Misc Authors

Confusion in the Americas on the Venezuelan Crisis / Manuel Cuesta Morua

HAVANA, Cuba. – The open crisis in Venezuela confuses all of Latin America and the Caribbean. It has an important economic component. Many of the small countries of the Caribbean basin, turned client-states, foresee the loss of the cheap oil prices Venezuela has been providing. This may be a small consideration for most, except for Cuba.

A shift should be easy to navigate for those barely viable and sparsely populated nations; no one knows why they changed a safer and more stable economic relation with the US, for a cheaper but clearly less reliable one with Venezuela. Surely, we know that strategic thinking is what the region lacks. To change oil and freedom, for oil and conditioning is a very strange move to secure independence.

However, the most important point of the Venezuelan crisis at the hemispheric level, is the one that connects the strategic possibility of a model of integration that is trying to develop, in Latin America and the Caribbean, the awareness and commitment of its elite with the values of its institutions, the growing struggle of citizens for self-recognition and the political intelligence of the leaders in the region.

Amid the silence of ALBA, Evo Morales withdraws to a nationalist but not at all anti-capitalist economic model despite his extravagant and poorly articulated rhetoric. His advisers seem to have more influence on him than those of Rafael Correa, who does not know how to respond to the crisis of his own model and the consequences of his erratic policies; one day he wants to be reelected, another day he swears he does not want to be reelected only to appear later, in a seeming act of despair which says little about his seriousness, threatening to seek reelection where we all thought was about a Citizens’ Revolution.

Meanwhile, Cristina Fernández de Kichner cavorts even better, defending democracy from the left and right; stating her support is not for Maduro but for the democratic process itself, while at the same time saying that the protests, which are precisely part of that democratic process, are a “soft coup.”

Juan Manuel Santos, trapped between the left and right, tries to save his difficult relations with Venezuela; while talking with the FARC and Havana, he is also forced to point out the value of democratic institutions and the need for dialogue in the other side of Tachira, even if it means being humiliated by Maduro. Mujica barely knows what to say, invokes UNASUR, which has little to contribute. Meanwhile, Piñera, on his way out, takes care to remind us that this happens because in Latin America almost everyone is dedicated to blaming the foreigners of the north, not the south, instead of looking for problems in their own entrails.

At the beginning of the Venezuelan crisis, Michelle Bachelet had the strategic intelligence to recognize a constitutional crisis in the country and recommend a plebiscite. She has been the only one in this sea of confusion to show vision. Unlike Rouseff who forgets her past as a student victim of the Carioca repression, and in this dramatic moment, allows herself to be lead exclusively by the economic interests of Brazil.

Nothing unusual in the pragmatic tradition of Brazil and a Lula with global ambitions, whom we all envisioned at the International Labour Organization battling for workers worldwide. He steps from being a union leader to President of Brazil and finally ends up a representative of Odebrecht, a transnational if there ever was one. And, in Havana, he allows himself the luxury of pointing out that Maduro is a man of good intentions. Thank God.

There is total disorientation. Even rhetorical. Maduro blames the Yankees, expels its diplomats while asking to talk to Obama and naming a new ambassador in Washington, almost all at the same time and within the closed cycle of events. He had earlier threatened to use the full force of the army against civilians, precisely what all fascists do, while accusing them of being Nazi-facists and inviting them to a peace dialogue for which he has no resources in his political and verbal memory.

The OAS seems to be slipping by Insulza, this man has lost every opportunity to show some kind of leadership and allows himself the luxury of coming to Havana to be rebuffed by his hosts in the face of the OAS. This is however, the only organization that has established consolidated mechanisms with reference, tradition and experience, but which has to be invoked in Mexico by Obama, the enemy, to the silence of Peña Nieto, the new Mexican friend of Castro, the coldness of Canada and the indifference of the rest.

And the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)? A newly released political ghost that no one in their right mind will talk about for a long time, if it even has a future. Without mechanisms, institutions, political representation and experience, CELAC, of course missed the opportunity to proactively respond to events in Venezuela through the vigorous defense of the democratic basis on which its integrative effort was founded, a defense that the presidents who participated in this political rock should have made. Not wanting to speak, from CELAC, about democracy in Cuba, has left Latin America and the Caribbean unable to talk about democracy in Venezuela, invoking the help of the ghost.

If it had done this, the youth of this new integration effort would have compensated with a clear and visible commitment in the right direction, and now Maduro’s rhetoric would have more legitimacy to obtain clear and consistent backups, alienating Washington, whom he has foolishly wanted to approach, from the shores of Venezuela. CELAC in Havana did not do the best it could and anyway, its leaders had to jump over the old principles of respect for sovereignty and non-interference in the affairs of other states they solemnly swore to respect: one way or another, they have gotten into the internal affairs of Venezuela, now that many things are at stake. Starting with Havana, who has turned that country into a juicy backyard of oil, resources and XXI century essays. Until it dries up, if patriots there are unable to succeed.

No one really knows how to react in front of a crisis that once more puts in evidence the lack of leadership in Latin America: a leadership that, by the way, can only be reached by combining the values, interests and strategic vision of where the region wants to go. No wonder some elites, with some clarity, look to the Pacific where, as in the China syndrome, the United States appears once more. A region and a country that were not in the integrationist plans of Marti or Bolivar.

Cubanet, March 5, 2014, Manuel Cuesta Morúa

Translated by: Eleruss

The Dictatorship’s Annoying Writer / Lilianne Ruiz

Writer Angel Santiesteban in prison -- photo Luz Escobar courtesy of Lilianne Ruiz — Writer Angel Santiesteban in prison — photo Luz Escobar courtesy of Lilianne Ruiz

HAVANA, Cuba. This past February 28, Reporters without Borders issued a statement attaching the second Open Letter from Angel Santiesteban to General-President of Cuba, Raul Castro, on exactly the day that the writer finished a year in jail. Santiesteban published the first letter, addressed to the same leader, on his blog a few days before being taken to jail for a crime of which he declares he is innocent.

The place where he is currently held is a military settlement in Lawton, Havana, with the appearance of a housing construction company. It houses 19 prisoners. His companions have committed crimes of theft, drug trafficking and murder. They are required to stay in a regimen of forced labor. We went there to visit him, a group of friends and this reporter, who could obtain his statements.

Previously he was in La Lima, a prison establishment located in Guanabacoa, and afterwards in the prison known as the “1580,” situated in San Miguel del Padron.

The writer’s people skills guarantee respectful relationships with the inmates. While they are going to work at the ironworks or carpenter’s shop, he stays writing all day. But this he has gotten by force of protest.

Compared with the other jails where he has been, the place is less severe:

“The only explanation that I give you for the fact that they have brought me here is that I publish complaints. Within the jails there are beatings constantly on the part of the authorities. In the ’1580’ I made 70 complaints in four and half months,” explains the writer who receives us in the penal enclosure.

This is the second time he has been a prisoner. The first was when he was 17 years of age. He spent nine months awaiting trial in the La Cabana jail. He had gone to the coast to say goodbye to a part of his family that was leaving Cuba clandestinely. They were caught, and all were taken to jail. From the memories of those nine months, which for him were interminable, came the book that won him the Casa de las Americas Prize in 2006: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn. continue reading

He has lost a lot of weight. He accepts no food except that supplied by his family. He came to have a diet as strict as milk with cookies at mid-day and a soup of dehydrated substances, made with boiling water, at the end of the afternoon.

Twice, in the “1580” prison during a hunger strike, he was shackled at his feet and hands. Then the jailers took him by the throat opening his mouth to make him swallow some foul liquid.

He is about to finish a novel:

“It will be an homage to Cirilo Villaverde, for his Cecilia Valdes,” he comments. But he has another in the editing stage of the detective genre in order to entertain, which breaks with his usual style:

“I wanted to have fun,” he explains.

He has also written a book of stories about prison.

“I wanted to tell how riots occur. I condensed the stories that prisoners have told me.”

He was able to get the manuscripts out of jail, and now the texts are saved on a computer. In the “1580” he began writing at eight in the morning and only stopped when the guards turned off the light at ten at night.

“I wrote as if I were going to die. In spite of everything, this is going to be a time that I am going to miss for the rest of my life.”

The case against Santiesteban started weaving itself one afternoon in July 2009 when he was in the company of three people who can attest to his presence. On the other side of the city, his ex-wife, Kenia Diley Rodriguez, presented herself at the police station at the same time in order to accuse him of having forced entry into her home and attacked her. After three days, Rodriguez added the accusation of the crime of “theft; after almost two months following the supposed assault, added “rape” and “attempted murder.”

None of these accusations had the least physical evidence, as the accused himself has demonstrated.

The background is a soap opera, except that it ended in tragedy for the main character:

Santiesteban had abandoned his relationship with Diley Rodriguez. By then, he already had a romantic relationship with a well-known Cuban actress.

Meanwhile, there was someone else interested in damaging him: State Security.

Lilianne Ruiz and Angel Santiesteban, 2012

Little time passed between the publication of Santiesteban’s blog and the day and time of his trial.

Without guarantees in this country for respect for the presumption of innocence (the law is not dealt out equally, and courts are not independent), the ill will of the woman against her ex-spouse, an intellectual dissident, got him put in jail.

Recently, the Motion for Review of the judgment was received, which his lawyer presented to the Ministry of Justice last year. Now the Court needs to send the trial record to the Review Department. In the motion, it is expressed that the sanction against Angel Santiesteban is an enormous injustice because “he has been the victim of a vulgar hoax originated in the express lies of his ex-wife.” At the end of the document, the nullification of the judgment is requested; acquittal for the charged crimes.

The writer’s family managed to find out that the document was filed for a long time in the Ministry of Justice. They told them informally that the case was famous there and that all the authorities had met.

“It’s one thing for the Ministry of Justice to accept the review and another for them to be able to be honest,” says the writer.

The video in which the most important prosecution witness appears confessing to having lied in favor of Kenia Diley Rodriguez, because of the financial benefits she offered, was not received by the Court as proof of exoneration. But it served to erode the body of charges that was initially brought.

In spite of all logic, he was sentenced for “breaking into the residence” and “injuries.”

The person of good will who managed to turn on the camera at the right moment saved Santiesteban from the prosecutor’s request for 54 years in jail.

“The guy did not know that they were recording him. When he found out he went to the police unit with my son’s mother to accuse me of ’assault.’”

The video was analyzed by the Central Crime Laboratory which assessed it as perfect. The court simply dismissed the material “as not contributing elements of interest to the process.”

The question that his lawyer asks in the document is the following: If the authorities came to the conclusion that the greater part of the accusations of Kenia Diley Rodriguez against Santiesteban were false, what degree of credibility can be acknowledged in those that still stand?

Cubanet, March 8, 2014, Lilianne Ruiz

Translated by mlk.

Fidel, the Lawyer Who Never Won a Case / Rene Gomez Manzano

Fidel Castro, “a lawyer without any cases”

The awarding of the National Law Prize to Fidel Castro—who abolished the judicial branch, established “revolutionary courts,” did away with procedural guarantees, and outlawed unfettered advocacy—is a mockery of justice.

I acknowledge that when I read that item my first thought was: “But hadn’t he already been given that?” We know that in these totalitarian regimes dominated by Marxism-Leninism, the bosses, by virtue of being that, are destined for all the distinctions, recognitions, and awards that have been or might be given. That the alumnus Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz had not been previously considered when this Prize was first granted probably cost some bureaucrat in the judicial sector a good scolding.

Now that it is an accomplished fact we should ask: What objective reasons exist for granting it? Was it based on the person’s performance before or after coming to power? The dilemma warrants that we briefly address these issues in order to give a response.

The professional practice of the older Castro after graduating as a lawyer was practically nil. In this he is no different from other figures who have gotten into history carrying a law degree. Internationally: Robespierre, Karl Marx, Lenin. In Cuba: Agramonte, Céspedes, Martí. These are just a few examples.

Of course I’m not making value judgments, simply naming people who, for better or worse, have earned a place in history. “Lawyer” is the title that is generally used to describe those figures. Although the appellation is not false, it is not really accurate nor illuminating. To more accurately describe what is common in these characters, we have to use a slightly longer phrase: “Lawyers without cases.” continue reading

This last characteristic is what distinguishes these beings. Unlike their colleagues, their activity is not devoted to drafting legal documents, outlining legal theories, or obtaining the acquittal of an accused. No; in the universities they were outfitted with the same tools, but they use them, if at all, to achieve more ambitious and broader political or social objectives. If they represent a clientele, it is political and not professional.

In the case of Fidel Castro, the grantors argue that the Prize is granted “to mark the 60th anniversary of his self-proclaimed defense ’History will absolve me.’” According to Granma, the obliging colleagues of the association of legal officials described this document as “a seamless legal piece . . . that has transcended the boundaries of space and time.”

We know that if anything has characterized the honoree, it is his overwhelming verbosity (rightly documented in The Guinness Book of Records). But the tens of thousands of pages containing his discourses, such as History Will Absolve Me, cannot be found anywhere else; they are not quoted in history books or cited alongside philosophers of past centuries. Haven’t the obsequious jurists noticed? Can’t they draw any conclusions from this?

José Ramón Machado Ventura received the National Law Prize on behalf of Fidel

In his plea, Castro criticized the mechanism (reminiscent of the classic tale of the chicken and the egg) established in the Constitutional Laws of the Batista regime: The President of the Republic appointed the ministers, and these in turn elected him. The curious thing is that after the climb to power of the revolutionary team in 1959, the Basic Law established exactly the same vicious mechanism.

A detailed description of the illegal acts perpetrated by the recipient during the scores of years of his absolute rule would require a collection of books. He did away with the judicial branch, established “revolutionary courts” composed of guerrilla fighters lacking legal education, eliminated procedural guarantees, outlawed the unfettered practice of law, and converted the prosecution into a body guided by political criteria. In a word, he dismantled the solid Cuban legal system.

If the bureaucrats of the Union of Cuban Jurists consider that the perpetrator of such acts deserves the National Law Prize, they are saying very clearly what they really think about this award, which they both created and bestowed.

Cubanet, March 6, 2014 / René Gómez Manzano

Translated by Tomás A.

The Hard Fate of Those Who Grow Old / Alberto Mendez Castello

Cuba, old age, selling little cones of peanuts on the street.

PUERTO PADRE, Cuba — Old Raul was a worker for Communal Services, but an unyielding cervical disease at age 54 made the Medical Commission discharge him. Now he is 74 years old and has a pension of 242 pesos, “but I go over 40 just on my wife’s drugs,” he says. Most of the time he stays seated on the sidewalk in front of a market that sells unrationed products, and sells spices and homemade bags to take on errands.

Raul gets around on a bicycle, but old Gilberto has to fight on foot, with short steps, in order to sell the occasional homemade cumin packet. He was a truck driver. He spent 41 years behind the steering wheel: “I was driving throwing rods since I was 11 or 12 years old,” he says.

Skeletal illnesses took Gilbert from work. Now a septuagenarian, he and his wife “live” with a pension of 242 pesos, and of those some seventy go for medicine. Those retired because of illness cannot get a license to work for themselves: “The other day an inspector wanted to give me a fine of 700 pesos. Take me to the police, to say there everything I have to say. In the end he left me alone.”

Mariano had a better position than Raul and Gilberto, and unlike them, did not retire because of illness but because he finished his years of work. At the time he retired, he held an administrative post in the municipal hospital. After retirement, other institutions took advantage of him until his health took a bad turn. Now Mariano is a paraplegic. Pedalling a tricycle with his hands, he tries to earn a living selling prú, a soft drink made of herbs and fermented roots.

Blanco also pedals a tricycle with his hands. He is an ex-operator and driver of tow trucks, who was transformed into a babbling paraplegic by two thromboses. Now he has to get by with a pension of 242 pesos for him and his aged mother: “More than 40 pesos go for nothing more than medicines; if I don’t sell knives we die of hunger,” he told me at the same time he was lamenting the difficulty of finding knives to sell because Customs has limited their entry into the country.

In Puerto Padre there exists a Grandfather House where, for 25 pesos a month, old people receive breakfast, lunch, dinner and two snacks. “Sometimes here we even have beef, today we have chicken,” said Jimenez, a retired bricklayer. But this Grandfather House only has capacity for 40 old people, who have to go sleep in their homes. So it is no more than a small remedy for this great wound that is old age, not only in Puerto Padre but in all of Cuba.

Hundreds of old people, almost all of them sick, almost always in precarious conditions and not a few on the edge of the law, have to pursue working in order to earn a living in this city. False reasoning does not produce a good soup. According to Law No. 117 of the State Budget for 2014, incomes for contribution to Social Security are 3,034.5 million pesos, but the expenses exceed 5,122.7 million pesos, therefore there is a deficit of 2,088.2 million pesos, to be covered by the central budget account. That is okay if the numbers are real. But they are not.

Cubanet, March 3, 2014, Alberto Méndez Castelló

Translated by mlk.

Collapse in Havana Leaves More Than 600 People on the Street / Agusto Cesar San Martin and Pablo Mendez

Building in danger of total collapse — photo Augusto Cesar San Martin

HAVANA, Cuba. — Since the afternoon of last Thursday the 27th, the residents of the building located at 308 Oquendo, between San Rafael and San Miguel, Centro Havana remain on the street.

The partial collapse of the upper floors put in danger the structure of the five story building of 120 apartments.

From the first concrete crashes, the more than 600 residents began to abandon the property, transferring their belongings to the street. Facing the imminence of total collapse, the local authorities ordered an evacuation.

The residents keep doors, bathroom tiles, toilets, electric appliances, beds and all kinds of belongings on the street. These people have not been evacuated.

At 7:00 pm on Saturday the police ordered the electricity cut off and prohibited entry into the building until Sunday morning. The order caused a disruption for the residents who have not finished gathering their belongings.

On Friday, local government officials met with some of those affected. According to one of the victims, they made assurances that they would evacuate everyone gradually.

One of the building’s residents who did not want to be identified told the independent press said:

“We don’t know where to go. Yesterday nine buses came by here in order to take us to shelters, and they were empty. . . We want homes, not shelter.”

It is also known that some affected families were installed in apartments of buidlings located in Santa Fe, Playa township. The provision of dwellings is prioritized by the composition of nuclear families with children.

The building constructed in 1928 was declared in danger of collapse in 1988. All the victims consulted agree on the reiteration of the government alerts about the deterioration of the building.

Photo gallery of collapse in Centro Havana, sent by Augusto Cesar San Martin and Pablo Mendez

Cubanet, March 3, 2014, Augusto Cesar San Martin and Pablo Mendez

Translated by mlk.

The Experiment of Hope / Francis Sanchez

Dagoberto Valdés, director de la revista ’Convivencia’. (BARACUTEYCUBANO.BLOGSPOT.COM) — Dagoberto Valdés, director of the periodical ‘Convivencia’. (BARACUTEYCUBANO.BLOGSPOT.COM)

On the 15th of February 2008, with the uploading to the internet of Issue 1 (January-February), the magazine Convivencia was born in Pinar del Río. Since then, six years have passed of uninterrupted bimonthly publication. The new publication invited one to live on a horizon at once broad and intimate, democratic, heavy with possibilities and without the scourge of restrictive determinations. “A dawn for the citizenry and civil society in Cuba”, the title of the first edition’s editorial, would become the motto of the magazine.

The beginning of the new alternative project within Casa Cuba, passing between the homogeneity and impersonality of the official press, brought a signal of hope or possible restoration of diversity from the westernmost of the Cuban provinces, after the retirement had taken place in 2006 of the bishop José Siro González Bacallao to a farm in Mantua.

Confusions and disappointments have taken place, at times imperceptibly, but knowing the difference between one and the other helps us to understand and to hope. Let us see. It is known how, during the nineties, a weave of publications belonging to the Catholic Church was assembled in Cuba — although sociocultural in ecumenical spirit — that allowed intellectual communities in many provinces to have a means of expression for the first time. I met Dagoberto Valdés in that setting: we founded the Catholic Press Union of Cuba (UCLAP-Cuba) in November 1996, in the church La Merced of Camagüey.

The new magazine movement was thriving (Vitral in Pinar del Río, Palabra Nueva in Havana, Amanecer in Villa Clara, Enfoque in Camagüey, Cocuyo in Holguín, Iglesia en Marcha in Santiago de Cuba, etc.) and independent of state control, which, as it must be supposed, would influence the State to respond by assembling a national system of editing houses and territorial magazines.

The unique impact of Vitral, its operation, its alternative editions, compelled the Government to strengthen the world of Pinareño culture in proportions that would have otherwise been unthinkable. Great sums were thus expended on projects such as, for example, the beautiful Ediciones Cauce and the Hermanos Loynaz Centre, elements that taken together would subsequently pay for themselves by achieving such a rich diversity there that this province would stand out in the civic, cultural, and editorial spectrum of the country.

The magazine Vitral, the Church, Dagoberto Valdés, and Pinar del Río were key points of reference in a phase of optimism that was marked by the first visit of a Pope to Cuba. Days of illumination were lived then — before, during, and after the brief crossing of Wojytla, the Pilgrim Pope. “Have no fear,” he said in mass in the José Martí Civic Plaza on the 25th of January of 1998, and at some moment everyone or most of the people present there were springing up — we were springing up — calling out “Liberty, liberty.” Either we no longer had fear, or we did not want to have, indeed, any more fear. Two days before, John Paul II had held the Encounter with the World of Culture, in the Great Hall of the University of Havana. continue reading

Among the few photographs that came out of those I took at that meeting, I save one in which I appear standing next to Dagoberto Valdés on a wing of the second floor. He was attending as a representative of Vitral, while I found myself in that hall as a young writer who was creating, along with others, a similar magazine: Imago, founded in 1996 and belonging to the diocese of Ciego de Ávila.

The opportunity of that encounter with the world of culture and John Paul II has been moreover the only day of my life in which I have seen Fidel Castro in the flesh, dressed strangely in a collar and tie there below in the first row, likewise to hear the religious leader, and, certainly, he seemed to me then very pinched, perhaps as an effect of the contrast with the image I had formed in my mind. I think I took some pictures from afar with my modest camera, but they did not come out.

Why stir up such memories to refer to the fifth anniversary of the magazine Convivencia? I have come back to the mentioned photo, and to another in which I am raising up a little Cuban flag in a very packed square, and with an enormous Heart of Jesus covering the façade of the National Library. Without a doubt, a new phase of the old and complicated experiment that time and again has seemed easy was being tested or beginning, although in the long run it shows signs of error: the experiment of hope. The hope of liberty.

Cuba must open itself to Cuba

Up to what point hasn’t the search for a spiritual and collective liberty been a controlled trial, condemned to failure? Who motivates our reactions and rations out our actions? Who distributes the social reach of intimate or true result?

Apparently a return of Cuba to the universal accord of democracy is tried once and again, and what is sad is that we who live out this trial from below and within, repeating it it, putting into every expression all of the energy and urgent need of our mortal nature, at times simply cannot get nor give answers.

The international repercussion of the first visit of a Pope to the island brought back to us, with great underscores, the petition that Cuba open itself to the world and that the world open itself to Cuba. It was urged at the coexistence between hemispheres without the great polarities of the Cold War. Without a doubt, that invitation impressed well, but although such a call-up and the wake of open expectations aimed to create a point of rotation in the tradition of rigidities, they continued giving preeminence to the problem of the role of a nation constructed for an international political conflict.

An emblematic scheme has continuously been inflated which has been incapacitating, agonizing for we who live it from within and beneath in Cuba, scheme or favorite script of those who enjoy power, and some who covet it, where this tale would supposedly have only two actors obliged to share one same scene: Cuba and the world. An enormous tale of love-hate. A libretto not for liberty, but rather to depersonalize.

That assumption, used as a straitjacket, has served to pretend justifying a stop to civic liberties and rights on the island. It has been brandished to silence or make invisible all the rest of us subjects who fill what they wish to present to us merely as a great international “scenario”, historic laboratory table, when it is no more than the area and the time of life, like the life of every human being: inexorable, unrepeatable. Lives, or unique novels where everyone is either protagonist of himself, or has been no one.

In light of the suspicion that we suffer artificial experiments, ill-constructed scenarios, we human beings have a metaphysical dilemma which remodels our civil condition: to open up to ourselves, to be, to live as we consciously are, then it will only be possible to build other reliable ontological and social figures, to open up among ourselves, to coexist. Cuba must open itself to Cuba.

Not for fun have despotisms based themselves historically in a false gigantism that claims to annul faith in free will and the mortal, real, imperfect but infinitely worthy nature of the human being: from the untouchable castes, representatives of the afterlife, kings that were considered the direct descendants of gods, up to leaders and political groups that in modern history have declared themselves “the vanguard of society” or claim to head up scientifically superior social classes.

Another invitation of John Paul II’s extended in that giant plaza had more effect in my heart, where for the first and only time –also surely the last one– I found myself among the multitude when he invited us to be “protagonists of our personal and national history.” Words taken as though by an annotator under a shell in an old theatre, at the bottom of our hearts that were wounded, half forgotten, thrown into the trash, to put them in our ears when the sky seemed clearer.

This last quote of John Paul II’s appears crowning the first editorial of the magazine Convivencia, where one can also read a programmatic maxim that became perhaps the necessary echo rising up from the earth, inevitable, personal: “We believe in the strength of the small.”

A renovation of the interior of Cuba

Somehow, despite the poor quality of the roads inside the country, and all of the broken bridges, I always get the magazine Convivencia. I believe in this inner weave, cell to cell. It is the same ethical motivation — for me in the final instance an active choice will always have a metaphysical reason — for which I also endeavour to make Árbol Invertido, “inland literary review”, without more interest but also with less illusion than this– the word which opens and closes the editorial “Tierradentrismo” from the first issue of the 2nd period of Árbol Invertido, corresponding to January-April of 2013: to be.

Convivencia is. A word with a very deep power of announcement. It does not enter the game of artificial paradises to substitute one old utopia for another, supposedly new or better, in that poor tradition of idealisms with which spiritually insufferable, baseless policies have sought to adorn themselves. It sounds like the future and is full of reality. Soft yet hardy. Open. Abundant. It changes. It flows. It grows upon itself. It branches out. It shelters. It explores. It deluges and demands. It arrives and it leaves. Coexistence as a challenge, a possibility, arises from the condensation of life experiences.

Convivencia looks like itself. Imperfect. It imagines, it reflects the image, the metaphor of Casa Cuba that it has made its own from the identifier that appears on each title page. If a person can accept themselves, or better put, should do it, as a plural being, box of echoes, impulses, defects, good and bad memories, the alternative of a civil society that bases itself on the creative relation of different peoples seems no less concrete.

From its structure, as a “socio-cultural magazine”, comes a model of inclusive edition. Through its pages run the popular outcry or murmur, the calculus, the song of the artist, the prayer of the believer and the intellectual discourse, among an infinity of themes dear to natural people. The Casa of the magazine Convivencia is not held up by the nails of so many dogmas, but rather moving upon the crests of the waves, in a spiritual impulse, when it is defined as “from Christian inspiration.” And I believe that here, in its entrance to tremblingly small things in the middle of the night, in its contribution to the light of spirituality, can be felt its most transcendent consequences.

We are not in need of another restoration, we who within a same residence felt that time and space were running out. Let them take them from us. Because definitively, a lasting “spiritual response” from anyone who feels oppressed may be based on the great ignorance of the institutions of hatred, not recognizing their perceived authority: do not do it with fear, but neither with more hatred.

One of the gratifying testimonies that I have found in Convivencia was that of doctor Hilda Molina. I did not know her until I read this account of her life, it being revealing that a scientist like her — founder of the Cuban and Latin American schools of Neurological Restoration and the International Center for Neurological Restoration –, after living close-up the dogmas of practiced atheism and even suffering uncountable problems when she decided to express herself differently, would arrive at the following affectionate, perhaps idealistic? conclusion:
“Nevertheless, any reconstruction of material sort will prove useless, if we do not prioritize from this precise moment onward the spiritual reconstruction of our afflicted country, the rescue of its confiscated souls; and the resurrection of its faith, and its hopes.”

Convivencia is and resembles a too-ideal house, so real that it has only been possible for some as a miracle and for others, of course, as a great sin. It is occupied and under construction. It opens and connects communicating veins. It is filling a stronger void: the hope in the necessary restoration of the “inside” of Cuba, in the soul.

Every time that a new issue of Convivencia arrives before my eyes from the other side of the walls of Havana and all the unexpected, I aspire to relive, to star in a free reading of the infinitely small time and space that is mine to live in, to embrace. An edifying read, personal, making contact with other experiences no less authentic. Can one ask for more?

Francis Sánchez, Ciego de Ávila

Diario de Cuba, 15 February 2014

Translated by russell conner

Transition to Dictatorship Rhythm / Jorge Olivera Castillo

Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, Spanish Foreign Minister, believes that the European Common Position towards Cuba is correct, but can be more flexible

HAVANA, Cuba, March — Latin America and now the European Union approach the Cuban dictatorship without great demands. Respect for fundamental rights, as a requisite for closer relations with Havana passes to a more distant plane than previously.

The priority is to guarantee the survival of the regime as an assurance of political stability within the Island, and maybe to manage a soft landing towards some form of less authoritarian government. It is risky, at the very least, to say that the end point of this journey that is barely beginning is democracy with all its attributes.

Single-party socialism is not going to disappear from Cuba because of a civilian-military revolution. Neither does it appear that its end is associated with a negotiating table formed by people of the current regime, the Catholic Church and the opposition groups. If history grants the possibility of such a scenario, it would settle for when the heirs of the gerontocracy assume control at a time impossible to determine.

Whoever says to the contrary is, as they say, lost in the weeds. The weakness of the opposition, in a social climate where anarchy stopped being exceptional some time ago, is a reality that counts when the time comes to define policies. Of course they are not the only motivations, but there is no doubt that they have contributed to things flowing in favor of conservative pragmatism. continue reading

To this one would have to add the little importance of our country in the geopolitical order. Without great economic attractions or strategic relevance for the centers of world power, the topic of Cuba dissolves between indifference and the castlings of very specific interest. Nothing of commitments with respect to a political evolution that overcomes single party rule and the impossibility of exercising fundamental rights without conditions. That would come associated with the development of economic openness.

The only government that maintains a policy of confrontation is the United States, although of little benefit for advancing the pro-democracy agenda. The embargo increasingly loses effectiveness following a moderating trend that includes important sectors linked to the politics and economy of this nation.

At times it seems that the incidents of abuse perpetrated by the regime fall on deaf ears. Except for a few non-governmental organizations, the majority of governments remain impassive in the face of statistics about arbitrary arrests, acts of repudiation and prison sentences for political reasons.

Resignation would not be a good option facing the sequence of irrefutable facts, but also one has to be careful about romantic visions.

A deep reflection about the circumstances is necessary. The opposition and the members of alternative civil society that do not do it will fall by the wayside. One must insist on efforts to be more creative and to eliminate the recurrence of old errors that continue burdening the pro-democratic plans.

Cubanet, March 3, 2014, Jorge Olivera Castillo

oliverajorge75@yahoo.com

Translated by mlk

What Will Happen if Chavism Falls? / Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique

Nicolas Maduro with Cuban doctors in Venezuela

Some 18 thousand Cuban doctors in Venezuela earn the government 4 billion dollars. And what about the oil?

HAVANA, Cuba – The Cuban regime is on tenterhooks about the situation in Venezuela, whose economic support, primarily through payment for medical services and the supply of oil is very advantageous.

Currently there are about 18,000 doctors from the Island in Venezuela, whose earnings bring the Cuban state at least 4 billion dollars.

At the recent closing session of the 20th Congress of the Cuban Workers Confederation, Raul Castro said that, “… the main income of the country right now comes from the thousands of doctors working abroad,” but he should have referenced not the work of these people but their exploitation by the regime.

Of the 82,065 doctors reported by the National Statistics Office at the end of 2012, Minister of Health Robert Morales said that as of two months ago, 56,600 were working outside the country.

This explains why the goods and services balance is a positive 1.265 billion dollars, while exports were down, mainly in nickel, sugar and oil, which in the latter case has become an export thanks to the resale of the Venezuelan oil on the international market. continue reading

In the tourism sector, whose gross income is currently in the range of 2.7 billion dollars, the national income is only about 65% because more than 900 million dollars in imports goes to supporting the activity. Net revenues are also affected by the quality and flow of visitors, which although the number of tourists are increasing, they are spending less.

Cuban doctors on health mission abroad — Cuban doctors on a health mission abroad

The financial situation has already worsened in 2014, with the expected fall in export prices of sugar and nickel, so that a worsening of the situation in Venezuela, with any decrease in the oil shipments and payments for services, would be catastrophic for the regime.

The general president, in his last speech, gave forthwith unforgivable gibberish when he confessed, “… wages don’t meet all the needs of the worker and his family, which generates demotivation and apathy toward work…” However, he also said it would be “… irresponsible and have counterproductive effects to give across the board increases in wages… which could cause an inflationary spiral in prices, if not appropriately backed by a sufficient increase in the offerings of goods and services.”

Did he not know what he was saying, or did he, perhaps, think to get the workers, demotivated by their low wages, to produce more? A Workers Congress like ours is just a caricature if they could listen so passively to such arguments.

No wonder that Castro is very worried about the worsening crisis looming over Cuba and that on this occasion he dedicated a long tirade, published in bold type in the official press, about the recent events in Venezuela. In addition, he stressed his full support for Chavism and Nicolás Maduro, and attitude that could have high reaching consequences if, as is likely, Maduro and his followers fail to weather the storm.

Indeed, such declarations are frankly interventionist and contradict the statement of the Second Summit of CELAC , where the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of States is proclaimed.

Cubanet, 4 March 2014, Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique

Why the United Nations Covenants? / Antonio Rodiles

On 28 February 2008, the Havana regime signed, as a propaganda maneuver, the United Nations Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. At that time Raul Castro was seeking to legitimate his figure in the international arena and to project himself as a future option for the country.

Six years later, Raul Castro can no longer be taken as a reformist. He now sells himself as the person who can close a chapter in Cuba’s history, offering the international community and the country’s allies a supposed controlled transition and offering his heirs as the only option for “governability” and “stability.” However, the hereditary group represents only the extension of a decadent system plagued by corruption.

Backed by this logic, a new anti-embargo offensive is gaining traction. Several actors and influence groups in the United States are seeking a blank check for the ruling elite and their beneficiaries. Elite who bear the main responsibility for the national disaster and the systematic violation of fundamental rights and freedoms. The offensive is also passing through Europe and Latin America. In the latter case, the main chess piece is beginning to be Brazil, now that Venezuela, in its decline, ceases to be a partner that guarantees stability in the medium term.

However, the recent “desertions” of Cuban professionals from the Brazilian “More Doctors” program, and its possible legal consequences, are evidence that the Brazilian situation is very different from that of the “Bolivarian brother,” and that it could quickly become more complex than expected. Brazil, with its ambition to establish itself as a regional power, is focused on a much longer term scenario. In order to sustain and widen its business presence, it needs a smooth transition process on the island, resulting in at least a stable free market system and full reestablishment of relations between the government in Havana and the United States. continue reading

On the other hand, negotiations with the European Union on a bilateral accord are moving forward, although according to statements from representatives of the EU, we’re looking at a process that could take at least two years. Sadly, some of the countries involved have bought into the ideas of “governability” and “stability” mentioned above, in the short term. Ignoring the terrible consequences of supporting a system sustained by corruption and state violence. Others, however, continue to demand a focus on human rights as a minimum guarantee for an eventual accord.

Meanwhile, the regime is silent before the European proposal, choosing a surgical repression on the island to avoid widespread discontent beginning to capitalize on open demands to the system. Repressing against activists is increasing and promises to worsen as the scenario becomes more complex.

At the same time, the Cuban Catholic Church, after a pastoral letter where it seemed to shift its questionable performance, continues to maintain a complicit silence in the face of repression. Recently the editors of the magazine Lay Space, a Catholic platform, declared that respect for human rights should not be a condition for relations with Havana. Regrettable statements from an institution that should assume respect for human dignity as its principle premise. No one should forget that legitimacy within a society is not achieved spontaneously.

To promote the false hope that a regime like the current one will evolve naturally into a modern democracy is at the very least naive, especially if what is blindingly obvious in Cuba is the construction of an authoritarian capitalism, sustained by State violence, corruption and and political patronage. To freely award room to maneuver to those who know no respect or ethics and who immediately show their criminal profile, is a mistake.

At the recent summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), one of the few statements that carried any weight was the request from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon that the Cuban regime ratify the UN Covenants. The campaign “For Another Cuba,” an initiative begun on the island almost two years ago, is working in this direction, looking not only for ratification but for implementation of these international covenants. In the context described above, it would give us a magnificent tool for the political game inside and outside the island.

Clearly the results still don’t reach the hoped for level, but the more than 4,000 signatures, the work of promoting and distributing the “Citizen Demand” inside the country, the request of Ban Ki Moon, as well at the possible bilateral accord proposed by the European Union, create an excellent environment to continue to focus on this campaign.

Cubans on island are fed up with a totally decadent regime, but they fear being the target of the excessive violence of the State and its paramilitary groups. The Covenants as a civic demand is a campaign that, precisely because it involves ordinary citizens, carries an implicit international legitimacy. The demand for these covenants also provides democratic and friendly governments a target for a direct and specific demand to the Havana regime. At the same time, implementation would serve as a road map to advance the process of democratization through changes in the whole constitutional and legal structure, pegged to the binding nature of such agreements.

To demand the ratification and implementation of the Covenants is an interesting tool that we have barely explored. The “For Another Cuba” campaign has borne only its initial fruits. Those who want to help democratic change in Cuba from abroad, should pay attention to this effort undertaken on the island and take a careful reading of the interior pulse, so as not to contribute to efforts that are fracturing and dismantling. If we want to be objective and work with real variables, without creating false expectations, we have to observe the tempos that, on the island, are marked not only by the opponents, but also by the citizens.

Antonio Rodiles, 3 March 2014

Cuba’s History Told by Beans / Alberto Mendez Castello

PUERTO PADRE, Cuba. Within the systematic scarcity and increasing cost of daily life, the last week was marked by gaps in supplies. And although cement, steel and deodorants are missing, groceries are particularly missed.

More than the bread of the ration books that has gone missing some day or another, stomachs cry out for the “midnight,” for the one peso bun that could be acquired unrationed, along with the rationed bread, but that now is not produced for lack of flour.

For many without purchasing power, it mattered little during the several days that chicken was lacking in the “Hard Currency Collection Stores” (as the State itself named them). But it did matter, and quite a lot, when this week, after standing in long lines at the butcher shops, the ration of “chicken for fish” was not enough, nevertheless and being a rationed product, people had to content themselves with getting on a list for when a second round is produced, that no one knows for sure when it will be produced. “This is more of the same, ’when it’s not Juana, it’s her sister’,” grumbled one of those who did not get his quota of “chicken for fish.”

As is known, although Cuba is surrounded by the sea, on this island fish is a scarce product and is expensive, so that when it’s time to supply it through the ration book, the government substitutes some few ounces of imported chicken, which on many occasions, because of factors of corruption or bad administration, does not reach all the consumers of certain localities, adding to the discontent of the population because of … “shortages.” continue reading

Depending on the person from whom you acquire it, the time of year, the place, the quality of the product, and the species in question, in Puerto Padre a pound of fish or other marine product can cost between fifteen and forty pesos.

But if the meat products are scarce and expensive here, nevertheless and now being well into the third five-year period of the twenty-first century, nothing less happens with vegetables, which as early as the ’50s decade of the last century, in the case of rice, provided 24% of the Cuban diet, while beans made up 23%, according to data from the time by the National Institute of Economic Reform.

“I forget the last time that I ate red beans”

In one survey by the Catholic University Association, carried out among the rural Cuban population in 1957, it was found that only 4% of those interviewed mentioned meat as an integral part of their customary portion, 11.22% milk, only 1% admitted consuming fish and only 2.12% of those surveyed acknowledged eating eggs. The investigators asked themselves: “How does the farmer subsist with such deficient contributions of meat, milk, eggs and fish?”

The same surveyors from the Catholic University Association revealed the mystery in their report: “There exists a providential and saving fact: the bean, basic element of the farmer’s diet, is exceptionally a vegetable very rich in protein. In other countries where corn takes the place of beans in Cuba, deficiency diseases are very frequent. We can assure, without fear of error, that the Cuban farmer does not suffer more deficiency diseases thanks to beans.”

“Beans providential and saving? That would be in that period, when beans were eaten by the poor in Cuba!” exclaimed a doctor who on condition of anonymity explained to this correspondent how the local population, although not in all cases precisely underfed, mostly is malnourished by a diet in some cases insufficient and in others unbalanced.

In the bowl of the hands is more than enough space to fit the beans that, through the ration book, the consumer may buy for a whole month that, perhaps, suffice for one, two or three pots of rice and beans; the rest, for people who worked all their lives and got a very diminished retirement under socialist planning, must be bought at market price. “I forgot the last time that I ate a stew of red beans,” confessed a retired electrician.

Today, in Puerto Padre, a pound of red beans costs fifteen pesos; also white beans and garbanzos cost fifteen, and between ten and twelve for black beans; a pound of rice is five pesos, a small head of garlic costs a peso, a little more than a peso for a medium onion, five pesos for a bowl of peppers and between three and seven pesos a pound for tomatoes. Pork meat costs twenty-five pesos a pound.

The humble rice and beans that freed our poorest farmers from deficiency diseases today costs some forty pesos if seated at the table are two old people, two children and the man and woman of the house, something like the family of today; six mouths although with more old people and fewer children, the same number as the rural family from the fifties.

Maybe that is the reason for underweight and small children, why so frequently the consultation and waiting rooms of clinics and hospitals remain crowded. And they are not scarcities more or less of recent weeks, but from the last half century, where by decree, in Cuba meat came to be the chosen food, while the poor stopped eating beans because of socio-political circumstances, making Cubans more destitute, maybe worse fed than our ancestors, the aborigines.

Cubanet, February 26, 2014, Alberto Méndez Castelló

Translated by mlk.

Sacristan Arrested for Protecting Ladies in White / Calixto R. Martinez Arias

HAVANA, Cuba. — Roberto Pupo Tejeda, sacristan of the Catholic Church, was arrested and mistreated by officials of the State Security Department (DSE).

“I was in the Church participating in the Sunday Mass, and I went out to observe the walk of the Ladies (in White),” said Pupo Tejeda, referring to the customary walk that they hold on leaving mass, down Fifth Avenue, the women’s movement that demands from the government freedom for political prisoners and respect for human rights.

The religious man, was who taken in a PNR (National Revolutionary Police) paddy wagon along with six opposition activists to a police station, told this reporter after being freed in the afternoon that he was a victim of taunts and physical and psychological mistreatment on the part of officers of the DSE.

“They put the handcuffs on me too tight, and in order to take them off, a Security officer who identified himself as Camilo used a knife, and as if to intimidate me said that I should be calm because the knife had a quite sharp blade, and he might slip and cut me,” indicated the sacristan while showing the lacerations caused by the shackles.

According Pupo Tejeda, who was threatened by his oppressors with being deported to his native Holguin, 700 kilometers to the east of Havana, when he showed his card that identified him as a member of the Church, the DSE officers told him that that gave him no right to protect the Ladies in White. continue reading

“When I saw that they (DSE officers) rushed violently to arrest the Ladies, I put myself in the middle to protect them. That was all that provoked their ire with me,” he emphasized.

Berta Soler, leader and spokesman of the Ladies in White, confirmed to this reporter the arrest of the sacristan and reported that a total of one hundred activists from her movement were arrested on leaving the Santa Rita Church, as well as some ten opponents who had gone to offer their support.

She also emphasized that the number of women detained this Sunday is around 200 because there were arrests in all the provinces in which the Movement has headquarters.

Sacristan Pupo shows marks of mistreatment — photo Calixto Ramon

The National Revolutionary Police’s (PNR) and DSE’s way of working in the arrest of the layman and more than a hundred opponents exposes the falsity of the words of the Catholic hierarchy and of the General President.

The wave of arrests took place in the morning hours this Sunday, February 23, when both repressive bodies carried out a raid against dissidents and opponents in the vicinity of the Santa Rita de Casia church located in the neighborhood of Miramar in Havana where the Ladies in White attend mass each Sunday.

Cubanet, February 24, 2014, Calixto R. Martínez Arias

Translated by mlk.

The Tax Man and his Aladdin’s Lamp / Gladys Linares

HAVANA, Cuba. — In 2010, Elvira was dismissed from her workplace. She had no option other than to get a license and open a snack-bar in her home in order to support her mother and son. She started selling coffee, soft drinks and sandwiches. She remarks that working for herself was more convenient, and she believed that she owed nothing to anyone because every month she duly paid her taxes.

Nevertheless, when she heard talk for the first time about the sworn statement about personal income as part of the “perfection” of the Cuban economic model, she never imagined what would happen to her: one fine day, they notified her that she owed nine thousand pesos national currency in debt to the tax authorities, and 500 in fines for fraud in her sworn statement, a total of 380 CUC [around $400 USD, close to two year’s average income in Cuba], hard currency and unattainable.

On inquiring at the Office of National Tax Administration (ONAT), the responses she received left her bewildered. According to the official, in order to monitor the sworn statement, they consider the work hours, quantity of products sold and their prices, as well as the place where the snack-bar is located. continue reading

Elvira asked how they could know all that, and the worker replied that the evaluation might be direct or indirect. “You may know that we observe you, but equally we have the option of evaluating you without your knowing.” And she added that if she did not agree, she could complain. Elvira, getting to her feet, told her: “I see now that you all get information from Aladdin’s Lamp.” Today she is thinking of turning in her license and working under the table, but first she must devise a way to pay the debt.

A carrier who did not want to reveal his name said that he turned in his license more than three months ago because “the streets are in a very bad state, and I barely earned enough to buy tires and fix the car.” In spite of that, a short while ago they notified him of a tax debt of 30 thousand pesos national currency, some 1,200 CUC.

One of the topics that lately has caused a commotion among the people is the great quantity of money the self-employed have to pay by way of taxes and fines.

Julio, an honest and enterprising neighbor, closed his private restaurant and turned in his license some time ago. He says that when the matter of the sworn statement about personal income began at the end of the year, he did not understand why, if all those months he paid 10% of his income, he had to pay again at year’s end.

“Marino Murillo said,” complains Julio, “that the payment to the tax system is to diminish the inequalities among the citizens. And I say what must be done for that is to take away privileges from the leaders, officials and their families, who are the ones who live well in this country, at the expense of Cubans.”

Cubanet, February 27, 2014, Gladys Linares

Translated by mlk.

Venezuela, a Truth Between Virtue and Vengeance / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The Cuban people will go down in history as the people who most contributed to Latin American disintegration. Disguised by the ideological hatred of capitalism, we bit into the core of fratricidal hatred on our continent. This guilt today covers several generations, irreversibly anthropologically damaged. There is no forgiveness capable of freeing us from this criminal responsibility.

Since January 1959, a bourgeois and pro-democratic revolution, with strong hints of urban terrorism and a certain Cuban-style Protestantism, was re-channeled by Fidel Castro into an agrarian and anti-imperialist process, and ultimately turned into a dictatorship of the proletariat and an extreme alliance with Moscow in the context of the Cold War.

The United States did nothing to avoid the artificial radicalization of the Revolution. Rather, great arrogance and a touch of ignorance led to the victimhood with which we Cubans justify a regime of injustice and impunity: massive social programs but not for those human beings who weigh in with an opinion (whether for or against, discipline in the face of despotism was always the key to survival in times of revolution).

Thus, Castro took thousands and thousands of lives, not only of his opponents (many of them armed), but also of Cuban revolutionaries, the majority executed extra-judicially — many of them were tried after they were shot — as soon as they manifested the least symptom of dissent to the official totalitarian discourse. continue reading

Cuban society came unhinged within a few months. No press remained. No religion one could publicly confess. No independent education, only that imposed “for free” by the State. Nor was there personalized healthcare. Nor commercial brands. Nor “human rights,” a term that still today sounds like an insult within Cuba. All exchange of international currency was abolished. We could not leave nor enter the country. We could not connect by phone with the outside nor receive a letter without being fired from our jobs.

Those who could flee, fled. We are still fleeing. It is our permanent plebiscite before a government that never listened to its own people: flight as a reaction to asphyxiating Fidel-ity. Those who remained on the island shut up or went to prison with long sentences — and terribly cruel tortures — like those that made Nelson Mandela, for example, a global icon.

We non-Castroite Cubans never became icons of anything. We were simply “worms,” “traitors,” “scum,” the “lumpen” of the “first free territory in America.” In American academia, especially, where Castroism had been “politically correct” from the very beginning, the greatest Cuban intellectuals, like the exiled and ultimately suicidal Reinaldo Arenas, never found shelter.

Then we imposed death on Asia, Africa and the Americas. We tried to spark 1,959 Vietnams all over the planet, possibly with nuclear missiles installed in Cuba behind the backs of the Cuban people. We invaded sovereign nations like Venezuela, and forever traumatized the fragile democracies of the hemisphere in the interest of a violent seizure of power, in uprisings or false populist movements that implied the scaffold for class enemies.

Just around the time our failure was obvious, with the fall of the global Socialist Camp, we used the money from other genocidal powers — such as Libya, North Korea and Iran — to encourage the false socialist democracies of the 21st century. Finally, it’s now Venezuela’s turn. A country that for many decades has been on Cuba’s death row, as General Angel Vivas reminded us a few days ago from his besieged home.

The Venezuelan people slept, like so many in the region. And in addition, it was a nation that evolved in its incessant clamor for a more just social system and less political demagoguery; this sequel we’ve dragged with us in Latin America since independence only bequeathed to us its retrograde string of caudillos.

Free Cubans, in Cuba and in exile, deplored Hugo Chavez from before his triumphant election. We never believed in his cynical smile. We didn’t even trust his most transparent election. Cubans know that the butcher’s hand of Castro never fails. But the world labelled us, then, reactionaries, “Batistianos” (half a century after Batista), and “Washington’s mercenaries” (as, in effect, many of us had no choice, having lacked a country in perpetuity). And, still worse, they spat in our face the stigma of being the intestinal traitors of the universal cause of Revolution.

Today Venezuela has taken to the streets, it “has had enough and has begun to march,” to the scorn of Ernest “Ché” Guevara, Salvado Allende, and other victims of Castroism still not recognized as such. In Venezuela the exploding popular tide is not political, but rather one of founding resistance. There where dictators and democrats have failed, the Venezuelan people understood that they were looking at their last chance. The alternatives to Chavezism, with or without cancer, were becoming obvious to Venezuelans after a decade of decline: Castroism in perpetuity or Castroism in perpetuity. They would never escape this monolithic idiocy if they didn’t escape it now.

Venezuelans are a lovely and free people, as were Cubans. It is now that they have to break the chains of constitutional fatigue. The Castro regime has never before been in such danger of finally beginning to disappear, with or without octogenarian Castros dictating their death ordeals from an interred, inhuman Havana.

Your freedom is now or now, Venezuela, still miraculously alive in this terrible trance were even vengeance seems like a virtue.

1 March 2014, From El Nacional, Venezuela

Venezuela is not Angola / Camilo Ernesto Olivera Peidro

Cuba is not the same as 40 years ago, but its leaders are the same

HAVANA, Cuba, February — Cuba intervened militarily in Angola on the side of the MPLA in August of 1975. In 1977 Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) supported the government of Agostino Neto in order to suppress by blood and fire an internal rebellion.

After that moment, the Cuban government took in its hands, in a less surreptitious manner, control of Angola. Within the MPLA there were divergent opinions about the role the Cubans were playing in the country’s political situation. On the death of President Neto in 1979, they pulled strings for the appointment of Jose Eduardo DosSantos to the post.

“In 1978, Fidel Castro knew that he could not count on the USSR unconditionally,” says an ex-official connected to the Cuban embassy in Angola at that time, “and his plan B consisted of strengthening political and military control over Angola. The Russians involved themselves in the matter when they saw the possibility of trafficking arms in exchange for gold and precious stones. This the high Cuban officialdom did from the moment they gained control of the Angolan governmental entities and the main access roads into the country. The political and military caste that came into power in Russia post-1991, did it, too, with the money earned there and in other low intensity military conflicts.”

Now, in the case of Venezuela, the strategy is different but seeking the same objective. “Venezuela is not Angola, and Cuba is not the same as it was 40 years ago,” explains my interlocutor, “but the individuals in control are the same. They have sent civil collaborators like a screen to try to cloak their strong presence within the structures of all levels of that country. Chavez handed the house keys to the Cuban DGI (State Intelligence Directorate), and Maduro is a bad version of Jose Eduardo DosSantos.” continue reading

If the political situation in Venezuela goes completely out of control, the first victims would be the Cuban civil collaborators. “And in the same way as happened in 1977 when Nito Alves confronted Agostino Neto, it cannot be ruled out that FAR will intervene in Venezuela citing the protection of the collaborators.”

The question of how they will do it is more of form than of substance. But Angola was a country recently released from colonial domination, in contrast with Venezuela which possesses a democratic tradition that has shown itself to be persistent. “Nevertheless the silence or complicity of the Latin-American countries with the abuses of the Burro from Miraflores is a bad sign.”

On the other hand, the government of Raul Castro is facing a difficult choice: “If the military intervention by Cuban troops generates a spiral of such violence that it involves massive deaths among the civilian Venezuelan population and Cubans, the political cost for Raul Castro would be very high within and outside of Cuba. The US government would hold all the cards in its favor to declare it a hemispheric plague. The Latin-American governments would have to take a clear position in the matter or public opinion would hold them to account.” And a possible dialog with the CEE would grind to a halt.

Towards the interior of Cuban, just look at the sad destiny that the African veterans suffer. My interlocutor said: “It is unlikely that a lightning political campaign of Raulism will gain the support of the island’s people for military intervention in Venezuela. At first, he will send elite troops trained in confronting disturbances in urban zones.”

In 1992 Fidel Castro declared that the era of Cuban military missions abroad had ended. Two decades later, the drums of another fratricidal war may be about to beat on the doors of the Cuban family. The worst scenario possible is not impossible.

Cubanet, February 28, 2014 / Camilo Ernesto Olivera Peidro

Translated by mlk

Cuesta Morua’s Wife Threatened With Eviction Notice / Reinaldo Emilio Cosano Alen

Havana, Cuba. – Professor Gloria Llopis Prendes, her daughter Gloria and her 3-year-old granddaughter Amanda, have received an Eviction Notice to vacate their current home located at Avenida 71 Edif. 3, Aprt 10, Zona de Desarrollo, Batabano, Mayabeque province, a community known as Las Casas de los Maestros (Teacher’s House).

How did you become aware of this Eviction Notice?

“On February 20th an official commission showed up at my home to give me an ultimatum, that I had only 15 days to go back to work, otherwise I would be considered an illegal occupant of the premises. Among the local officials were Julio Cesar Martinez, Director of the Ministry of Education (MINED) here in Batabano; Hildo Caballero, general secretary of the Communist Party (PCC) in the municipality; and a lady named Liset, head of the MINED Department of Inspectors in the municipality. I have no choice, if I refuse to vacate the house, all utilities will be cut off, the police will enforce the eviction notice and we’ll be homeless.

What is the basis for this eviction threat?

Our apartment is an asset of Ministry of Education. Once you don’t work for them anymore, you cannot be in possession of such asset. I have been working for the Ministry of Education since January 3, 1983, until two years ago when I was fired for becoming a peaceful dissident, a “crime” sufficient to cause you to lose your job.

Do you know someone who has been given such an ultimatum?

“Yes, Odalys Fernandez Quesada, History professor, received a similar notification from the same Commission. Odalys is member of the NGO Zero Violence Feminine Platform, of which I am the Coordinator, and associated with the NGO Nuevo Pais (New Country) Forum, presided over by Dr. Manuel Cuesta-Morua. continue reading

Cuesta-Morua is your husband. What is his legal status?

“Manuel is on probation now. He has to go once a week to a Police Station located at Septima y 62, Miramar, Municipio Playa. He was imprisoned some days before the CELAC Summit in Havana for daring to call a parallel convention which did not take place because the government obstructed it. They charged him with “Disseminating False News against World Peace.”

Do you know any other former employee of Ministry of Education in possession of housing that belongs to the Ministry?

“Yes, many. When the Escuelas en el Campo (schools in the countryside) idea failed, some employees went to work in different fields, others took clerical jobs, others were promoted to political or administrative positions, always keeping the roofs over their heads.

“The same thing happens with all the housing that belongs to any government entity. Officials look the other way, they never review the lease as long as the employee continues working for the government*. Whoever is in possession of an asset is tied for life to government entities. Years ago apartment buildings were built in the countryside for those teachers who were permanently working in middle schools and high schools in those areas.”

Gloria Llopis holds a BA History and Social Sience 1983 and a BA Psychology and Pedagogy 1989

*Translator’s note: Since the vast majority of jobs in Cuba are in State entities, this covers most working people.

Cubanet, 28th of February, 2014 Reinaldo Emilio Cosano Alen

Translated by: Rafa

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