for Cuba, especially when you start to notice the fall in oil shipments from Venezuela, in remittances, and especially a very bad tourist season. Combining all these factors, the Cuban economy is going to experience a growth that is practically nothing, or maybe even negative,” predicts Amor Bravo, president of OCDH and also a university professor in Valencia (Spain) and author of the blog Cubaeconomía.

Nor will the sugar harvest be able to help improve the battered national economy, now that it can’t manage to overcome the downhill slope it has been traveling for years. In the sugar harvest of 2017-2018 the Island produced a little more than a million tons of raw sugar instead of the expected 1.6 million, a steep drop from the all-time high reached in the last century of 8 million tons (plus or minus).

For the economist Jorge Sanguinetty, who directs the Latin American Program in Applied Economics at American University and currently resides in Miami, the prospect of 1.5% growth for the Island is a realistic figure even though Cepal uses data provided by Cuban institutions to make their predictions.

“In any place where there are economic statistics, you know where your data is coming from and how it is calculated. In Cuba that is not the case. They only have large-scale estimates,” says Sanguinetty. This statement is shared by Amor Bravo, who points out that the Island does not have data to predict the behavior of the economy in the short term, which makes it difficult to make accurate predictions.

“Whatever the growth of the economy may be doesn’t mean that it is a growth in consumption. The economy can grow by 10% and the spending of the Government can absorb all the growth so that it is not reflected in people’s lives,” says Sanguinetty.

From Pinar del Río, where one must face the difficulties of real life every day, the independent economist Karina Gálvez confirms this perception: “The GDP is not just a number, it’s basically an indicator that should be reflected in the economy of families and should mean something in everyday life in people’s pockets.”

And, “with nominal salaries that leave people practically destitute,” adds Amor Bravo, private consumption, which is key to economic growth, cannot be stimulated.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Dissident Group Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) Denounces 23 Arrests this Sunday in Cuba

Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, is arrested during a demonstration in Havana. (Damas de Blanco)

EFE via 14ymedio, Havana, 27 August 2018 – The Cuban dissident movement Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White) denounced on Monday the “harassment” by authorities and the temporary detention of 23 of its members in Havana and the western province of Matanzas, after attending Sunday Mass in different churches or upon leaving their homes.

In Matanzas 17 women were arrested as were six others in Havana, including the leader of the opposition group, Berta Soler.

Soler explained that for more than two years the authorities have not allowed the women to reach the Santa Rita Church in Havana, where the group attended mass weekly since its formation in 2003, and at the conclusion of services demonstrated for the release of political prisoners on the island. continue reading

Given these circumstances, she explained that they decided to attend different churches separately, but often cannot do so because they are unable to evade police operations such as the one routinely held Thursday through Sunday around the headquarters of the Ladies in White in the Lawton neighborhood, in the capital city.

Soler described as “terrible” the current situation of the Ladies in White because they are not allowed to exercise their “rights of expression” and said that the “harassment” against its members is on-going.

In addition, she denounced that four women from the group are imprisoned, among them Martha Sánchez, sentenced to five years in prison August 21 for “public disorder, resistance and attack” after having protested in front of a polling place in the general elections held in March.

She remarked that, in the cases of Nieves Matamoros and Yolanda Santana, they were sentenced to one year in prison for non-payment of fines and a fourth detainee is awaiting trial.

Berta Soler (b. 1963, Matanzas, Cuba) is one of the founders of the Ladies in White movement that emerged to advocate the release of the 75 dissidents imprisoned in the “Black Spring” of 2003, including her husband, Ángel Moya, all of whom were released and, as of today, remain out of prison.

After the death of Laura Pollán in 2011, Soler has headed the group, one of the most active of the internal dissidence of the island.

The Cuban government considers the dissidents “counterrevolutionaries” and “mercenaries.”

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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Cuban Poet Carilda Oliver Labra Dies, One of the Principal Lyrical Voices of the Island in the 20th Century

Carilda Oliver Labra won the National Literature Prize in 1997. (escritores.org)

14ymedio, Havana, 29 August 2018 – The poet and writer Carilda Oliver Labra died in the early morning hours this Wednesday at 96 years of age, according to the official press. This matancera (i.e. woman from Matanzas) was one of the most important voices of the Cuban lyric of the twentieth century, with a notable individual style and a great passion for the promotion of culture.

Born in Matanzas in 1922, Oliver Labra graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences degree from the Institute of Secondary Education of that city and her first book, Lyrical Prelude, was published in 1943. Later she became part of the Peña Literaria Matancera, where she held various positions, including President of the group.

The Cuban writer garnered second place in the International Poetry Competition, organized by the National Broadcasting Co. of New York, and in 1949 published Al sur de mi garganta (South of My Throat). In 1952 her texts appeared in the anthology Fifty Years of Cuban Poetry, compiled by Cintio Vitier, and she married the lawyer and poet Hugo Ania Mercier, whom she divorced in 1955. continue reading

In those years Oliver Labra worked in the First Festival of the Décima organization in the Sauto Theater, published in her city the Canto a Matanzas (Song to Matanzas), worked in the newspaper El Imparcial on the feature Saturday’s Poem and also served as Director of Culture in the municipality of Matanzas. At that time she wrote one of her most controversial poems: Canto a Fidel (Song to Fidel).

After January 1959, she worked as an English teacher in Matanzas, participated in the literacy campaign and married in second nuptials tenor Felix Pons Cuesta, of whom she would be widowed in 1980.

In the decade of the 80s she received the Distinction for National Culture, the National Literature Prize and the “José Vasconcelos” Hispano-American Prize. The 13th International Book Fair of Havana was dedicated to her, most of her volumes have been published and reissued and an international colloquium about her work was held at the “Camilo Cienfuegos” University of Matanzas.

At the end of that decade the poet experienced an incident little mentioned in her official biography. She was injured in the abdomen during a presentation at the Pensamiento de Matanzas bookstore, to which she was invited, and which was busted by the combined action of extremists and agents of State Security. The gathering was dedicated to the theme of perestroika in the Soviet Union.

Translated by Wilfredo Díaz Echevarria

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Extrajudicial Executions Are Still Happening on the Island, According to Cuba Archive

Alejandro Pupo Echemendía, presumed killed by Cuban police officials (courtesy)

14ymedio, Mario J. Pentón, Miami, August 27, 2018 — The NGO Cuba Archive claimed this Monday that extrajudicial executions are still happening on the island, and they cited as an example the case of Alejandro Pupo Echemendía, 46, “killed by officers at a police station” in the city of Placetas (Villa Clara).

Pupo Echemendía died on August 9, two days after being detained for an offense of illegal horse racing. According to Archive Cuba, citing Abel Santiago Tamayo, another detainee, as a source, Pupo Echemendía “was demonstrating a strong attack of nerves when a police officer handcuffed him and others proceeded to beat him with sticks, canes, kicks, and crashes against the floor.” continue reading

The human rights activist Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as Antúnez, was the one who denounced the alleged murder of Pupo Echemendía via social media. Various photos published on the activist’s account show signs of violence on the corpse. Pupo Echemendía’s wife as well as other family members testified to the state in which they received the body in the morgue.

Cuba Archive claims that this case is barely the “tip of the iceberg.”

“It’s only a window into the systematic killing in Cuba’s dungeons for nearly six decades,” adds the report published on their website. Cuba Archive asserts that it has documented some 509 extrajudicial executions, 22 deaths from hunger strikes, 312 deaths from lack of medical treatment or health reasons, and 107 suicides or supposed suicides, some of which may hide other executions.

“The vast majority of prisoners’ deaths are not reported, but it is thought that the victims add up to hundreds every year. The conditions in Cuban prisons are horrifying and they don’t permit monitoring or access for independent human rights organizations, they silence witnesses and victims’ family members, and they persecute human rights defenders,” adds Cuba Archive, which says that among the cases that it has documented are those of women and children.

Cuba keeps secret the number of prisons in the country and the number of people locked up. Cuba Archive estimates that there are more than 500 prisons, not including work camps, reformatories, and facilities for minors.

The NGO, based in Miami, claims that State Security is currently developing a campaign “of threats and intimidation to cover up the murder of Alejandro Pupo.”

On August 21 Abel Santiago was threatened by the authorities and forced to record a video where he declared that “he had been manipulated.” On August 22, Pupo’s niece and her husband were detained, threatened by State Security, and forced to sign a declaration denying the events. Various human rights defenders from Placetas, including Antúnez, Arianna López Roque, and Loreto Hernández García, are being harassed and threatened by the authorities, says Cuba Archive.

The report also accounts for the death of Daniela Ramón Rodríguez, 4 years old, who died on March 26, 2013 in Juan Manuel Márquez Hospital in Havana “after a health crisis caused by police mistreatment.”

According to Cuba Archive, the girl was forced to remain with her parents who had been detained by police, accused of the crime of burglary.

“The police threatened them and insulted them in front of their daughter. Two days after the traumatic incident, the health of Daniela [who had had an open heart surgery and suffered from congenital heart disease, an enlarged heart, and aggressive pericarditis] suddenly worsened; she was in intensive care until she died two months later,” adds Cuba Archive.

“This is the Cuba hidden from the world that we must continue to make known,” concludes the document.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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From State Homophobia to Marriage Equality in Cuba

The acceptance of unions between two people of the same sex owes more to “State transvestism” than to pressure from the LGBT community (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Abel Sierra Madero, New York | August 28, 2018 — For the past few years the Cuban regime has been producing some sudden changes meant to guarantee the continuity of the system and to erase the past. I called this process of “gatopardism” (a political strategy of changing things so that everything remains the same) “State transvestism.”

It is a readjustment of the revolutionary rhetoric of the Cold War that uses the notion of diversity as a method to offer to the outside world an image of change, but with hardly any tweaks. State transvestism is also a policy that uses new means of managing political control and (self) transition being brought about by the old Cuban political elite.

This strategy started to be tested a decade ago by the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), directed by Mariela Castro Espín, daughter of General Raúl Castro. From 2007, Mariela dominated the headlines when, to the party rhythm of the conga, she started to parade through the streets of Havana surrounded by gay people, insisting that sexual diversity formed part of the Revolution and “in a revolutionary manner.” continue reading

In 2008, CENESEX got the Ministry of Public Health to approve a resolution that authorized sex change operations, which regenerated great affection on the international level as well as on the island. At that time, the institution proposed a new family code and a law of gender identity.

The issue remained silenced for years, until a few days ago, when the Cuban National Assembly — totally controlled by the regime — approved, unanimously and true to the old Soviet style, a new Constitutional text prepared in secret which even Raúl Castro himself helped to edit. They say that it will be submitted very soon to popular consultation, although the general clarified that the consultation would consist of a debate supervised by the Communist Party.

Cosmetic and semantic politics

The project of the “new” constitution is getting tangled up at the same time with cosmetic and semantic politics. It says that private property will be recognized and that the construction of Communism will be renounced, although the Communist Party will continue togovern the destinies of the nation. It assures that socialism is irreversible, but behind the curtain the socialist model is being supplanted little by little by a neoliberal capitalism of the State, which concentrates power in a military elite and more and more cuts the budgets of state services like public health and education — areas on which the Cuban government has rested its legitimacy.

However, the paragraph that most stirred up the media and caused an explosion on social media was Article 68, which considers the “officially approved voluntary union between two persons with the legal capacity for it.” No longer is it limited to a man and a woman, as it was up until now. This simple change can open a pathway to the recognition of gay marriage in Cuba.

Marriage equality has its supporters and its detractors. In the United States and Europe, for example, it has been criticized by queer theorists and activists for the demobilization and the depoliticization it has generated inside these communities, which have seen marriage as the end of a historic agenda to fight for. But that is another discussion.

In Cuba, supporters will say that the approval of equal marriage signifies a step toward the recognition of individual rights, historically diluted in the impersonal and collective mass. To a certain extent they are right. I am in favor of all laws that favor groups that are vulnerable, whether for reasons of race, sexuality, gender, or politics. However, I cannot help pointing out the logic on which the recognition of marriage equality on the island is set up, and the consequences that it could have, thinking about the future and the history of the Revolution itself.

Marriage equality responds to assimilating policies that are being tried out by the State to create politically docile identities. Finally passed, marriage equality would create a protective framework basically circumscribed by the patrimonial one. For years we have seen many people stripped of the goods and properties of their partners, because they did not have the legal protection to inherit. But at the same time, it turns into a device, an instrument aimed at assimilating and canceling out a more comprehensive democratic discussion, not circumscribed to the specific issue of sexuality.

With the way things stand, marriage equality seems to be turning into another space of controlled diversity created for public post-revolution relationships. “With this proposed constitutional regulation, Cuba places itself among the countries at the vanguard of the recognition and guarantee of human rights,” pointed out Mariela Castro. In this way, marriage equality turns into an instrument of propaganda over human rights, an area in which the government has come under harsh criticism.

So, can a country which every year registers high numbers of arbitrary arrests for political motives be considered “at the vanguard” of human rights? A country that considers dissidents or opponents as mercenaries at the service of foreign powers or as traitors to the homeland? A country where freedom of expression, of association, among others, is practically prohibited?

Yesterday’s False Hope

Some activists from the LGBTI community in Cuba have claimed this change as a result of the pressure they have exerted on the institutions. However, this conjecture doesn’t have much support if we take into account the strong pressure that opponents, the Cuban diaspora, the exiles, and international organizations have exerted for decades for the government to recognize other liberties and rights, while those who pull the strings of power haven’t moved a muscle.

Without discounting the agency or the importance of the work of activism, I must say that marriage equality is anchored to this “State transvestism” of which I spoke at the beginning. This policy, in addition to trying out new means of political control, promotes an amnesiac transition, the washing of national memory and the rewriting of history. It is a matter of reaccomodating or rewriting certain historical processes that connect the Revolution to discrimination and homophobia.

For decades homophobia in Cuba was a policy of the State that legimitized purges of gay people from institutions and their internment forced labor camps, like the infamous Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), aimed at the construction of the Communist “New Man.” The washing of memory and the rewriting of history began in August of 2010, when Fidel Castro told La Jornada that he recognized his historical responsibility in the implementation of these forced labor camps.

A few months later, Mariela Castro, in an interview with the Swiss Institute for Cooperation (COSUDE), embarked on a damage control campaign where she ended up saying that “Fidel didn’t even know about UMAP. He was concentrating on the survival of the Revolution and on the changes that they were making in politics, the laws in favor of the rights of the people, amidst complex and tense international relations.”

Mariela Castro has tried to minimize the scope and scale of UMAP in the history of the Cuban Revolution. She even promised an investigation into the matter; we are still waiting for it. Since then, the director of CENESEX has said, in every forum she has appeared in or every interview that she gives, that UMAP was an isolated error and that they were by no means forced labor camps.

Mariela is not the only one engaged in this effort, other cultural commissioners are also trying to reproduce and export this version. If these speeches manage to take root, it’s possible that in a not too distant future, we will see UMAP represented in textbooks and in the public sphere as mere summer camps.

In Cuba I see many of the elements that Isaac Rosa pointed out in his novel Yesterday’s False Hope (2004). Rosa called attention to the existence in Spain of narrative forms that tend to tame and anesthetize the past, while offering a placid image of the Franco dictatorship.

One of the passages reads: “Consciously or unconsciously, many novelists, journalists, and essayists (and filmmakers, let’s not forget) have transmitted a deformed image of Francoism… By doing so they construct a digestible impression of the banana republic in front of the reality of a dictatorship that applied, in detail and until its last day, refined techniques of torture, censorship, mental repression, cultural manipulation, and the creation of psychological ways of thinking that even today we have not managed to completely get rid of.”

On the island, this type of representation goes back to the 90s. Let’s not forget conciliatory exercises like the film Strawberry and Chocolate (1993). “Fidel, with this film, assumed, and with nothing to say, we close internationally that horrible moment that some call a Chapter and that I prefer to call a “digression” that was the UMAP,” wrote the then-director of the Cuban Institute of Art and Film, Alfredo Guevara, to the comandante.

Finally, with the passing of marriage equality, Cuba would take an important step toward becoming a gay-friendly State, which can create large businesses in areas like tourism and sex change operations. Until now, the principal market for these surgeries is in Thailand, but the scene could change because Cuban doctors are now carrying out these procedures, after having received the know-how of European specialists for several years, as part of the CENESEX program.

In recent days, Grupo Gaviota, a corporation belonging to the Cuban military — yes, the military — signed an agreement with the European chain Muthu Hotels & Resorts to manage a hotel in Cuba aimed at the LGTBI community. The company made the announcement with great ceremony on its Twitter account.

The police raids and underground spaces, the forced labor camps and the state-sanctioned homophobia, will remain in obscurity. Celebrities of the gay world can marry in Cuba without fear of being arrested. Now more than ever we need a policy of memory that is not aimed at the clinical space of healing, but rather at justice and compensation for the victims of this harmful policy. It is the only way to ensure that the past not be that “yesterday’s false hope” of which Isaac Rosa spoke.

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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Editors’ Note: Abel Sierra Madero (Matanzas, Cuba, 1976) is an essayist, researcher, professor, and critic. With the author’s permission we are reproducing this text which was previously published in the Mexican magazine Letras Libres.

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