14ymedio – Page 555 – Translating Cuba

The Second Cold War / 14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner

The icy look with which Barack Obama demonstrated the state of bilateral relations to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. (EFE)

14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 25 December 2016 — Exactly one quarter of a century ago, the Soviet Union disappeared. The hecatomb occurred on Dec. 25, 1991, the direct consequence of the prior (and failed) coup in August of that year. Vladimir Putin believes that it was the worst disaster that has happened to his country, but at the time most of the Russians perceived it as something convenient.

I remember it clearly. Around that time, I visited Moscow rather frequently to take part in academic acts leading to discuss the convenience of ending the costly subsidy to the bellicose Cuban satellite. continue reading

I remember being considerably intrigued after repeatedly hearing a nationalist slogan that ended up as a political reality: “We have to liberate Russia from the weight of the Soviet Union.”

The USSR had been born in 1922, stimulated by Lenin in the midst of a hopeful All-Russian Congress of Soviets. He added Marxist ideas to the imperialist spasm that, in a few centuries, had turned the small Principality of Moscow — then animated by the superstition of being the “Third Rome,” the heir of Bizantium’s Christianity — into the world’s largest nation, roughly speaking twice the size of the United States or today’s China.

To Lenin and his communists, the USSR did not intend to abandon the Russian imperial momentum, of which they were secretly proud, but to refocus it on a new ideological project of world conquest based on the harebrained ideology of Karl Marx, a German philosopher who lived much of his existence in London, a city where he died in 1883.

Naturally, the newly created structure — Russia plus Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Byelorussia and later Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tadjikistan — served for that purpose and for another one, of a defensive nature. The USSR would protect communist Russia’s conquests and would be another obstacle to impede a hostile reaction from nations that opposed the bloody revolutionary experiment that emerged in 1917.

To that end, Lenin and later Stalin (after Lenin’s death in 1924) helped to create a worldwide federation of communist parties whose primary objective was to protect Moscow, the motherland of communism, even if their national interests were in conflict with those of the distant Russia. Beyond staging a revolution carbon-copied from the Bolshevik upheaval, the grand task of the local communist parties was to serve the Russian Big Brother.

As things stood, the national communist parties, Moscow’s shields, took on the task of persecuting Trotskyites and exterminating those who disobeyed the directives from the Comintern, as people called the Third International, the structure also created and financed by the Russian communists for their own benefit, as they had done with the USSR.

This was seen very clearly in Spain during the Civil War (1936-1939) and even before, when the Cuban communist leader Julio Antonio Mella, a dissenter from the official line, was murdered on a Mexican street in 1929, a prelude to what would happen to Trotsky himself in 1940. Trotsky was assassinated by Ramón Mercader, a Spaniard in the service of Stalin, son of a fanatical Cuban communist woman.

A quarter of a century after the USSR disappeared, Vladimir Putin is threatening to rearm Russia’s nuclear arsenal to foil the shield of protective missiles with which the United States has endowed the West’s defenses and its own. His words were not only those of a nostalgic former communist but also those of a Russian convinced of his homeland’s hegemonic fate.

According to the former KGB agent, now his country’s political leader, the U.S. and the European Union cannot prevent the total destruction of their defensive barriers (and the E.U.’s) by an attack by the so-called triad: the effect of land-based nuclear missiles, the action of submarines carrying atomic bombs, and bombs dropped from planes.

Oddly, Putin’s bullying will have a positive strategic effect on the West. To begin with, Trump will realize that Vladimir Putin is not his friend, to the extent that Putin repeats Russia’s old imperial habits. Likewise, he will realize that NATO continues to be the best instrument to keep the planet from being incinerated by Moscow and will refrain from weakening or demolishing it.

Evidently, we’re at the start of the Second Cold War.

Note: English text is directly from CA Montaner’s blog.

Police Question Publisher Of ‘Coexistence’ About Her Travel Abroad / 14ymedio

Independent economist Karina Gálvez, editor of the magazine ‘Convivencia’ (Coexistence). (Courtesy)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2016 – Karina Galvez Chiú, editor of the magazine Convivencia (Coexistence) was questioned Saturday about her travels outside Cuba, during a meeting with the Department of Immigration and Nationality of Pinar del Rio. Two interior ministry officials demanded information from the economist about her participation in an internet governance forum in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Galvéz related to 14ymedio that the officers who questioned her identified themselves as Lieutenant Colonel Beune and Major Joaquin. “They tried to act friendly,” says the editor, but warned that police citations could be repeated every time she left the country. continue reading

“The whole time they wanted to make clear that they wanted a dialogue,” says Galvez, who replied that they could not consider it a dialogue when she was forced to attend.

“If they eliminated the white card [former exit permit] and the exit permit why do I have to go through this every time I leave the country,” the activist asks in reference to the immigration reform that came into force in January 2013, easing travel abroad which previously required every traveler to apply for a permit to travel outside the country, which often was not granted.

Recently Galvez also visited Washington D.C., a trip about which the interrogators wanted details.

Also summoned by the police this Saturday was the editor of Convivencia, Rosalia Viñas Lazo, who protested the date chosen. On December 24 many Cuban families gather around for Christmas Eve festivities, especially the Catholic community of the Island.

The officials agreed to schedule the meeting with Viñas Lazo for next Monday.

In recent months members of the magazine Convivencia have been subject to interrogations, pressure and warnings. Dagoberto Valdés, director of the independent publication, was subjected to an intense interrogation in October of this year in the police headquarters on San Juan Highway in Pinar del Río. “From today,” the uniformed officers warned, “your life will be very difficult.”

On November 25, State Security prohibited the meeting of the Center for Coexistence Studies (CEC), linked to the magazine, the topic of which was intended to be: Culture And Education In The Future Of Cuba: Vision and Proposal.

‘Feliciadades’: The Word the Taunts the Official Sobriety

On Cuban streets, the word “felicidades” is heard everywhere. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2016 — Few details reveal that it is Christmastime for Cubans. The austerity imposed this year-end, promoted from the Government due the recent death of former President Fidel Castro, but also because of the economic situation that has citizens worried. Faced with high food prices many opt for more low-key celebrations.

However, the word “felicidades” is heard everywhere in the streets. As if it were a “watchword,” Cubans offer good wishes accompanied with a complicit smile when they pronounce the word. Is it a way to mock the official sobriety? A sign of the desire not to let the Christmas festivities fade completely away?

Said in an undertone, shouted balcony to balcony, or intoned to the rhythm of Mexican music, like the “mariachi” in the photo, the phrases of this happy greeting take the place of the lack of garlands, the few houses in Cuban streets that display seasonal lights, and the absence of public dancing, otherwise typical of this time of year.

Cuban Faces of 2016: Carlos Lechuga, Filmmaker (b. Havana, 1983) / 14ymedio

The Faces of 2016: Carlos Lechuga, filmmaker. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2016 – Cuban Faces of 2016: The film Molasses (2013), director Carlos Lechuga’s debut, garnered much applause, but it was his second feature which placed him at the center of public attention. The film Santa and Andrés was excluded from the 38th edition of the Havana Film Festival, for political reasons.

The film tells the story of a homosexual writer who, at the beginning of the 1980s, is isolated from society in a remote spot on the east of the island. The authorities there assign a peasant woman to watch over him, but after a time, an unforeseen relationship between them is born.

Lechuga spoke out against the censorship of the film from his Facebook profile and also raising their voices were the directors Jonathan Jakubowicz, Fernando Perez, Enrique Alvarez and film critic Dean Luis Reyes, among others. However, the president of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), Roberto Smith, claimed a “question of principles” to prevent its distribution.

Santa and Andrés has been exhibited in prestigious festivals such as Toronto, San Sebastian and Chicago, but in the native country of its director it will have to circulate by alternative methods through the popular “weekly packet” in which Cubans receive much of their entertainment.

Cuba’s ‘Weekly Packet’ is Caught in the Crossfire / 14ymedio, Luz Escobar

A Cuban accessing the packet from his laptop. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 23 December 2016 – “Over my dead body!” echoes across a living room in Florida, Camaguey, Cuba, the day Jorge Angel discovered his family absorbed in the weekly packet. Now the wife sneaks to watch the reality shows that come in the weekly audiovisual compendium so as not to annoy the family’s Communist Party militant.

Criticized by officialdom, and in ever growing demand among customers, the packet is caught in the crossfire. After several weeks of programming on national television marked by tributes to the recently deceased Fidel Castro, demand for movies, TV shows and documentaries has skyrocketed in the informal market, while institutional hatred against the packet has intensified. continue reading

In Central Havana, the most densely populated municipality in Cuba, the impact of the packet is everywhere. Outside La Candeal bakery, two women were talking this Thursday about a Colombian telenovela that arrives in one of the 40 folders included in the popular compilation.

“This is the zone of satellite dishes and the packet,” explains a messenger for Copypack, a place that sells the product put together by an enterprise calling itself Omega. The young man says that over the last three weeks the number of clients has grown, as they “come looking for anything, so long as they don’t have to watch [state] television.”

Distributors have avoided including in the latest compilations material critical of the former president and the popular programs on South Florida channels. “There’s no reason to stick your finger in the eye of the beast,” says the employee.

The caution of the informal producers and distributors has not prevented the authorities from renewing their offensive against the most important competitor to official programming.

This Thursday the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) published an article on the subject, signed by journalist Miguel Cruz Suarez under the title The Sweet Poison In The Ostrich’s Hole. The author acknowledges that “thousands of Cubans” prefer audiovisual content that is distributed on flash memories and DVDs, a practice that exposes them to the “disparate scenarios of capitalist entertainment,” he says.

The reporter also points out the dangers of “cultural naiveté” opening the doors to “the guest of banality and consumerist egotism,” although he acknowledges that there are already “some manifestations” of this scourge on the island.

Among the bitterest enemies of the packet is Abel Prieto, Minister of Culture, and Miguel Barnet, President of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). Both have complained about the poor quality of content consumed, versus that of the state television programming, is content they consider “junk” and “pseudo-cultural products.” Prieto recently warned that the phenomenon could end up expanding in the country “the frivolity of the culturally colonized,” people who “have already given up the pleasure of intelligence.”

However, among ordinary people on the street there are other critics whose voices are also being heard. “The packet has become very cowardly, I don’t watch it,” says Jonathan, who has a degree in History. He explains that “it used to include more interesting and controversial topics, but now it is a little lightweight.”

Wilfredo and Niurka, a couple residing on Monte Avenue in Havana, share this view. “We decided to buy the satellite dish because we want to watch the news and Miami programs that no longer come in the packet,” the wife says. Both believe that the compendium “has become annoying, it’s already as ‘controlled’ at the (state) Cubavision channel.”

Youth Club Launches A ‘Special Backpack’ Dedicated To Fidel Castro / 14ymedio

‘My Backpack’ is the program created by the Youth Club to counter the success of the Weekly Packet (screen capture).

14ymedio, Miami, 22 December 2016 – “My Backpack,” which was created by the Youth Club to counter the influence of the Weekly Packet, will launch this coming December 27, with a wide variety of materials about the recently deceased former president Fidel Castro.

The idea of including materials about Castro started in the Youth Club network in Artemisa, a province in western Cuba, according to the local newspaper, El Artemiseño.

According to Lisandra Garcia, institutional spokesperson for the Provincial Directorate of the Youth Club of Computing and Electronics, the special Backpack includes a catalog for easy access to all content, with “historical content” games, “poems and TV shows.” continue reading

The catalog “will contain allegorical music, celebrity interviews, series like Memoirs of a Grandfather and 90 Reasons, the route of the recent “Freedom Caravan,” taken by Fidel Castro’s ashes between Havana and Santiago de Cuba, the political event in the Plaza, documentaries about Fidel’s impact on sports, health, education, culture… and in different countries,” says the newspaper.

“This program (My Backpack) is being created at the central level in Havana and distributed to each of the provinces, so if Artemisa makes a special about Fidel, it will be distributed throughout the island,” said a lab technician from a Youth Club who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals.

The lab technician also said that the purpose for which My Backpack was created is still far from completion. “Most people prefer the Weekly Packet because it is more fun and has more options,” he adds.

“The Packet is the internet of the poor, but My Backpack is still far from being done, it is like the internet of those who don’t even have the one for the poor,” he added.

Due to the strong ideological slant of programming on national television, the Weekly Packet — considered one of the largest sources of alternative employment on the island — has become indispensable in Cuban homes. It has been tolerated, more than accepted, by the powers-that-be, who on occasion have intervened to eliminate any kind of political content in these informal distribution networks.

In the days following Fidel Castro’s death, many of the audio-visual products distributed by private individuals omitted any critical reference to the figure of the former president.

“We have to compete with ‘Our Latin Beauty’, with concrete proposals, with ideas, with the coordinated work of teachers, artists, editors, journalists… giving people tools so they do not get ripped off,” said the minister of culture, Abel Prieto, referring to the Weekly Packet in April 2014 at the Eighth Congress of the Writers and Artists Union of Cuba (UNEAC).

“We have not yet succeeded in creating the cultured and free people [envisioned by] José Martí,” he added.

Cuban Faces of 2016: Gilberto ‘Papito’ Valladares, Barber (b. 1969) / 14ymedio

Gilberto ‘Papito’ Valladares, barber. (EFE)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2016 — Cuban Faces of 2016: At 16, Gilberto Valladares, known as Papito, began to work in hairdressing, self-taught. At the beginning of the nineties he worked as a hairdresser in the Habana Libre Hotel, but with the relaxations allowing Cubans to work for themselves, he decided to set up his own business in Old Havana’s Barrio Santo Angel.

Papito leads the ArteCorte project, popularly known as the Callejón de los Peluqueros, Hairdressers’ Alley, which involves several neighborhood entrepreneurs and promotes small-scale development. The owners of the private businesses devote a part of their earnings to improving the neighborhood and solving problems such as unemployment, the lack of recreational opportunities for children, and alcoholism.

In March of this year, Papito spoke with US President Barack Obama during the latter’s visit to Havana. In the Cuba-United States Business Forum, attended by business owners from both countries, the entrepreneur related his experience and said that the private sector is growing among Cubans, despite all the impediments and obstacles.

Cuban Faces Of 2016 / 14ymedio

14ymedio, 24 December 2014 — Putting a face to a year like 2016, in which several historical events indelibly marked the Cuban reality – for better or worse – is a task as difficult as it is risky. This newspaper has selected 14 people who stood out in the last twelve months, in science, activism, sports, politics or entrepreneurship, among many other sectors.

From today and throughout the week, we present to our readers these 14 faces, which contributed to make this year a singular compendium of achievements and failures, projects completed and others indefinitely postponed. They are those who chiseled the peculiar physiognomy of a year that is about to expire.

Cuba’s Ration Book Survives For Another Year / 14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez

A bodega of rationed products in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución municipality (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 22 December 2016 — At the end of this month the ration market quotas for January 2017 will go on sale. Cubans who depend on products distributed at subsidized prices will gather outside the bodegas, in long lines, for the 55^th anniversary of the ration book, whose elimination continues to be one of Raul Castro’s unmet projects.

In 2014, the average monthly salary on the island increased by 24%, to 584 Cuban pesos (some 24 dollars). Despite this increase, many families still depend on the subsidized prices maintained by the ration card. Their income does not allow them to pay the prices in the supply-and-demand markets or in the retail network of stores in Cuban Convertible pesos. continue reading

Different analysts and official functionaries have warned that the elimination of the ration book could cause a fall in the standard of living in the most vulnerable sectors of the population, among whom are the retired and families who don’t receive any additional income beyond their state salaries.

Among the Guidelines approved by the Seventh Communist Party Congress, last April, it was agreed “to continue the orderly and gradual elimination of the ration book products.” However, so far, the proposal has not gone into effect, in part because of the poor economic development experienced by the country in recent years.

Cuba’s gross domestic product will grow only 0.4% this year, its lowest level in the last two decades, as recently confirmed by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Faced with this reality, the government has not been able to improve people’s purchasing power or dismantle the rationed market.

The Government is faced with the dilemma of maintaining the enormous infrastructure and the hefty costs of prolonging the life of the ration book or suppressing it, with the consequent deepening of poverty for various social groups. Such a measure would have an undeniable political impact on a process that has been defined as a revolution “by the humble and for the humble.”

Officialdom has repeated on several occasions that it is preferable to “subsidize people rather than products,” but the rationed quota is still given to every citizen equally, even those who have reached an above average level of income. The practice has focused on removing products from the subsidized basic market basket.

Rice, grains, oil, sugar, salt, eggs, chicken and bread are some of the foods that are still subsidized, while other goods have been removed from the ration book altogether, including liquid detergent, bath and washing soap, toothpaste, beef and cigarettes.

During the 1970s and ‘80s it was virtually impossible to live without ration book products. This phenomenon resulted in, among many other ills, low internal migration and a greater control of the State over the citizens.

Currently, the mobility of the population to provincial capitals and especially to Havana has increased as a result of the easing of the policy on rental housing. The ability to purchase food and hygiene products outside the rationing system has also contributed to the phenomenon.

The emergence of a parallel market that includes state establishments and private bakeries has also been hugely important to the process of citizen independence. Ration book bread, a recurring theme in the “accountability meetings” of the People’s Power, a topic of critical analysis in the official press and a target of mockery for the majority of Cuban comedians, has lost its importance.

Families with better incomes have given up standing in the traditional lines to get bread for 10 centavos in national currency (less than one cent on the US dollar). They prefer to go to the private bakeries that offer a wide variety of products at unregulated prices.

The bodegas with empty shelves and a blackboard listing the products of the month have become, along with the old American cars that still circulate on the streets of the island and the billboards with political messages, among the photographic trophies taken by tourists as part of the social landscape of Cuba.

The disappearance of the ration book will have to wait until the completion of the gradual reforms announced by the authorities. There will probably be more who mourn its end than those who will celebrate it, but the day will come when some incredulous grandchild will listen to his grandfather repeat stories of “that era when everyone ate the same thing on the same day in the whole country.”

Opposition Leader José Daniel Ferrer Released / 14ymedio

José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 22 December 2016 — José Daniel Ferrer, general coordinator of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), was arrested on Thursday around one in the afternoon when he left the organization’s headquarters in the city of Santiago de Cuba, and released about 40 minutes later, as reported in a phone call to 14ymedio from Omar Fayut, a member of the opposition organization. Ferrer was taken in a bus, handcuffed, to the third police station in the city of Santiago de Cuba and then released, without further explanation.

The activist denounced that since the death of former President Fidel Castro “many members of the movement have been harassed” by the political police who maintain a cordon around Unpacu’s headquarters. continue reading

Last Sunday, some hundred members of the UNPACU were arrested when they tried to march to the shrine of El Cobre to demand the release of political prisoners. Most of the detainees were released after a few hours, but nine remain imprisoned.

Minutes before his arrest, Ferrer had denounced on Twitter that activists Ovidio Martín, Samuel Leblan, Juan Salgado, Yasmani Magaña, Belkis Cantillo and Moraima Díaz, among others, continued to be detained.

Carlos Amel Oliva, a member of Unpacu, maintains that “the threat is constant” and that since Monday the headquarters remains besieged with police officers “stationed on the corners.” The young man explains that the soldiers “put up fences to prohibit the access of any type of vehicles.”

The arrests and police cordons are in addition to the searches of at least 13 houses of Unpacu activists.

The last report of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) said that during last November there were at least 359 arbitrary arrests of peaceful dissidents on the island. That is roughly one hundred fewer than in October but the independent organization warns of possible repression after the death of former President Fidel Castro on November 25.

On Your Marks, Get Set…Trump / 14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez

Many Cubans must dispose of all their property in order to pay for a plane ticket and to migrate by air. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 21 December 2016 – Walking around the block with a suitcase in hand has been added to the rituals to mark the end of the year, as a plea to be able to travel outside the country. Many Cubans fear, however, that the situation is becoming complicated with the pending arrival of Donald Trump to the White House.

The president-elect of the United States has been so contradictory in his declarations about Cuba that no one knows what will happen between the two countries when he is installed in the Oval Office. Cubans on the island seem less concerned about a possible setback in the diplomatic thaw, than about the loss of their immigration privileges. continue reading

The debate over the repeal of the Cuban Adjustment Act, which awards benefits to migrant Cubans arriving in the United States, could put an end to the dreams of many in the new year. Foreign consulates in Havana, especially those of Latin American and European countries, have seen a surge in visa applications.

“We are overworked,” the custodian of the Mexican consulate site in the Miramar neighborhood told 14ymedio. Outside the building, Roberto, who prefers not to give his last name, managed to get a temporary visa to travel to the land of the Aztecs. This Thursday he will fly to Cancun, the cheapest flight between the two countries. “I’m working against the clock,” he says, while finishing the bureaucratic paperwork before the journey.

Roberto has a long journey ahead of him, plagued with obstacles and dangers to reach the US border, but he feels confident. “My brother who lives in Miami is going to help me and pay for the whole trip,” he explains. “It will be much more expensive, but I have to get there before January 20th,” he says.

Trump’s inauguration date has become the goal in a marathon race for thousands of Cubans. People who in recent months have liquidated their possessions, managed to get a visa and are preparing to leave.

Most consulates close their doors at the end of December for the Christmas holidays, an element that contributes to the desperation.

Departures by raft have also increased. The US Coast Guard recently reported that since last October 1st, the beginning of the fiscal year, around 1,000 Cubans have tried to enter the US illegally by sea. For fiscal year 2016, which ended on 30 September, the figure reached 7,411, compared to 4,473 for the same period in 2015.

With this exceptional winter, without cold and with an ocean free of hurricanes, many Cubans embark on the route to Florida in makeshift crafts. Raul Castro’s government has redoubled its vigilance along the coast lately, but the rafters choose to leave from remote places, among the mangroves or the rocks.

“I don’t know if Trump will be good for us or not, but I’m not going to stay here to find out,” says Yusmila Arcina, who worked as an accountant for a state company until she decided to “make the leap.” The young woman considers herself fortunate, in part, for having obtained a work visa for the Schengen Area (a free movement zone made up of most of the EU countries and others in the area). From Europe, where she expects it will be easier, she hopes to get a tourist visa to travel to the US, using the old continent as a springboard to realize her “American Dream.”

“Yes or no, we have to take advantage now,” suggests the young women, who has no family in the United States. Arcina has paid for the paperwork and a plane ticket in the high season, which cost her around 2,000 Convertible Cuban pesos (roughly the same in dollars), with the sale of a mid 20th century Cadillac that belonged to her father. “That car has been my ticket to freedom,” she jokes.

Arcina’s boyfriend is stranded in Colombia waiting to take the route through the Darien Gap. The challenge for both of them is to reach US territory “before that millionaire gets into office.” Both hope “to watch the inauguration ceremony on local TV in Miami,” says Arcina. Trump has fired the starting gun, and each one, on their own side, has embarked on their migration journey.

What the Newspaper ‘Granma’ Can Change / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar

As of this Thursday, the official newspaper ‘Granma’ will have a new design with changes limited only to the visual. (EFE)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 21 December 2016 — The newspaper Granma announced that as of tomorrow, in Thursday’s edition, it will debut a new design. For the peace of mind of the most orthodox, the note concludes by warning that “the official organ of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party is being renewed, but it will remain the same.”

The modifications refer to the alignment of the headlines, more readable typography, better composition of the front pages and greater prominence of photographs. According to the paper itself, its new design “is more compact, more modern, more contemporary, and cleaner.” continue reading

What is striking is that the intention “to look like current times” will be limited to the visual aspect. Apparently, the paper will not stop practicing secrecy, political debate will remain absent, and criticisms will never be directed towards the highest levels of power. No one will question the legitimacy of the rulers or the viability of the system.

The change of image will coincide with the date when, 55 years ago, the end of illiteracy in Cuba was proclaimed, but the directors do not seem to understand that what its readers require from this press organ is precisely a change of philosophy, of its essence, in order to leave behind “the conceptions of the founding era.”

Only a profound political illiteracy can come to the conclusion that a newspaper at the beginning of the 21^st century should continue to be dogmatically governed by such narrow ideological guidelines.

Granma will continue to choose “positive” verbs, adjectives and adverbs for its national news and will select “negative” ones for the titles that refer to the rest of the world (excluding its allies). We will have to continue reading that in Cuba the harvests are growing, the goals are being exceeded, the programs are advancing without delays, meanwhile foreign economies are collapsing, unemployment only grows, and the richest intend to despoil the planet.

“The purpose of this redesign is to compete with ourselves and win,” confesses Granma in an act of utmost honesty. When an athlete runs alone on a track she always takes the trophies. It would be another kettle of fish if at the newsstands the readers could choose among several publications, if in citizens’ homes there were access to the internet and any digital news source that circulates in the world, without restrictions or censorship.

However, the notice that something changes is always welcome.

Maduro, Disciple of a School in Decline / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

The differences of style between the Fidel Castro and Nicolas Maduro are endless, but something more decisive separates them: Time. (Headline: To die for the fatherland is to live.) (Nicolasmaduro.org.ve)

14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 21 December 2016 – On television a speech by Nicolas Maduro reverberates. He is talking about international conspiracies, the enemy that wants to end the “Bolivarian” revolution and the “monetary mafias,” a refrain that recalls the deceased Cuban ex-president Fidel Castro, obsessed with blaming others for the disasters caused by his own decisions.

The differences in style between the two leaders are endless, but something more decisive separates them: Time. Decades have passed between Castro’s interminable oratory about Cuba and the Venezuela ruled by the erratic Maduro. continue reading

In that time, we Latin Americans have become suspicious of populist discourses and learned to reveal the seams of the redeemers, who hide authoritarians under their robes. Their political speeches do not work like they did before. Like those hackneyed verses that compare the eyes with the stars or the mouth with a rose, and that now only provoke mockery.

In these times, when from the podium the homeland is invoked too often, the spectrum of foreign interference is constantly dangled and results are never offered, this is the time to be on alert. If the leaders call on us to spill every last drop of blood, while they surround themselves with bodyguards or hide at some “zero point,” we have to cease to believe them.

A dose of skepticism immunizes against these pernicious harangues where it is explained that the country’s problems originate outside the national borders. Suspiciously, the whistleblower never takes any responsibility for the disaster and blames the failure on some alleged externalities and media wars.

Maduro was trained in the school of politics as permanent agitation, a school headquartered in Havana. To make matters worse, the Venezuelan leader has been a mediocre student, who interprets the original script with a lot of huffing and puffing, very little charisma and a huge dose of nonsense. His main blunder has been not to realize that the manual designed by Fidel Castro no longer works.

The Venezuelan leader arrived too late to take advantage of the gullibility that for decades made many people of this continent exalt dictators. His speeches resonate with the past, like bad poems, that neither move our souls nor win our affections.

Last Imports Before Cuban Customs Raises the Duties / 14ymedio

Technology imports overwhelms the luggage rooms in the Havana airport. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 20 December 2016 — Jose Marti International Airport in Havana is busy. The increase in tourists, the avalanche of foreign journalists who came to the island on the occasion of the death of Fidel Castro and the proximity of the end of the year recharged its infrastructure. To this is added the completion, on 31 December, of the deadline for those who have not yet made their first non-commercial import of this year, paid for in national currency, the Cuban peso (CUP).

The “mules” who travel and buy, preferably in Panama, Cancun or Miami, are hurrying to bring everything in the country before the last day of the year. According to customs regulations, in force since September 2014, each resident in the national territory can make a single import annually, beyond what is considered personal effects, with the duties paid in Cuban pesos. Duties on merchandise brought in on subsequent trips must be paid in Cuban convertible pesos, which are worth 25 times more than Cuban pesos. continue reading

The most behind are in a rush and it is common to see Cubans arriving on flights from Interjet, Aeromexico, Cubana and Copa Airlines loaded with boxes filled with air conditioners, flat screen TVs and other appliances. The luggage collection rooms are overwhelmed with so many bundles and tourists look stunned at the parade of technology.

Cuba Sends A Shipment Of Vaccines To Syria Worth Almost One Million Dollars / 14ymedio

Arrival of cargo of medicines to Syria. (SANA)

14ymedio, 19 December 2016 — The Cuban government has sent Syria a shipment of nearly 240,000 doses of meningitis vaccine valued at $930,000.

The container, received this Sunday, is part of the agreement signed between Syria and Cuba last April that includes, in addition to medicines, an economic agreement to liquidate the debts of the Government of Damascus with the island.

Relations between the Syrian and Cuban authorities have been very close in the last five decades. President Bachar al-Assad and Raúl Castro have carried on, in recent times, the friendship initiated by Hafez al-Assad and Fidel Castro.

This is the second time in 2016 that Cuba has sent medicines to the Arab country, heavily devastated by almost six years of war.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: