14ymedio, Havana, 30 December 2016 – Cuban Faces of 2016: Joanna Columbié’s baptism by fire began in September of 2015, when the dissident was detained to prevent her participation in the 2nd National Council of the political movement Somos+ (We Are More). With degrees in History and Nursing, Columbié was working at that time as an education methodologist in the municipality of Céspedes in Camagüey. Police pressures led to the loss of of her state job.
Columbié runs Academy 1010, an independent educational project that seeks to develop leadership skills among its students with a view to the nation’s political future. In the opinion of the opponent, “it would be a fatal mistake to come to democracy with people not prepared to assume it.”
Last November, the second session Academy 1010 was severely suppressed by State Security and several students were arrested. Columbié denounced the police siege. She is a member of the opposition Democratic Action Roundtable (MUAD) coalition and participated as an observer in the referendum on peace accords in Colombia.
In Havana, there have been great shortages in construction materials since last November.
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 3 January 2017 – This week Luisa Camejo’s biggest headache will be getting the rebar she’s lacking. For months she’s been piling up stacks of cement, bricks and other materials to build an improvised room in the Cerro district of Havana. If she’s lucky she’ll soon finish her house built with her own efforts, in a year when the state plans to build fewer than 10,000 houses on the entire island.
The authorities recognize that the housing problem is the primary social need in Cuba – analysts estimate the deficit at some 600,000 homes – but in the last decade the number of homes built has fallen by 20%. In 2006, there was a historic peak of 111,373 housing units erected, but by the end of 2015 the total barely exceeded 23,000, more than half of which were built through private efforts. continue reading
With the gloomy economic announcements in the last session of the National Assembly, alarms have also been set off about the development of the housing fund in the short and medium term. In his speech to the parliamentarians, Minister of Economy and Planning Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz declared that in the next twelve months the state will only finish some 9,700 homes.
The areas prioritized for the new buildings coincide with the five municipalities affected by Hurricane Matthew in its passage across Guantanamo province, a region where more than 38,000 homes were totally or partially destroyed, and for which the government is raising international aid to rebuild them.
Homes built between 2006 and 2015. (14ymedio)
The Alaves Emergency Fund, established by the Provincial Council of Alava and the Municipality of Vitoria, in Spain’s Basque Country, just announced it will allocate 52,000 euros for schools and workplaces in the area of Cuba affected by the hurricane, but foreign aid is barely a drop in the ocean of Cuba’s housing deficit.
The difficult situation facing thousands of families has led many to stop waiting for the state’s construction plans – in the style of those undertaken in the years of the Soviet subsidy – and to seek their own solutions. A tortuous road, where the obstacles range from getting the materials to the cost of labor.
Luisa, 61, lived for six years in a place that she, her two daughters and her husband sneaked into. “There was no bathroom and we had to see to our needs in a can and empty it every day,” she tells 14ymedio. With the 2011 enactment of the law that allows the buying and selling of houses, Camejo acquired a small piece of land near Sports City, with a rickety wooden house on it
These last three years she has dedicated to construction, spending full time locating and acquiring the materials for the house, supervising the brick layers and making with her own hands everything from formwork to mortar. “We are living amid dust and sacks, but at least it’s mine,” she reflects. So far, she has spent 2,000 Cuban Convertible pesos, a decade’s worth of the salary from her former job as a teacher, from which she retired a couple of years ago.
In the middle of last year Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, vice-president of the Councils of State and of Ministers, made clear that the solution to the problem of the house in the country resides “in individual effort”
At the beginning of the century, Vice President Carlos Lage was the official functionary in charge of the housing program. The goal, in those years, was to build 150,000 houses a year to relieve the problem. Luisa hoped to benefit from an apartment in a microbrigade building built by a social contingent, but the brief economic flourishing the island experienced with aid from Venezuela was extinguished shortly thereafter.
“We realize we have to solve this problem ourselves,” she comments. Shortly afterwards, Lage was ousted and no other face of the government took on the public commitment to families needing a roof.
Instead, in the middle of last year, Ramiro Valdés Menéndez, also vice-president of the Councils of States and of Ministers, made it clear that the solution to the housing problem in the country resides “in individual effort.”
Despite the attention, the result is insufficient. The retired teacher is now worried about problems with the supply of construction materials, with the east of the island given priority, according to decisions made in the capital. “We have a lot of problems getting pipes and everything related to electrical installation,” she explains. She also needs “tiles, concrete glue and gravel.”
Since last November, there have been weeks of shortages of building materials in Havana, a situation that could slow even further the completion of construction projects. But Luisa seems determined to finishing her own personal plan. “This year my bathroom and my own shower, even if I have to tile it with my own hands.”
Norma’s mangoes fruited this year in January instead of summer. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Havana, 3 January 2017 – The flag that waves in the breeze or a cloudless sunrise on the first day of January, are seen by the people of Santiago as good omens for the year to some. But Norma Santiesteban, 77, has her own source of prognostication. The mango bush in her backyard is bearing fruits that, only in 2017, arrived outside the season, which is usually limited to the summer.
Cuban peasants have woven a thousand and one rural myths around mangoes. When the trees are loaded with flowers, the aged prophesy that it will be a year “with little food.” On the other hand, if in April the branches are bent under the weight of dozens of small fruits, then the guajiros smile and predict economic abundance for their fields.
Norma, born on La Fortuna Farm in the Sierra Maestra, still does not know how to interpret the whims of her backyard. At the moment she has begun to pick some mangoes, although they are still green, for fear that “the children of the neighborhood” will climb the tree to grab them.
With the alarming situation facing the Cuban economy and the somber forecasts announced in the National Assembly, Norma is taking advantage of the sudden whims of nature that has brought her mangoes in January.
The assembled should not have been all those excluded by the official discourse. Placard: “I am Cuba, Fidel, Revolution” (Twitter)
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 3 January 2017 — The images from the January 2nd parade and the march of the “combative people” provoked questions in many: Who are these Cubans who went to the Plaza of the Revolution? What characteristics define those who awoke at dawn, shouted slogans in front of the podium or marched diligently carrying a pro-government placard?
The official press defines them with positive adjectives – grateful, loyal, combative – and includes them in slogan of the day, which each of them repeated on Monday: “I am Fidel.” But it is also possible to draw the contours of their nature from what they are not, or at least what they should not be… continue reading
It is clear that in the wide esplanade, in the shadow of the Ministry of the Interior, missing were those who maintain political differences with the Government or those who did not have the desire to fake overwhelming revolutionary enthusiasm. Those who still had an end-of-year hangover and could not drag themselves out of bed so early are also on this list.
If we take at face value officialdom’s description of the faithful gathered there, nor should we concur that they include that “anti-social scourge who neither study nor work”
However, if we take at face value officialdom’s description of the faithful gathered there, nor should we concur that they included that “anti-social scourge who neither study nor work,” a group whose principle ideology is survival and who label “on the left” (as in “under the table”) everything that is done outside the law to survive the rigors of daily life.
It is assumed that those in the Plaza included none of the many who traffic in tractor and bus fuel, “diverted” from those uses. Nor even the negotiators in gas and oil “extracted” from electricity generation equipment, freight transport and state-owned vehicles, who resell the product to the drivers of private vehicles.
In that mass of inflamed people one assumes there were no faces of those who sell food or personal hygiene products “diverted” from kindergartens, hospitals, schools, workers’ cafeterias and even prisons and military units. Because “these kinds of people” had no place in a march called for the unimpeachable.
Under that logic, among the combative construction workers none of those who marched feed the black market with cement, sand, bricks, bathroom fixtures, cables, electrical outlets and all the other things extracted from state-owned works. Not to mention those who commit the crime of buying “diverted” resources to repair their homes.
Among the seniors, who represented those who worked on the literacy campaign, former militiamen or internationalist fighters, none should have been the elderly who buy newspapers from the state kiosks at 20 centavos and resell them for one peso. Nor would there have been any retirees who, at the doors of the markets, offer at retail prices cigarettes, plastic bags, coffee and spaghetti, taken from what they receive on the ration book, to round out their pensions.
Among the thousands of children and teenagers who waved flags, carried banners and chanted slogans there was no space for those who sell their bodies to tourists or who dream of leaving the country
The list of those who – under no circumstances – should have been part of the rally organized by the government on Monday could be extended ad infinitum. In those tight ranks there was no room for the unproductive, for negligent service workers, for those who manipulate weights in the markets, or for the administrators who fix the numbers before the auditors show up.
Among the thousands of children and teenagers who waved flags, carried banners and chanted slogans there was no space for those who sell their bodies to tourists or who dream of leaving the country, whether by crossing the Straits of Florida or crossing the jungles of Central America, not to mention through a loveless marriage to a foreigner.
Nor expected to show up would be those who buy the test for admission to higher education or falsify a medical certificate to escape military service.
And also missing should be those who star in that phenomenon the official media calls a “crisis of values” and exemplify it with the use of “symbols alien to our culture,” like celebrating Halloween, preferring soccer over baseball or wearing a T-shirt with the American flag on it.
If none of these types excluded from the official discourse, stigmatized by propaganda and condemned by the system, marched this Monday… who, then, filled the Plaza?
Jose Ramirez Pantoja, Holguin Radio journalist and author of the blog Verdadecuba. (Facebook)
14ymedio, Havana, 27 December 2016 – Cuban faces of 2016: The journalist José Ramírez Pantoja starred this year in one of the most publicized cases of censorship within the official press. The reporter was fired from his job at Radio Holguin after being accused of printing on his personal blog the words of Karina Marron, vice president of the official newspaper Granma, who expressed concern at a union meeting about a possible social explosion like the 1994 Maleconazo.
Ramírez Pantoja says that the injustice committed against him has led him to consider the need for a journalism that is more serious and committed to people’s needs.
The Granma Memorial originally opened its doors on December 1, 1976. (Tripadvisor)
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 30 December 2016 — The Granma Memorial, an open-air exhibition that shows the namesake* yacht along with other vehicles and weapons, reopened Thursday in Havana after undergoing a comprehensive restoration to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the expedition led by Fidel Castro.
The site, located on the grounds of the former Presidential Palace which is now the Museum of the Revolution in Old Havana, was completely renovated with an “attractive museography” that changed the way the pieces are exposed, according to a statement from the state-run Cuban News Agency. continue reading
The repairs included a new lighting system that “offers greater splendor, a better image and perception of the historic yacht,” the replacement of hydraulic networks and air conditioning, work on the garden and the paving of the interior street.
The Granma Memorial was inaugurated on 1 December 1976, with a collection which highlights the yacht in which Fidel Castro, his brother and current president Raul Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara and others traveled from Mexico to Cuba.
The boat is displayed in a heated glass facility “for better preservation.”
The Granma left from Mexico with more than 80 men who landed in eastern Cuba on 2 December 1956, to become the germ of what later would be the Rebel Army with Fidel at the head, and which would triumphantly enter Havana a little more than two years later.
The ship is considered a symbol of the Revolution and its replica will be in the parade on 2 January 2017, in the mass march that will celebrate the anniversary.
This commemorative parade of the triumph of the Revolution is usually held every December 2nd, but this year was postponed a month due to the mourning period for the death of Fidel Castro on 25 November at age 90.
Also carrying the name Granma is the country’s most important newspaper, the organ of the ruling Communist Party of Cuba (the only party permitted in the country), and a province on the east of the island.
The site, which receives more than 500 visitors daily, also shows pieces related to historical events of the 20th century on the island, including two aircraft, one of them captured by the Rebel Army during the fighting in the eastern Sierra Maestra.
The second, a Seafury model, was one of the few aircraft of the revolutionary fleet that faced the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
Also on display are vehicles used in the last war by Camilo Cienfuegos, Ernesto Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro and Juan Almeida, some with bullet holes.
Also featured is the red truck that carried a group of young people who stormed the Presidential Palace and attempted to assassinate then President Fulgencio Batista, on 13 March 1957 and the turbine of an American U-2, shot down by the Cubans while it was spying on the island during the Missile Crisis in October 1962.
Nearby is the Monument to the Eternal Heroes of the New Homeland, with an “eternal flame” that was lit by Fidel on 19 April 1989.
*Translator’s note: The yacht, owned by an American in Mexico, was named ‘Granma’ when the revolutionaries bought it and they did not rename it; instead they ended up naming things in Cuba after that American’s affectionate moniker for his grandmother.
Raúl Castro with senior level government staff greets the crowd from the stand in the Plaza of the Revolution. (EFE)
14ymedio, Mario Penton, 2 January 2017 – With a military march and a “parade of the fighting people” the new year dawns in Cuba. This time there were no tanks in the Plaza of the Revolution, but thousands of Cubans were taken there from their workplaces in order to demonstrate unity with the Communist Party and the figure of Raul Castro in the absence of his brother Fidel, who died on 25 November of last year.
The event was dedicated to the young, “those who are carrying on the work of the Revolution,” to the deceased leader and to the disembarkation from the yacht Granma, which in 1956 brought a handful of revolutionaries from Mexico to Cuba who overthrew the government of Fulgencia Batista. All this in a year that is called ‘complicated’ after a fall of 0.9% in the GDP, which reflects the failures of the Raulist reforms and resurrects the old ghosts of the Special Period. continue reading
“It is ironic that they dedicate this demonstration to young people, because they are the first ones who are escaping to wherever they can because that don’t see hope or any possibility of progress in Cuba,” says Manuel Perez, a young Cuban psychologist who emigrated to Argentina looking for better work opportunities.
Residence awarded to Cubans in the U.S. (2010-2015). Upper line: Number of residents. Lower line: Number of arrivals by land.
Carlos Amel Oliva, youth leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), shares this view.
For Oliva, the Cuban government is in the midst of “a campaign whose strategy is well thought out” to revive nationalism among young people, following the ideological vacuum left by the reestablishment of relations with the United States.
“Young people are indifferent to these old demonstrations. The only thing that interests many young Cubans is to escape to any country to find what they cannot find in theirs,” he says.
In the last three years more than 100,000 Cubans have arrived in the United States by various means to avail themselves of the Cuban Adjustment Act and obtain residence in that country. A large proportion of these migrants are young or of working age, which increases the problem of the aging of the population on the island. In 2025 Cuba will be the oldest country on the continent in demographic terms.
Negative migration balances, coupled with a low level of fertility, the already obsolete just-opened technology park, and the scarcity of foreign investments, which amounted to scarcely 6.5% of what was planned, constitute serious problems facing the country. Added to that is the crisis in Venezuela, the Cuban government’s main ally, which has substantially reduced trade with the country, according to official data.
Cuban trade with Venezuela. Blue: Commercial trade with Venezuela. Green: Cuban exports to Venezuela. Red: Imports from Venezuela.
“When the enemy disappeared, there was no one to fight against. That is something that should be given much attention and hopefully the US administration will maintain an intelligent discourse and offer no reason to revive the old Cold War discourse,” says Oliva, 29, who opposes the regime. This Unpacu leader believes that the warlike message was also addressed to the US government.
For Arnoldo A. Muller, president of the Social Democratic Co-ordination of Cuba, a Cuban opposition organization attached to Cuban Consensus, an umbrella organization that brings together several organizations in exile, the January 2nd march “is a demonstration of strength.”
“They want to maintain the continuity of the system and do not want change. It is a message about who has military control over the country, the regime makes it known to the people that Castroism continues,” he says.
The military parade was barely able to count on some troops trying to recall the significant moments of Cuban independence battles and the struggles against the government of Fulgencio Batista. Transportation in the city was focused on bringing thousands of people from their workplaces, and there were reports of traffic jams due to the terrible state of Havana’s main arteries.
From the province of Pinar del Rio, Dagoberto Valdés, director of the Center for Coexistence Studies, adds that military parades “are a throwback to the culture of war” and “the legacy of a history that has been written about warlike events and not about the development of civil society.”
For Valdes, it is a manifestation “of that tradition that has believed that the triumph of the Cuban nation is to make it strong as a Republic in Arms and not as a Republic of Souls.”
Valdés believes that, on the contrary, it is necessary to “change the logic of war for that of peace, the inheritance of war for the ethical inheritance, the building of the republic over virtue and love.”
Meeting in Havana between the teams negotiating the peace in Colombia. (@ComputerPazGob) (TranslatingCuba Ed. note: … the all-male teams….)
14ymedio, Sergio Segura, 2 January 2017 – Cuba is no longer subordinate to the dictates of the man who imposed his will for more than half a century. The time has come to talk to the people, to recognize and give public voice to those who manifest different opinions.
The departure of an autocrat by natural death has very positive precedents in history. Changes occur peacefully, through dialogue and consensus. The most beautiful of these transformations occurred in Spain after the death of Franco. The case of Pinochet in Chile could also light the path of those who remain at the head of the Cuban Government at this time. The end of Ceausescu and his family, for refusing to hand over power to a people tired of his dictatorship, was pitiful.
It is not violence that Cubans on the island want, as they aspire to maintain several social achievements created by the Revolution in a new Republic, where the dream of José Martí – whom we Cubans of all stripes call our Apostle – is realized: With all and for the good of all.
It would do no harm to advise the opposition groups – which are many – to send a request to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos asking that, in reciprocity for the attitude of the Cuban Government as a mediator for his country to achieve a final peace, he brings to a table of dialog in Colombia, in a respectful and impartial manner, negotiators from the Cuban regime and the country’s internal dissidence to reach a constructive agreement for the election of who will be, on 24 February 2018, the next president of our Republic.
Thousands of soldiers marched in lockstep on this 60th anniversary of the creation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. (EFE / Ernesto Mastrascusa)
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 2 January 2017 — The military parade this Monday for the 60th anniversary of the creation of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces concluded without the traditional display of antiaircraft rockets, armored tanks and heavy artillery. The martial parade, presided over by Raúl Castro, prioritized the display of troops over any display of military hardware.
Still sleepy after the holiday season, many Havanans were awakened by the noise of the salvos launched from the Plaza of the Revolution. With that signal, at barely seven in the morning, the first military parade after the death of former President Fidel Castro began, in a city paralyzed by the closing of streets and the gigantic mobilization.
The display of military force comes at a difficult time for the country’s economy. The recently concluded session of the National Assembly has confirmed that GDP fell 0.9% in 2016, and forecasts for 2017 are also not favorable, a context that has increased people’s criticism of the waste represented by this Monday’s military parade. continue reading
Thousands of uniformed soldiers marched in lockstep steps, along with elementary school students with their neckerchiefs and workers from different sectors under the motto “I am Fidel.”
“They threw the house out the window,” complained Raymundo, a pensioner who collects empty cans near the National Hotel to sell them as a raw material and feels that “the way things are right now, better to save even the last centavo.”
A little more than a mile away, thousands of uniformed soldiers marched in lockstep, along with elementary school students with their neckerchiefs and workers from different sectors under the motto “I am Fidel.”
The result was a peculiar combination of troops and civilians, a mixture of military parade and people’s march that lasted for less time than in previous years, barely an hour and 40 minutes.
Raul Castro remained on the dais for the entire exercise, surrounded by senior government officials, but left the main speech to Jennifer Bello Martinez, president of the University Student Federation (FEU). The young woman, who has risen rapidly in officialdom, was named as a member of the Council of State in December 2015.
“No one can make us forget our history, nor the symbols of this people’s resistance,” bellowed Bello from the rostrum. She alluded to the words spoken by Barack Obama during his speech at the Gran Teatro in Havana last March when the US president said he knew the story of the long dispute between the Cuban and US Governments but refused to remain “trapped” in it.
Those who hoped that this Castro parade feature a proud display of military paraphernalia had to content themselves with some modernized AK47s and rifles with telescopic sight for the Special Troops. Apart from that, the Cuban Army barely showed its armament.
Long gone are the times when the country could allow itself, thanks to the free supply from the Soviet Union, to be the most well supplied armed forces among Latin American countries. The great military campaigns in Africa were also in the past, and the economic situation of the island barely allows them to maintain their obsolete means of combat.
Nevertheless, Cuba continues to spend a huge amount of resources sustaining its military apparatus. At the end of 2016, the Island ranked 79th in the list of military powers, according to the Global Firepower site, a privileged position in the Latin American context, where it is only surpassed by countries with much greater population and resources, such as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
At the end of 2016, the Island ranked 79th in the list of military powers according to the Global Firepower site, a privileged position in the Latin American context
In the absence of renewed armaments, officialdom has sharpened the level of ideological discourse in the last half year. A turn of the screw that has become more pronounced after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and the recent death of Fidel Castro.
The younger generations are the main target of this offensive.
The daughter of Damaris, 38, is a fifth grader in Las Timba neighborhood and was chosen to be part of the pioneers who surrounded the replica of the yacht Granma. “She had to go to the three trial runs at the end of December and today is the fourth time that she is in the Plaza for this activity,” says the woman.
The participation of the girl in the parade caused some clashes in the family. The mother did not want her to do it, but she does not want an absence to “single her out so early.” She acknowledges, however, that her grandfather is very proud she was chosen for the demonstration.
As they finished passing in front of the podium, the children hurried along and continued to a school on Ayestarán Street. There they shared a snack with soda, bread with a hot dog, and some goodies that revived them after a long sleepless night. “Now we’re going to bed because we’re dead,” confesses Damaris.
Elaine Díaz, director of Neighborhood Journalism. (Citizen Journalism)
14ymedio, Havana, 27 December 2016 — Cuban Faces of 2016: Elaine Díaz graduated with a degree in Journalism from the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana in 2008, she has worked as an assistant professor and maintains the blog La Polémica Digital (The Digital Debate). In an episode of the series Cuba’s Reasons, broadcast by officialdom to demonize critical voices, the reporter was presented by way of a counterpart to independent bloggers, who were defined in the program as “cyberterrorists.”
Díaz was the first Cuban woman to win a Nieman Fellowship in investigative journalism at Harvard University, and last year launched the site Periodismo de Barrio (Neighborhood Journalism), a publications centered on communities affected by natural disasters and others occasioned by the hand of man. Her site has been harshly criticized by officialdom, which has questioned how it is financed and the use of fundraising campaigns through Paypal.
In October this year Diaz was arrested with her team in Baracoa while reporting from areas affected by Hurricane Matthew. All were questioned, their belongings meticulously searched and they were deported to the capital. The authorities alluded to an alleged state of emergency in the east of the island.
In an editorial published later, Periodismo de Barrio denounced that, “There are no good and bad monopolies Any monopolization, made by the State, a person or a corporation, just curtails freedoms,” a reference to government control over all press media permitted in the country.
14ymedio, Havana, 26 December 2016 – Cuban Faces of 2016: Ariel Urquiola, a biologist and doctor of science, has participated in several research projects on Cuban biodiversity, especially related to marine and terrestrial species. He directed an international research project carried out between the University of Havana, the Museum of Natural History of Berlin and Humboldt University of Berlin on the origin and settlement of the Sierra de los Órganos in Pinar del Río.
This year Ruiz Urquiola was expelled from the Marine Research Center under the official charge of unjustified absences, but, according to the biologist, it is a plot against him because the the authorities of the scientific center do not consider him “trustworthy,” because of his political leanings.
In October of this year the biologist was arrested three times for demanding the medicines needed by his sister, a cancer patient who urgently needs te monoclonal antibody Trastuzumab, which must be supplied every 21 days. After a hunger strike and a vigil outside the Havana Oncology Hospital, Ruiz Urquiola managed to restart the administration of the drug to his sister.
Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca. (EFE)
14ymedio, Havana, 26 December 2016 – Faces of Cuba 2016: An economist with a degree from the University of Havana, Rodrigo Malmierca served in several diplomatic positions before being appointed Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment. This year has had a particularly intense agenda, trying to attract foreign capital to the island’s shrinking economy.
During the International Fair of Havana (Fihav), in early November, the minister acknowledged that, two years after the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, foreign investment goals have not been achieved and the country must correct its mistakes. The island demands “high rates of investment,” the official said.
Malmierca was the official face during the presentation of the new business portfolio, which includes 395 projects valued at more than 9.5 billion dollars, with a leading role in the tourism, oil, food and energy sectors.
A man waits in his ‘bicitaxi’ for a customer to tour the streets of Havana. (EFE)
14ymedio, Mario Penton, Miami, 30 December 2016 — “This is the last thing the ship brought,” you hear a young man say, to refer to one of the most recent products imported and sold on the black market in Havana. Being made abroad is synonymous with quality for many Cubans despite attempts to boost local production through state enterprise in a socialist model.
Decades have passed since the first time Cuba’s rulers said it was necessary to replace imports and increase local production to develop the country, a matter that the executive, presided over by the Castro brothers, has suspended year after year.
For the economist Omar Everleny Pérez, one of the gurus of the national economy, this is a fundamentally “ideological” issue. continue reading
“If the State would prefer to avoid paying the Vietnamese in dollars and allocate at least half of those resources to finance domestic production, it would not be necessary to import rice”
“If the state would prefer to avoid paying the Vietnamese in dollars and allocate at least half of those resources to finance domestic production, it would not be necessary to import rice,” Perez says.
However, Raúl Castro – recognizing that Cuba entered a recession this year, with a 0.9% drop in its gross domestic product – once again hopes to salvage the economy using the same formula that has failed for decades.
“It will be necessary to fulfill three decisive premises: to guarantee exports and timely collection of payments, to increase the national production to replace imports, and to reduce all nonessential expenses,” said Castro before more than 600 deputies in the National Assembly.
Exhortations to reduce imports began almost at the same time as the revolutionary government. The phrase can be found over and over in the speeches of the top leaders, but the figures published by officialdom show that, over and over, it has remained just words.
“Stimulating development and diversification of exports and taking advantage of opportunities to replace imports,” is reflected in the document Theses and Resolutions of the First Congress of the Communist Party in 1975.
In the documents of the Second Congress, celebrated in 1980, the same recommendations can be read almost verbatim, which remain unmet and are reformulated at the next Congress in 1986.
“The essential problem of the country’s economy in the five-year period 1981-1985 was that, although we had more than acceptable growth, it was insufficient where we needed it most, that is, in the export of goods and services and in the replacement of imports,” states the conclusive document of the Third Congress.
“When production increases often there is also an increase in the need to import intermediate products necessary for this production, such that it does not necessarily end up positively affecting the global figure for imports.”
Replacing imports is not a Cuban invention. It is a trade policy based on the premise that a country should try to reduce its dependence on the outside world through the development of its local industry, and it was an ideology in vogue in a post-war Latin America that sought to industrialize third world countries and promoted protectionism.
However, as the Cuban economist Antonio F. Díaz explains in a research paper at the University of Havana on the measurement of the effect of replacing imports (2015), it is not simply a matter of dispensing with imports to develop the local industry.
“It is a complex process,” explains Díaz, who states that the government’s progress in replacing imports cannot be effectively measured because of the absence of official statistics.
Total Exchange and Trade Balance in Cuba (millions of dollars)
“There has been growth in many of the sectors where there is the attempt to replace imports, but when domestic production increases, often there is also an increase in the need to import intermediate products necessary for this production, such that it does not necessarily end up positively affecting the global figure for imports,” he explains.
“Imports are always going to grow, as happens in all countries, but their replacement [with domestic products] as an economic policy is effective when economic growth is greater than the growth in imports,” the expert explains.
Cuba’s balance of trade over the last decades has shown a trend of increasing deficits, which accelerated in 2008 when the balance of trade was negative 10.57 billion pesos.
In the economic policy guidelines promoted by Raul Castro in 2011 as a guide to “perfecting socialism,” the replacement of imports is mentioned 20 times. The term is revisited in the update of those guidelines for the period 2016-2021.
The reduction of the immense Venezuelan subsidy, as well as the fall in the demand of the export of Cuban services abroad, can not be compensated with the increase of the tourism and the remittances
The document calls for “promoting an accelerated and effective process of import replacement, with mechanisms that stimulate and guarantee the maximum possible use of all the capacities available to the country in the agricultural and industrial sectors and in services and human resources.”
In 2015, Cuba reported a decrease of more than 1.5 billion dollars in exports, motivated to a large extent by the deterioration of economic relations with Venezuela, the island’s main trading partner. Official Cuban statistics reveal that the exchange between both nations decreased by more than 3.0 billion dollars in 2015.
The reduction of the immense Venezuelan subsidy (valued at its peak in more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day, part of which Cuba re-exported), as well as the drop in demand for the export of Cuban services abroad – in healthcare and other sectors – cannot be made up for through increases in tourism (3.8 million visitors) and remittances sent to Cubans on the island from family and friends abroad (more than 3.0 billion dollars).
For now it will be necessary to wait for the postponed plenary session of the Central Committee of the Party, originally scheduled for December 2016. The Central Committee must approve the Conceptualization of the Economic and Social Model and an Economic Development Plan to the Year 2030, in which surely the exhortation will be repeated to replace imports and strengthen local industry.
Today, different rituals will accompany the end of the year, but all are intended to lead to the same outcome: that 2017 bring better opportunities. (EFE)
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, 31 December 2016 — Before Silvio Lázaro moved to Havana from Guantánamo he had the tradition of burning a doll made out of straw and old clothes every December 31. However, in the capital he has replaced that custom with throwing out a bucket of water at midnight. Today, different rituals will accompany the end of the year, but everyone wants the same thing: for 2017 to bring better opportunities.
The National Assembly of People’s Power has just made a nefarious gift to Cubans. The parliament announced that the recession has taken over the country, expressed in a GDP in negative numbers: -0.9%. Cuba is facing a difficult economic scenario and the next twelve months are a mystery that few analysts dare to decipher. continue reading
Not even the bad omens and the austerity in celebrations imposed by the authorities after the death of the ex-president Fidel Castro, can put the brakes on the deeply rooted custom of the dinner on Saint Silvester’s Day, New yYear’s Eve. This morning you could still see many people carrying home tomatoes, some kind of drink and the little pork left in the agricultural markets.
Silvio Lázaro, 46, shows a special interest in celebrating. “My oldest son has everything prepared to travel to Mexico in the next few days,” he says. The young man will try to it to the border with the United States to reach that country and to avail himself of the Cuban Adjustment Act.
The family plans to change the habit of throwing a bucket of water from their balcony this midnight. “We are going to go out with suitcases and walk around the block so that everything goes well,” says the proud father. He does not hide that he is worried about the journey that his son will make and will even “light a candle so that the saints and orishas” will protect him.
A few yards from Silvio Lázaro lives a mother with a daughter who will get her degree in psychology next July. “This year she will achieve everything I’ve dreamed of,” says the woman, who works as a maid in a hotel in Old Havana. Her party tonight includes “grapes and cider,” which she bought thanks to tips given to her by some customers.
Despite the economic situation in the country, the mother of the future professional feels optimistic. “We have come out of worse things,” she reflects, although she acknowledges that during the last year it has been especially difficult “to buy food and find toiletries.”
A situation that could worsen, because as Raúl Castro clarified in his speech during the last parliamentary session this year, “it has not been possible to overcome the transitional situation we are experiencing in current payments to suppliers.” Imports of commodities could be affected by this delinquency.
The authorities limited the public dances that characterize the last day of the year and have emphasized the celebrations on January 1st, when the 58th anniversary of the Revolution is commemorated. On Monday, a military parade presided over by the Cuban leader will be the climax of official celebrations.
“There is nothing to celebrate, everything goes from bad to worse,” reflects Maurín, 38 and unemployed. The woman believes that “we are bottoming out” and for her family it has been especially difficult to acquire the ingredients for the end of the year dinner. Her brother, who is part of a medical mission in Caracas, has arrived this year to spend the holiday with his family.
“He does not want to return to Venezuela, nor do many of his colleagues,” says the woman. The doctor is greatly affected by the violence, the shortage of basic products and the restrictions of movement in the South American country. Among the few things he could bring on his trip were colorful garlands for the Christmas tree.
On centrally located G Street in Vedado, young people will also gather to bid farewell to the year. This December some have promoted a new custom to mark the date: having money in your hand just when the clock strikes midnight.
“That way it ensures that there is financial solvency for the next year,” says Daniela, a member of Havana’s Goth community, to 14ymedio.
“But it has to be dollars, euros or Cuban convertible pesos … with Cuban pesos it doesn’t work,” the young woman clarifies.
