English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Somos+, 3 December 2016 — Joanna Columbié has been released but with the “warning” that she cannot leave Havana until after December 10th*. Once again, the nervousness of the Cuban government in the face of people who know what they want for their country is on display.
*Translator’s note: December 10th is International Human Rights Day, which may or may not have played into the government’s choice of that date.
Somos+, 3 december 2016 — State Security took Joanna Columbié off a bus on which she was traveling to her home in Cespedes.
We do not know where she is right now.
Somos+, Joanna Columbié, 2 December 2016 — It has been announced on any number of occasions — much anticipated by many and feared by others — but the death of Fidel Castro is now a reality. Nothing can delay it and nothing can stop it.
However, there is something that lives on after his death which is a greater evil, the one that should have died: Castroism. It is that compulsive obsession that demands homage and submission to the ideas of a human being named Castro, whose legacy to this nation cannot easily be reconciled by history.
Fidel left behind separated families, weeping mothers, children lost in the Florida Straits, young migrants traversing mountains and towns throughout the world, political and ideological division, persecution, prisons, death, hypocrisy and a country that is plunging ever deeper into material and spiritual poverty. continue reading
Fidel intoxicated those who were hoping for a better future for Latin America, infecting them with “his communism.” He tried to pass on to posterity his totalitarian legacy of always trying to hold onto power. His struggle against “Yankee imperialism” left an open wound which even now remains impossible to close. He spoke of people’s rights when his own people have long lived without those rights.
All this is indisputable, but what then do you do with this experience? Where to look? Backwards or forward? Will we simply stand still, frozen in time in the present?
Fidel Castro has died, but Castroism has not. The Cuban people cannot live forever subject to his ideas, to his doctrines, to his opinions, to his image and his symbols. They have divided our nation for too long. We are living in the midst of a societal breakdown but he is no longer here to define the goals or to point way to reaching them.
As Fr. José Conrado said some time ago, “our people are languishing in the middle of a desert whose scarcest water is that of hope. We are at the edge of a spiritual precipice much more serious and profound than the material deprivations that overwhelm and oppress us daily. The vision of society that has been promoted as the panacea to all our problems, as a solution to our vices and the fulfillment of our dreams, has led us to this dead end, to this sad condition.”
This is a decisive juncture; let us not allow the opportunity to pass by. It is the moment for reconciliation and hope. Enough with hate and separation, enough with forgetting our identity as a nation, as Cubans, as brothers. We must reconcile our differences, listen to proposals and discover the value of dialogue as a source of those proposals. This is necessary if a new dawn is to rise among us. We must be ready to find solutions for the future of a homeland that belongs to us and that demands it of us.
If you would like to comment on this post from within Cuba [ed. note: and do not have sufficient internet access to enables you to do so in real time, online], write to comunicaciones@somosmascuba.com. Your comments will be included in the blog.
Somos+, 26 November 2016 — Consistent with its tradition of objectivity and respect, the political movement Somos+ acknowledges the death of former president Fidel Castro as an historical event of great significance.
We understand that his followers will pay him the tribute they deem appropriate. We hope, however, that this event will be the beginning of a new stage in the life of the Cuban people. For although in his almost 50 years of governance he did some praiseworthy things, his decisions were marked by pride, authoritarianism, overconfidence, intolerance and a cult of personality. continue reading
Every branch of Cuban economics, society and politics were formed in his image and likeness, assuming each of these traits and leading over the years to the terrible structural, spiritual and moral crisis that we are experiencing today. This has been further compounded by emigration and a lack of respect for fundamental human rights.
We hope that his passing will encourage a greater and essential exercise in reflection and responsibility for our people and will be the starting point for all of us as Cubans to once again seek to be, as was Jose Marti’s dream, a single country that affords the peace and harmony that we need.
Fidel’s death marks the death of an era and with it a great opportunity to rebuild our nation.
Somos+ National Council
Somos+, 12 November 2016 — Professor Jose Luis Artiles Salinas, Coordinator of the Somos+ (We Are More) Movement in Santa Clara, has been released after 24 hours of detention. With the aim to frustrate his participation in an course on audiovisuals in Barcelona Spain, he was detained in order to make him miss his flight.
He was released with a letter of warning where it explicitly states he is under investigation. continue reading
This is not only an attack on Individual Human Rights, among which are the Right to Free Movement and the Right to Freely Access the Internet, but also violates Articles 58 and 59 of Chapter VII of the Cuban Constitution, which establishes the inviolability of the detainee, and that he or she can only be tried and condemned by a competent court.
They want to destroy the prestige and respectability of Artiles, because they fear him. They are afraid that more young people and professionals are joining the cause that the professor defends. They are trying to “create” a crime and charge him with it, to make it clear that they are “after him.”
Our support and solidarity, today more than ever, is with Jose Luis. Exposing and denouncing this enormous injustice is the duty of every good Cuban; it is a way to demand the restoration of Human Rights in the Republic of Cuba, which is obligatory on the current government, as a member state of the United Nations.
Somos+, 12 November 2016 — Cuban State Security forces arrested professor Jose Luis Artiles Salinas of the Santa Clara Vocational School of Exact Sciences in Villa Clara, to keep him from traveling to Barcelona, Spain, where he planned to take a course in audiovisuals along with other members of the Somos+ (We Are More) movement.
Once more, the Cuban government violates rights, transgresses universal norms and denigrates people who don’t go along with their system of governance. And for this they resort to coercion, violence and arbitrary arrest to frustrate any progress within the ranks of their opponents. The political movement Somos+ condemns this shameful act and demands the immediate release of this young Santa Claran.
Somos+, José Presol, 7 October 2016 — On October 9 it will be forth-nine years since a man with dirty, matted hair, a lice-ridden beard, boots that were no more than shards of leather and a uniform in tatters emerged from the forest to demonstrate, as he had at other times when he was powerless, his cowardice.
In his delirium he believed he was the most important of world’s exploited peoples, a military genius without equal. He had ventured off to “liberate” new lands but in the end had been put in his place. Trembling, surrounded by dust and enemies, he was a vision of human misery. Desperate, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted:
“Don’t shoot! I am Che Guevara. I am worth more alive than dead!”
He surmised they preferred him alive and defeated rather than martyred. Others thought differently. But let’s step back in time a little. continue reading
He possessed several “qualities”: an obsession for writing diaries, like those of his motorcycle trip to Bolivia; a lifelong penchant for lying; a devotion to death, his own and others; an inability to finish any project; and cowardice.
Perhaps it was genetic. They say his mother was a progressive. A supporter of the Spanish Republic, she was anticlerical and feminist — though she came from a family of cattle barons whose ancestors arrived in the eighteenth century — and had once wanted to become a nun. After claiming her inheritance, she moved in with Ernesto Guevara Lynch. He welcomed her with open arms, presumably out of love but also because of her inheritance.
His father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, was also an “aristocrat.” His great grandfather Patricio was the richest man in South America. Like his son and namesake, he went to university but did not complete his studies, though he called himself an engineer. While at university, he distinguished himself by attacking another student, which led to his expulsion. The victim was none other than the writer Jorge Luis Borges, who brought more glory to Argentina than all the Guevaras combined.
After going bankrupt, he used his inheritance to buy a mate farm, whose workers were little more than slaves. He went bankrupt again, and then yet again in a real estate deal. He held his son responsible for the child’s own asthma. And to top it all off, in 1915 he shot the world’s most famous tango singer, Carlos Gardel, then blamed it on his brother Roberto. He spent his final days in the company of his second wife, traveling between Cuba and Argentina, living off his Cuban acquaintances.
Our Ernesto “forgot” things. Even his birth certificate was a lie. It was altered to indicate he had been born prematurely in order avoid the shame of having been conceived out of wedlock.
He started off in medicine but there is no evidence he completed his studies. The University of Buenos Aires says it has no records of him fulfilling the requirements necessary to receive a degree.**
He travelled to America on his motorcycle in hopes finding a job but was arrested in Miami and deported. It seems he had forgotten about being a doctor even before his time as a guerrilla fighter in the Sierras. After he was captured in Bolivia, he wanted to treat a wounded man. When asked if he was a doctor, he said no.
He toured Latin America and ended up in Guatemala, in the middle of a coup d’état against President Jacobo Arbenz. Under the influence of his wife, Hilda Gadea, he began thinking about becoming a Marxist. His revolutionary biographies claim he organized resistance groups but there is no evidence to support this. What is evident is the unreality of his life at this time. In a letter to his Aunt Beatriz, he wrote, “I am entertaining myself here with shootings, bombings, speeches and other activities to relieve the monotony of everyday life.”
When Hilda was arrested, his cowardice resurfaced. He left her behind in prison and fled with his infant daughter to Mexico. Hilda later reunited with him and introduced him to Edelberto Torres, director of a publishing house: Editorial de Educación Pública. It was there that he met Ñico López, who introduced him to Fidel Castro.
The Communists were looking for leaders who could give anti-imperialist speeches while claiming not to be Marxists. Fidel Castro turned out to be one of them. Fidel always liked to have a cohort by his side. At the time, it was a Spaniard, Alberto Bayo. But Bayo could not accompany him to Cuba, so he settled on Che. His simple rationale for this decision was “He’s a doctor.”
We know all too well about his time in Cuba, starting with the execution of Eutemio Guerra in La Cabaña. And the deaths and illnesses of his comrades throughout the world. We are familiar with his initiatives when he was in charge of the Cuban economy; we need only look around. We also know about his lies about the “New Man.” And his cowardice. Once he realized he had become a nuisance, he preferred to leave, without bothering to pay his respects.
His departure marked the beginning of his travels, taking him to Spain and Czechoslovakia. He ultimately found what he was looking for in the Congo. But he ended up fleeing there too, crossing Lake Tanganyika.
In a new diary he laid the blame for his defeat on those “blacks” who did not understand his French, though clearly those “blacks” can communicate perfectly well in French with the rest of the world. Elsewhere he complained about the laziness and uselessness of blacks, Indians and homosexuals.
Upon his capture, he was taken to a small school to be interrogated. There he met a “Bolivian” captain named Ramos.
Guevara realized that something did not add up. He said to the captain, “Your accent sounds familiar but it is not Bolivian. Your questions aren’t military questions; they’re military intelligence questions. Who are you?”
Ramos told him his real name: Felix Rodríguez. He said he was Cuban and that he was part of the advance group that infiltrated the island to provide logistical support during the Bay of Pigs invasion. He later described how Che then lost what little composure he had, soiled himself and turned whiter than a sheet of paper.
A coded message was transmitted to La Paz, “Papa is tired,” indicating that Che had been captured and was wounded. The reply was “500-600,” which meant “positive identification” and “execution.” A little later headquarters received confirmation: “Regards to Papa.”
The rest is history, though not the way Fidel tells it. (Yet another lie in the life of Ernest Guevara.) We know all about it. What to do next? Turn him into a martyr and put his image on T-shirts to be worn by all the fools and bourgeoisie of the world.
Translator’s notes:
*Elementary school students in Cuba, at morning assemblies, raise their arms in unison and chant, “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.”
**In a blog post, Enrique Ros — author of the Spanish language book, Guevara; Myth and Reality — questions whether Che Guevara ever received a medical degree. He points out that Che could not have fulfilled the stringent academic requirements or the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine because, during what should have been his final period of study, he was out of the country, “never to return.” When Ros asked the university for a copy of Che’s transcripts, he was told they could not be provided because they had been stolen.
Carlos Raúl Macías López, 15 September 2016 — Starting in the second half of the twentieth century, the world has witnessed a phenomenon without parallel in the history of mankind, one which has been strengthened by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, and has increasingly expanded to encompass virtually all strata of society. We are talking about globalization, whose significance has upset politics, economy, technology, culture, trade, bringing a gradual increase in communications and greater interdependence among the world’s different countries.
Human beings’ most basic rights have not escaped the advent of this trend, where international institutions have joined their best efforts and resources to ratify what is inherent and essential for every person, regardless of race, sex, gender, ideology, religion, etc. continue reading
Outside from these realities, the the official government discourse in Cuba has employed with tragic repetition the term “political isolation” to refer to the treatment that the United States government has applied, from almost the very triumph of the Revolution, to “try drown the Cuban people in hunger and need, and to generate in this way, discontent and destabilization.”
According to this line of reasoning, it would seem that the only source of dissatisfaction that the Cuban people might experience in their daily lives, comes from outside (imperialism), and never from the poor governance within. Undoubtedly, the government conveniently has known how to take advantage of this doctrine, and with impunity to undermine attention to such an extent that there are still a few of the ideologically blind (intentional or not), who blame all the ills that afflcit us on “the Americans.” Confirming the saying: “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
If we objectively stick to the facts, we can not deny that in foreign policy the Americans have made their lamentable “blunders” and miscues (the embargo/blockade), since after 57 years of this policy the same priestly caste remains in power in Cuba. Even the current occupant of the White House, as part of recent bilateral negotiations, acknowledged that “it was time to reconsider the methods and to change them.”
None of this negates the fact that in Havana there is a regime that rules a hard and rigid hand. Events conclusively demonstrate that the true and most fearsome isolation plaguing us is not coming from Washington, but from the capital of all Cubans. Given this argument, I can not but hold that for things to move forward as they should, the dialogue should be primarily between the government and its own people, and not primarily with our northern neighbors. Because, what does it serve us to get along with those who live next door to our house, if we are at odds with those living inside it? Unlikely coexistence.
In order to shed light on the subject at hand, I must point out that human rights, the Cuba case is controversial and appeal internationally. International organizations such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the World Organization Against Torture and others have repeatedly submitted information and reports, with abundant evidence of violation of human rights.
Moreover, the defenders of the Castro government appeal to the fact that in developed countries human rights are violated, in a much more critical way, arguing further that in 2007 the United nations removed Cuba from its list of states that violate rights humans, and that in most of the Antilles the human Development Index (HDI) is among the highest in the continent, comparable even with developed countries in the first world.
This last parameter (HDI) includes health, education, culture, which are ultimately second generation or social human rights, but the crux of the matter is that, for years, the great ruler, and then his brother, have spoken boastfully that these human rights are often raised as trophies of socialism, but ultimately a nation cannot overstate the human rights of second generation, to the detriment of the first generation, or to put it another way, it is improper to base the existence of certain human rights as a justification for desecrating others.
This has been our pathetic reality. To accept this thesis, would be like consenting willingly to be slaves, because we enjoy certain rights, because our master supplies us with food, a place to sleep, books, and heals us when we get sick, but at the same time prevents us from going where we want to go, speaking and associating with whom we want, writing about the subjects we want, etc …
What I find even more disturbing is the fact that, in order to justify certain abuses, the Cuban political system is organized on the basis of the lordship of state power over the basic human rights being breached, violated, transgressing these rights capriciously, on behalf of the government’s own interests and to the detriment of a completely vulnerable individual at the mercy of it. A simple scrutiny of the Cuban Constitution shows that the interests of the socialist state, as casually defined by the system itself, are above all else. See Article 62.
The questionable phrase “the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism” is simply a euphemism for sidestepping the truth: the government’s ideology is above individual rights and guarantees, since it deprives the individual in the full exercise his or her freedom, and catalogs as a punishable offense the mere attempt to change this decision. As noted, it is not an objective, comprehensive, fair and impartial law but a law dyed with an ideology, therefore, unjust, biased, diffuse, which ultimately depends on the willingness of whomever has the power to decide what it believes is “best for the people.”
The the question asked in the title of this article — “Who violates the rights of whom in Cuba… Washington of Havana?” — the evidence points only in one direction: the Cuban government.
How much truth can a man take?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Somos+, Roberto Camba, 12 September 2016 — They say it began with the fight to return the young rescued rafter Elian Gonzalez from the United States to Cuba. Really it was much earlier, since the strategy never changes: silence and ignore the adversary, incessantly repeat lies until it is almost impossible to distinguish the truth.
To define, to communicate that the assault on the Moncada Barracks was a revolt of sergeants, to publish in Bohemia magazine in January of 1959 that the Revolution was green like the palm trees and had nothing to do with the Soviet Union, or to when the United States invaded Granada in 1983, are examples. And yet, “Revolution… is never lying,” say the propaganda billboards. continue reading
By monopolizing all the media immediately after 1959 and creating their own education program, the arsenals of weapons were entirely under their power. The enemy could have ideas, but could never express them publicly.
With the Elian Gonzalez case they started the Open Forums and the Roundtable TV shows… all caps. I never understood that these manifestations of the Battle of Ideas transmitted to the Cuban people were just about ensuring their overwhelming support for the Revolution. Where was the battle? Who was the enemy? Why do you line up the “canons” facing your own soldiers?
The speakers at these “Masses” didn’t have to think, they just recited the Revolutionary “creed” from memory. On the Roundtable show the soldiers didn’t have to face the enemy, only their colleagues on the other side of the table.
The concept of “Round” itself symbolizes the endless and monotonous. Like in Mark Twain’s novel “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” the topics of each day of the week were identical: “The King walks through his circular courtyard.” There is nothing new in a vicious circle.
All Communist regimes have curtailed freedom of expression. The only explanation for this is that it is in the ideological arena where they are most vulnerable. Therefore, they continually reject dialogue with the opposition, they refuse to share “the same room” with its representatives during the Americas Summit in Panama, so they hid the people of the “Varela Project” and discussions with Edmundo Garcia were only broadcast in Miami. Ultimately, former vicepresident Ricardo Alarcon ends up looking ridiculous talking to Eliecer Avila, then a student, as do the Castros at press conferences. They find having interlocutors uncomfortable. They learned monologues, not dialogues.
They arm the “fighters” of the Rapid Response Brigades for an act of repudiation against the Ladies in White. They shout a lot so they don’t have to hear the voices of these brave women. If there are not enough people they bring an orchestra, they set up a “Street Fair” with screaming kids or hold a “Carnival.” If the Ladies in White continue to express their ideas they force them into a bus and take them away.
The “Battle of Ideas” is a paradox. There is no “battle.” They only fight when they have previously “killed” the enemy. The other army is not allowed to shoot. Only then they can win the battle. In the Cuban Constitution there is only freedom of speech and of the press as long as they “conform to the aims of socialist society” (Article 53), which is another way of creating the crime of “enemy propaganda” (Article 103 Penal Code).
The “Battle …” has now moved to the digital arena. The “soldiers” of the University of Computer Sciences and State Security must comment on the articles of the official media, and of those refugee challengers in the only place that the state can not fully control: the internet.
Compare the comments on the articles in the official sites such as “Granma” or “Cubadebate” with those of the independent sites such as “14ymedio” or “CubaNet.” In the articles themselves, it seems they are speaking of different countries. Censorship makes the difference. The “soldiers” don’t get medals, they get toiletries and free internet access. In the land of those with nothing, nothing is an incentive.
The idea is not even new. Putin learned it in the KGB and used it extensively as revealed by the newspaper The Guardian. The difference is that Putin pays his trolls better. Like any war strategy, it has a weak point. The “soldiers” — allowed to surf the internet to promote the Revolution — are exposed to the enemy’s “weapons.” Eventually they will contrast these ideas with those they’ve been inculcated with and with the reality they experience. And they will learn the truth … and the truth will set them free.
Somos+, Victor Manuel Camposeco, 10 September 2016 — In April of 1960, from the official newspapers Hoy (Today) and Revolución along with the leftist organization FIDEL, the demands to take by force the three independent print media still standing seemed unstoppable. For months, the newsrooms of those newspapers had also been infiltrated by State agents.
Diario de la Marina, the most influential conservative newspaper in Cuba, respected by publishers and the public, which at one time had supported Castro, had its own building in Havana, “a stately stone building,” at the corner of Paseo del Prado and Brasil Street. On May 11 it would publish a spread signed by more than 300 of its workers in support of defending the freedom of expression. Members of FIDEL, advised by the infiltrators, along with a huge crowd, took the building by assault the night before and its facilities were partly destroyed. continue reading
The police refused to intervene. The next day, at the University of Havana, the already tamed the University Students Federation, FEU, led a grotesque celebration: between slapstick and jokes they buried a copy of the last Diario de la Marina published.
Through the pages of Diario de la Marina had passed Pedro Henriquez Urena, Miguel Angel Asturias, Mariategui, Borges, Alejo Carpentier and Lezama Lima, among many others. Shortly afterwards the Rivero family, owners and managers of the newspaper, went into exile. The “stately stone building” was delivered with its workshops and offices to the Communist newspaper Hoy. The life of Diario de la Marina, then celebrating its 128th year, ended violently.
Humberto Medrano, deputy director of Prensa Libre, the largest newspaper in Cuba, published an article the next day: “It is painful to witness the funeral of freedom of thought in a center dedicated to culture […] Because what was buried last night [at the University] was not a newspaper. Symbolically what was buried was freedom of thought and expression. The obligatory colophon of this act is the commentary in the periodical Revolución. The title of this commentary says it all: “Prensa Libre on the road to La Marina.” They didn’t have to say it, everyone knows.”
On July 4, at night, the FIDEL mob took by assault the Prensa Libre facilities. Medrano left the building, the street teemed with activists. One of them tried to stop him, shouting comments for the occasion, but others let him pass. Medrano got into his car and went to seek asylum at the nearest embassy, that of Panama. Perhaps during the drive he recalled the six times Batista’s police had stopped him, before the triumph of the Revolution, and interrogated him for publishing comments that displeased that other dictator.
Days later Humberto Medrano, escorted to the airport by Panama’s ambassador, left with his family on a commercial flight to Miami. That same week he got a job as a taxi driver. He soon began writing for a local newspaper and devoted himself since that time to the fight for respect for human rights in Cuba. He died in Florida in 2012, at the age of 96.
At the end of the fifties, the most important magazine in Latin America was Bohemia. Founded in 1908, it was directed by Miguel Angel Quevedo, the son of the founder. “Bohemia reported when reporting was dangerous,” said Humberto Medrano in 2008. The first interview Fidel Castro gave to a Cuban media, from the Sierra Maestra, went to Bohemia. The magazine sent Augustine Alles Soberon to interview Fidel and he also interviewed Che.
The editorials, news reports, photographs and articles in favor of Fidel Castro, by Alles Soberon and later others, filled dozens of pages of the magazine. Fidel Castro himself published in Bohemia. Recently installed in power Fidel Castro visited the magazine’s offices. That was a party, about which a large and proud story was published in the weekly magazine itself. The courageous editorial attitude of Bohemia against Batista, in defense of freedom of expression and in support of Castro, was the most prominent among all the media.
On June 15, 1960 Fidel Castro celebrated the Day of Freedom of the Press. A year after that party with Fidel in Bohemia’s offices, the crazed mob of the FIDEL organization took the workshops and offices of the magazine by assault. Miguel Angel Quevedo took refuge in the Embassy of Venezuela. He committed suicide in Caracas in 1969.
Taken from the site Revista Replicante
Somos+, Kaned Garrido, 24 August 2016 — Among vibrant speeches, spirited debates, coalitions of power, changing sides, unthinkable alliances and the dream of rebuilding the Republic, was born one of the most progressive legal texts. The ambitious statements of the 1940 Constitution are as interesting as the story behind it.
The fall of Machado’s dictatorship had left the country with a shaky legitimacy of power. Parties and movements sought profound changes. The revolutionaries wanted to slow the growth of monopolies, the size of the large estates, inequality between classes, poverty in the countryside and cities, and, above all: eventually form an independent nation.
Within the Constituent Assembly political leaders were battling it out in intense discussions. In the upheaval of World War II Cuban politics took sides in the movements of the great powers. Eduardo Chibas criticized the support of Cuban communists for Moscow’s actions. Meanwhile, laws were proposed to reduce American dominance over the island. Nationalism was the recurring and necessary theme. continue reading
The constitution has a strong liberal base, a deep respect for the separation of powers and equality before the law. In addition it proposed an ambitious social program.
Article 61 guaranteed that all Cuban workers would have a minimum wage consistent with their material, moral and cultural needs. Commissions would set salaries that should take into account economic activity, the conditions of the region, and consider the worker the “head of household.”
If we created a commission right now, would would be the estimated minimum salary for a Cuban worker?
Article 67 gave every worker one month’s rest for every eleven months worked. If due to circumstances he did not complete the 11 months, the rest was proportional to the time worked. But those were only benefits, the true right resided in Article 71:
“The right of workers to the strike and the right of employers to the lockout is recognized, in conformity with the regulations that the law may establish for the exercise of both rights.”
This was the law that would prevent the employers from ignoring the workers. The mere threat of a strike is a reason to negotiate.
It is difficult to define the grammatical terms to talk about these laws, to say how much they were held to. The years of that constitution were plagued by corruption and ended with Batista’s coup d’etat on 10 March 1952.
Today, a review by officialdom recognizes certain social conquests in the text, but considers it a “bourgeois constitution” and “inferior” to today’s.
So we must create our own perception of what is salvageable and what is not. Why is such an ancient text so important? Can we copy and paste it into the twenty-first century?
Many constitutional scholars agree that only some amendments need to be updated, because by its nature it is liberal and fair making it applicable to our time.
Possibly this constitution written among the storms of the nineteen-forties will be the basis of a new Cuban democracy. So we will continue talking about it…
Somos+, 2 September 2016 — Yesterday the Venezuelan people gave us another great lesson: We can go out into the streets united to demand our rights, we can peacefully challenge a Populist-Marxist government and conquer the streets. It was a great victory.
We salute our Venezuelan brothers and we thank them. Thank you for gathering in such huge numbers to remember one of your leaders, Leopoldo Lopez, who chose to be arrested in a very special place in Caracas: at the foot of the statue of Jose Marti, reminding us all that Cuba is one thing and Fidel Castro and his agents are another, and they are the ones collaborating with the Maduro dictatorship. continue reading
The protest achieved its planned objectives: to “occupy” Caracas and demand a recall election, without delay, without waiting for next year, which is what Maduro wants.
It is important to know what the objective was and that it has been achieved, because some voices have commented saying the effort was useless, because they should have taken advantage of the moment to occupy the centers of power in Caracas.
That would have been to anticipate events and give the Chavistas arguments to use all the forces of their paramilitary collaborators and the army itself.
The time for that has not yet arrived in Venezuela. First all the legal means and resources must be exhausted, and we hope that when the time comes the military will refuse to shoot, because they recognize that in these demonstrators are their children, their brothers, their wives, their mothers or themselves.
Venezuelans have given us a great demonstration of where you can get with unity around a table in which everyone can organize themselves, around those objectives they have in common and forgetting their differences.
These common objectives are, briefly: NO to hunger and misery, YES to work and progress. NO to tyranny, YES to democracy. It’s that simple.
From this lesson we must draw a firm determination, in our own national struggle, of advancing our movement: Somos+ (We Are More), and advancing our roundtable: MUAD.
Long live free Venezuela and Cuba!
Somos+, Gretther Yedra, 1 June 2016 — When addressing the need for a “transition” of Cuban society, Cuban leaders respond that such a process already took place, starting in 1959, when the Revolutionary government seized farms, factories, shops, banks and other industries which had hitherto been in private hands.
But when the traditional opposition-in-exile speaks of transition, it almost always means a return to the political and economic order that existed before 1959, which in essence means returning confiscated property to its former owners. In other words, to turn back the clock, retracing the path that the Revolution took in the years immediately following the triumph of the insurrection. This is, from a revolutionary point of view, counter-revolutionary. continue reading
One might think that it all boils down to a choice between two diametrically opposed options, with each alternative amounting to nothing more than a reverse of the other. One option proscribes absolute collectivization; the other calls for complete privatization. When the first agrarian reform was carried out and large estates were seized, the government spoke of giving the land to the peasants. A frequently heard phrase at the time was “The land should belong to those who work it.”
And when factories, businesses and banks were seized, it was said to have been done on behalf of the proletariat in order to make workers the “owners of the means of production.” The Revolutionary government was, therefore, conceived as a means for transferring wealth from one class to another. This was supposed to take place in two stages. First, the assets of the bourgeoisie were to be expropriated and, second, they were to become the property of the workers.
No one can seriously claim that the first step in this transition was not carried to the fullest extent possible — all property belonging to capitalists and landowners was expropriated — but what remains an open question is whether or not the second stage was ever realized.
These two extremes are not altogether unalike, with both sharing a common denominator. Both involve transforming the way monopolies are controlled, with one approach precluding the other. Whether a large plantation is run privately or by the state, its essence remains unchanged; it is still a plantation. Instead of dividing the land among the peasants, collective farms were created. Workers in factories, shops and banks could not democratically elect their directors and administrators; they were appointed by higher-ups.
As noted by sociologists both inside and outside the island, the model adopted by state-run agriculture tended to conflate state property with socialist property, which also affected non-state socialist enterprises such as CPAs (agricultural production cooperatives). One result is that a farm worker’s position more closely resembles that of salaried employee in a capitalist enterprise than that of a socialist owner.
In neither case has the radical rethinking necessary for a real solution been realized. Neither addresses the essential dilemma: the monopolistic control of property, the absence of worker participation in management decisions and the marginalization of much of the population.
While the first step was taken in the early years, the second was indefinitely postponed. Companies came under state control, which became an end unto itself. To say that the transition has already been carried out is only half true. It is a transition that was interrupted, one that never came to fruition, and as a result the revolutionary process remains unfinished.
What is significant is the term “state-owned” rather than “social” property as the official terminology used to describe the essential nature of a socialist society. But statism is not socialism. It is a form of centralization that precludes civil society and is incompatible with the original concept of socialism, which might better be called socialization or, in other words, the free participation of all sectors of society in economic activities without bureaucratic intermediaries.
Since classic Marxism predicted the eventual abolition of even state-owned property during the most advanced phase of socialism, how can it be argued that state ownership is the ideal form of social property given that it was the inefficiency of such a system that led to failure of the Soviet Union itself?
Democracy should be a pathway, one in which we are free to choose our leaders and remove them from power if they prove to be corrupt or if they betray us. It is essential that our economy be guided by experts in this area, not by the military. Political ideology cannot be the determining factor in our country’s economic growth.
Therefore, our goal must be to eliminate centralism, which we consider to be a hindrance to the development of the kind of society we want to build. Learning from our own and others’ mistakes is a first step in the right direction. The change lies within us.
Somos+, Joanna Columbié, 24 May 2016 — The Cuban economic model, one that is imprecise, vague, and very particular to Cuba, does not manage to meet the needs of the Cuban people. The nominal wage does not come close to the actual salary that a Cuban citizen needs to cover their basic necessities and, in this respect as in many others, the Guidelines set forth in the previous Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba have failed to be implemented effectively; according to official figures, only 21% of the proposals have actually been carried out.
In Cuban president Raúl Castro’s own words, this whole process should be carried out “without haste but without pause,” however we should ask ourselves whether this phrase can ever be realistic for the Cuban people. Having to wait over 57 years for the promises made by Fidel Castro in his speech known as “History Will Absolve Me” to be put into effect puts this current wait into question. continue reading
It is not the first time that a similar process has been implemented in Cuba. Appearing to recognise the mistakes that have been made, necessary rectifications of mistakes and negative trends have been set out on more than one occasion, in each case with the apparent objective of distracting the population, making sure that their attention is diverted away from the serious economic and social situation that has plagued the country at various points in history.
And now Raúl is back at the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (known as the PCC) with the same discourse. Nothing has changed and in his speech he repeats this same fateful phrase that has led to many a frustrated hope for the people of Cuba and many a useless plan.
Part of the population hoped that this 7th Congress would bring change, change that has to happen sooner or later, but we did not think that it would come via a party that has lost its reason for being in this society, if it ever had one. Remaining in the same political confinement to which we are accustomed will not be a sufficient reason for the opposition movements in Cuba to walk step by step towards necessary change, even though the communists finish their congress in the same way it started: without haste and with many pauses.
Translated by E Hill
Somos+, Jose Manuel Presol, 17 May 2016 — If there is something shameful in our republican history, it is the events of 1912. Nothing much is being said about it, not even in the government’s current propaganda. It is mentioned, articles and books are published about it, although it is not widely exposed.
Relatively few things have been written about it; the data, which is scarce at the source, are lost, and it is difficult to achieve an in-depth knowledge about it. Oral transmission is likewise poor, perhaps out of shame by some or out of fear by others.
I am referring to what is called the “War of the Independent People of Color,” or the “War of the Blacks.” continue reading
Whoever denies the significance of our compatriots of color in the War of Independence is blind. Their freedom from slavery, their recognition as citizens and all their rights as Cubans stem from it. Apparently, there was something deeper: friendship and brotherhood amongst whites and blacks who had jointly fought as mambises (patriotic fighters).
But that equality was merely on the paper the Constitution was written on and in multiple laws. The fact is that Cuba had, and still has, an important racist component. At the 7th Cuban Communist Party Congress, Raúl Castro himself mentioned that “the fight against any vestige of racism which hampers or slows down the promotion of blacks and mestizos to leading positions shall be relentlessly pursued.” And even after 57 years of a theoretical “egalitarian revolution” and three generations under “socialism,” we still encounter expressions such as “Dude, you strike me as an ’Oreo’.”
Legal equality had been achieved, but not in reality. In 1902 began the creation of organizations in defense of the rights and interests of black people, such as the Black Veterans Committee, some of whose meetings were presided over by Juan Gualberto Gómez.
In 1908 the Group of Independent People of Color was created, a rather more political organization, which on August 7 of the same year became the Party of Independent People of Color (PIC, according to its Spanish acronym). Its platform was not only anti-racist but also social, as it called for an eight-hour working day and general and free education.
However, from then on big mistakes were made by both parties:
On the part of the State a black senator, Martín Morúa Delgado, filed a motion against that party, by considering a party based on racial principles to be unconstitutional, and the “Morúa Amendment,” modifying Section 17 of the Electoral Act was adopted and the PIC was declared illegal.
Morúa, in his–likely honest–attempts to avoid social division, even forgot the continuous insults to which he and other black and mixed race senators and congressmen were subject. One of the most frequent was that in all receptions, these were directed to the guest and companion or mistress, while discriminating against their wives.
On the other hand, Evaristo Estenoz, a slave-born PIC leader, distanced himself from many whites who supported him, thus politically isolating himself, and attempted to foster a new U.S. intervention, to which end he held meetings with figures such as Charles Magoon, the U.S. occupation governor between 1906 and 1909, and Enoch Crowder, former Military Governor of the Philippines, who had taken part in U.S. interventions in Cuba and in wars against the Apaches, led by Jeronimo, and the Sioux, led by Sitting Bull. Both of them being “very good company.”
Finally, on May 20, 1912, a PIC armed uprising took place in Pinar del Río, Havana, Santa Clara and Oriente to achieve their demands, although it did not contemplate the overthrow of the government presided by José Miguel Gómez.
Originally no attention was paid to it, but the contacts initiated by Estenoz were in motion, and the Cuban government was warned that, in order to defend U.S. interests, armed troop vessels were being sent to Guantánamo and other destinations.
Thus, the President ordered the army to intervene, which put an end to the uprising–to the embarrassment of all–by murdering all the black and dark-skinned mixed-race people encountered, whether or not they had participated in the revolt; it even removed peaceful workers from their homes and killed them in front of their families.
The leaders of the uprising, Evaristo Estenoz and Pedro Ivonet, perished. Regarding the former there are versions that he committed suicide and that he died in combat; his body had a shot in the temple. Ivonet was simply murdered after being taken prisoner.
It is not known how many victims there were. Some mention 60 victims, which could be ludicrous if we were not referring to human lives, others mention 6,000. The safest thing is that they ranged between 3,000 and 4,000.
In order not to revisit similar mistakes and embarrassments, let us recall that we are all Cubans and it is no good to merely state it on a piece of paper. This is another pending change which has to be begun, as all changes, by ourselves.
