Fear, Dry Law and Funerals / 14ymedio, Zunilda Mata

Cubans still manage to get some alcohol in the middle of the 'dry law' imposed by the official mourning. (14ymedio)
“Prohibited, the sale of alcoholic beverages.” Cubans still manage to get some alcohol in the middle of the ‘dry law’ imposed by the official mourning. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio/EFE, Havana, 28 November 2016 — The always busy corner of Infanta and Carlos III was a desolate wasteland Sunday. Since the death of Fidel Castro was announced, Havanans have gathered at home. The official media say that it is from pain, but fear is the protagonist of days in which the sale of alcoholic beverages has been prohibited and the biggest funerals in contemporary Cuba are arranged.

Foreign journalists are arriving in the country by the hundreds and are seen in the streets trying to interview every passerby. Many pedestrians look down and refuse to give interviews. When the reporters finally manage to get some statements, they are only from those who agree with the official discourse. Inside people’s homes everything is different. continue reading

“Luckily we had a bottle of rum left over from a party,” says Chicho, a retired teacher who has waited decades for this moment. “It is not that we’re celebrating the death of a human being, because this man made us all believe that he was not one… that he was above life and death,” he tells 14ymedio.

Chicho has a nine-year-old granddaughter who will go to school early this Monday, although there are doubts about how the week will go in schools and workplaces, in the midst of the national mourning that has been decreed for nine days. “I’m sure that they aren’t going to teach classes, there is going to be one event and another until the day the ashes reach the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery,” says the grandfather.

For Mileidis, a resident of Havana’s Regla neighborhood, there is another concern. “My brother is a son of Changó,” (an orisha of the Afro-Cuban religion who is the equivalent of Saint Barbara). The celebration of the saint is held every December 4, the same day the national mourning concludes. “I don’t know how we are going to get the brandy and rum,” the young woman worries.

The festivities on the eve of Saint Barbara are very popular on the island, fueled by drumbeats, Yoruba songs and a great deal of alcohol. With the sale of alcohol prohibited, many Santería rights are in danger of collapse. Distilled alcohol has doubled in price in barely three days of the “dry law.”

A well-known bar on Reina Street is deserted and the drinks list has been put away. Nearby, in El Curita park, three regulars of the place get together on a corner and pass a plastic container that looks like it contains cola. In reality it is distilled alcohol, better known as “train sparks” for the effects it occasions in the stomach when ingested.

Police patrol cars and uniformed officers approach, and the three men hide the bottle. “This is my thing, I can’t live without it,” says one of the men, justifying his transgression. “What fault is it of mine that He can no longer take a drink?” he reflects, slurring his words.

Posters with the face of Fidel Castro are everywhere. Since the celebration of his 90th birthday in August, the tone of the personality cult has noticeably risen, such that Cubans seem to be used to Fidelmania.

“Will they change the bust of José Martí in the schools for one of Fidel?” a seven-year-old girl asks her mother. In the street, Havana residents speculate about the anticipated tributes to Castro and expect the establishment of an official order in his honor, his face on a banknote, a multi-story iron relief with his silhouette in the Plaza of the Revolution — like the ones for Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos – some street with his name, and a museum in his memory in the heart of the city.

The most daring even predict a change in the only political organization allowed in the country. “It’s a good moment to shake off the communist label,” an official academic who asked for anonymity told this newspaper. “It’s possible that at the next plenary session of the Cuban Communist Party or at an extraordinary congress they will re-baptize it the Fidelista Party.

In tune with popular predictions, the illegal lottery, known as la bolita, has seen an increase in bets on the numbers that mean ‘police,’ ‘great death,’ and ‘horse,’ the later for Fidel Castro’s nickname, “El Caballo.”

The Myth Died, Cuba Must Change / 14ymedio, Pedro Campos

There are no copies of the official daily Granma at the newsstands. (14ymedio)
There are no copies of the official daily Granma at the newsstands. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Pedro Campos, Havana, 27 November 2016 — Fidel Castro has died. The mythic figure has died. The event will be discussed for a long time and from many points of view. Nine days of mourning has been decreed in Havana, the flag is at half mast; in Miami they are partying, the same Cuban flag held high.

The Fidelistas mourn, the anti-Fidelistas party. The vast majority of the island’s population, eager for changes, are waiting. It could not be any other way. Since the attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, Fidel Castro’s imprint on Cuba shapes our days. The government is ready to maintain total control over the streets. Its mass organizations are mobilized to prevent and counteract any demonstrations against him.

But like the myth, his charisma and his influence are not inherited. We can affirm that a political cycle in Cuba has ended: the eclectic sum of conceptions that make up Fidelism, populism, authoritarianism, neo-Stalinism, statism and bureaucratism, just received a mortal blow. A stage of inevitable changes opens. continue reading

Raul Castro, since he assumed power in 2006, promised to undertake important reforms, replaced many officials, and began dictatorially implementing a set of measures that he consolidated and expanded in both Cuban Communist Party Congresses held since then, but without establishing a legal framework that guarantees them.

During these years, the bureaucracy, laws, regulations and customs of Fidelism, established over almost 60 years, have prevented such reforms from being fully deployed.

Raul Castro now has the opportunity to demonstrate whether his reformist proposals are real or were just a deliberate attempt to counter the resistance within the system and seek international recognition and funding.

Cuba’s economic situation requires that the changes set forth by Raul be deepened and expanded, that all state monopolistic barriers to domestic and foreign markets for capital investment, enterprise development and productive initiatives of all kinds be broken.

However, it does imply that the Fidelistas abandon their positions in the government and the Party and that many regulations and customs of traditional statism be removed. This will be very difficult if, in parallel, there is no democratization process that permits deep criticism of the Fidel regime, the adoption of new forms of organization in the economy and politics, and the emergence and development of new entrepreneurs and unprejudiced leaders at all levels the society.

Cuba is facing inevitable changes. The death of the mythic figure favors them. The Cuban people also demand them. Everyone, those inside and those outside, regardless of their political ideas, must have the right to participate in the reconstruction of the nation. Achieving it more or less peacefully will depend on those who still hold power in Cuba.

It is time to assume, with decency, José Martí’s homeland: With all and for the good of all.

Graffiti Artist ‘El Sexto’ Still Under Arrest, Mother Says / 14ymedio

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14ymedio bigger14ymedio, 27 November 2016 — The Cuban graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, known as “El Sexto” (The Sixth), remains under arrest, according to a report from his mother, Maria Victoria Machado, to14ymedio.

Maldonado was arrested on Saturday and taken to the police unit at 51st and 240th Streets after painting graffiti on a wall of the Habana Libre hotel. He wrote the words “he left” to refer to the death of Fidel Castro, which occurred a few hours earlier.

When relatives tried to contact the artist they were notified by the officials in command that he was not at the police unit, which was immediately disproved by El Sexto who shouted from inside the station, “Down with Fidel Castro, down with Raul.” continue reading

Maldonado’s mother, Maria Victoria Machado, said Sunday afternoon, “They closed 51st Street to take him out of the station and now we know nothing about his whereabouts,” but several hours later she learned that he was at “[Station] 14 of Guanabacoa.”

The officials informed his relatives that, although they will not be allowed to see him, they would be able to send him medications and toiletries.

El Sexto was arrested on Christmas Eve of 2014, when he planned to stage a performance art piece with two pigs that were painted with the names of Fidel and Raul.

He was arrested when he took the two pigs in a vehicle and spent ten months in Valle Grand Prison without trial.

The officers informed their relatives, but will not let you see it, yes they will send medicines and grooming.

The Sixth had been arrested Christmas Eve 2014, when he intended to make a performance with two pigs bearing the names of Fidel and Raul painted in the body.

He was arrested when carrying pigs in a vehicle and spent ten months in Valle Grande prison without trial.

The Ancient Dictator Died Long Ago / 14ymedio, Miriam Celaya

Fidel Castro celebrates his 90th birthday in the Karl Marx Theatre.
Fidel Castro celebrates his 90th birthday in the Karl Marx Theatre.

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 26 November 2016 — The official media have just announced the last and definitive death of Fidel Castro, and I think I have perceived more relief than bereavement in the mournful message. If I were a religious person, I would feel at least a tiny bit of grief, but that is not the case. Definitely, pity toward despots is not among my few virtues. And, as I have always preferred cynicism over hypocrisy, I am convinced that the world will be a better place without him.

At any rate, to me, the old dictator had died a long time ago, at an unspecified date, buried under some dusty headstone, without epitaph in the deepest recesses of my memory, so I can only be curious about what this expected (exasperated) outcome might mean for those who have kept their destinies tied to every spasm of his many deaths.

Nevertheless, just because I had given him an early funeral doesn’t mean that his irreversible departure from this world is not a momentous event. The image of the defeated specter he had become will now disappear, and his passing will also cease to gravitate over the superstitious temperament of the nation as an unavoidable doom. We will finally find out whether the prophecy Cuba will really change after Fidel dies is true or false, because it seems that, for almost all Cubans, waiting for changes that result from nature’s course is easier than taking the risk to do it themselves. Peoples who feel ashamed of their fates often blame their rulers for their own collective irresponsibility. continue reading

There are also the superstitions, a nice wild card for the national lethargy. There are too many people that believe in some god, in a sense of fatality, in the tarot, in the zodiac signs, in the I Ching, in the Tablet of Ifá or other prophecies of the most varied kind. I have never believed in any of them, perhaps because accepting the mysteries of these predestinations as true would have made me feel I was cursed just for having been born in Cuba in 1959. Far from it, such an adverse coincidence became the challenge that I accepted gladly, so I never experienced the deep feelings of frustration that oppress several generations of Cubans, choked under the effects of the power of a sort of superhuman entity that seemed to sum up all creeds in it and that intervened in every destiny. An impostor, in short, pretending to be god, oracle and mantra all at once.

For almost all Cubans, waiting for changes that result from nature’s course is easier than taking the risk to do it themselves

Nevertheless, all my memories are intact. They have survived every cataclysm in good health. How could I go back on them if our spirit is pure memory? I reminisce without love, without resentment, without bitterness and without regrets, as if I were observing, in an old movie, my own story which is the same for millions of Cubans like me. There are even some chapters I find amusing. How could we have once been so naïve? How did our parents and grandparents allow us to be manipulated in such an atrocious way? It was because of fear. Fidel Castro’s true power was never the love of Cubans, but the unspeakable fear they felt toward him, an irrational and irate leader, and an individual whose limitless egomania could only be matched by his inability to feel empathy. Sometimes fidelity is only a resource for survival.

Looking back on the first 20 years of my life, I remember Fidel Castro as a sort of omnipresent magma that invaded every space of public and private life. He seemed to have the gift of ubiquity and to appear everywhere at once. My earliest memories of childhood are invariably associated with that image of the bearded man who never smiled, dressed in a military uniform, whose portrait could be found anywhere, whether on the wall of a building, on a fence, on the covers of magazines, newspapers, or in a carefully framed picture in the halls of revolutionary Cubans, who were a majority back then.

That same man very often appeared on the screen of my grandmother’s television (in my mind, I thought he lived inside that device), or he invaded every home from the radio stations, thundering and fierce, making long threatening and scolding speeches, loaded with harangues. He was always irritated, so I was a little afraid of him and tried – with little or no success – to stay away from his vibrations. My elders swelled with ecstasy and even cried out, excited about the false prophet’s this or that bravado. “It’s El Caballo!* that’s how it’s done!” The admirers of the new hard man would bellow, drunk with a fervor that I did not understand but which, over time, succeeded in infecting me.

In any case, “Fidel” was one of the first words uttered by the children of thousands of families which, like mine, had discovered that on the dawn of January 1, 1959 they were suddenly revolutionaries. And thus, also suddenly, in a nation traditionally Catholic, quite a few proclaimed themselves as atheists and renounced God only to accept a new faith, Fidel Castro as savior, and communist dogma as catechism.

Fidel Castro’s true power was never the love of Cubans, but the unspeakable fear they felt toward him

Meanwhile, countless families were fractured by political polarization and emigration. Parents and children, siblings, uncles, cousins who had always lived in harmony, clashed, became filled with grudges and distanced themselves from one another. There were those who never spoke to each other again, and died without the embrace of reconciliation. Many survivors of this telluric rupture are still picking up the pieces and trying to recreate some parts of our battered lineages, at least out of respect and homage to our estranged departed family members, all because of an alien hatred.

Then came the militias, the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, the compulsory military service, the rationing card, the monumental harvests, the Revolutionary Offensive, Angola, the in-field schools and the schools in the countryside, and the permanent consecration of endless delusions of the Great Egomaniac. And with the passage of time, the signals of the ruin we insisted on ignoring began to arrive.

The increasing shortages were silenced with slogans and with gigantic plans doomed for failure, all freedoms were buried and rights disappeared, sacrificed on the olive green altar under the weight of once sacred words and now debased by speeches (“homeland,” the most tainted; “liberty,” the most fraudulent), while – unnoticed and blind – we Cubans ourselves helped to build the bars of our prison and, docile, left the keys in the hands of the jailer.

The first great schism between the lunatic orator and me were the events at the Peruvian embassy, and especially the Mariel stampede, between April and May, 1980. They were not, however, isolated events.  The first conversations (they are often referred to as approaches) had taken place in 1978 between the dictatorship and a group of emigres living in the United States, which resulted in the opening of family visits in 1979, although only in one direction: from Miami to Cuba.

Cubans themselves helped to build the bars of our prison and, docile, left the keys in the hands of the jailer

Suddenly, the stateless-wormy-counterrevolutionaries were not that, but “our brothers from the Cuban community abroad,” who had been able to preserve their original cultural values and their own language in foreign lands, and who were being offered the right to visit their country of origin and reunite with their families. Now they happily arrived, weighed down with gifts for the beggars who had chosen a revolution that proclaimed poverty as a virtue. Naïve or not, many of us felt the manipulation and discovered that we had been scammed, and although one does not wake up at the first bell after a long and deep lethargy, we began to live on alert and to question the system.

Then, without expecting it, the New Man, forged under the principles of that celebrated whore called Revolution, witnessed in surprise the spectacle of the hordes gathered at the Peruvian diplomatic headquarters and the mass flight through the port of Mariel. And we were perplexed by the thousands of deserters and horrified by the repudiation rallies, the beatings, vexations and insults towards those who were emigrating and the impunity at the barbarism that was only possible because it had been instigated and blessed from the power.

By then I was sporting my new motherhood, and before every fearful scene I would cling to tenderness for my son. I think it was then that I began to definitively tear all the dense veils of the lie I had lived for 20 years and became obsessed with the search for the truth in which I would bring up my children: freedom as a gift that we carry inside, which nobody grants, which is born with the being. So ended Fidel Castro’s leadership of me, dragging in his fall any possibility of future glitches in my spirit.  The dissident, living in silence within me, emerged that year, and the paradigmatic leader of my adolescence began to transmute into an enemy.

The feelings his existence infused in me were fear, admiration, respect, devotion, doubt, disbelief, resentment, contempt, and, finally, the most absolute indifference

That is why the difficult events and the Fidel battles that followed my conversion did not make a mark: the Ochoa case, the associated executions, the Special Period resulting from the collapse of real socialism, the Maleconazo, the Balseros Crisis, the rescued child rafter Elián, the Open Tribunes, the Roundtables, the Five Spies, the Black Spring, the Battle of Ideas, the Energy Revolution and so much nonsense that resulted in swelling the ranks of the discontented and the disenchanted, widening the rift between the power and millions of Cubans.

My feelings for Fidel Castro went through several stages. It could not be any other way, since I was born in 1959, since I grew up in a family of Fidel fans and since I’ve spent my whole life in Cuba. The feelings his existence infused in me were fear, admiration, respect, devotion, doubt, disbelief, resentment, contempt, and, finally, the most absolute indifference.

News of his death, then, does not stir emotions. A friend recently wisely told me that Fidel Castro was not cause, but consequence. It seems to me an accurate sentence to summarize the history and idiosyncrasy of the Cuban nation. Because we Cubans are not (we have never been) the result of Fidel’s existence, but the reverse: the existence of a Fidel was possible only thanks to Cubans, beyond political or ideological tendencies, beyond our sympathy or resentment. Without all of us the power of his long dictatorship would not have been sustained.

That is why I take this, the occasion of his ultimate death, to sincerely make a toast, not to his memory, but to ours. May our memory never falter, so that we do not forget these decades of shame, so that no more Fidels are repeated on this earth! And I also offer, with all my hope, to celebrate the opportunity that this happy death unlocks to the new life that all Cubans will finally build in peace and harmony.

*The Horse: Fidel Castro’s nickname among Cubans

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez and Norma Whiting

“Cuba’s Tyrant Died,” Miami Celebrates / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, 26 November 2016 – Thousands of Cubans poured into Miami’s streets in the early morning hours to celebrate the death of Fidel Castro, Cuba’s former ruler, who held onto power for almost five long decades. To the rhythm of “Our Day is Coming” by Willy Chirino and “In Case I Don’t Return,” by the late Celia Cruz, the exiles celebrated surviving the man who dominated with an iron fist the destinies of those on the Island of Cuba.

“Here we are celebrating freedom for the Cuban people. Satan has died, a man who plunged the people into misery and hunger,” said Maria Cristina Labrada Varona, member of the Ladies in White on a visit to the city of Miami. continue reading

The leader of the Democracy Movement, Ramon Saul Sanchez, explained to 14ymedio that the exiles do not rejoice at the death of a human being but “at the disappearance of a symbol that is used as a sword of Damocles against civil society activists and all who want to democratize Cuba.”

Sanchez says that “Raul and his brother Fidel Castro were responsible for making the dynastic transfer” and argues that military exercises like the Bastion 2016 were carried out in order to intimidate people and so that people did not pour into the streets.

“The Cuban is changing in his heart, he wants liberty. One day we are going to see that this happiness that is seen in the Cuban exile is going to be apparent to everyone,” said Sanchez.

Ufracio Gonzalez, a boxing trainer attending the demonstration explained that he decided to go out to the streets with his young daughter to celebrate the death of the dictator because “That man has done a lot of damage to Cubans. We have memories of suffering and bitterness.”

Not only Cubans were among the celebrators. Venezuelans and Latin Americans decided to share the joy of the exiles. Lia Fausta, a Brazilian living in Miami, says that she does not celebrate the death of Fidel Castro but a new life for Cuba and for all the countries in the Americas.

“Lula, Dilma Rousseff, Evo Morales, Nicolas Maduro, Ortega and Santos. We must free ourselves from these people who destroy the future of our young people,” she explained.

“I love Cuba. My mother was a woman who loved the Island. All my life the only thing I heard was ‘what a shame that this has happened (the Cuban Revolution) to a country that was the most beautiful in the Caribbean,’” she added.

A woman raises a flag to celebrate the end of Fidel Castro (14ymedio).
A woman raises a flag to celebrate the end of Fidel Castro (14ymedio).

Since early morning the county police have been present and closed downtown’s Eighth Street in Little Havana, the quintessential meeting place for Cuban immigrants in south Florida, estimated at about two million people.

“It is a family celebration. You find the same thing among the old and the young. No one has wanted to stay home. It is something that we owe to our parents, our grandparents, to all who suffered the worst of the Castro tyranny,” comments Elquiades Suarez, 40 years of age.

In the afternoon Willy Chirino and other famed local artists visited the restaurant Versailles.

Cuban-American members of congress also met to give a joint statement.

“We are not going to expect big changes,” said the recently re-elected Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in a joint press conference with Republicans Mario Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Carlos Curbelo.

Ros-Lehtinen also threw a bucket of cold water on those who expect rapid changes on the Island with the death of Castro: “Do not expect Fidel’s death to open a door to a new chapter of liberty. It is not so easy.”

“What we need is freedom for the Cuban people, freedom of expression and everything that is written in the Helms-Burton law.”

Diaz-Balart for his part said that Fidel Castro’s legacy is “of tragedy, of repression, of corruption, of drug trafficking and terrorism.”

Fidel Castro’s public enemy number one, the militant anti-Castroist Luis Posada Carriles, described the death of the Cuban ex-ruler as “unjust” and lamented that it came “so late.”

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Cuba Survives Fidel Castro / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

A group of older people waiting for bread talk about the death of Fidel. (14ymedio)
A group of older people waiting for bread talk about the death of Fidel. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana 27 November 2016 – Few people were watching official television at that hour. The news of Fidel Castro’s death began to spread through the night on Friday by phone, as information that was vague and imprecise. “Again?” my mother asked when I called her. Born in 1957, this Havanan of nearly six decades does not remember life before the Commander in Chief took power in Cuba.

Three generations, we Cubans have put the final period on an era this Friday. Each person will define it in their own way. There are those who claim that with the departure of the leader a piece of the nation has also left and that now the island seems incomplete. They will be those who will shape the creed of Fidelism that, as a replacement of imported Marxism-Leninism, will fill the manuals, the slogans and the burning commitments to continuity.
continue reading

The propagandists of the myth will put his five-letter name in the pantheon of national history. They will dedicate a revolutionary prayer every time reality seems to belie “the teachings” he left in his hours of interminable speeches. For his followers, everything bad that happens from now on will be because he is no longer here.

In Miami, the exile so vilified in his harangues celebrates that the dictator has embarked on his last journey. On the island, within the privacy of many homes, some uncorked a bottle of rum. “I kept it so long I thought I would never be able to taste it,” an early rising neighbor told me. There are those who have woken up this Saturday with one less weight on their shoulders, a sensation of lightness they are not yet accustomed to.

These are also the days to remember those who didn’t make it this far. Those who were killed during the Castro regime, shipwrecked at sea, victims of the censorship that the Maximum Leader imposed, or who lost their sanity as a consequence of the delusions he promoted. An immense chorus of victims is expressed today in the sighs of the survivors, the euphoria in the streets of Florida, or in a simple “Amen.”

Most, however, after learning the details of the great funeral, turn down the TV and express their disgust with a simple shrug. This indifference contrasts with the messages of condolence from international leaders, both the ideologically aligned as well as the others. On the wall of Havana’s Malecon, a couple of hours after Raul Castro announced the death of his brother, some groups continued to behave as on any other late night: sweat, sensuality, boredom and nothingness surrounding them.

Cubans who were under 15 in July of 2006 when the then-president’s illness was announced, barely remember the timbre of his voice. They only know him from the photos in which he would appear lately when some foreign guest visited, of through his increasingly absurd Reflections, published in the national press. It is the generation that never vibrated to his oratory and never seconded the dreaded cry of “Paredon!” – To the Firing Squad! – that he bellowed from the Plaza of the Revolution.

These young people have now been charged with reducing his historical dimension, in inverse proportion to the hubris he exhibited in governing this nation. They won’t stop listening to a single lyric of their preferred reggaeton songs to intone the slogan “Viva Fidel.” They will not give birth to a wave of infants who will carry the name of the deceased, nor will they beat their breasts and tear their clothes during the funeral.

Fidel Castro in Rome in 1996
Fidel Castro in Rome in 1996

Never have we heard less about the Commander in Chief than at the moment of his death. Never had oblivion loomed like a more threatening shadow than when his end was announced. The man who filled every minute of Cuba for more than 50 years receded, faded, was lost to spectators’ sight in this extremely long film, like the character who walks off down a path until he is barely a blip on our retina.

He leaves behind the great lesson of contemporary Cuban History: tying the national destiny to the will of one man ends up passing on to a country the imperfect traits of his personality and inflates one human being with the arrogance of speaking for everyone. His olive green cap and his Greek profile, for decades, have encouraged the nightmares of some and the poetic residues of others, along with the populists promises of many leaders on the planet.

His “anti-imperialism,” as he stubbornly called it, was his most constant attitude, the only slogan that he managed to take to the ultimate consequences. No wonder the United States was the second great protagonist of the documentaries national television began to broadcast as soon as the news was announced. Castro’s obsession with our neighbor to the north ran through every moment of his political life.

The eternal question that so many foreign journalists asked, now has an answer. “What will happen when Fidel Castro dies?” Today we know that he will be cremated, his ashes will be carried across the island and placed in the Santa Ifigenia Cemeterey, a few yards from the tomb of José Martí. There will be tears and nostalgia, but his legacy will fade.

The Council of State has decreed nine days of national mourning, but the official elegy will last for months, time enough to cover with so much hullabaloo the flat reality of post-Fidelism. A system that the current president is trying to keep afloat, adding patches of market economy and calls for the foreign capital that his brother abominated.

A representation of the “good cop, bad cop” that both brothers unfurled before our eyes, is now missing one of its parts. It will be difficult for the defenders of Raul Castro’s regime to argue that the reforms are not faster or deeper because, in a mansion at Point Zero on the outskirts of Havana, a nonagenarian has applied the brakes.

Raul Castro has been orphaned. He knows no life without his brother, no political action without asking what his brother will think about his decisions. He has never taken a step without this gaze over his shoulder, judging him, pushing him and underestimating him.

Fidel Castro has died. He is survived by a nation that has lived through too much mourning to dress in the color of widowhood.

————————–

Editor ‘s note: This text was published on Sunday 27 November, 2016 in the newspaper El País.

Live from Havana / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 26 November 2016 – The Council of State has decreed nine days of national mourning, until 4 December. During this time, public activities and spectacles and the flag will fly at half mast on public buildings and military establishments.

The Organizing Committee of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee, the State and the Government said that on the 28th and 29th November, between 9:00 AM and 10 PM, Fidel Castro’s funeral will be held. On 29 November, at 7:00 PM, there will be a ceremony at the Plaza of the Revolution.

The situation recalls the movie “De Eso No Se Habla” (I Don’t Want to Talk About It), one of the last films Marcello Mastrioianni starred in, about a woman dwarf from a wealthy family, and no one was allowed to say she was “small.” People cross the street and don’t say a single word about the “elephant” in the of the room. continue reading

Employees of several cafes and bars visited in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution district fear that they will soon be informed to stop selling alcoholic beverages… and I still haven’t had my sip of rum…

Placido Domingo’s planned concert at the Alicia Alonso Theater, for which some 500 foreign guests with reserved seats have already arrived in Havana, has been cancelled, according to what his son and manager told CNN.

This is a strangely quiet Saturday morning. The non-tourist neighborhoods are oddly empty. There are no elderly people re-selling cigarettes, no one standing in line for a newspaper, no gossips talking on the corner, no kids scampering down the sidewalk. It is as if there was a tacit agreement to stay inside until we see what is happening.

Dawn in Havana after the death of Fidel Castro
Dawn in Havana after the death of Fidel Castro

The flow of traffic on Rancho Boyeros Avenue is greatly diminished for a weekend, not least because today they announced the run-through of the military parade and drivers had already taken other routes.

The situation is reminiscent of what happened the day after the announcement on 31 July 2006 of Fidel Castro’s illness. At that time there were fewer people on the street than normal, and it now appears that caution is being repeated.

Sun, heat, some clouds. Havana the day after looks like a city in mid-summer, if it weren’t for the calendars showing November.

A personal comment, the news has caught many opposition leaders traveling abroad. Among them Berta Soler, Antonio Rodiles, Manuel Cuesta, and even Pedro Campos who is living in Miami…

Several private businesses have not opened their doors. Perhaps out of fear.

Among the comments most often heard are those about a prolonged and bigger dose of ideology on official TV, which in recent weeks has already been increased several degrees.

TV is broadcasting some statements, previews, from Miguel Barnet who assures us that “Fidel is like poetry, ageless. Fidel is not a man, he is an idea.”

National television is beginning to broadcast interviews with young people, their voices breaking, on the verge of tears, when they speak of the death of Fidel Castro. There are students of international relations that right now are “supporting” a tribute to the fallen leader on social networks.

At the entrance to the President Hotel, a taxi driver showed his phone to an unbelieving colleague, “No, son, it’s a lie.” A man turns on state radio, where the news is being broadcast, to settle it.

Waiting for the decisions and report due in a few hours from the Commission in charge of the posthumous tribute, it is expected that the ashes of the commander in chief may be displayed at the base of the Monument to Jose Marti in the Plaza of the Revolution, as was done on the death of commander Juan Almeida. It raises the question of whether the 60th anniversary of the landing of the yacht Granma, with a military parade and a March Of The Combative People, will be held as planned on 2 December.

Young people on Havana’s Malecon are hearing the news. It’s Saturday morning, they are young…
Young people on Havana’s Malecon are hearing the news. It’s Saturday morning, they are young…

A driver on Bus Route 174 listens to several passengers commenting on the matter and says: “Gentlemen, don’t make me angry, but here on my bus we don’t play around with that.”

Friday at midnight, Havana seems oblivious to the news. Those leaving restaurants and nightclubs hear about it from their cell phones.

They are putting a documentary with less laudable moments … talks about people the regime calls “the worms” who “don’t get it on with señoritas, they play with other men.”

Documentaries broadcast on official television for the occasion repeat the starring role played by the United States: the obsession with Fidel Castro.

“Is it true this time?” The most repeated phrase on the phone along with the news of the death. “Nah, it must be a rumor,” the first response.

Raul Castro’s message is rebroadcast. On national television, the announcer is dressed in black and looks lost. Nervous and erratic, she starts to read the reactions of Latin American presidents on hearing the news.

Widespread commentary that “The Bastión (war games) was a dress rehearsal for the funeral.”

Some are overcome with pain, others with relief… the vast majority with a touch of indifference.
Some are overcome with pain, others with relief… the vast majority with a touch of indifference.

Many Cuban immigrants have advised their relatives in Cuba, because the news was broadcast at a time when few were watching television.

In the most populous neighborhoods of Havana, many people are glued to the screens of their TVs to watch the programming that comes by illegal satellite dishes.

The phones start ringing … an echo of “ring ring” is heard everywhere.

Havana’s dawn seems never ending: it is long, silent, on edge…
Havana’s dawn seems never ending: it is long, silent, on edge…

The only thing Heard in central Havana is the sound of the truck that just went by to pick up the trash.

‘El Sexto’ Says Goodbye to Fidel Castro / 14ymedio

El Sexto’s graffiti after the death of Fidel Castro. (14ymedio)
El Sexto’s graffiti after the death of Fidel Castro. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 26 November 2016 — The artist and graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, known as ‘El Sexto’ (The Sixth), heard the news of Fidel Castro’s death while he was on Havana’s Malecon. “People kept doing what they were doing, talking, partying, when the police started to show up,” he says, of those first hours after the news. The artist irreverently took advantage of the situation to leave a brief message on a wall: “Se fue” (He’s gone).

As the sun rose, the graffiti remained defiant and accurate in the eyes of the silent passers-by. “The exterior dictator has died, but the interior dictator still remains inside many Cubans,” Maldonado said in a telephone conversation with 14ymedio.

El Sexto’s graffiti is the first demonstration outside the expressions of mourning organized by officialdom. Calm, caution and silence have spread as more Cubans have heard about the death of the former president.

The Last Death of Fidel Castro / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar

Fidel Castro at a meeting with civilian workers of the Ministry of Interior and the Revolutionary Armed Forces. (Revolution Studio)
Fidel Castro at a meeting with civilian workers of the Ministry of Interior and the Revolutionary Armed Forces. (Revolution Studio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 26 November 2016 — As expected, the news of the death of Fidel Castro was announced by his brother Raul, in a brief official statement to the people of Cuba and friends around the world.

While his biographers are careful to detail that he survived hundreds of alleged attacks, no one can keep count of the innumerable times that his death circulated as a rumor or even as a headline, starting with those left him for dead after the attack on the Moncada barracks, or after landing of the yacht Granma on the coast of eastern Cuba. continue reading

Sixty years to the day after the morning of 25 November 1956, when the historic yacht sailed from Tuxpan, Mexico, events have changed the significance of that anniversary to inscribe the date, as of today, as the moment when the hisotiral leader undertook his “ultimate journey.”

The question so often formulated, of what would happen after the physical disappearance of Fidel Castro, will soon have its inexorable answer. Obviously, it will not have the dramatic effect it would have had, had it happened when he was in command of the rudders of the country, as was on the point of happening in June of 2006 when he had to “provisionally” delegate all his responsibilities to his brother Raul.

Although the impact has been ameliorated by a decade of relative absence, in one way or another his real death marks a before and after. Especially for the decisions that his heir must take in his last year in office. From this point, the argument that this or that cannot be done because “the boss” would not agree, ceases to have any meaning. No one will now have any doubt about who rules Cuba

Now begins the prolonged stage of competing panegyrics and diatribes. Adulators and detractors will bring to light their long sharp conclusions, will once again relate the anecdotes that earned him glory and blame; they will recall the legends and jokes, epithets and nicknames.

Cuban television will have already prepared a selection of his historic moments, the best pens of the national Parnassus will publish poems and compose songs, and then will come the anniversaries, and sooner or later the generation of those who never knew him will exceed that who saw him triumphantly enter Havana, deliver his interminable speeches, make his unappealable decisions.

The contemporaries of Elian Gonzalez will perhaps remember that 17 years ago, a day like this 25 November, that child rafter was rescued almost miraculously in the Straits of Florida. This coincidence obliges us to think of Charon, the mythical boatman who leads souls to their final destination. This ship will not sink. Fidel Castro is dead. Sadly for some and joyfully for others, this time it’s true.

Activist In Exile: It Is Sad That a “Tyrant” Dies and Freedom Doesn’t Come

Ramon Saul Sanchez, president of the Democracy Movement. (14ymedio)
Ramon Saul Sanchez, president of the Democracy Movement. (14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerEFE/via 14ymedio, 26 November 2016 — Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the Cuban exile organization Democracy Movement, lamented today that the death of a “tyrant,” as he defines Fidel Castro, will not mean “freedom for the people of Cuba”.

“It is the greatest sadness that I have in my heart,” the activist told EFE; like many others in Miami the news of Castro’s death got him out of bed. continue reading

“I wish I could tell you that the tyrant’s death is people’s freedom,” but in the case of Cuba is not so “because they (the Castros) managed the succession very well.”

According to Sanchez, if Castro had died while in the exercise of power, it could have sparked a revolt in Cuba to demand freedom, but as his brother Raul is in office, the impact will not be the same.

For the leader of the Democracy Movement, Fidel Castro is a symbol of terror that Cuba has suffered for almost 60 years and his legacy is “fear, prisons, pain, rafters, etc…”

Food Prices Rise Despite Price Caps / 14ymedio, Zunilda Mata

The Egido Street market still displays prices based on supply and demand. (14ymedio)
The Egido Street market still displays prices based on supply and demand. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 24 November 2016 — The seller doesn’t even need to advertise his wares. He just stands at a corner with several strings of onions and buyers crowd around him. Six months after the imposition of price caps for more than twenty farm products, shortages and the high cost of food continue to mark Cubans’ daily lives.

The measure, approved in May of this year, for state markets and those managed by cooperatives, regulates the prices of 23 products, to avoid “the enrichment of intermediaries.” In practice, however, this government decision had not managed to curb rising prices, which are expected to reach historic highs by the end of the year. continue reading

At the intersection of 19th and B Streets, in the Vedado neighborhood, one market has earned the epithet of “the rich people’s market.” Some also call it “the museum,” because it’s “look but don’t touch,” due to its high prices. The place has a variety of products far beyond the average offered by markets across the island.

The capped process still have not yet reached these kinds of markets, where private producers sell their merchandise. A pound of boneless pork has varied between 40 and 50 Cuban pesos for months, two days’ salary for an engineer. “We sell the meat here depending on how it comes to us,” explains Yulian Sanchez, the market’s administrator.

Opinions among customers are divided on the government’s measure. “There’s no one here who eats beef or even cracklings,” an old woman complained this Tuesday at 19th and B, while looking for oregano to cook some beans. “These prices are unthinkable for people,” she said, expressing her support for price caps on all the markets of this type.

Other customers fear a possible extension of price regulations. “What will happen is that the best things will disappear,” says Roberto, a self-employed workers who regularly buys fruit at 19th and B. “The minute they capped prices, onion disappeared,” he said.

Among the foods with regular prices are also beans, taro, cassava, bananas, yucca, sweet potatoes, lettuce and pumpkin. In markets where price controls are already in place, products cannot be sold for more than the prices established in a resolution of the Ministry of Finance and Prices.

An army of inspectors verifies that the stands display the regulated prices and apply fines to offenders that can range from 100 to 700 Cuban pesos.

A few yards from Havana’s Capitol building, the Egido street market still displays prices based on supply and demand. Four tomatoes can cost 50 Cuban pesos, a third of the monthly pension of Oscar Villanueva, a retired construction worker looking over the market stalls on Tuesday.

“With Christmas and New Years it is normal to raise prices, but since these are already quite high, we have to prepare for the worst,” he says.

Anxiety in anticipation of these holidays is apparent among the stands of the central market. The government has informed the sellers that as of this coming January there will be a system of price regulation for several products.

“This is the only place where you can find a variety of fruit. If they cap the prices it will be like the others,” says Villanueva.

Board with prices for the day's offerings in the EJT Market at 17th Street and K, in Havana. (14ymedio)
Board with prices for the day’s offerings in the EJT Market at 17th Street and K, in Havana. (14ymedio)

The quality of the products at the Youth Labor Army (EJT) market at 17th and K, run by the Armed Forces, is very different from “the rich people’s market,” a distant relative of the Egido Street market.

Many consumers agree that price caps are often at odds with the quality of products. “The fruits they sell are always green and the root vegetables are covered with dirt,” says a regular customer of the market in Vedado. The woman recognizes, however, that the prices in other markets “can’t go on like this, because soon we’ll need a wheelbarrow full of money to buy food for a week.”

“Now they have one-thousand peso notes to fix that problem,” a nearby vendor jokes with the woman.

The hopes of many are pinned on the reopening of El Trigal market in January, the only agricultural wholesale market in al of Havana, which in the middle of this year was closed for “irregularities” in its operation. But it is still unknown if the government will maintain the price caps, sustain supplies in the market stalls, and improve the quality of the offerings.

Cuban State Security Prohibits Third Meeting Of Coexistence Studies Center / 14ymedio

The director of the Center for Coexistence Studies, Dagoberto Valdes. (Facebook)
The director of the Center for Coexistence Studies, Dagoberto Valdes. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 25 November 2016 — The meeting of the Center for Coexistence Studies (CEC) scheduled for Saturday in Pinar del Rio has been prohibited by State Security, as reported two officers to the organization’s director, Dagoberto Valdes. The men visited the house of the Catholic layman and they assured him that “high command” would not allow holding the event, the intellectual told 14ymedio.

The meeting, the third of its kind, had as its theme Culture and Education in the Future of Cuba: vision and proposal. The organizers expected the participation of about 20 people, most of them from other provinces.

One of the officials said he was Major Joaquin, who was also present at the last interrogation to which Valdes was summoned. Among the arguments presented for the prohibition of the meeting was that it had been scheduled to take place 72 hours before the anniversary of the landing of the yacht Granma, which brought Fidel and Raul Castro and other revolutionaries from Mexico.

The major also said that those invited to the meeting were “prominent counterrevolutionary ringleaders,” but without giving details. Valdes, who is also director of the magazine Convivencia (Coexistence), questioned the reasons why the Government to considers dangerous a meeting to talk about education.

Last September the CEC had to cancel a meeting on community issues, when two participants from Cienfuegos were intercepted and forced to return to their province.

The Coexistence Studies Center organizes training courses for the citizenry and civil society in Cuba. The organization operates independently of the State, the Church and any political group.

Dagoberto Valdes Recounts His Conversation With Cuban State Security / 14ymedio, Dagoberto Valdes

Cuban intellectuals and artists from both sides of the Florida Straits in a meeting organized by the Center for Coexistence Studies. (File 14ymedio)
Cuban intellectuals and artists from both sides of the Florida Straits in a meeting organized by the Center for Coexistence Studies. (File 14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Dagoberto Valdes, 25 November 2016 — At the stroke of noon today, 25 November 2016, two officials from State Security came to my house, Major Joaquin, who participated in my interrogation on 27 October, and another official.

Major Joaquin said that they came to inform me that I would not be permitted to hold the meeting planned by the Center for Coexistence Studies for this weekend, the 26th and 27th of November, because this is considered a provocative activity, because those invited are “ringleaders of the counterrevolution” because of doing so barely hours from the 60th anniversary of the landing of the [yacht] Granma [that brought Fidel and Raul Castro and other revolutionaries from Mexico]. continue reading

I asked them what they meant by a provocative activity and being “counterrevolutionary ringleaders,” because Coexistence is a project of study and thinking for the good of Cuba, and does not engage in provocations nor consider people to be “ringleaders.” These meetings are to think about solutions and proposals for the progress of our Nation and, in this specific meeting, it is to study the theme “Culture and Education in the future of Cuba.” He responded that it was an order from the high command of the Country and they would follow what is established, when and how they considered appropriate.

I asked if they were closing Coexistence, they told me no, but they would evaluate each activity we organized and would act as appropriate. I stated that I considered they were already carrying out the threat received at the interrogation summons from less than a month ago and which they assured me that “starting from today your life is going to be very difficult.”

Thus, continues the harassment of the Coexistence Studies Center that the Cuban authorities began as of 1 September 2016.

Dagoberto Valdes Hernandez

Director, Center for Coexistence Studies

Police Confirm To ‘El Sexto’ He Can Not Leave The Country / 14ymedio

Danilo Maldonado, known as El Sexto (The Sixth). (Artist File)
Danilo Maldonado, known as El Sexto (The Sixth). (Artist File)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 24 November 2016 — Police informed the graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado – known as ‘El Sexto’, (The Sixth) – that he can not leave the country because he is “regulated,” having been accused in a legal process due to a complaint by his ex-wife. He received the information within a few minutes of an official at the Zapata and C Police Station, in El Vedado, telling him the exact opposite.

The artist has attempted, this Tuesday, to travel to the United States after receiving a police summons, but was not able to board the plane. continue reading

El Sexto detailed to 14ymedi that earlier this week he received at the home of his mother, Maria Victoria Machado, a summons for 22 November for an “interview.” The uniformed officer who delivered the citation told the family that it was related to “a complaint for harassment” made by his ex-wife.

However, when he presented himself on Tuesday morning in response to the citation, police officials were not able to give him any more details about the presumed accusation. Maldonado tried to travel that same day, but at the airport an immigration official confirmed that he was “regulated” by the National Revolutionary Police (PNR).

On Thursday the artist went to the Vedado police station to demand an explanation of his case. There they told him he could not travel, but a few minutes later he received contrary information.

El Sexto was arrested in Havana on Christmas Eve of 2014, when he proposed to stage a performance with two pigs he had painted with the names of Fidel of Raul. On that occasion he spent ten months in Valle Grande prison without trial.

Political Arrests Increase / 14ymedio, Pedro Armando Junco

Reporter Sol Garcia Basulto was arrested on the night of November 3 when she was preparing to travel to Havana. (14ymedio)
Reporter Sol Garcia Basulto was arrested on the night of November 3 when she was preparing to travel to Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Pedro Armando Junco, Havana, 23 November 2016 — I learned via the internet that 14ymedio’s Camaguey correspondent, Sol Garcia Basulto, was illegally and arbitrarily arrested on the night of November 3 when she was travelling to Havana to get a visa for her passport.

As she herself relates, she had won a trip abroad for a journalism course. She would not qualify for enrollment in a Cuban university journalism school because her political ‘wood’ is not suitable for the construction of that ‘national informational edifice.’ Her case is not isolated. There are many young students of this profession whose careers are interrupted for the least ideological slip-up or who, when they manage to graduate, have doors to jobs closed on them. They are innumerable, the names of the recent graduates who have crossed the Strait or who are marginalized within the country and take on any self-employment that is often as distant from their abilities and aspirations as they ever imagined. continue reading

Sol’s case is in keeping with a repressive wave that is playing out across the Island against opponents and independent journalists in order to put a stop to that avalanche of popular dissatisfaction that is growing among the citizenry because that handful determined to complain is the only representation of the people’s discontent. The system is not content with excluding them from the official media – the only media accessible to the population – but intends to eliminate them because of new technologies that one way or another allow what’s happening within Cuba to be known.

The most significant thing about Garcia Basulto’s detention, if the objective was to prevent her trip abroad, is that they could have visited her at her home and withdrawn her passport; taken her off the bus at the Camaguey terminal before it took off; or even summoned her to the police station. However, they waited for the bus to leave the city, and then they stopped it in the middle of the road, boarded it and handcuffed her like a common criminal. This is one more kind of mistreatment that so many of the Cuban population suffers.

I know Solecito – as I call her – and I know that she is a young woman of character. She raises her daughter alone because the father is a prisoner. I am not unfamiliar with that journalistic aspiration that has not been able to develop, as I said before, because of its dissident tenets. I have seen her often and read her work in the independent magazine Cuba’s Time which, by the way, is not at all “counter-revolutionary” except when its collaborators touch a sore spot of some public official – I even think that the State could take the articles that are written there as a reference to discover the administrative deficiencies of many revolutionaries who bleed public assets for their own benefit, as is well known.

I am at once saddened and indignant that the changes of openness promised to the people are the object of a double standard – to use this phrase that they like so much – and that now that the president general assures that there are no political prisoners, they stop and humiliate those who don’t submit to the system. It is possible that there are no political prisoners in Cuba; but political arrests increase daily.

The bad time that they gave to Solecito will not change her way of thinking but will increase her condemnation of those who oppress her. Maybe a friendly and convincing attitude together with facilitating her trip would have made her change her view and respond empathetically when the time came to practice non-professional journalism. But instead, the sad and regrettable event has brought to international light a new name that will have to be taken into account from now on.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel