Guillermo Farinas on hunger and thirst strike. (Courtesy / File)
14ymedio, Havana, 17 August 2016 — In a letter to Pope Francis, eight activists from the Anti-Totalitarian Forum (FANTU) have asked “his Holiness to take an interest” in the condition of regime opponent Guillermo Fariñas after 27 days on hunger strike.
The signatories are appealing to the Bishop of Rome to “keep Fariñas in your prayers” and said that the 2010 recipient of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is risking his life to demand “compliance with Cuba’s existing laws to stop the violence of some Cubans against others.” continue reading
Guillermo Fariñas is in “critical condition” according to several reports issued on Monday afternoon by Jorge Luis Artiles Montiel, known as “Bebo,” a spokesperson for the well-known dissident during his hunger strike.
Artiles Montiel told 14ymedio via telephone that Fariñas had slept “from the time the doctor left in the morning” until the afternoon visit of independent unionist Ivan Hernandez Carrillo, with whom he spoke for a few minutes.
The spokesperson for the FANTU leader said the opponent is now in a very delicate state in which “he sleeps for long hours, passes little urine and reports a lot of pain in his lower back and joints.”
In the early days of this month, Farinas was visited by a representative of the Holy See in Havana, José Manuel Alcaide, and the bishop of the diocese of Santa Clara-Sancti Spiritus, Monsignor Arturo Gonzalez Amador, who came to his house to show their concern for the health of the dissident.
During Fariñas’ hunger strike he has also been visited by Dana Brown, head of the Economic Policy Section of the United States Embassy in Havana and Raquel Gómez, minister counselor in the Spanish embassy.
Fariñas is demanding through his hunger strike that Raul Castro publicly commit to not repressing the Cuban opposition and to ending state abuses that affect the self-employed. He is also demanding a dialogue between the authorities and the Cuban opposition.
Since Farinas began his protest on July 20, he has been taken to the hospital twice, both times after becoming unconscious. In both cases he received intravenous hydration in the Arnaldo Milian Castro Hospital in the city of Santa Clara, and then returned to his home, where he is being looked after by his mother, who is a nurse.
Guillermo Fariñas has said previously he is willing to continue his strike “until the final consequences” if all of his demands are not met.
In its 23 years of work the City of Havana Office of the Historian has created more than 13,000 jobs directly and thousands indirectly. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Luz Escobar (Havana), Mario Penton (Miami), 16 August 2016 — “Do you see that building? Ten years ago it was full of stinking water, rats and trash. When people passed through the doorway a balcony could fall on their head. Today it is housing, thanks to the work of Eusebio,” Mirna says excitedly.
After expressing her gratitude to the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana (OHCH) for having provided her a home, this 68-year-old woman confesses her concern for the future of this institution, which has passed gradually into the hands of the military. continue reading
It is an open secret that the majority of the Historian’s companies have been transferred to an entity of the Armed Forces. It has not yet been published in any official decree nor has the national press spread the news, but the Historian of Havana, Eusebio Leal Spengler, has confirmed to 14ymedio that assets have been transferred to the Business Administration Group (GAE), a consortium managed by the Army. “It has not been transferred to the Armed Forces, but rather to GAE, a development company with investment capacity and prestige, which the Historian’s Office maintains the power to advise on the conservation of the work and also on new projects,” he explained via email.
Leal assures that the institution is calm because “the work of conservation now extends to the heritage cities of Cuba.” However, the historian expresses his sorrow at what this means for his efforts to protect the national patrimony. “It hurts us, that at the time when perhaps the greatest respect for the circumstances of life is required, the mediocre who lack any work are taking advantage, the poor in spirit, to hurt and damage many who have worked over the years to save the patrimony of a nation, whether in Cuba or anywhere else on earth.”
The Office of the Historian of Havana emerged in the ‘30s, in Republican Cuba. In 1967, after the death of the first title holder, Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, Eusebio Leal took the helm of an entity that gradually grew not only in size and income, but also autonomy.
Its uniqueness comes from the ‘90s, when the OHCH received by Decree-Law Number 143, the freedom of economic initiative. The Government, in an unusual gesture of decentralization, entrusted Leal with creating a corporate structure that would allow social reinvestment and restoration of buildings. The institution responsible for the conservation and rehabilitation of the historic center of Havana, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, would be answer directly to the Council of State, and would have a special legal jurisdiction, personality and permissions to import and export, among other prerogatives.
The bar of La Luz Restaurant. (14ymedio)
In addition, it gave the Office the ability to have entities not subordinate to it and encompassed within in the prioritized are contribute to the conservation of buildings with payment of 1% of their income from operations in national currency (Cuban pesos, of CUPs) and 5% from operations in hard currency (Cuban convertible pesos, or CUCs).
Within the broad and complex business fabric that OHCH has woven for more than two decades are the Habaguanex hotel chain; the San Cristobal travel agency; the Opus Habana cultural magazine; the Habana Radio station; the Bologna publishing house; and several websites for marketing its products. The company also controlled two real estate agencies, Aurea and Phoenix; more than fifty cafes and twenty restaurants; museums, concert halls and shops; an import company, a workshop school and three construction companies (later merged into one), among other assets.
In its 23 years of work, the Office has created more than 13,000 jobs directly and thousands indirectly. According to research published by the University of Havana, of the 500 million dollars generated during this time, 60% has been earmarked for social works. In addition, the company has received more than 30 million dollars in funding from international cooperation.
About 55% of tourists coming to Cuba visit Havana, and 90% of them tour the Historic Center. Tourism revenues are soaring, therefore, in this area, reaching 2,185 CUC per resident compared with 245 CUC for the whole city.
“The best part of the cake is Old Havana, everyone knows that, so they are taking all of Leal’s businesses,” said a worker in an old-age home funded by the Historian.
Leal confirmed that the Office retains some financial instruments, including the 5% tax on any public or private activity in the historical district and the shops considered heritage, linked to the system of museums. In addition, other State institutions continue to contribute to the operation of the entity.
The Historian’s Office was getting fat in the first decade of the century when it added to his portfolio the Traditional Malecon, in 2003, and Chinatown in 2005. Following the publication in the independent press of several corruption scandals related to its administration, some of the OHCH companies were taken over by other state agencies.
“The process of disengagement has been slow. They have been removing one company after another to save Leal. The comptroller has uncovered a very large embezzlement and the only way not to charge the Historian, who actually had nothing to do with these thefts, is to exempt him of responsibility for these companies,” said a Cuban economist who prefers to remain anonymous.
Leal flatly denies these allegations and explains that “wherever someone is willing to sell his soul to the devil there will be administrative or corruption scandals.” The historian also says that “it is simply about consolidating efforts for development that we can not handle within our own means.”
But there are other theories. Eugenio Yanez, a Cuban academic who belongs to the study center Cubanálisis, believes there are three problems the transfer is designed to solve: “First, Raul Castro has a more pragmatic view, so he may want there to be a specialized management company that is responsible for business in Havana. Then there is the issue of the Leal’s deteriorating health, and thirdly there is the problem of serious corruption in the Office of the Historian companies. The Comptroller has discovered shady businesses. The solution has been to the transfer them to the Army, which is trusted by Castro.”
Self-employed individuals in Old Havana say they feel protected by the OHCH. Some expressed to 14ymedio their misgivings about the transfer of the Office of the Historian’s business to GAE. “The state always promotes its own restaurants, hotels and businesses instead of private businesses, so we don’t know what will happen now,” said Reinaldo, who operates a fashion business.
Camilo Condis, self-employed, who works with Gilberto Valladares (Papito), the hairdresser who spoke with President Barack Obama during his visit to Cuba, says that small and medium sized businesses have worked in Havana as managers of local development. “Without the Historian’s Office the work we do would not have been possible,” he said at a meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE).
As of August 1, the institution that has saved at least one third of the historic center of Havana has seen its activities reduced to “museum management, promoting cultural activities and conservation of the heritage,” says a source at the Vitrina de Valonia cultural center.
No one knows how the restoration processes in the capital will proceed from now on, but many fear that the military will not know how to manage the legacy of the Historian and will seek a more immediate profitability, without taking residents into account.
Misael Gonzalez, weaver in the streets of Havana. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Yosmany Mayeta Labrada, Havana, 11 August 2016 – For Misael Gonzales, Old Havana is the gallery that for years has refused to display his figures made from natural materials. All the passersby on Teniente Rey Street between Oficios and Mercaderes, will see there his grasshoppers made from coconut leaves and some Japanese-inspired constructions of braided green fibers.
The artist tells 14ymedio that initially he made clay and ceramic structures but with that raw material it became very complicated to get permission to market his work. Nature saved him from those difficulties and, although his business of figures made from natural leaves has not been without setbacks, little by little he has made his business thrive. continue reading
“I was fined several times,” says the artist, “but now I have authorization from the Office of the City Historian to develop my craft works here,” he said, while his fingers agilely braided the wings of an inspiring insect.
At 44, this Artemisa artist based in San Miguel del Padron has turned to crafts looking to support himself. When he lived in his native province he came to the capital every week with the pieces he had made “selling them for prices between 1 and 5 CUCs,” which still hold.
“I have been experimenting for seven years,” explains Misael, and describes some of the “spectacular” works that have never sold that he treasures at home. “I feel comfortable making these pieces out of natural materials and, in addition, I don’t get into trouble with the law,” he stresses.
Every afternoon the artist positions himself near Los Frailes Inn in the old city center to sell his sympathetic figures, most of which he creates before the eyes of the buyers. Other pieces are on display for “when someone is interested” and he then makes them on request in front of his customers.
Onlookers surround him and Misael displays his skills with leaves between his fingers. Sometimes a child approaches and is ecstatic with the animals that emerge with each fold. Misael gives him a grasshopper that seems about to take flight. He knows that many of these little ones’ families don’t have the money to pay him.
“Being an artist is being born again,” he says with the same wisdom that, one day, led him to create wonders with materials that others discard.
Raul Castro in February 2015 honored as heroes the five Cuban agents convicted in the US for espionage. (Revolution Studios)
14ymedio, Boris Gonzalez Arenas, Havana, 11 August 2016 — My friend Adriana Gutierrez suggested I write this, only asking that, out of respect for her father, I change the names. She has lived in Spain since 2007, when she went to do a degree that also offered the occasion to stay and live outside of Cuba. Her father and mother remained in Cuba. Let’s call her dad Anibal Ochoa to use the last name of his great friend Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, the general executed or murdered, or both as it appears, in 1989. Adriana and her father don’t have the same last name because he wasn’t her biological father, but the man who took on caring for her and did it in the best way he knew how, considering that she was also his only daughter.
Anibal spent his whole life as an official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and his specialty was to plant spies in Spain to travel around the rest of Europe or, to continue with the language of farming, to harvest them when they were totally worn out and return them to Cuba with false identities and all kinds o technical intricacies. continue reading
He was also a racist who despised his daughter’s black lovers, when she had them, and was macho enough not to rest until his wife, Adriana’s mom – let’s call her Leonor – left her job as a nurse to devote herself to being a housewife. She was a woman who spoke in a measured way and smiled more with her eyes than with her mouth. A beautiful smile that she passed down to Adriana.
Even after retirement, Anibal went to the Foreign Ministry to advise new diplomats in the art of shaking hands without giving away the knives up their sleeves and smiling discretely so as not to show their fangs. But, as his era coincided with the aggressive years of the Cold War, a time when a Cuba financed by the Soviets lacked the intelligence to profitably manufacture a pencil, although it played at being a military power, Anibal’s advice seemed more like funny anecdotes than plausible directions. Anibal, who was no fool, quickly understood and, as he had his pride, he ended up distancing himself from Cuba’s Foreign Ministry.
Almost simultaneously his wife died and his two grandchildren were born in Seville. Retirement did not suit him and slowly he slipped into the old age of an ordinary Cuban, making him a man dependent on help from his daughter.
Shortly after being widowed he returned to Spain for the first time after two decades. He feared being denied a visa, something that his former enemies were in charge of and that emphasized his current impotence. But none of this happened and he got the visa. He was there three months and when he returned we talked a lot. He was happy, and in addition, as expected, he had slimmed down and his skin cleared up. Then there was a second visit and he stayed a year, and eventually he stayed for good.
Two months ago Anibal died of a heart attack at 79 and took his secrets to his grave, some of which he regretted and so decided not to share with anyone, even after so much time and distance from his career as an official, a diplomat and a spy.
Adriana said that Anibal once commented he had been used. Perhaps he also thought about Arnaldo Ochoa and concluded that he had had better luck than his deceased friend. At the death of the Cuban general, Anibal was out of work for some time, understanding nothing and unable to pretend that he did. They say that something happened to Raul Castro at this time that only aggravated his alcoholism. Later, Anibal recovered and took up his previous duties, which would never be the same, because the death of the Cuban general coincided with the end of Soviet socialism and, still unable to produce a pencil, the Cuban state sank too deeply into misery to support any James Bonds.
In Spain, Hannibal used to be welcome to sit in outdoor cages, which he also did in the 70s and 80s, but he was too self-absorbed and distrustful to enjoy anything.
Hannibal had a peaceful death, surrounded by his daughter and grandchildren as he always wanted, in the country he treated throughout his working life as an enemy and where he settled, in retirement, as a home.
Cuban National Conference in Puerto Rico (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, San Juan, 15 August 2016 — The emergence of a new opposition partnership called the Conference of the Cuban National Congress is the most notable result of the event that has gathered in Puerto Rico 65 organizations from the island and in exile.
After lengthy and complex discussions in which there was laughter and tears, reasoned arguments and passionate declarations, lights and shadows… in short, Cubans. An agreement has been reached to forge an integrated structure with a Coordination Committee composed of 22 elected representatives. continue reading
Work has been assigned on different fronts distributed among 11 working committees, including ones assigned IT and communications, the press, popular consultation, Human Rights and one to address political prisoners and their families. Like any other organization, some working committees will deal with international relations, finance and legal affairs. Leading each committee is one representative from the island and one from exile. These coordinators will appoint a minimum of three and a maximum of five members to their respective committees, and will provide a report on their work every three months.
The principal declaration from the event that expresses the consensus on the new Cuba proposed at the Second Cuban National Conference, ratified the Democracy Agreement of 1988 as containing the elements needed to reconstruct the new Republic of Cuba, which had been ratified in the previous conference held in August of 2015.
The Declaration supports “the establishment of a commission against impunity” and, in response to the demands of several organizations, it proposes to “retroactively audit the management of existing companies in Cuba with the intention of respecting the conventions of the International Labor Organization.” Similarly, with clear perspective on the future, it proposes the need to implement “measures that guarantee transparency and integrity and fight corruption in public management and the electoral process of the new Republic of Cuba.”
Telecommunications was a topic at the meeting. In the accords, the US government was asked to seek an accord with the Cuban government to connect an internet cable between the two countries and to ask the American company Google to establish an appropriate policy to provide uncensored internet via wifi. In addition, it denounced the violation of the internet giant’s code of conduct for its indifference to the Cuban people in this regard.
Telecommunications were present at the meeting. In the agreements, the US government to seek an agreement with Cuba to connect an Internet cable between the two countries and the US company Google to establish a correct policy to provide uncensored internet via wifi was claimed was requested. In addition, the violation of the code of conduct Internet giant was denounced for its indifference to the Cuban people in this regard.
As is usual in this type of meeting opposition activists and civil society residents on the island manage to get together with Cuban exiles there were immeasurable parallel results that over the long term will open new contacts and support the emergence of diverse indicatives.
The results of the agreements reached will not have an immediate effect, but progress has been made, despite the inevitable differences among personalities, given those who only understand unity when it goes their way, along with all the pessimism and the overcoming of exhaustion and induced suspicions.
The composition of the Coordinating Council of the Congress of the Cuban National Conference is (in alphabetical order by last name).
Composition of the Coordinating Board of the Cuban National Congress (In alphabetical order by last name).
Chosen by the Island
Eliecer Ávila: Somos+
Henry Constantín: Proyecto La Hora de Cuba
Guillermo Fariñas: Foro Anti Totalitario Unido (Fantu)
Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez): Frente de Resistencia Orlando Zapata
René Gómez Manzano: Corriente Agramontista de Abogados Independientes
Juan Carlos González Leyva: Consejo de Relatores de Derechos Humanos
Iván Hernández Carrillo: Confederación de Trabajadores Independientes de Cuba
Mario Félix Lleonart: Instituto Patmos
Damaris Moya Portieles: Coalición Central Opositora
Félix Navarro: Partido por la Democracia Pedro Luis Boitel
Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina: Alianza Democrática Oriental
Chosen by the Exile
Ana Carbonell:Instituto de la Rosa Blanca
Pedro Fuentes: Consejo Presidio Político Cubano
René Hernández: Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba
Faisel Iglesias: Fundación Nuevo Pensamiento Cubano
Augusto Monge: Free Cuba Foundation
Rosa María Payá: Fundación para la Democracia Panamericana
Pedro M. Peñaranda: Círculo Democrático Municipalista
Mario Rivadulla: Unión de trabajadores cubanos de la comunicación social y la cultura.
Ramón Saúl Sánchez: Movimiento Democracia
Julio M. Schiling: Patria de Martí
Guillermo Toledo: Cubanos Unidos de Puerto Rico
United States and Cuban flags in the streets of Havana
14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 15 August 2016 – The baby cries in her cradle while her mother sings to console her. Barely three months old, her name is Michelle, like Barack Obama’s wife. This little Havanan who still nurses and sleeps most of the day, came into the world after the armistice: she is a daughter of the truce between the governments of Cuba and the United States. A creature without ideological phobias or hatred on her horizon.
In the history books that Michelle and her contemporaries will read, these months after 17 December 2014 – “17-D” as Cubans have dubbed it – will remain in a few lines. In these retrospective summaries there will be optimistic tones, as if the whole island, stranded for decades on the side of the road, had set out anew from this moment, putting pedal to the metal and making up for lost time. But, for many, living through the reconciliation is less historic and grandiloquent than was playing a starring role in a battle. continue reading
A process that, one day, analysts will compare with the fall of the Berlin Wall and perhaps define with high-sounding names like the end of the sugar curtain, the death of the Revolution or the moment when peace broke out, is losing brightness now, faced with the daily exhaustion. Indeed, the truce quieted the noise of the slogans and has allowed us to hear the persistent hum of the shortages and the lack of freedom.
The day when the presidents of Cuba and the United States announced the beginning of the normalization of relations has been left somewhere in the past. It will be a reference for historians and analysts, but it means little to those who are facing a whether decision to spend the rest of their lives waiting for “this to be fixed” or to choose to escape to any other corner of the world.
17-D has increased apprehensions about the end of the Cuban Adjustment Act. The number of Cubans who, since then, have crossed the United States border has shot up, with 84,468 arriving by land or air while another 10,248 have tried to cross the sea. The popular ironic phrase of the latter for leaving the island –“turning off El Morro,” a reference to Havana’s iconic lighthouse at the entrance to the bay – dramatically foreshadows those numbers.
Why not stay in the country if the thaw promises a better life or at least a more fluid and profitable relationship with the United States? Because 17-D arrived too late for many, including several generations of who had to face off against our neighbor to the north, shouting anti-imperialist slogans for most of their lives and abetting the commander-in-chief in his personal battle against the White House. They don’t trust promises, because they have seen many positive prognostications that survived only on paper and in the mystique of a speech, lacking any impact on their dinner tables or their wallets.
After a prolonged skirmish lasting over half a century and eleven US administrations and two Cuban presidents with the same surname, the nation is exhausted. The adrenaline of the battle has given way to dreariness and a question that finds it way into the minds of millions of Cubans: Was it all for this?
It is difficult to convince people that the confiscations of US companies, the diplomatic insults, becoming the Soviet Union’s concubine, and the many caricatures ridiculing Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush were all worth it, even with all the official propaganda that controls every one of the county’s newspapers, radio stations and TV channels.
The American flag raised at the US Embassy in Havana just one year ago, on 14 August 2015, put a final end to an era of trenches and to the eternal soldier: the Cuban government with its still hot Kalashnikov and a marked inability to live in peace. It is prepared for confrontation but its ineffectiveness is clearly evident in times of armistice. In his convalescent retirement, Fidel Castro noted how the country he molded in his image and likeness was out of his hands. The man who controlled every detail of Cubans’ lives cannot influence how he will be remembered. Some rush to deify him; others sharpen their arguments to dismantle his myth; while the great majority simply forget he’s alive: he is buried while still breathing.
Children born since 31 July 2006, when the illness of the “Maximum Leader” was announced, have only seen the president in photos and archival materials. They are the ones who don’t have to declaim incendiary versus before him in some patriotic act, nor be a part of the social experiments that emerged from the gray matter under his olive-green cap. They live in the post-Fidel era, which does not mean they are entirely freed from his influence.
For decades to come, the schism created by the authoritarian leadership of this son of Galicia, born in the eastern town of Birán, will divide Cubans and even families. The aftermath of this tension that has infiltrated the national identity, otherwise lighthearted, will last for a long time. There will be a before-and-after Castro for the followers of the creed of political obstinacy he cultivated, but also for those who will breathe a sigh of relief when he is no longer.
The Maximum Leader’s 90th birthday, celebrated this August 13 with cheers and a good dose of personality cult, has all the earmarks of being his farewell. Now his closest family members should be exploring the calendar to select a date to announce his funeral, because such a huge death won’t fit just any date. They will have to pick a day that is not associated with the memory of some offensive in which he participated, a project that he opened, or some lengthy speech that hypnotized his audience.
There will be no need, in any case, to disconnect the machines or to stop administering medications. To say the final goodbye, it will be enough to give him his measure as a human being. Forget all those epithets that extolled him as “father of all Cubans,” “visionary,” or “promoter of medicine” on the island, along with “model journalist,” initiator of the “water-saving policy”, “eternal guerrilla,” “master builder,” and a long list of other grandiloquent titles that have been repeated in the days before his birthday.
Fidel Castro and Michelle, the little baby born after the visit of Barack Obama to the island, will be together in the history books. He will remain trapped in the volume dedicated to the twentieth century, although he has made every effort to put his name on each page dedicated to this nation. She will star, along with millions of other Cubans, in a chapter without bloody diplomatic battles or sterile confrontations.
****
Editor ‘s Note: This text was published on Monday 15 August 2016 in the Spanish newspaper El País .
Guillermo Fariñas, UNPACU Activist: “With this [hunger strike] I am giving the Castro regime leaders to decide if they want to assassinate me publicly.”
Eliécer Ávila, President of Somos+ (We Are More): “I don’t see how the death of leaders who should motivate people and push changes can be helpful.”
14ymedio, 10 August 2016 – This Tuesday, activist Carlos Amel Oliva has ended four weeks on hunger strike after spending the last five days in hospital due to the deteriorating state of his health. Eight members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) had seconded his protest and decided not to eat in solidarity with the opponent’s demands, including State Security returning his personal belongings, the confiscation of which he considered a violation of his rights.
On 20 July, regime opponent Guillermo Fariñas also began a hunger and thirst strike, for which he has received hospital care on several occasions in recent days. Winner of the European Parliament’s Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, he is demanding that the Cuban government cease its repression against dissidents and that the authorities agree to a dialog with the opposition. continue reading
In the last twenty years Fariñas has undertaken a total of 25 hunger strikes, the last of these six years ago when he demanded the release of a group of opponents from the 2003 Black Spring. On that occasion the opponent went 135 days without eating, the great part of the time hospitalized and receiving parenteral nutrition and hydration.
Fariñas began that strike on February 24, 2010, one day after the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died after staging a hunger strike for 86 days while incarcerated.
Amnesty International considered Zapata Tamayo a prisoner of conscience and many analysts agree that his death was decisive in the negotiations subsequently held between the Cuban government, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the Spanish government that ended with the release of many political prisoners.
Previously, a hunger strike had been maintained to its final consequences by Pedro Puis Boitel, who died in prison in May 1972 after 53 days without food or medical care. The young man was buried in an unmarked grave in Colon Cemetery in Havana.
Since January 1959 it has been common for activists and opponents to use hunger strikes as a form of protest against the government and to demand improvements in prison conditions or political reforms. Currently some opponents believe that this strategy of peaceful struggle is not effective.
However, other dissidents cite the importance of the hunger strike as a way to attract the attention of international organizations to pressure the government and bring about political change.
On Tuesday, the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights called on all opponents to abandon their fasts, considering that it is not an effective method of struggle and activists are people who are needed “with all their energy, strength, intelligence and courage in the demand for freedom, democracy and better living conditions for Cubans.”
Guillermo Fariñas, who currently is continuing his hunger strike, has recently stated in an interview that he has a responsibility given that he is a person known internationally for the use of this method of protest. “With this I’m giving time for Castro’s rulers, extending my possible death, so that they can assess, among and political and ideological international allies and opponents, which really has to do with my demand, if they are going to publicly murder me,” he said.
Eliecer Avila, who on Tuesday wrote a letter asking Carlos Amel Oliva to abandon his strike, emphasized the importance of activists who are still alive today being, one day, public representatives of the citizens if they wish. The leader of Somos+ (We Are More) ended his letter with the words: ” Do not give away your life to these bastards, compadre!”
14ymedio, Carlos A. Montaner, Miami, 6 August 2016 – They are hungry in Venezuela. It is the revolution. It does not matter that it potentially may be the richest country in the world. The same thing happened in 1921 in the newly debuted USSR. A million Russians died of hunger. Lenin rejoiced. “The revolution and I are like that, madam.” They kept the peasants from trading, and the Red Army confiscated food, including the seeds.
It happened in China. There were 20 million deaths. In that country grieving also is multitudinous. It happened in Cambodia and North Korea, where some desperate subjects resorted to cannibalism. It always happens. In Cuba sixty thousand people lost their sight or mobility in their lower limbs because of peripheral neuritis cause by malnutrition after the end of the Soviet subsidy. continue reading
Castro protested against the US “blockade.” The Minister of Health, who warned about what was happening, was removed from his post. The Revolution is also about keeping your mouth shut. It was not the embargo. It was the Revolution. It is always the Revolution. They gave the Nobel Prize in economics to the Bengali Amartya Sen for demonstrating that famines invariably are caused by state interference. Any of the victims of Communism could have explained to the Swedes with equal clarity and without need of getting a doctorate from Cambridge.
Why do the Communists do it? Are they sadists? Are they stupid people who commit the same errors time and again? Nothing of the sort. They are revolutionaries bent on creating a new world based on the prescriptions of Karl Marx.
Didn’t Karl Marx assert that the ruling oligarchy and state model were the consequence of the regime of capitalist property? Didn’t he claim that if a Communist vanguard were to take over the means of production in the name of the proletariat that there would emerge a new society ruled by new men endowed with a new morality?
It is a matter of priorities. Communist revolutionaries are not interested in people living better or farms and factories producing more. Those are the petty bourgeois stupidities typical of liberal democracies which include the Social Democrat traitors, the Christian Democrats and other minor species insistent on the babble of social pseudo-justice.
The two essential jobs of the Communist revolutionaries are, first, to demolish the power structure of the “old regime” and to substitute their own people for it; second, to take over the productive apparatus, ruin businesses that they cannot manage and nationalize the rest in order to deprive the old capitalist oligarchs of resources.
It is in these activities that Communist revolutionaries demonstrate if they have succeeded or failed. That is the benchmark. Lenin and Stalin succeeded, at least for several decades. Mao and the Castros succeeded. Chavez succeeded … for now.
What does it matter to Maduro that there are skeletal children who faint from hunger in school or that the sick die for lack of medicine? His definition of success has nothing to do with the feeding or health of Venezuelans, but with that fevered and delirious little world they call, pompously, the “consolidation of the revolutionary process.”
That explains the leniency in the face of immense theft of public treasure or the complicity with drug traffickers. Welcome. Marx also delivered the perfect alibi: They are in the first phase of capital accumulation. In this period of regime change, like someone who sheds a skin, anything goes.
And there will be time to re-establish honesty and to trust that the centrally planned five-year plans will bring something like prosperity. For now it’s about enriching the key revolutionaries: The Cabello brothers and their nephews, the docile generals, the Bolibourgeois, which is to say the revolutionaries in service to the cause. They have to have full pockets in order to be useful.
Do you understand now why the Communist revolutionaries repeat time and again the same framework of government? They are not mistaken. The upheaval is part of the construction of the new State.
Do you understand why the Castros advise Maduro to follow the unproductive Cuban model and why he doggedly obeys? What matters to the Chavistas is keeping power and exchanging the government elites for their own.
Do the Colombians understand what the guerrilla chief, Timochenko, means to say when he promises to revolutionize Colombia when he comes to power? Or Pablo Iglesias in Spain when he asserts that he will use in his country the same prescription that was recommended to the Venezuelans? They are consistently destructive.
That is the Revolution. Exactly that. Nothing more and nothing less.
Former president Fidel Castro with a “Queen” brand pressure cooker, made in China. (EFE)
14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 13 August 2016 – Turn on the radio and the announcer reads a brief headline: “Fidel Castro, The Great Builder.” The man goes on to explain that the most important works of the country have come from this head that for decades has been covered by an olive-green cap. Weary of so much personality cult, I decided to watch television, but on the main channel a lawyer was detailing the legal legacy of the Maximum Leader and at the end of the program they announced a documentary about “The Invincible Guerrilla.”
For weeks, we Cubans have lived under a veritable bombardment of references to Fidel Castro, which has increased in proportion to the closeness of the date of his 90th birthday, this 13 August. There is no shame nor nuance in this avalanche of images and epithets. continue reading
This whole excess of tributes and reminders is, undoubtedly, a desperate attempt to save the former Cuban president from oblivion, to pull him out of that zone of media abandonment in which he has fallen since announcing his departure from power a decade ago.
We have left the man born in the eastern town of Biran, in 1926, in the past, condemning him to the 20th century, burying him alive.
Children now in elementary school have never seen the once loquacious orator speak for hours at a public event. Farmers have breathed a sigh of relief on not having to receive constant recommendations from the “Farmer in Chief” and even housewives are thankful that he does not appear at a congress of the Federation of Cuban Women to teach them how to use a pressure cooker.
The official propaganda knows that people often appeal to short-term memory as a way of protecting themselves. For many young people, Fidel Castro is already as remote as, for my mother in her day, was the dictator Gerardo Machado, a man who so adversely marked the life of my grandmother’s generation.
Followers of the figure of Fidel Castro are taking advantage of the celebrations for his nine decades of life to try to erect a statue of immortality in the heart of the nation. They deify him, forgive him his systematic errors and convert him into the most visible head of a creed. The new religion takes as its premises stubbornness, intolerance for differences, and a visceral hatred – almost like a personal battle – against the United States.
The detractors of “Él,” as many Cubans simply call him, are preparing the arguments to dismantle his myth. They await the moment when the history books no longer equate him with José Martí, but offer a stark, cold and objective analysis of his career. They are the ones who dream of the post-Castro era, of the end of Fidelismo and of the diatribe that will fall on his controversial figure.
Most, however, simply turn the page and shrug their shoulders in a sign of disgust when they hear his name. They are the ones who, right now, turn off the TV and focus on a daily existence that negates every word Fidel Castro ever said in his incendiary speeches, in those times when he planned to build a Utopia and turn us into New Men.
Tired of his omnipresence, they are the ones who will deal the final blow to the myth. And they will do it without hullabaloo or heroic acts. They will simply stop talking to their children about him, there will be no photos in the rooms of their homes showing him with a rifle and epaulettes, they will not confer on their grandchildren the five letters of his name.
The celebration for the 90th birthday of Fidel Castro is, in reality, his farewell: as excessive and exhausting as was his political life.
********
Editor’s note: This text was published Saturday August 13, 2016 in the newspaper O Globo of Brazil
Floats being built for the “Comandante’s” carnivals. (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 12 August 2016 – After weeks of anxieties and rumors, the Havana carnivals are starting tonight. A popular celebration whose date* has again been postponed this year to make it coincide with the eve of ex-president Fidel Castro’s 90th birthday.
For several days, the floats that will parade in front of the stands, bleachers and grandstands along Havana’s Malecon, have been under construction near the site. This Friday, the official newspaper Granma published a note with the names of the streets that will be closed and warned people not to “attend the festivities carrying glass containers, knives or fire.” continue reading
The choice of this day for the start of the carnival once again alters its date, which for decades had been moved from its traditional February. The first of these changes happened in 1970, when the celebrations were moved to coincide with the celebrations for July 26 (the date of the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, that is considered the beginning of the Revolution), but over the years it has been postponed again and again.
The increasing scarcity of domestic beers in the retail market and the announcements of economic setback had made many fear that the festivities would not be celebrated in Havana. However, the worst fears have not been realized and now Havana residents say, half jokingly and half seriously: “These are the Comandante’s carnivals.”
Cuban migrants stranded in Turbo, Columbia (courtesy)
14ymedio, Pedro Campos, Havana, 11 August 2016 — Latin American governments who are closing their borders to the crossing of Cubans seeking to leave Cuba’s state slavery to reach the United States are complicit in the genocide that is increasing in the Straits of Florida, the only escape route left to the island’s new escaped slaves.
Don’t they know that the border closures are forcing Cubans to risk their lives at sea? Don’t they realize, doesn’t it pain them, don’t they feel remorse?
First was the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, unconditional ally of the Castro regime, which was then was followed by other Central American governments and joined by Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador, the latter of which is now deporting Cubans. continue reading
These are countries with millions of its citizens in the United States, a good part of them illegally, whose governments systematically condemn our northern neighbor for its policy of closing its borders with Mexico to try to prevent the arrival of Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Central Americans, Colombians, Ecuadorians and other nationalities.
They scream about the, but now close they close their borders so that Cubans cannot pass. This is called the politics of a double standard.
Where is the solidarity with Cuba? Or do they understand that this should be addressed to the government responsible for this genocide and not the Cuban people, its victim?
How long are they going to look away before the Cuban government’s repression against its own people, its guilt for the exodus because of the absence of democracy and freedoms of every kind imposed on the island in the name of a socialism that doesn’t exist and whose mission is to piteously and arbitrarily exploit the workers, who are paid poverty level wages by the state that decides everything and is the principal employer, for the primary benefit of an elite and corrupt elite?
Are they still afraid that the Castro regime will send them guerillas? Do they know that one of the most famous Latin Americans of all time, José Martí, called state socialism, later imposed on Cuba by the Castro regime, “future slavery”?
Every day the international press agencies report on dozens of Cubans intercepted on the high seas by the US Coast Guard and returned to Cuba, or that dozens of others reach the coasts of Florida, but almost never reported are those who leave and never arrive, who are not news because their corpses never appear and their families in Cuba keep a desperate silence, imaging that some day they will get a call from the United States.
Do they have any idea of how many thousands of Cubans have lost their lives facing the waves, the Gulf Stream and the sharks, trying to escape to the north? Latin Americans trying to do the same run other dangers in the jungles, with the coyotes, whose existence is the responsibility of those governments, precisely for making the passage through their territories forbidden when it should be normal.
These governments should show solidarity with the Cuban people, open their doors and allow them to continue their journey to the United States in a safe way. This is their responsibility and I hope they rectify their position.
There is already a certain resentment, a deep rejection among many Cubans toward these governments for their attitude toward our fellow citizens, who have been mistreated for the simple desire to get to the United States, something very common among Latin Americans tired of the misery and repression in their countries.
We Cubans have always shown solidarity with the just causes and misfortunes of our Latin American brothers, we have always opened our doors to Latin American victims of repression. Do the Cuban people deserve this treatment from their governments.
It is well-known that many Latin Americans who arrive in the United States have received broad support and collaboration from Cubans who live there; Artists, businesspeople, media workers, simple employees. We also know that Cubans are a wealthy and influential nationality in the United States.
The demands made by some nations to end the US laws that favor the emigration and settlement in the United States of Cubans, seem motived more by the desire to have the same advantages conferred on their citizens. Then fight for this and not for it to be taken away from the suffering Cuban people.
Wake up, America.
***
Editor’s Note: The author of this article is a former Cuban diplomat and was in charge of consular affairs of the Embassy of Cuba in Mexico.
”United We Will Be Free” is the slogan of the conference, which involved nearly a hundred activists from the island and from exile (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 12 August 2016 — The Cuban 2nd National Conference is meeting this Friday in San Juan, Puerto Rico, under the slogan “United we will be free,” with the presence of nearly a hundred activists from the island and from exile.
The event seeks to “provide a space for reflection and dialogue among the greatest possible number of opposition organizations” to discuss, among other things, the principles of a “New Cuba.” Throughout the meeting, which will run until noon on Monday, there will be a discussion of the creation a structure of unity of action in diversity inside and outside Cuba. continue reading
The organizers of the conclave have predicted, at the end of the discussions, there will be proposals of candidates for the elective positions of the resulting structure, and a vote. The members elected by the new organization will inform the plenary regarding the work to be carried out both within Cuba and from the exile.
The meeting has as its antecedent the one held last year, where a nine-member Coordinating Committee was created, with five members from the internal opposition and four from the exile. Their principal mission has been to communicate the contents of the Declaration of San Juan and coordinate the current meeting.
On the eve of the conference and during the first day of work, attendees focused on ironing out differences and finding common ground in order to achieve the democratization of Cuba. Creating a coalition or common front among the opposition is the larger challenge ahead of the participants.
The Cuban 2nd National Conference is taking place at a time of intense debate among Cuban activists on the island, a situation reflected in the departure of at least two of the most representative opposition groups on the island – the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) and the United Anti-totalitario Forum (FANTU) – from the Democratic Action Unity Roundtable (MUAD).
A statement released this week by Boris Gonzalez, MUAD spokesperson, sent a greeting to all the participants in the Second Conference, and wished them “the greatest successes to achieve the democratization of Cuba.” The document recognizes “all efforts in this direction.” This opposition coalition is widely represented in the San Juan meeting.
Revolico’s user portal. (Silvia Corbelle / 14ymedio)
14ymedio,Zunilda Mata, Havana, 12 August 2016 — With the same discretion that eight years ago led the government to censor a popular Cuban version of Craigslist, it has now lifted its electronic blocking, without any announcement or public statements. The news of the unlocking the Revolico, a site filled with classified ads, has revolutionized the wifi connection sites.
Access to Revolico is also possible now from the computers in the Nauta internet rooms managed by the government-run Cuban Telecommunications Company (ETECSA), according to what this newspaper was able to confirm.
In several Havana hotels that offer internet access to their guests from terminals in the lobby, one can go directly to Revolico’s home page, navigate its menu options and look at the classified ads without any hitches.
However, users of Infomed, managed by the Ministry of Public Health, complain that Revolico remains inaccessible from servers at that institution.
Despite the government’s long-standing censorship of Revolico, it became the leading classified site on the island. Its main attraction is the vast assortment of ads – 16 million accumulated from the start – for property, the buying and selling of technology, job offers, and every kind of home appliance, all scarce on the country’s store shelves, can be found on their pages.
The well-known “weekly packet” distributed in the informal market each week, for years has included a copy of Revolico intended for users without internet access, a solution that facilitates the posting of ads via email and has helped increase users to the current 300,000 unique visitors a month.
Hiram Centelles, cofounder of Revolico, is satisfied with the new situation of the site and already anticipates possible improvements. “In the near future we will launch a new version of the product and platform, and we are getting many more users in Cuba, now that the site is unblocked. Our goal is to continue providing the best classified ad service to Cubans, as we have done these past eight years,” he told 14ymedio.
Several digital sites that have been censored for years, such as 14ymedio, still remain inaccessible, unless the surfer uses an anonymous proxy anonymous or other tricks to circumvent censorship.
An “almendrone” — old American car used as a fixe-route shared taxi (14ymedio)
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 9 August 2016 — Private trucks covering the stretch between Santa Clara and Sancti Spiritus remained out of service during the weekend and Monday in response to new demands from the authorities. For several days, at checkpoints along the road drivers have been asked to show an invoice for the purchase of fuel in state service centers, a move intended to discourage them from resorting to the illegal hydrocarbon market, 14ymedio’s reporter Jose Gabriel Barrenechea told this newspaper.
As of noon Monday, “not a single truck” had passed on the route which also serves intermediate towns like Placetas and Cabaiguán, a decision the private drivers of both provinces made together in protest against increased controls by the police. continue reading
This kind of transport is very popular in the area and moves thousands of passengers every day, in old trucks reconditioned to move people. The situation got worse this weekend with the celebration of carnivals in Santa Clara, which significantly increased the number of travelers in the region.
There was a huge crowd of people at the Sancti Spiritus terminal on Monday around noon. The truck drivers refused to provide their services, explaining that last Friday a group of private drivers was detained at the provincial delegation of the Ministry of Interior.
The arrests occurred at several operations at checkpoints on roads connecting Santa Clara with Sancti Spiritus, where the carriers were required to show proof of having purchased their vehicle’s fuel through the Cupet chain of state gas stations.
Ubaldo, 53, one of the drivers who serves the route and who has refused to work for the past three days, told this newspaper that the business does not make enough to buy fuel at Cupet because a liter is nearly 30 Cuban pesos, and the same amount can be bought illegally for about half that. “Nobody wants to drive the road because the fares are the same and we don’t do charity,” he says.
Most of the gas that is sold in the informal market comes from state enterprises [i.e. is illegally “diverted” at various points], which in recent months have experienced up to 30% cuts in their fuel assignments because of the tense economic situation in the country.
Given the crowding of passengers at interprovincial terminals and various points between Villa Clara and Sancti Spiritus local authorities yielded to pressure after noon on Monday and called the truckers one by one to ask them to make the trip and guaranteed that no one will ask for proof of payment.
Some of the self-employed saw this decision as a small victory and returned to work Monday afternoon, but others, more distrustful, have preferred to wait to verify that the controls have been ended. “I do not want to lose money nor my license,” Raymundo, who owns a Ford truck that regularly makes the trip from Villa Clara to Trinidad told this newspaper.
State buses in the region are not adequate to meet the demand for interprovincial travel. From the bus terminal in Sancti Spiritus vehicles leave five times a day – at 5, 6, 7 and 10 am and 2 pm – bound for Santa Clara, but they suffer frequent breakdowns and technical glitches.
Transport managers and specialists in the area are studying “setting caps” on the prices of private transport, as was done in the capital, according to sources in Villa Clara’s provincial government. The authorities, are hoping to counter the rising fares by also bringing in a fleet of new “Diana” brand buses assembled on the island.
An “almendrone” (14ymedio)
In Havana, the picture is not very different. Desperate customers crowding corners to board a shared fixed-route taxi and workers who need more than three hours to get home at the end of the working day are scenes that are repeated everywhere. The imposition of price controls for “almendrones” (the old American cars used in this service, named for their “almond” shape) has contributed to the transport crisis, which interferes with daily life in the Cuban capital.
Passengers see this as a test of strength between the government and the self-employed transportation providers, a confrontation where the private operators seek to overcome the fare restrictions, and the authorities try to control the rising prices the sector has experienced since mid-June.
The shortages at the gas stations regulated by the State contribute to the problem. Of the five gas stations in Havana’s Vededo district 14ymedio visited this Sunday, only one, at 25th Street and Avenue of the Presidents, was open for business. El Tangana, at the corner of Malecon and Linea, and the station at 17th and L, as well as the station at Linea and D Street all remain closed for lack of supply.
An article published last Thursday by the official daily Granma recognizes the reduction in the number of private cars that make up a major part of the transportation routes within the capital city, due to the drivers’ response to the freezing of rates on July 14, a decision taken by the Provincial Administration Council in Havana.
With the application of Agreement 185, which established that self-employed drivers could not raise their fares and must adhere to the fares in effect prior to July 1, drivers have chosen to shorten their routes or significantly curtail their working days, as recognized by Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party.
“Before, I could take just one car from my house in Santiago de las Vegas,” a passenger told this newspaper. “Now I have to take two vehicles, one to Sports City and another to the end, so the trip costs me twice as much,” the woman lamented, who said the government thought it had found a solution to the price increases caused by a reduction in the supplies of fuel in the informal market. However, she says, “what has happened is that the drivers have split the routes and no one can force them to run the whole way,” explains the irritated customer.”
Of the more than 496,400 people who in January of this year were “self-employed,” at least 50,482 are dedicated to the transport of cargo and passengers.
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 11 August 2016 – Cuba’s immigration authorities prevented activists Ivan Hernandez and Felix Navarro from traveling outside Cuba this Thursday. The former prisoners of the 2003 Black Spring were invited to participate in the 2ndCuban National Conference that be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from 12 to 14 August, but were unable to board their flight at Havana’s José Martí International Airport, where they ran into Reinaldo Escobar, 14ymedio’s editor
The answer that each of the dissidents received on presenting their documents to the Immigration and Nationality official was: “You cannot leave a second time.” continue reading
Both Hernandez and Navarro had received, in March of this year, special permission to go abroad “one-time” after being placed on parole, a condition the authorities continue to maintain since release from prison in 2011. All those released from the Black Spring “Group of 75” who continue to reside in Cuba benefited from a similar authorization.
The opponent Librado Linares, also a former prisoner of the Black Spring and general secretary of the Cuban Reflection Movement (MCR), did manage to board his flight on Thursday to participate in the meeting of Puerto Rico, since it was the first time he made use permit leave the Island.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) recently sent a letter to Raul Castro expressing “deep concern” about the “violent treatment” received by the trade unionist Ivan Hernandez on his return to Cuba after his first trip abroad. He traveled on the same flight as the opponent Vladimir Roca and attorney Wilfredo Vallin, of the Law Association of Cuba.
Hernandez was arrested on July 31 and reported that he received a “savage beating” when he refused to be subjected to a search at the time of arrival. During his trip abroad he met with organizations and activists from Europe and the United States.
Both Hernandez and Navarro cataloged the “injustices” and said they will continue trying to assert their right to travel freely.
The Cuban National Conference is a continuation of one held last year, which involved 23 organizations in Cuba and 32 from exile. It has been convened by the Coordinating Liaison Committee composed of Ana Carbonell, Rosa María Payá, Sylvia Iriondo, Guillermo Farinas, Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leyva, Rene Gomez Manzano, Mario Félix Lleonart and Saylí Navarro
Among the participants in the conference traveling from Cuba are also Eliecer Avila, leader of Somos+ (We Are More) and Boris Gonzalez, a member of the Democratic Action Roundtable (MUAD). The great absence the meeting will be Guillermo Fariñas, who remains on hunger strike in Santa Clara.
In the early hours of Thursday, Lady in White Leticia Ramos Herrería was arrested while traveling from Matanzas to Havana to take the flight that would also have taken her to the conference in Puerto Rico, according to the leader of the Ladies in White movement, Berta Soler, speaking to this newspaper. The activist was returned to her home where she is under police surveillance.
Event organizers want to use this 2nd Conference to create a “structure of unity of action in diversity,” whose purpose is to “operate inside and outside Cuba, coordinating the efforts of both shores.” In addition, they discussed “the general principles of the new Cuba” desired, an issue that was left pending at the previous meeting.
14ymedio, Havana, 17 August 2016 — In a letter to Pope Francis, eight activists from the Anti-Totalitarian Forum (FANTU) have asked “his Holiness to take an interest” in the condition of regime opponent Guillermo Fariñas after 27 days on hunger strike.
