14ymedio – Page 575 – Translating Cuba

A Chef on the 14th Floor / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

The chef José Andrés cooking in the kitchen of the 14ymedio newsroom. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 18 April 2016 — José Andrés arrived in Havana at the best and worst moment of the year. One of the most famous chefs in the world knocked on the door of the 14ymedio newsroom the same day that Barack Obama was saying goodbye to the Cuban people. The shortages in the markets were an incentive rather than an obstacle for the Spaniard who moves easily between the glamorous kitchens of Washington DC and the wood fires of an impoverished Haiti.

In his fingers, each ingredient becomes pure magic. “What do you have?” He asked. And the answer reflected this period of empty shelves in stores. However, the art of cooking is to combine precisely what there is, the ability to convert the little one has at hand into have something marvelous for the palate. continue reading

In Cuba you need to be more alchemist than cook to turn out a tasty dish.

There he was, in our newsroom, this Paracelsus of the stove. “What do you have?” He asked again. Very little. Since early this year, with the price increases imposed by the government on many of the food markets and the absence of goods in the stores that sell in hard currency, it is difficult to buy everything from a cabbage to a pound of chicken. On the shelf, a package of Russian oats, scored in 2010, lights up the eyes of chef José Andrés. “We are going to do something with this,” he boasts.

Uniting the elements – including some he had bought under the counter in the streets of Havana – he turned a few somersaults and emerged from the kitchen with steaming and unique dishes. The great chef had climbed to the 14th floor to create an unforgettable dinner on a historic day.

A Dinner in Havana / 14ymedio, Jose Andres

Chef José Andrés with "Hemingway" at El Floridita in Havana (Photo: José Andrés) — Chef José Andrés with “Hemingway” at El Floridita in Havana (Photo: José Andrés)

14ymedio, Jose Andres, Washington, 17 April 2016 — I was smiling. My sunglasses were lying beside the book on the bar. I turned around, as if I were coming back to reality, when I felt a hand on my back. I had just finished my sixth daiquiri in less than half an hour. The waiters serve them faster than you can drink them. Even so, I was not going to return to reality. I was just another tourist vying for a highly sought-after picture with Ernest Hemingway. I was a trophy hunter, trying to take a selfie, set on getting close to his statue in the corner of El Floridita bar.

El Floridita is a nearly 200-year-old institution of colonial Havana. I felt more excited there than usual. I could hear the music of my anxiety fill the air; the type of music Steinbeck talks about in The Pearl, that describes situations that words cannot. continue reading

El Floridita is now a tourist attraction. Still, I was delighted to enjoy the same setting that Hemingway did seventy or eighty years ago. The bar was full. Live salsa music filled the air. A few tourists, who did not have even one drop of rhythm flowing through their veins, were in denial about their dancing. Silly people. Decadence. What I really could not understand was how people could line up at the bar drinking daiquiris with a straw. A straw? Could you imagine Hemingway ever using a straw to drink a daiquiri? Never.

I raised my hand. Fidel, the bartender, was more than willing to please me with my seventh daiquiri. I took the straw out and asked him to add a little of the best rum they had. Fidel then poured a beautiful dark brown molasses-smelling liquid on my pale frozen citric daiquiri. I carefully lifted the glass to my lips and took a sip. That is how you are supposed to drink a daiquiri at El Floridita.

El Floridita’s chef finally arrived with a plastic bag. I had asked him to sell me some Brie, blue cheese, and a bottle of virgin olive oil. These ingredients are not easy to come by in Havana, so therefore, it was best if I asked a cook. But he has brought me something more than I expected. When I looked in the bag, I saw lobster tails. I then took another drag from my Cohiba Behique cigar. It was my fourth cigar that day, and it was only 6:00 PM.

I smoked three more cigars at the baseball game. Cuba and the United States were becoming friends through sport. It was a historic moment, a great moment. Perhaps this signals a change in the lives of many people. The joy was so intense that you could feel it.

I again glanced at the lobsters, and then took a sip of my daiquiri. Yoani Sánchez, my accomplice and host for that evening’s dinner, had asked me not to bring anything. She said: “It’s better that way.” What did she mean by that? During the last four days I had been trying to reach her. In the best of cases, Wi-Fi in Havana is spotty. When they do work, communication devices are very slow. That is why two days earlier I ventured late at night to her apartment in a fourteen-story concrete high-rise in the far off the tourist track Nuevo Vedado neighborhood. I decided to try my luck. It was 11:00 PM, and the street was dark. It was a fourteen-story building. I had no luck because no one opened the front door. After thirty minutes, no one came in or out. Since I was not able to call Yoani, I had no access to the elevator that would take me to her home and office. So I left.

Yet today was different. Now I had an invitation and a specific time I should be there. I grabbed the two plastic bags, the cheeses, the olive oil, and the lobster, and stored it all in my black backpack. I sipped my last daiquiri, and kissed my cigar goodbye.

I got in a taxi. I thought it best not to call any attention, so I wore the Cuban national baseball team t-shirt, with its beautiful shade of blue. I was also wearing a baseball cap. When we finally got to Yoani’s street, I told the driver to let me off where it starts off. “I’m going by foot,” I said. I wanted to walk. I wanted to get there on my own. But I did ask him to wait for me. Yet for how long? Maybe thirty minutes or a few hours, since I was not sure. I left a bag of t-shirts I bought for my daughters with him. That is how trust works: when you show it, it is reciprocated.

Protruding overgrown tree roots have cracked the sidewalks over the years. This is a good indicator of who is in charge of things. I twisted my ankle. I felt the pain for a second, but the excitement served as a good antidote. I suppose the daiquiris helped too.

At last, I arrived. I saw a man heading towards the door, and I followed him in and entered the elevator. I was going to the fourteenth floor, but there were only thirteen numbers. I did not want to ask why. I wanted to appear as if I were from there, especially after hearing so many stories about the police, informants, and dissidents thrown in jail.

My host Yoani is an independent journalist. She is renowned for her ability to use technology to let the world know what is happening in Cuba. Once I was on the thirteenth floor, I saw a narrow staircase leading to the fourteenth. Wonderful! The fourteenth floor did indeed exist. I reached a locked metal door, and rang the bell. A man came out and asked: “Are you José?” Was that the password? I said I was. Although we had never met, he opened the door, and gave me a bear hug, as if I were a long-lost friend.

I finally entered the apartment. Yoani was there, and all of her staff broke out in applause. I had met Yoani only a year earlier in Washington, D.C. Her stories about Cuba, her fight for freedom, and the difficulties that Cubans have to endure everyday in order to survive all resonated in my mind. I had promised to visit her someday, and I was finally there. Yet I was not in an apartment. It looked more like a newsroom.

I did not understand why all the applause. Perhaps it was due to the pictures I had sent Yoani from Obama’s entourage, since I had been invited on the trip as an official culinary ambassador. Or maybe it was the photos of business leaders with Obama, among others, that I had also sent her. These pictures were not sent directly to Yoani. Instead, they were forwarded to Miami, and somehow, they made it back to Cuba. I was counting on the idea that dining at Yoani’s during Obama’s visit would give me a different perspective on these events. Still, I felt like I was just visiting an old friend.

Yoani and her team kept moving in and out. The air smelled of baked chicken and oregano coming from three small chickens in the oven. The seemingly endless conversation went from one topic to another, from family matters to paladares, from Obama to beer, to ice… I prepared a soup of oats, Brie, chicken stock, and powdered chicken soup. Yoani explained that Cubans like big portions. They are hungry and stressed. So whenever they can, Cubans like to feast.

Yoani had just finished making a waffle in an electric waffle iron. Since it is such a small kitchen, creativity is a necessity. Still, a waffle at 8:00 PM? So I asked “Why not bread?” The staff replied: “There’s no time for bread. We’re too busy.” This was true, since Yoani had just interviewed Ben Rhodes, Obama’s national security advisor. It had been a very important day for her. She had gone from dissident to being in the presence of a man very close to the President. Yoani told me that she had even dared to ask Obama for an interview. “If you don’t dream, you don’t accomplish anything,” she said.

The 14ymedio staff was indeed hungry. They devoured the Brie and Blue Stilton cheeses I placed on the table.

There were only two waffles. I dressed them with margarine, the blue cheese that was left over, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I used the salt Yoani brought back from her last trip to Washington. She is proud of all the spices she has. Not all Cuban households are that lucky.

The pizza waffle was just too small, and we had no flour or eggs to make more batter. Still, the team seemed to like what we had. In Cuba we like big portions, José. But there was not much more I could do. There was only one Jesus Christ.

The chicken was ready. I cut it up in small portions, and sprinkled it with oregano and its cooking juices, and I brought it to the table. Everyone in the room was smoking, drinking rum and beer, and chatting.

Next, I served a dish made from the lobster I had brought with me. I used the part of the tails closest to the lobster head. I dressed it lightly with olive oil, chopped lettuce, and vinegar. I was lucky. The 14ymedio team thought they had nothing to cook, but I am a kitchen survivor. I learned how to work with a small kitchen on a ship of the Royal Spanish Navy, without gas, without ingredients… We cooks are like Jesus Christ. We can multiply anything.

It was time to put the frying pan with the leftover grease in the sink. However, the chicken juice and the burnt skin stuck to the bottom were ingredients that had to be saved. I relit the stove, added a glass of rum, and scraped the bottom of the pan. I added the tomato paste that was guarded as if it were a consecrated communion host. I added water and I let it boil. There was a little chicken broth left. I added the water left over from the lobster ceviche. A pinch of garlic. The pasta was ready. Half an hour earlier, I had been frying spaghetti in the pan. If one is not careful, it tends to burn. The stove seemed to give off a live flame, under control, and well mannered; a soft flame, like a whisper. As I toasted the pasta, Yoani told me about an article on Obama’s arrival in Cuba. Since it was a rainy day, he exited Air Force One holding his own umbrella, as he sheltered himself as well as Michelle from the rain. This is in marked contrast to Cuban government officials, who have others hold their umbrellas for them. This is another example of what freedom is like.

My dish was ready, or so I thought. I assumed it was the worse one I had ever made.

I put the toasted pasta and the small lobster medallions in the oven so the top part would be crunchy. If anyone saw me do this in Catalonia or Valencia, I would end up in jail. Nevertheless, on that long, messy table, full of dishes holding chicken, glasses of rum, and beer cans, we made room for the platter.

It was well received. We talked about how Cubans can end up in jail if they are caught with lobsters. Lobster trawlers are not allowed so that no one can escape the island. They would be too much of a temptation. The diners ate everything on their dishes. My cook’s ego was saved. This time, no one mocked me with that same old mantra, “Cubans like big portions, José.”

Yet the evening was not over. Yoani enjoys the drink I made for her last year in Washington. Called “cremat,” its ingredients are coffee grains, cinnamon, lemon peels, and rum that has been lit on fire. However, there were no lemons or limes, an oddity in a climate perfectly suited for citrus fruits. I suddenly felt guilty when I thought about how many limes were used for my daiquiris. So then I went on to narrate the story of the Catalonian sailors who returned home after the war between Spain and the United States in Cuba, and other places.

Spain may have lost the war, however, special drinks and traditions were created because of it. I started singing a Habanera, which in Catalan goes “El meu avi se’n va anar a Cuba…” (“My grandfather went off to Cuba…”). And by the light of the burning rum, we all sang together.

Editorial note: In 2011, the James Beard Foundation named José Andrés the nation’s most outstanding chef. Time Magazine has called him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. Mr. Andrés is a globally recognized culinary expert.

Translated by José Badué.

Thinking About America Amid the Red Rocks of Arizona / 14ymedio, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Panel at the Sedon Forum in Arizona last week. (@McCainInstitute)

14ymedio, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Arizona, 13 April 2016 — On the 8th and 9th of April, along with some fifty other speakers, I was invited to the Sedona Forum which is organized every year by the McCain Institute in cooperation with Arizona State University. So I flew from the democratic volcanoes of Iceland to fall, almost by parachute, among the rusty canyons of Arizona, whose red stones immediately reminded me of Stalinist aesthetics.

This elite event takes place behind closed doors at the Enchantment Resort, a kind of luxury campsite under Sedona’s cliffs and pristine dawns, where the sky is preserved by lighting technicians to make visible 101% of its stars, constellations, comets and Milky Ways.

I sneaked in there, with no qualifications but Cuba in tow, like a conspirator sect continue reading

, side by side with more than 200 personalities from the elite of American and global politics, including the National Intelligence Director, governors, ambassadors, ex-generals, university rectors, editors-in-chief, CEOs of NGOs, and a dozen senators and congressional representatives.

All were entertained on the family ranch of Republican Senator John McCain, a hero of the war against communism in Vietnam where, incidentally, he was tortured and left with lifetime scars by Cuban hitmen hired by the Ministry of Interior, who killed in cold blood several of his colleagues who were prisoners of war (all of which he told me with a hand on my shoulder and a resolute expression of resignation).

Until the sessions are made public on the website of this conclave, we were asked not to say anything of the men summoned there and their controversial statements. But I can reflect a little now on America as such. That word that, notwithstanding the academic left, remains synonymous with the only functioning and stable democracy in our hemisphere: “America” as an apocope of “United States.”

Without falling into apocalyptic aporiae, the American Union seems to stand, in the spring of 2016, just on the edge of one of those red abysses of the desert where the Sedona Forum took place. The United States desperately cries out for water, its eyes caked with the dry sand of freedom on probation. Between fundamentalism and schizophrenia, between fear and manipulation of the masses, between ethnic tolerance and immigration balkanization, between ghettos and wars, between nationalism and the NSA, between chauvinism and pornography, between correction and criminality, between idiocy and ideology, between capitalism and the lack of capitalists, between isolationism and abstention, between the State Department and its fourth floor despotic populism. Finally, between socialism and the wall.

The sessions included testimonies from Russian and Eastern European activists, for example, and they were chilling. For all of them, Putinism – that Mafioso model that Cuba is implementing today among the tycoons of Cuban exiles and the tyrant Raul Castro – mercilessly assassinated a colleague or loved one. Or both. Some of the panelists in my discussion, in fact, were survivors of violent attacks or the posthumous peace of free doses of radioactivity.

All these champions of human rights – including, by sheer luck, me – can or cannot return to our countries of origin some day, but all of us, within or outside of our Cubitas, face the most brutal impunity of regimes that kill professionally as a state policy. Be it in a “dictatorship” or a “democracy,” we all survive in an eternal state of quotation marks: precarious countries with a fancy for the gallows.

I understood then that the democracies of the world are a race in the phase of extinction and that we have been left very alone, like lost souls, despite the solidarity as symbolic as it is insolvent of the ever diminishing governments and institutions of the free world – where now no one declares themselves free – howling like fatally injured coyotes, or perhaps like characters from Roberto Bolaño: losers who are lost in the Sonora desert, just in sight of the Sedona Forum in new-century Arizona of the end of Europe and the United States.

I shared these 48 hours of voluntary seclusion like a half-silly monk amid futility and philanthropy. Still trying not to set off too many alarms in the debates all about this alarming situation. Still trying to seem like a person with perspectives, facing our fossil future or Fidelity ad infinitum. Still playing at being that Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo who, in the Isle of Infamies, at a party under surveillance even in our most intimate lives, was an incisive and intolerable writer for the system of the rude masses.

In my talk – and hoping not to violate the sub-rosa Sedona code in saying it – I first diplomatically applauded President Barack Obama’s approach to Cuba. It is not us, free Cubans, who rely on censorship and closure, but we are precisely the victims that have suffered it most. But. I immediately confirmed in public my faith in Castroism as a thing intrinsic to Cubans, as a congenital condemnation that defines us before and after Castro.

So. I told them in the English of my childhood – when the United States was, in Cuba, an illusion that everyone believed in, everyone hoped for, everyone supported – that the heart of Castroism is unwavering and that in consequence, it will end up (and this is already starting) criminalizing the Obama administration’s “opening” and its empowerment of our civil society, far beyond the vile greed of the Chamber of Commerce of an ever more un-united Union, and far beyond the terrible Cuban-American betrayal of a nation that was never born.

In other words. I told them, as a devotee of the barbaric nature of the Castros as an incarnation of Cuban complicity which, in whatever variant, America could emerge even more shutout with its “humanitarian” intervention of bombarding us with dollars and hams and computer clicks and cellphones. Although. I also asked them – among the cackle of American laughter and sophisticated sips of wine – for a civil re-colonization, a civilizing interference that finally makes us people and not subjects of a socialism with no way out, neither by ballots nor bullets. I asked them with full responsibility for a reverse invasion of human beings without anthropological damage, while our poor people escape in a suicide stampede. Curtain.

With or without embargo. With or without engagement. With or without internet. With or without repression. With or without political prisoners. With or without a market economy and the Sugar Kings who will come. With or without the rule of law. I told them that Cuba is and will be only a dynastic tyranny in self-transition, as long as a Castro or a Callejas or a Cardinal or a theatrical etcetera of these remains alive: a caste in the throes of perpetuating itself, not from Law to Law, but from Power to Power. And so. Cubans tremble, tremble like enslaved plebeians, tremble both from the opposition and from officialdom before the specific initiative of a plebiscite as a tool of liberation, as has been proposed by CubaDecide.org led by Rosa María Payá.

And I offered them this other little tidbit. Dear little friends, American daddies and grampas: the first Cuban opponent or dissident that is inserted into some little post within the institutional machinery of the regime, be it at the grassroots level in the People’s Power or in the National Assembly itself, before or after the post-totalitarian shebang of 2018, this will not be a Cuban opponent or dissident from any Cuba, but an agent planted not in secret but brazenly by the think tanks of the Ministry of the Interior and its intelligence thugs. Full stop.

Why. Without citizen mobilization and participation, the rights of Cubans – on the island as well as in exile – will remain hostages of our national sovereignty, in the hands of a clan that controls the agenda of the secret pacts where the latest guest of horror has been the White House. Please.

Forgive me, compatriots. I went to the Sedona Forum to talk about despair and left despairing. By the same grace, at a Miami foundation in the summer of 2013, a great magnate almost accused me of “doing the dirty work of the Havana Government.” And a radical counterrevolutionary said the same thing (listen to how good it sounds): “the Havana Government.”

My answer three years ago was the same with which I concluded my plea in Arizona on the afternoon of Friday, the 8^th of April:

“Better despair than demagoguery.”

No ‘Privatization’ or Other Political Parties, says Raul Castro / 14ymedio

Raul Castro during the reading of the principal report to the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party. (Internet)

14ymedio, Havana, 16 April 2016 – In a room with huge images of Carlos Balino, Julio Antonio Mella and Fidel Castro, the Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party opened in Saturday. Jose Ramon Ventura, Second Secretary of the PCC Central Committee, offered the opening words, in front of 995 delegates – of the 1,000 elected – present at the Palace of Conventions. Five delegates are not participating in the great event, among them the former Cuban president.

A few minutes into the event there was the first unanimous vote, in this case to approve the agenda. Raul Castro gave a speech of a little more than two hours, the main report dressed in civilian clothes, and recalled the days of the Bay of Pigs, emphasizing the role of State Security in this military victory. continue reading

The Cuban president warned that the island will never follow “formulas of privatization” or apply “shock therapy” during the so-called process of updating the economic model. “Cuba can allow itself to apply the so-called shock therapy, frequently applied to the detriment of the most humble classes of society,” he said.

Referring to Article 5 of the Cuban Constitution in which the Communist Party is enshrined as the highest leading force of society, Castro affirmed that “we have a single party and I say that with pride.” The first secretary of the PCC affirmed that “it is no coincidence that they attack us and demand, in order to weaken us, that we divide ourselves into several parties in the name of bourgeois democracy.”

However, for those who speculate that the party meeting will be the stage to announce the legalization of other political forces, Castro emphasized that “if they succeed in fragmenting us it will be the beginning of the end of the fatherland, the Revolution and socialism.”

The president proposed to establish “60 years as the maximum age to join the Party Central Committee,” and also noted that “up to 70 years” would be the time to hold senior Party positions.”

The report detailed that there are 670,344 PCC militants. The reduction in their number was attributed by Raul Castro to demographic reasons, to a policy restricting growth in the organization since 2004, and deficiencies in the work of recruiting and retaining members.

To justify the secrecy and lack of consultation that has surrounded the documents to be discussed during the Congress session, Castro said that unlike the previous Congress when the people were consulted on the Guidelines, this time a popular consultation was not undertaken, because it was a confirmation and continuation” of the line agreed to five years ago.

With regards to the “main course,” announced as a national development plan to the year 2030, which is “the fruit of four years’ work,” it “could not be finished,” declared the president and there would be continued “work on its drafting” which would end in 2017.

Similarly, there will be not discussion of the so-called “conceptualization of the model” but there will be a prior discussion with the participation of the Party militants, the Union of Young Communists (UJC) and the mass organizations, so that later the Central Committee can approve the final version.

The slowness in implementing the Guidelines approved by the previous Congress, of which only 21% have been completed, also found a justification in Castro’s words when he warned that it was known ahead of time that the process “would not be easy.” “The main obstacle has been the burden of an obsolete mentality which creates an inertia and lack of confidence in the future,” he said.

The “socialist state enterprise is in a disadvantageous position compared to the non-state sector,” Castro admitted. The distortion brought about the by dual currency system along with the low-key performance of the economy are the causes “that have not allowed the application of the agreement about improper gratuities and subsidies because a widespread wage increase has not been possible.”

Castro announced a program of “improving the education system” and said that the public health system will be reorganized to “increase its quality and make it efficient and sustainable.”

Calls for “more discipline and exigency” were also heard during the reading of the report because “ears and feet must be firmly planted on the ground,” explained the first secretary of the PCC.

The cold water also came for those who expected announcements about an early reunification of the dual currency system. The update of the “monetary and exchange rate is a matter that we have not stopped on working on and whose solution will not be left for the twelfth of never,” explained Castro. He commented that this reordering will eliminate “the harmful effects of egalitarianism” so that “the standard of living corresponds to the wage income.” He also confirmed the decision to guarantee “bank deposits in international currencies, in Cuban convertible pesos and in Cuban pesos, as well as the cash held by the population.”

“We are not naïve nor do we ignore the aspirations of powerful external forces that are committed to what they call the empowerment of non-state forms of management with the intent of generating change agents to put an end to the Revolution by other means,” added Castro, who, however, declared that it is necessary to set aside “prejudices” with respect to foreign investment and to advance into new businesses.

With regards to Guideline 3, which states unequivocally that non-state forms of production will not permit the concentration of ownership, he now added that not will it concentrate wealth.

However, Castro explained that the concept of private property over the means of production for small businesses is widened, although he insisted that the fundamental means of production must be in the hands of the people.

In conclusion, the General expressed a wish that from this Congress “will emanate the principal directions of our work.”

Starting Saturday afternoon, the Congress delegates will work in four committees, which will also meet on Sunday in the Palace of Conventions in Havana. The Congress will look at 268 Guidelines of those approved at the prior congress: 31 original guidelines, 193 that have been modified and 44 that have been added.

On Monday, all participants will meet in a plenary session and vote on the nomination of the Party Central Committee. On that day the members of the Politburo and the First and Second Party Secretaries will also be announced.

Betting is Closed, Cuba’s 7th Party Congress Opens / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar

The Palace of Conventions during the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. (EFE)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 16 April 2016 — Five years after the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, the only agreement from that congress that had a fixed date will meet this Saturday: the celebration of the Seventh Party Congress. The event will begin at 10:00 am at the Palace of Conventions in Havana with the presence of one thousand delegates and 280 guests. The secrecy and speculation regarding a possible change of course or a frustrating continuity continues.

At the opening session, which will be broadcast live on national television, the main report will be read. The main documents – which were not disclosed to the public and are not even known by the mass of Party militants, which exceeds 700,000 people – will be discussed, probably behind closed doors, in four commissions. continue reading

Among the issues the delegates will address are the conceptualization of the economic and social model, the economic plan, and the analysis of the implementation of the guidelines agreed to in the previous congress. Of great importance will be the election of a new Central Committee, where changes are expected among senior positions on the Politburo.

The expectations have been many and diverse. If you follow the opinions collected by the newspaper Granma, the meeting, considered “the congress of all Cubans,” should be characterized by continuity and “improving the economic and social model,” at least that is what different interviews with some of the delegates elected to the conclave have reflected.

Within this line they insist on the anti-imperialist character of the process and have repeatedly alluded to the will not to cede a single inch in matters considered unshakable principles.

Some commentators have slipped less orthodox views into the digital pages of the official Party organ. Among these are suggested changes that exceed the limits of continuity, including greater openness in the economy with the more flexible creation of non-agricultural cooperatives, and allowing the formation of small and medium enterprises in the non-state sector. Bolder actions demanded include the elimination of the dual currency and greater flexibility in all matters relating to the ownership of property.

With regard to politics, those who are hopeful that the Congress could introduce reforms in this area have referred to the need to introduce amendments to the Constitution and to offer a new electoral law. In a general sense there is a demand for the amplification of rights related to freedom of association and expression.

However, for the opposition sector to expect anything from this meeting of communists is a delusion. The most extreme are offended by any analysis that expresses the idea that the event could result in something positive.

Most observers agree that the importance of the partisan congress is that it will be the last in which members of the “historic generation,” most of them octogenarians, are present, so this must be the occasion on which it is defined who should take over.

Speculations incline to those who would take steps to openings, based on the improvement of relations between Cuba and the United States, the difficult situation of the internal economy, and the trend of decline among Cuba’s main allies on the continent. Those who are betting on the stagnation option rely on the traditional attachment to power of those who have spent more than half a century at the helm in Cuba, and their fear that the slightest concession could lead to an undesirable outcome.

As part of the symbolic aspect to be imprinted, the opening of the Congress coincides with the 55^th anniversary of the declaration of the socialist character of the Revolution, while the closing session announced for 19 April marks five and a half decades since the military victory at the Bay of Pigs, baptized in official discourse as the first defeat of imperialism in Latin America.

When the most important event for Cuban communists opens this morning, the fate of the whole nation will be hanging on what is said in front of those microphones. The delegates to the Seventh Congress, and especially the senior Party officials, might let this opportunity pass amid the applause and vacuous statements, or they could make decisions that remove the shackles from the wheel of history.

Fresh Fish / 14ymedio

A young man with his recently caught fish near Havana's Malecon. (14ymedio) — A young man with his recently caught fish near Havana’s Malecon. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 15 April 2016 – Near Linea Street in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood, a young man is selling this fish he just pulled from the sea. After hours on the water in a makeshift craft, the bold sailor has managed to hook a huge fish that he is offering for 20 convertible pesos, the equivalent of a months’ wages for a professional.

The sale of the beautiful specimen is accompanied by the epic of the fish. The young man brags of the difficulties he faced, the long time he had to wait to snag the fish, and even relates his surprise at the moment it emerged from the water. His face is filled with happiness on knowing that this afternoon, thanks to the fish, his family will be able to buy a little chicken, a bottle of oil and even some soft drinks for the kids.

Despite being surrounded by the sea, Cubans find it very difficult to get fresh fish. The managers of private restaurants must jump through hoops to ensure the supply of this product on their menus. They depend, in most cases, on the illegal market and fishermen like this young man, whose fish will probably end up this very night in the kitchen of one of these paladares (or palates, as private restaurants are called).

Chronicle of a Chronicle Not Foretold / 14ymedio, Manuel Pereira

Gabriel García Márquez with Fidel Castro. (GGM files)

14ymedio, Manuel Pereira, Mexico, 15 April 2016 — In 1981 I was delivering some lectures about Cuban cinema at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) when I received a call in my hotel in the Zona Rosa neighborhood from Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He asked me to come to his house on Fuego Street in the exclusive Pedregal neighborhood. We ate at a nearby restaurant called El Perro Verde, or something like that. He asked me to read his latest novel, he was in a hurry, it was short.

What was the mystery of such urgency? He knew that I was returning to Havana in a few days. “I can read it on the plane,” I told him. No, I had to do it in Mexico. He was in such a rush to give me the manuscript that he forgot his wallet on the table. He realized it when he got home and asked me to go look for it at El Perro Verde. The waiter was honest and had saved it, despite its being quite bulky, as I supposed the wallets of famous writers to be. “It’s all here,” sighed Gabo, after counting the bills. continue reading

He handed me the novel. I began to read it right away in his house, and then I locked myself in my hotel to keep reading. I read it in a couple of sittings, not knowing what the famous writer expected of me. The story of the two brothers who stabbed Santiago Nasar was well structured, flowed effectively, like everything from Gabo; with his impeccable craftsman’s prose, neither lacking or needing a single comma, the precise adjectives, the well-drawn characters. The following day we met again. Then he said to me, “You are the second reader of this work, after Mercedes of course.”

“It is an honor,” I replied.

But … what was the mystery of the hurry?

He confessed that he wanted Fidel to authorize him to publish this book.

Why?

Because he had made a public oath: he would not publish again while Pinochet remained in power. “And the problem is, he is not failing,” he grumbled. “And meanwhile, I wrote this book and I really want to publish it.” But before breaking his announced promise he should consult with Fidel.

Indeed, sinceThe Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) Gabo had not published any piece of fiction. Too long in silence for such an esteemed writer.

What did I have to do with all that?

“I want you to take this book to Fidel.”

“I do not personally know Fidel, I have no direct access.”

He hesitated a moment and added:

“But you know Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, right?”

“Yes, him I know.”

“Well, you give it to him to give it to Fidel.”

Then he wanted to know my opinion of the novel, which flattered the thirty-something I then was. With great tact I told him that his story reminded me of vaguely of Rashoman – the two stories from Akutagawa and Kurosawa’s film – because of its multiple witnesses and diverse versions of a crime, but he said no, his source of inspiration had been the assassination of Julius Caesar. I thought about the omens, the fatality of Greek tragedy, and concluded he was right, although the Japanese took nothing from Gabo, as was evident later with Memories of My Melancholy Whores, so akin to Kawabata’s House of the Sleeping Beauties, starting from the epigraph.

Twenty-four hours later I landed in Havana and handed the clandestine text (not foretold) to Carlos Rafael Rodriguez. Shortly afterwards Chronicle of a Death Foretold was published simultaneously in Colombia, Spain, Mexico and Argentina. Obviously, Gabo had obtained the imprimatur of Fidel Castro, as is proper of every high ecclesiastical or ideological authority. The Middle Ages in its purest state.

Only 5.5% of Communist Party Congress Delegates Under Age 35 / EFE, 14ymedio

EFE/14ymedio, Havana, 14 April 2016 — The average age of the thousand delegates who will participate from 16 to 19 April in the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) is 48 years, and only 5.5% are under 35, according to data released Thursday by the newspaper Granma.

The oldest delegate, Jose Ramon Fernandez, is 92, and is currently president of Cuba’s Olympic Committee and one of the founders of the PCC. The youngest participant, Idaliena Diaz, age 27, is a deputy to the National Assembly and is president of a People’s Council in the eastern province of Guantanamo. continue reading

“It is natural that those attending events of this nature are, as a rule, compañeros who have accumulated considerable experience and have a long history in the Party ranks,” said Granma, the official organ of the PCC, which added that the Party Congress will be “a reflection of the [Party] militancy and of Cuban society as a whole.”

By gender, some 43% of the delegates are women, 2.5% more than at the previous congress held in 2011.

The representation of blacks and mixed race delegates will also increase, with 36% of the delegates, 4.5% more than five years ago.

Cuban communists will open their Seventh Congress on April 16 and end it on April 19, when the Central Committee elected the previous day will be announced, along with the members of the Politburo and the first and second Party secretaries.

At the previous PCC Congress, held five years ago, the president of Cuba, Raul Castro (now 84), was named first secretary of the organization, replacing his brother Fidel, who retired from power in 2006. At the same time Jose Ramon Machado Ventura (now 85) was designated second secretary.

On that occasion, the Cuban communists approved the plan of economic reforms under President Raul Castro.

Ecuador And Mexico Take Steps To Stem The Flow Of Cubans / 14ymedio, Mario Penton

Cuban Migrants stranded in Panama. (Facebook)

14ymedio, Mario Penton, Miami, 13 April 2016 — Mexico will not operate more “air bridges” for now, nor will Costa Rica allow more Cuban migrants in its territory, at a time when some 3,500 Cubans are flocking to the Panama isthmus trying to continue their journey to the United States. This is the scene at the climax of the summit where authorities of the countries involved in the flow of Cuban migrants – from the United States to Ecuador – are meeting.

Also present at the meeting, convened by Costa Rica to “follow up” on the crisis of last year, are the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Program for Development. The notable absences were Cuba and Nicaragua, allied governments who blame the immigration policy of the United States for the current situation. continue reading

Costa Rica called the meeting “constructive” and, according to a statement from its Foreign Ministry, “it has been a meeting to exchange some ideas about how to address the issue of immigration.” The Deputy Foreign Minister, Alejandro Solano, also commented on the proposal for “a normative study to try to harmonize laws” commissioned by the IOM, with a view of taking a regional approach to the practices in each country.

Moreover, it has emerged that Ecuador and Mexico are going to tighten measures to prevent the flow of Cubans. In the case of the Andean country, the cost of a visa will be increased from $100 to $400, one of the most expensive in the world, while the Aztec country has not yet clarified how it will stem the flow of Cubans to the United States. Still to be confirmed is whether Cuban migrants who reach Tapachula, Mexico will be granted safe conduct. Costa Rica has reaffirmed its position from recent weeks and according to the deputy minister will require a visa from all migrants seeking to cross its territory.

Meeting of the Central American foreign ministers Tuesday. (Costa Rica Foreign Ministry)

While the meeting was taking place in the Costa Rican capital, Nicaragua mobilized riot and military police near the border post at Teblillas, Costa Rica in response to an eventual furtive passage of migrants from Alajuela through this town. Also at the same time, Roberto Vega Lopez, a Cuban citizen, was captured in Colombia; he has trafficked people from the island in a complicated route that includes Guyana and the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon jungle. At the time of his arrest he was leading 15 Cubans through this dangerous route to Panama.

The conclusions of the meeting in San Jose fell like a bucket of cold water on the camps of Cuban migrants in Panama. According to Yunier Leiva, many of them had lit candles during the day in hopes of a “miracle,” that would resolve their difficult stay there. “In the end what they did is support the Cuban government and lock up even more Cubans in the floating prison that is Cuba,” he commented with a heavy heart.

For Silvio Enrique Campos, the alternative left to them by the foreign ministers was to “stick with the coyotes.” In a conversation with 14ymedio the migrant said that given “the lack of answers or solutions, Cubans in Paso Canoas are overcome by desperation.” Despite the difficulty of the moment, he calls on his compatriots not to endanger their lives because “the walls will fall again.”

In the absence of solutions to their problematic situation the migrants have decided to begin night vigils so that the international community can see the conditions they are living in. On Cuban who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, comments that every day several groups of Cubans are leaving Panama for the United States, crossing through the forests along the Costa Rican border.

He says, The only thing the authorities have done by not solving our passage in an orderly manner is to feed the bands of coyotes they are claiming to fight.” He also said that the human traffickers are now charging more for their services. “A trip that cost some $3,000 dollars has now been converted into a much more dangerous and expensive journey and last week someone wanted to charge me $7,000.”

From Ecuador, the Cuban National Alliance also released a note which encourages Cuban who have decided to emigrate not to get discouraged. “We knew from the beginning that it wasn’t going to be an easy task,” it says, and at the same time it calls on its members to “continue appealing to the reason and humanity of the governments.”

At this point it is not yet known what will happen to the thousands of Cuban migrants who are stranded in Central America. In a report presented by the Panamanian immigration authorities it stated that the number of Cubans has already reached 3,500 people, of which more than 150 are children.

Cuban migration crisis in numbers. (14ymedio)

Party Congress: Neither More Of The Same Nor Surprising News / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 12 April 2016 — Ruperto, the comedic character in Vivir del Cuento (Living the Story), woke up after a 28-year coma and still doesn’t understand Cuba’s dual currency system nor the end of the Socialist Camp. In this case, there are many “Rupertos” who will analyze the upcoming Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, who believe that everything will continue as before and the hardliners will have their way. For them, nothing has happened in the last decade since Fidel Castro left power and passed it on to his younger brother.

If, in fact, nothing happened, the great event of the Cuban communists would be a remake of previous congresses. Those who have not been in a coma since 2006 have seen that that axes around which Cuban politics revolve are not the same. The rampant reversal of paternalism, the preponderance of economics over ideology in decision-making, the failure of the monopoly on the media and culture, and a long list of reforms – classified by some as timid and by others as devious – paint an entirely different picture. To this should be added the change in the correlation of influences in the international arena and a growing and increasingly evident popular discontent. continue reading

Most of the delegates to this Congress have no memory of the first of January 1959 when “luminously dawned the morning,” as the poet Indio Nabori wrote. For the first time, when a new Central Committee, and especially a new Politburo are chosen, most of their members will have no responsibility for the executions of those first years and probably never even shouted the slogan “Paredón! Paredón!” – “To the [execution] wall!” None of them seized any properties. Those born after 1960 weren’t even old enough to vote when the first constitution was approved in 1976.

These delegates are no longer homophobic atheists who boasted of their machismo and the fact that they never passed the 9^th grade because they were of humble origin. They have been politically shaped with an awareness that the system is not invulnerable and that the theory behind it is debatable. They have connected to the internet, studied marketing techniques and, although it seems a frivolity, passed a decade without listening to the speeches of Fidel Castro; and they did listen to Barack Obama’s remarks in Havana’s Gran Teatro.

And so this Party meeting cannot be more of the same.

However, this does not mean that General Antonio Maceo (b. 1845) is going to sit down to talk with General Martinez Campos (b. 1831), nor that the name “communist” will be removed from the Party. The hard core will impose its authority by dint of intimidation against the unruly and through the offering of perks and opportunities. It is also true that most of the delegates to this Congress should have participated at more than one repudiation rally, and it is probably that many have betrayed a co-worker or a neighbor, and that most of the time in the assemblies in which they have participated in they have dutifully raised their hands for what in the opinion of the nomenklatura is politically correct.

There will be no surprising news such as opening the door to a multi-party system, or launching a program of privatizations. No one will talk at this event about reconciliation among Cubans or dialog with opponents. There will be no decree of amnesty for political prisoners, nor recognition of the legitimacy of an alternative civil society, of freedom of expression or of an independent press.

However, those who rule Cuba know that they are forced to change something or at least to give the impression that they are willing to do so. They have their hole cards, but they should put them on the table. The secrecy with which they have managed the documents to be discussed can only indicate that they are preparing to change direction and we will have to wait for the closing remarks to see the course taken.

Because what has really characterized the Cuban Communist Party is not having its own theoretical base and, above all, not respecting the letter of its own agreements. Decisions made in a personal and specious manner by one or two people have always prevailed. And it is precisely this that would be the unpredictable essence of change. Will they recognize Marxism-Leninism as only a secondary source to be taken into account? In the hidden desires that fill the heads of these real men and women is the key to what to expect of the Seventh Congress.

Panama Is Preparing A New Shelter For More Than 1,000 Cubans / 14ymedio, Mario Penton

In Puerto Obaldia, Panama, there are already more than a thousand Cubans. (La Estrella de Panama)

14ymedio, Mario Penton, 9 April 2016 — An old and abandoned building in the district of Gualaca, in western Panama, is being refurbished to accommodate some of the more than 2,000 Cuban migrants who have been arriving in that country from Ecuador and Guyana in recent weeks.

The flow of migrants has continued despite warnings from the Panamanian authorities to discourage Cubans seeking to reach the United States through Central America. In the coming days at least 1,300 more Cubans are expected to arrive, joining those who are currently stranded on the western border of the country. continue reading

The local news channel Telemetro reports that the preparations for the shelter have not been well received by Gualaca’s authorities, who claim they were not consulted on the issue. However, after a meeting between residents of the community of Planes, local authorities and governor Hugo Mendez, it was agreed to allow the Caribbeans to be sheltered in exchange for social projects in the district.

The Panamanian press has also reported that among the conditions imposed by local authorities is the presence of the National Police along with troops from the National Civil Protection System to prevent the migrants from leaving the immediate area. A situation that has been denounced by human rights activists which categorize it as “forced confinement.”

Local people are also sensitive to issues of health and public safety, and the government will guarantee the presence of primary care personnel to provide for the healthcare needs of the migrants.

In the information published so far it is unclear whether the new shelter will be for Cubans who are arriving from Puerto Obaldia or those already in Paso Canoas. The latter have received the news with skepticism and concern.

For Silvio Enrique Campos it is “another media lie.” According to this migrant the conditions in the current camps are subhuman, the food is terrible and they have to pay for medical attention. “It is not like they say in the media,” he said.

Orislandy Diaz, meanwhile, told this newspaper that the Panamanian government has “a strategy” to keep them away “from the view of the pres.” The young man wonders why they want to keep them 50 miles from the Costa Rican border and believes that the purpose is to “hide” the thousands of migrants.

Isleyda Lelle, a Cuban who reached the Isthmus a week ago, considers the crowded conditions of the thousands of Cubans “grim,” and calls on the international community to help them continue their journey.

This week Costa Rica’s Foreign Minister said his country has no capacity to serve more islanders and will not allow access because the country’s capacity is exhausted after receiving more than 8,000 migrants last year. He added that “the problem can not come here,” referring to the nearly 2,000 Cubans settled on the Panamanian border.

This coming week there will be a meeting convened by Costa Rican President Guillermo Solis; invited to attend are United States immigration authorities, the Central American countries, along with Cuba, Colombia and Ecuador. Costa Rica is expected to again call for an end to the Cuban Adjustment Act and the tightening the conditions for granting visas to citizens of the island.

“What is appropriate,” said the Costa Rican Foreign Minister, “is the elimination of this legislation that responded to a historical context that is not current and that is affecting all of us who are in the middle.”

Facts and figures to understand the crisis of Cuban migrants in Central America. (14ymedio)

Cuba’s Official Press Treads Carefully With Panama Papers / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

In Iceland, citizens took to the streets to demand the prime minister take responsibility after the leaked documents. (Twitter)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, 5 April 2016 – The name of Cuba has not appeared among the so-called Panama Papers, but the official press is displaying caution over leaked documents that reveal fortunes hidden by politicians, athletes and entertainment figures. The national media has mentioned those touched by the scandal, such as Argentina’s president Mauricio Macro, while hiding evidence that points to Vladimir Putin and the Venezuelan government.

In Monday’s first newscast, the report on the exhaustive investigation into the documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossak Fonseca lasted less than a minute. The unveiling that exposed billionaires’ offshore accounts involving 140 politicians in 50 countries presents the ossified Party propaganda with the dilemma of joining the diffusers of these 15 million leaked documents, or keeping its distance before the involvement of numerous allies. continue reading

The Panama Papers involve not only doubtful transactions by political leaders such as the prime ministers of Georgia and Iceland, the King of Saudi Arabia and the president of Ukraine, but also reveal the shady dealings of close friends such as Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bachar Al Assad, figures close to the Havana establishment and beneficiaries of favorable coverage in the local media.

The Plaza of the Revolution prefers to tread carefully before the avalanche of names of heads of states and governments — newly inaugurated or already retired –mentioned in the documents leaked by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The monopoly maintained over the written and broadcast media allows Cuba’s Department of Revolutionary Orientation (DOR) to present the version of the scandal that is later repeated in chorus by its reports inside and outside the island.

However, the plot has just begun and there may be other names. The ICIJ has warned that the investigators will demonstrate which of those involved have no legitimate way to maintain offshore accounts and thus have committed a crime or violation of the law. For now, all those mentioned are in the eye of the hurricane of the public diatribe, but it is up to the organs of justice to determine their guilt.

The threads of the skein, now being untangled by 370 journalists and 107 media companies in 78 countries, start with the documentation from an anonymous source delivered to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, and also involve the soccer player Lionel Messi, King Juan Carlos’s brother Pilar de Borbon, and the movie director Pedro Almodovar. It is expected that in the coming weeks the scandal set off by these leaks will cause resignations, judicial proceedings and who knows if there might be a suicide.

Cuba’s official daily Granma will juggle to hide the fact that Adrian Jose Valasquez Figueroa, former head of security at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, opened a bank account in the Republic of Seychelles a few days after Nicolas Maduro’s victory in the presidential elections. The faithful former captain of the Bolivarian army now lives in the greatest luxury in the Dominican Republic with his wife Claudia Diaz Guillen, a former nurse to Hugo Chavez. A story that will not be mentioned by the official press.

However, the Panama papers are more than a scandal of public figures who hide their money and evade tax obligations. Above all it is a test of truth and transparency in a world where there are ever more walls, secret codes and masks. This massive leak of documents also restores hope to journalism, a profession in crisis that has managed to stand out through perseverance and teamwork.

Hiding the revelations, silencing the names of those involved, will only end up sinking the official Cuban press, incapable of reflecting its own reality and that of others.

Google Jumps Through Hoops In Cuba / 14ymedio, Luz Escobar

Uniformed officers from MININT leave the Google+Kcho.MOR site this Wednesday. (14ymedio / Luz Escobar)

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, 7 April 2016 — Google may be the Internet giant, but in Cuba it has had to jump through hoops. This Wednesday, the newly inaugurated Google+Kcho.MOR site opened its doors late because the employee who keeps the keys arrived late and because fumigation against the Aedes aegypti mosquito –carrier of dengue fever and the zika virus – had filled the place with thick gray smoke. Not even these setbacks caused the dozen users waiting outside to connect to the internet to leave.

The process to access the place is reminiscent of the lines to acquire products in short supply, like an interprovincial bus ticket or a dozen eggs. “You have to come early to mark your place in line, because you are going to spend the whole morning here,” said a young woman who said she had used the new infrastructure twice since it opened to the public this Monday. continue reading

And in spite of everything the brand new Google project has also bowed to the government and blocked websites. Sites such as Cubaencuentro, Revolico and 14ymedio remain blocked. The censorship is due to the provider of the connection, the telephone company ETECSA, a state monopoly that maintains control over what can and cannot be seen on its servers.

However the lines never end and every hour only 20 numbered tickets are issued. Prior to entry, users must leave all their belongings in lockers, with the exception of their ID cards without which entrance is denied. They cannot enter with cameras, phones, USB memory sticks or laptops. All published photos of the interior have been taken by the official press and a few foreign correspondents who have been allowed to publicize the new project.

Although initially there was talk about the possibility of being able to use storage devices, such as flash drives or external hard drives to take information home and to upload materials to the web, as of this Wednesday this is still not permitted. This limitation gives the surfing room the aspect of a museum: look, touch and go, but without taking anything, the employees warn. The novel experience is reduced to navigating the internet from one of the 20 Chromebooks in the place.

Fabian, a young man who has been three times between Tuesday and Wednesday, tells14ymedio that “at first they let you make calls and talk but then they prohibited it because people were shouting and it bothered everyone nearby.” The place is crowded and users have no privacy as they move around the World Wide Web. Several employees supervise every move and look over users’ shoulders at the pages open on their screens.

“The problem is that this is a library and you can’t speak in a loud voice,” one of the workers explained to this newspaper. As for the schedule, the young man said that so far it is open “from 7:00 AM to 12:00 PM, but the early hours are reserved for previously coordinated visits.”

A group of agents from the Immigration and Nationality section of the Interior Ministry (MININT) left the center on Wednesday just before the first 20 people in line were admitted. “Yesterday the ones dressed in green came, from MININT in fact… now, what I don’t understand is why these people have some priority,” said Dorian, a neighbor of the Google+Kcho.MOR center.

Yuli, a third year medical student returned to mark er place in line after having used the Chromebooks because she didn’t have enough time to find the information she needed. “Because you can’t copy anything, what I do is send it to my Gmail account and later download it take it to another site,” she detailed. Her boyfriend, a fine arts student at the Higher Institute of Art (ISA), said that the day before he had been able to visit several sites with “impressive virtual reality thanks to the cardboard glasses.” He was referring to “Cardboard,” a virtual reality platform for mobile phones, also donated by Google.

Particularly striking is the slow navigation speed in the new facility, as it had been announced that the place – integrated into the Organic Romerillo Museum (MOR) belonging to the artist Kcho – would have a connection speed 70 times faster than that offered in the WiFi zones in the rest of the country. Several users commented outside that they felt cheated because of the problems watching videos on Youtube or using other services that require a higher bandwidth.

Despite the obstacles, the wait, the numbered tickets and inability to take digital content home, users seem mesmerized by simply sitting in front of the screens and moving their hands at full speed over the keyboard so as not to lose a single second of their access to the web.

Looking on from the wall is a huge picture of Fidel Castro with a Cuban flag. An electronic marquee installed at the site shows one of the last phrases the former president wrote to Barack Obama: “We do not need the empire to give us any gifts.”

A View From Cuba of The US Presidential Campaign / 14ymedio, Pedro Campos

Hillary-Clinton-Donald-Bernie-Sanders_CYMIMA20160129_0004_13 — Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

14ymedio, Pedro Campos, Havana, 11 April 2016 — The current election campaign in the United States has been characterized by low blows and “disqualifications” in the Republican camp where, at this point, the person not wanted by the party establishment, Donald Trump, appears to be in the lead, with the entire structure of the party trying to cut the floor out from under him and supporting his opponent Ted Cruz, who carries Cuban blood.

The frontrunner is accused of being an extremist, fascist, crazy. While they crucify Cruz as impertinent, lacking charisma, and too conservative in religious matters, although both can claim another image in front of the national convention. It is well known: a fascist extremist and an impertinent extreme conservative do not have many chances in modern US presidential elections. continue reading

The Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, project more presidential images and no one could accuse them of being extremists in any sense.

Trump assumes positions that concern a good share of the American public, and many around the world, because of their implications for the economy and security, but his insults to the establishment and his ordinary manners appeal to a part of the electorate tired of the dominance of a tax-imposing political class.

The lack of democracy within the Republic Party is seen is the maneuvers its establishment is using to try to unseat the billionaire during the party convention. This has led the candidate to consider the possibility of leaving the party, but so far there is nothing definite.

In the presidential elections in the United States the figure, respect and sympathy inspired by the candidate weigh heavily, as does his or her platform and the money to support a campaign.

Some analysts believe that the Republicans are already defeated because they failed to advance a candidate from the beginning with the weight and personality capable of uniting the party. But they have fought among themselves, and so have been weakened in the ultimate battle against the Democratic candidate and, at this point, “inventing” a winning candidate could result in a disaster for the party.

The campaign for the Democratic nomination has been cleaner and with greater unity and coherence. Clinton is ahead and, if nominated, could become the first woman president of the United States, a great attraction indeed. In addition, her skills were demonstrated from the State Department.

Sanders, without backing from millionaires or the establishment, has built his campaign from small donations from young people and workers who, weary of the great social differences and the abuses of power, want systematic changes; an outcome of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He is not a common socialist, and no one questions his commitment to democracy. His discourse has forced Clinton to declare that “companies must distribute part of their earnings to their workers.”

A common problem for the Democrats is mobilizing the vote of their historic base: Hispanics, blacks, workers and the middle class. A controversial or socialist candidate as their nominee could encourage these voters to go to the polls.

A Clinton-Sanders combination would unite a part of the establishment with some of its challengers, women, the liberal left and the traditional Democratic base; but it could be too far to the left of the traditional axis of the electorate, However, since Obama the Democrats seemed to have moved in that direction. However, both Clinton and Sanders come from the Northeast, so they may prefer a running mate from the South or West to gain greater support in those regions.

Traditionally, if the economy grows, if unemployment is at tolerable levels, if the rate of inflation is not elevated, if there are no international conflicts that jeopardize national security and if the outgoing government is viewed favorably, the candidate of the current president’s party has a greater chance of winning.

From here to November, everything will depend on the eventual changes that could occur in these parameters and on the level of unity and coherence that is finally achieved at each party’s convention, which, for now, favors the Democrats.

Without dramatic changes in these aspects, either of the Democratic candidates or a combination of them both would be more likely to win over any of the Republicans, who are still burdened by the novelty of an agitator with popularity among the Republican base but with positions that are too controversial to unite the party and defeat the Democrats. But a lot can happen between now and November.

Without Democratization There is No Guarantee of Cuba’s Independence / 14ymedio, Pedro Campos

The Mariel Special Development Zone. (ZEDM)

14ymedio, Havana, Pedro Campos, 6 April 2016 — Politicians, analysts and academics, both socialists and liberals, have addressed the importance of the political and economic democratization of Cuban society as a basis for the desired lift-off towards the development and modernization of the nation.

For a sector of the democratic left and more than a few nationalists, this democratization would also be a strategic guarantee for the independence of Cuba in every sense. continue reading

In the absence of subsidies, the current state-centric political and economic model can only guarantee its survival with a significant increase in foreign capital investment in the joint development of state mega-enterprises or direct investment in support of the plans for its “portfolio of businesses.”

In the belief that foreign capital will save the state companies, the official economic policy prioritizes its alliance with foreign capital, while opposing the full and free development of independent “non-state” forms, whether joint-venture or fully private, because it considers them “enemies of state capital.” Not to mention the dreaded “big bad wolf”: self-management under workers’ control.

In these circumstances, a democratization of the economy that put the bulk of it in the hands of the people – workers in self-managed state enterprises, and medium and small businesses, private or state-associated—is what could cushion the impact, absorbing into the Cuban economy as a whole the expected US investment once the blockade-embargo is fully lifted.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the state website CubaDebate that authorization for US telecommunications companies to operate on the island and financial support the non-state sector by the Obama administration only seeks to build opposition to the government of Raul Castro.

The internet and the development of the non-state sector are seen as “opposed to the government of Raul Castro.” To the bureaucracy it is the same whether the support for these activities comes from the US or from the Moon: the US has always interfered in the free development of”state socialism” in Cuba and wherever it has been tried.

It could not be otherwise for the “new class” generated by the statism that tries to preserve its control-power, which explains the limitations imposed on the internet, on self-employment and on the development of cooperatives, despite approval by the Sixth Congress the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) itself, to not mention that the term self-management has disappeared from the vocabulary.

The independent development of small and medium-sized private and associated businesses (cooperatives, mutual or stock) in the short and medium term would displace inefficient and anti-worker state enterprises, as is already happening, if the regime does not move quickly to self-management or co-management. Were they to do so, workers would no longer be simply underpaid employees, but can become become effective owners of companies and participate directly in the property, or carry over to full or partial control of domestic or foreign capitalist enterprises.

In the first variant, the current state monopoly savage capitalism, which exploits the workers and impoverishes them, would thus be forced to transfer real economic power to the workers, which it has always refused to do because it would imply a decrease in and/or disappearance of the power of the bureaucracy and the current control exercised on all dividends generated by state enterprises. This is why they have preferred the second variant, an alliance with international capital so that power can continue to support itself, now sharing the exploitation of its employees with foreign capital.

But this involves delivering much of the country’s economy to foreign capital and eventually to the great American capital.

The principal enemy, the limitless capital of the United States, would become the government’s main ally in the joint exploitation of Cuban workers and in a fundamental way would lead to a new socio-economic dependence: a kind of virtual annexation to the United States, where there is no blockade and it costs little more to travel to Miami than it does to go from Havana to Varadero.

The communists who still believe that socialism relies on the salaried state company, where the workers continue to be widgets for which they don’t even have to pay full cost, are making the game into one of virtual annexation.

The fault is not the United States’, but the official policy against free labor. Without democratization and socialization of the economy and politics there will be no guarantees for the future independence of Cuba.

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