The Leaders Feel “Threatened” After Obama’s Visit / 14ymedio

Eduardo Cardet, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement. (Flickr)
Eduardo Cardet, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement. (Flickr)

14ymedio, 21 April 2106 — The national coordinator of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), Eduardo Cardet, argues that the communist leaders of Cuba felt “very threatened” by the recent visit of US President Barack Obama. “They fear losing power,” he said told the Catholic news agency Aciprensa on Wednesday.

“This entrenchment (of the senior leaders) in that old position demonstrates the fragility they feel, the fear in the face of the change that our people are expecting. The people of Cuba have changed, there is a diversity that is manifesting itself and there is an exhaustion with this official discourse and there is no longer any identification with the message that they want to impose on the people,” he asserts. continue reading

For Cardet, the recently concluded Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party has been “more of the same” and has failed to meet the expectations of the people. However, the coordinator of the MCL admitted that no significant change was not expected at that meeting.

The opposition stressed that even “moderate Communist members” are “extremely disappointed” because they had “the hope that there would be a certain renewal within the core of the party to bring a fresh air, fresh ideas and they have seen that that opportunity has vanished and that nothing really positive has happened.”

Cardet considered the harsh criticism from Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez directed on Monday at the United States president as a proof of the fear of the party leaders of losing power. “Because of this they are returning to these hardline positions,” returning to the rhetoric of confrontation and “pointing to the United States as the empire that is supposedly destroying the Cuban nation and all these fallacies that do nothing to support reconciliation or the normalization of relations,” he said.

The leader of the movement founded by Oswaldo Paya stressed that the continued repression towards the opposition “shows that the Government has no intention of changing with regards to political tolerance” and he invited Cubans to “be united and work hard” to achieve a transition to a state of law.

Foreign Minister’s Criticism Of Obama’s Cuba Visit Betrays Nervousness / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 19 April 2016 — Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez harshly criticized Barack Obama’s trip to Havana this Monday. It was “a visit in which there was an all out attack on our conception, our history, our culture and our symbols,” the minister told the 7th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party.

The Foreign Minister’s comments had the tone of a reflection on the concerns of some sectors of the regime before the new situation created by the resumption of diplomatic relations with Washington. First, it was Fidel Castro with his “Reflection” column at the end of March that reproached the United States president for his “syrupy” words. Later, a video was posted in which the number two man at Cuba’s embassy in Madrid, Miguel Moré Santana, expressed himself with great crudity before the Spanish committees of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution. continue reading

In that video, circulating on the social networks, the diplomat describes the coverage of Obama’s visit in Spanish media as “a display of cultural, psychological and media war without parallel.” In addition, he criticizes that “mercenaries in service to the United States” are used as the only sources of opinion, which he considers “a lack of respect for Cuba.”

The deputy ambassador says, for example, that the Spanish public television channel collected the impressions of Cubans on the arrival of President Obama only through the words of the regime opponent Guillermo Fariñas.

Moré Santana lashes out against the image other foreign media gave of the presence of Obama in the island. “It would seem it was a successful visit,” excoriates the diplomat, but calls the guest a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and declares that now the Cuban government has to be “more measured” in its “discourse” because it already has diplomatic relations with the United States.

Moré Santana denounces “the constant slanders and campaigns of media contamination” against Cuba, starting with the idea of the embargo “that no longer exists or is on the path to extinction” or assertions that it is not the cause of the country’s economic problems. For the diplomat it is a battle “of the lion against the chained monkey,” because in his opinion the major media are able to influence and manipulate public opinion and also exercise control over social networks.

The diplomat argues that “the Cuban Revolution is experiencing the most difficult moment in its history,” because the mechanisms of destabilization used by the White House are now more subtle and are trying to “corrode” the process from the inside. He criticizes the flexibility measures implemented by the US administration, to ensure that “telecommunications is the number one target” in a new strategy “against Cuba.” They “come and tell us that they will facilitate – a kindness – free access for young Cubans to the Twitter network,” he adds.

Among Obama’s strategies criticized by Moré Santana is having contacted Panfilo “one day before arriving in Cuba… the most famous comedian” on the island. Through this telephone call, he says, Obama “opens the door, the easiest one of all, and that is of empathy,” and with this he “spread… the criticisms and thinking and many Cuban intellectuals who were in public debates” and “all that was effectively smothered.”

According to the diplomat, this policy is part of a plan of the “imperial powers” to “end the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela and create a domino effect that sweeps aside all the progressive and integration processes on the continent.”

Spain Will Disembark in Cuba in May / 14ymedio

The training ship Juan Sebastian Elcano is the best known barquentine of the Spanish Armada. (M. Exteriores)
The training ship Juan Sebastian Elcano is the best known barquentine of the Spanish Armada. (M. Exteriores)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Madrid, 21 April 2016 – The Spanish Navy training ship Juan Sebastian Elcano will dock in Havana on 11 May, arriving from Puerto Rico, according to Spain’s El Pais newspaper. It is not the first time the iconic Spanish ship has arrived on the island. On ten previous occasions the barquentine visited Havana.

However, according to journalist Miguel Gonzales, an expert in diplomacy, the arrival of the ship will in all likelihood coincide with the visit of the acting Foreign Minister, Jose Manual Garcia-Margallo, along with a business delegation, almost a metaphor for Spain’s landing on the island. continue reading

The Juan Sebastian Elcano, which visited Cuba for the first time in 1029, will continue its journey on the 16th, heading for Miami, which makes the visit exceptional. “Most veterans do not remember the last time a warship, even it if is a masted schooner, covered the 200 miles that separate Havana from the capital of the Cuban exile in the United States,” the paper reported.

The Spanish daily claims that Spain does not want to lose time and is seeking to strengthen its position in Cuba, hence the economic, diplomatic and symbolic deployment, which will be crowned with the imminent signing of the pact to 375 million dollars in Cuba, notwithstanding the existing 2.5 billion debt owed by Cuba to Spain.

However, this landing will not include a visit from a senior official, due to the political paralysis in Spain since last December’s elections. Uncertainty prevents the prime minister (as of now Maraino Rajoy, in an acting position) from visiting Cuba, nor will King Felipe VI come, as his visit would have to be supervised by a government that, to date, there is no sign of forming.

Between 19 and 20 May the chambers of commerce of the two countries will meet in Havana. Secretary of State for Trade, Jaime García-Legaz, will make his fourth trip to the island in the last year with a group of entrepreneurs who are looking to explore business opportunities in Cuba.

Their Congress / 14ymedio, Luis Tornés Aguililla

The discussions in committees of the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party are guided by members of the Politburo. (MINREX)
The discussions in committees of the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party are guided by members of the Politburo. (MINREX)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio Luis Tornés Aguililla, San Sebastien, 20 April 2016 – As the priests of old used to say: Ite, missa est, that is: Go out there and tell them what I said, this mess is over now.

They closed the circle, this Communist Party Congress in Cuba that was, as always, a conclave of The Family, ending with its slogans, with its disciplined creeping things who applaud while verifying out of the corners of their eyes whether the compañero sitting next to them dared to not applaud.

It was a formality, a sort of cloister where they proclaimed the dogmatic incantations of a whole life which they themselves don’t believe in, because in Cuba as elsewhere, reality flees from artifice. Those assembled (rolling their eyes at the passion) know very well, as does Raul Castro: that’s it. continue reading

The opening speech of the sub-boss showed a real lack of respect for the Cuban people, especially when the general-president justified the existence of a single party in the political spectrum of the island; he said it with a cruel sarcasm, with that irony old men have when they know they are facing the abyss. It was a mocking self-assurance that we Cubans must not forget because it allows us to measure the enormous ideological fragility in which the regime finds itself.

We know perfectly well that if, at his age, the administrator for the Elder Idiot is amused by such antics, it is simply because the new status quo with the United States permits it. Right now, Castroism is a political circumstance under American control, a control arising from the financial accords with the Paris Club, the exchanges of every kind with the enemy, as if Havana is well worth all the senile tantrums and all the appearances of other times.

It is true that no one wants a civil conflict in Cuba, which would amount to (we have to admit it) three times the horror of the war in Syria given the grisly string of hatred and rancor accumulated since 1959. In that eventuality, the United States “apparatus” would prefer a million times and freedom-killing management of the current stiffs on tenterhooks.

The only viable option for Cuba to not cease to exist as a national entity appears to be the heroic struggle of the opposition on the island, a peaceful struggle whose vector is convincing the people that life is possible without repression, without political exiles, with decent wages and without fear. In the end, Cubans will win the battle, but the road to freedom is long.

Communist Militancy Expresses Its Disenchantment On The Web / 14ymedio

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 19 April 2016 — The 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba has confirmed the suspicions of the opposition. Despite the changes in the socio-political context of the island, the Party is not open to the possibility a multi-party political system, nor will there be new “forms of privatization” or “shock therapies” for the economy, as announced by President Raul Castro. But the disappointment transcends the ranks of the opposition and comes from their own membership. Some militants have opened friendly fire against the Party leadership and used their space on the web to express their opposition to the stagnation of the elites. continue reading

“The documents that will be put to the consideration and approval of the VII Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (…) will not be discussed with the membership at the grassroots,” reflected Francisco Rodriguez Cruz, known as “Paquito el de Cuba” and author of the blog of the same name. Rodriguez Cruz published an article before the Party Congress titled, “1,000 People Decide the Fate of the Nation?” “As a communist militant I think that is not enough,” he wrote.

Paquito el de Cuba considers appropriate mechanisms such as regional meetings with leaders of various sectors of society, evaluation assemblies and municipal elections, but considers them insufficient.

“Undoubtedly, these are valid ways. But pale (…) now that these decisions are already signed. I repeat in public, I believe I have the right (…) The changes underway and to come for Cuban society need much more discussion,” he claimed.

Yohan Gonzalez, from the official blog “From My Island,” begins a post titled “The Militant Who Wanted To Be,” by explaining how it was his dream as a young person to belong to the PCC. “I believe that only through membership could I be a good revolutionary and good Cuban,” he recalls. Gonzalez, who confesses he is a socialist and not a communist, returned his membership card to the Union of Young Communists (UJC) and abandoned his aspiration, because he says he would have liked to be a half-militant – “a person committed but realistic, disciplined but critical” – like Paquito el de Cuba, to whom he refers directly.

“The Congress (…) opens having failed to push the popular debate of its documents. I’m sure there are half-militants among the delegates, helpful people, with a capacity to represent. But the future of the country can not be in the hands of a few,” he says.

González regrets the lack of transparency and that Cubans can not access the documents the delegates have, that they don’t address social issues such as emigration, LGBTI rights or racism, and that there are no younger people among the Party elite. “I did not convert myself into this militant, but I have no regrets. Today I am more revolutionary than I wanted to be and more Cuban. I am an equal of that half-militant who will go along with everything that passes in the Congress but in the end will still have the sensation they he could have done much more,” he concludes.

“The time when the fate of Cuba it could be decided by a handful of men is over.” Thus begins the text entitled “The National Plan” by Harold Cardenas Lema, blogger on La Joven Cuba (Young Cuba).

The author gives a good overview of the collective intelligence of the Cuban people, who he considers the best educated in the region, to reproach the not taking into account of this human capital.

“Our country has a thousand and one problems to resolve, some products of the blockade and others very much our own,” he says, before offering a review of the reasons why the citizenry has given “a blank check to the country’s leadership.” Cardenas shows that the bad governments prior to 1959 and the popularity of the Revolution led to a faith in the leadership of the PCC that has no foundation.

“It happens that this consensus was formed more than half a century ago, with a generation that knew capitalism, who experienced the Agrarian Reform Law, the Literacy Campaign. My generation knows only the Special Period, the vicissitudes and the breakdown of values. Can the same consensus work with us? I think not,” he says.

Nevertheless, the blogger proposes an exercise of understanding with the elites with those who think they have a plan. However, his belief that politicians live in a bubble that separates them from reality leads him to doubt the current capacity of the Party to solve Cubans’ problems.

“By now we should have learned to be inclusive and not exclusive when the time comes for collective construction. (…) This nation can temporarily engage in politics with the people or against the people, but permanently without the people is not possible,” he says.

News From the Invisible 7th Communist Party Congress / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar

The first vice president of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, during the reading of the central report of the Seventh Congress of the PCC in Havana. (EFE)
The first vice president of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, during the reading of the central report of the Seventh Congress of the PCC in Havana. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 20 April 2016 — The most notable departures from the Central Committee of the Party elected at the Seventh Congress are: Rolando Alfonso Borges, who until now headed the ideological department dedicated to controlling the media; Yolanda Ferrer Gómez, who served as head of the International Relations Committee of the National Assembly of People’s Power and who spent long years as a second to Vilma Espin, Raul Castro’s late wife, in the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC); Agustin Lage Davila, brother of ousted Carlos Lage — former vice president of the Council of State and member of the Politburo– and director of an important scientific center; Abel Prieto Jimenez, cultural affairs advisor to the president; and Harry Villegas Tamayo, survivor of Ernesto Guevara’s guerrilla actions in Bolivia.

To those who stepped down is added more than a hundred who died, destitute and retired, who were on the list of the 142 members of the Central Committee elected at the 5th Congress, which was the last time before the just completed conclave that elections were held, as in the 6th Congress they were not. From that list from 1996 there are now only 33 remaining. continue reading

From those who were handpicked over the last 19 years, 32 have keep their positions. It is noteworthy that Joaquín Bernal, the current Minister of Culture who is often presented as a member of the select group, has been left off the list, along with others unknown whom no one would miss. If the math does not fail us, we can assume that there are 77 new entrants, representing more than 50% of the total membership.

The perception of paralysis resulting from a reading of the documents adopted at the event contrasts with this remarkable injection of fresh blood, but it is reinforced by the fact that most of the members of the Politburo have remained in their positions, and especially by the presence of Raul Castro and Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who have given the impression of being the only ones who know what can be changed in the so-called process of perfecting the system.

If something positive happened at the Palace of Conventions in recent days it is that the prediction that there would be a nepotistic trend, raising some of the heirs to the name of Castro to the highest Party structures, was not fulfilled. Everyone knows how the list of candidates that is “analyzed and discussed” by the delegates is drawn up. It has not transpired that anyone has objected to a name or questioned any absence from the list. So it is designed, and so it was approved by unanimous vote.

If they follow the new requirements established related to age, in the 8th Congress it could be that very few of the current members of the Central Committee will be reelected. But 2021 is too far away to make predictions, and in this game not everything is decided because the dominoes are shuffled face down.

Raul Castro Re-Elected First Secretary Of The Communist Party Of Cuba / 14ymedio

Cuban President Raul Castro and former president Fidel Castro, on Tuesday at the VII Congress of the CCP. (EFE)
Cuban President Raul Castro and former president Fidel Castro, on Tuesday at the VII Congress of the CCP. (EFE)

14ymedio biggerEFE (14ymedio), Havana, 19 April 2016 – The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Tuesday re-elected the country’s president, Raul Castro, as first secretary of the organization, a position he has occupied since 2011, when he replaced his brother Fidel Castro.

The newly elected PCC Central Committee also ratified Jose Ramon Machado Ventura as deputy party secretary, a position he also held since the previous Congress of the organization, held five years ago. continue reading

After three days of meetings, the Seventh Party Congress is closing today, a day when the new composition of the bodies of the party and the Central Committee, the Political Bureau and the Secretariat was announced.

The Politburo now consists of 17 members, with five new members including the sevretary general of the official union, the Cuba Workers Center (CTC), Ulises Guilarte; Health Minister Roberto Morales; and the general secretary of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), Teresa Amarelle.

Completing the list are two women from academia, the rector of the University of Information Sciences (UCI), Miriam Nicado; and the directive of the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Cuba (CIGB), Marta Ayala.

In the new composition of the Politburo, no longer members are General of the Armed Forces Abelardo Colome Ibarra, who resigned as Minister of the Interior last October for health reasons; and Adel Yzquierdo, Minister of Transport since September.

Remaining in the Politburo are the first and second secretaries of the PCC, Raul Castro and Machado Ventura;  first Deputy Prime Minister, Miguel Diaz-Canel; Economy Minister Marino Murillo; Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez; Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Ramiro Valdes; and deputy chairman of the State Council, Salvador Valdes Mesa.

Also continuing as members are the President of the National Assembly, Esteban Lazo; Minister of the Armed Forces (FAR), Leopoldo Cintra Frias; the first deputy minister of the FAR, Alvaro Lopez Miera; the deputy minister of the FAR, Ramon Espinosa; and the first secretary of the PCC in Havana, Mercedes Lopez.

The new Central Committee, the highest governing body of the Party between congresses, is composed of 142 members, with an average age of 54, lower than the average age of the previous committee elected in 2011, which was made up of 116 members.

In the new committee the representation of women reached 44%, higher than previously, and the percentage of blacks and mixed-race also increased, now accounting for 36%.

The Secretariat of the PCC remains almost unchanged ind its composition and consists of, in addition to Raul Castro and Machado Ventura, Abelardo Alvarez, Jose Ramon Balaguer, Olga Lidia Tapia, Jorge Cuevas and Omar Ruiz. The only novelty is the departure of Victor Gaute, chief of the civilian mission of collaboration in Venezuela.

Civic Engagement of Peruvians / 14ymedio, Manuel Cuesta Morua

An elderly man signs in at the polling station to exercise his right to vote in a school district of La Perla, Callao. (EFE / Eduardo Cavero)
An elderly man signs in at the polling station to exercise his right to vote in a school district of La Perla, Callao. (EFE / Eduardo Cavero)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Manuel Cuesta Morua, Havana, 19 April 2016 — In many ways, the elections in Peru reflect in some way the process of democratic maturation in the Americas. I participated in the elections of 2016 as an international observer in response to a shared invitation from Peru’s Political Institute for Freedom (IPL) and the Center for Assistance for Electoral Processes (CAPEL), based in Costa Rica. This was my third experience, after Argentina and Spain, whose electoral processes I also observed.

It was the first time that two representatives of Cuba’s public platform #Otro18 (Another 2018) managed to be present in elections as international observers. This has allowed us to look at the polls from a new angle to gauge the strength of the electoral system as a whole. continue reading

Electoral Integrity is, roughly, a concept that allows us to analyze elections from a conception that goes beyond the day of the vote. We observe the conditions of electoral competition, the degree of independence of the agencies involved in the process, the level of independence and freedom of citizens to elect and to be elected, the role of the press, respect for human rights, the balance of participation among candidates and, of course, the process itself starting from the call for elections through counting the votes and releasing the results, as well as all the logistical conditions.

Electoral Integrity goes to the quality of the process. It precedes the elections, follows them, and follows up post-election, looking at how citizens perceive the process itself. This concept holds that electoral systems are perfectible. A system is not a permanent given, rather every system has to evolve, readjust to technological conditions, and – this is fundamental – respond to changes in context. The main thing is the quality of representation and the clarity of the elections.

The idea is dying, therefore, that good elections are reduced to participation, calm, competition and transparency on the day of the vote.

Based on this concept, I was able to observe that the elections in Peru began long before they were called, at the end of 2015.

I was in Trujillo, the most important center of La Libertad region, in the north of Peru. In the National Organization of Electoral Processes (ONPE) I observed closely the well-oiled electoral architecture for the elections convened this April. I talked to the judges of the National Elections Board (JNE) and with the Organization of Electoral Processes, responsible for overseeing voting and ensuring the necessary logistics.

Voting is compulsory, with corresponding fines for those who do not turn out, but I noticed more civic engagement than fear of harm to one’s purchasing power. Fines respond, in any case, to social classes: 29 soles (the official currency) for the poorest, 90 for the middle classes, and 193 for economically privileged sectors. Probably 29 soles could be very important for the 20% in the lowest band of Peruvian society; however, 80% of the more than 23 million Peruvians who took to the polls could easily pay a fine, for them symbolic, to punish the system.

From here I drew a first conclusion: democracy is a civic virtue in Peru, despite the remnants of political violence. We attended a crowded rally at the end of the Pedro Pablo Kuczynski campaign. The participation of thousands of his followers was a sign that democratic conviction is probably more important than the political and communications capacity, and perhaps the vision, of their leaders.

I noticed that the leadership of the parties responds to the leadership and civic engagement of Peruvians, a fact that solidifies the soil of democracy in that country, although one should not lose the perspective of the importance and value of political leadership in democracy. My doubt arose from whether the presidential candidates shared the stature of their citizens.

A second condition of Electoral Integrity is thus satisfied: the political space for the civic expression of citizens. This is a substantial element to strengthen the relationship between civil society, the citizenry and political parties: electoral transparency.

The behavior of the press is the third essential element for Electoral Integrity. El Comercio, La Republica and Peru 21 , despite their clear backing for one candidate or another, covered the development of the day with good objectivity. The same happened with television. There was a balance in the treatment of candidates and plurality in editorial treatments, with arguments for all ideological tastes.

Peru voted. And, as the daily La Republica headlined on its front page on Monday the 11th, the voters turned to the right. Adding the votes obtained by Keiko Fujimori (40%), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (22%) and Alan Garcia (6%), shows that more than 67% of Peruvians voted for continuity while Veronika Mendoza , the candidate of the Frente Amplio (the Left) received only 18% of the votes.

The runoff between Fujimori and Kuczynski, on 5 June, will define the course of Peru for the next five years.

Cuba, A Broken Toy / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar

Like the spoiled child who wants his turn with a toy to last forever, Raul Castro intends to remain in office until 19 April 2021. (CC)
Like the spoiled child who wants his turn with a toy to last forever, Raul Castro intends to remain in office until 19 April 2021. (CC)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, 17 April 2016 — Among the many expectations raised by the Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) was the possibility that the expected generational change would be announced there. The prospect that young cadres would introduce bold changes and accelerate the timid reforms initiated with the departure of Fidel Castro from power, fed by the expectations among Cubanologists of different viewpoints.

Perhaps that is why, when the general-president proposed that the maximum age for joining the PCC Central Committee would be 60 and to hold senior posts one would have to be under 70, many had the momentary impression that the rule would begin to be applied at this Party Congress. Only a more sedate reading, stripped of all irrational optimism, was able to untangle the ambiguity of his words. continue reading

Raul Castro, First Secretary of the PCC, acknowledged that “the next five years, for obvious reasons, will be decisive.” Hence, the need “to introduce additional limits on the higher organs of the Party.” However, he declared that this would be a “process of transition that should be undertaken and concluded with the celebration the next Congress. Leaving for the future, “a five year transition so as not to rush things.” A phrase that reinforces Castro’s oft repeated premise of acting “without haste but without pause.”

The “additional limits” on age to be appointed to “the higher organs” had already been introduced, although not disclosed, at the first PCC Conference in January of 2012, when the concept of age was added to those to be taken into consideration at the time of filling leadership positions.

To Raul Castro it seems that having delayed four years and four months in defining the numbers that would mark the age limits would have been “not rushing things.” Although it is probable that his real concern has been that the Central Committee elected at the current 7th Congress would naturally dispense with the so-called “historic generation of the Revolution.”

The only obvious reason for not passing the baton in this Congress is reduced to an unhealthy addiction to power, especially to its obscene attributes of privileges and powers.

Like the spoiled child who wants his turn with a toy to last forever, the first secretary intends to remain in office until 19 April 2021, when he’ll be just 45 days short of officially becoming a nonagenarian.

By that time, should he survive, what would be left of the instrument of his amusement could be an useless wreck, and we’re not talking about the Party but about the country: a toy broken beyond fixing through the attempts to make it work capriciously. The blame for its destruction will then fall on those who inherit it.

Mario Vargas Llosa: The Liberal Rebel / 14ymedio, Mauricio Rojas

The writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. (EFE)
The writer Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. (EFE)

14ymedio, Mauricio Rojas, 17 April 2016 — On 28 March Mario Vargas Llosa turned 80 and wanted to celebrate with a brief reflection on his political thinking and, in particular, his form of being a liberal. For this I want to start from two great French thinkers who played a key role in his intellectual development: Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

Sarte, who was a great cultural hero for the young Vargas Llosa, did not stand the test of time. His dialectical artifices were not, in the end, capable of justifying the unjustifiable, that is, the supposed distinction between “progressive oppression,” undertaken in the name of a future paradise on earth, and oppression, plain and simple. However, Sarte did survive in the idea of a writer committed to his time, who takes sides, who is not silent, who doesn’t look away. Nothing is more foreign to Mario Vargas Llosa than indifference to his world. continue reading

This attitude has been a touchstone in a life in which politics has never been absent. This does not mean confusing politics with literature, essentially different activities, which Vargas Llosa himself never tires of explaining: the writer, the artist in general, starts from the sovereignty of his imagination to forge “real unrealities,” fictions so convincing that we experience them, for a moment, as reality. Those who engage in politics, on the other hand, should take care not to fall into political-fiction and do great damage, starting always from the sovereignty of what is really possible.

I now turn to Albert Camus. I associate him with that rebellious streak that, in my opinion, makes Vargas Llosa who he has always been. Rebellious in the sense of Camus, that is, one who does not accept indignity, injustice, oppression. Who says no and stands up to tyrants of every kind. The rebel is not a revolutionary who dreams of earthly paradises or new men. No, the rebel acts for the men we are, that imperfect and limited being, like all of human society that we can construct. But it no case does he resign himself to what we are versus what we can and must be: dignified, respected, free.

Vargas Llosa’s rebellious streak has resulted in what has been his most constant struggle, his true existential predicament from childhood: his strong, visceral opposition to authoritarianism, tyranny, dictatorship. He himself has expressed it better than anyone on several occasions. As an example I took some of his words from a conversation with Enrique Krauze:

“If there is anything I hate, that disgusts me deeply, that outrages me, it is a dictatorship. It is not only a political conviction, a moral principal: it is a gut feeling, a visceral attitude, perhaps because I have suffered many dictatorships in my own country, perhaps because from early childhood I experienced first hand this authority that imposes itself with brutality.”

I think I do not exaggerate when I say that very little in the life of Mario Vargas Llosa would be comprehensible if we don’t consider this aspect. To write, as he reminds us in his memoir A Fish in the Water, was also an act of rebellion before “this authority that imposes itself with brutality,” a vital act of resistance facing, in this case, the violence of his father in demanding that dignity and freedom that we are owed and that we owe every human being.

Hence, an absolute repulsion toward all tyrants. From General Odría, the Peruvian dictator whose regime marked Vargas Llosa’s youth, to the dictators and caudillos of the left and right who have marked our time, be they Brezhnev or Pinochet, Castro or Batista, Chavez, Khomeini or Qaddafi.

This consideration allows us to address the very nature of Vargas Llosa’s liberal thought, what he has called “integral liberalism.” This is something absolutely fundamental, as it distinguishes and denounces the suicidal temptation of a certain “liberalism,” not uncommon in Latin American, to reduce that expansive tree that is freedom to economic issues.

This does not mean that Vargas Llosa devalues the fundamental importance of an economy based on freedom, one that has allowed, as it has recently been extended across almost the entire planet, a higher standard of living for human beings in a way never before seen. This is clear, and provokes the ire of those who believe that, at least with regards to the economy, freedom is not our best option. But this does not mean transforming this freedom into the only thing worth defending, or into a kind of superior freedom before which other freedoms must prostrate themselves.

Taking this position has led Vargas Llosa to define liberalism in a way that reminds us of the most original, Hispanic, sense of what it means to be liberal, that which Octavio Paz recalled in 1981 on receiving the Cervantes Prize: “The word liberal appears early in our literature. Not as an idea or a philosophy, but as a temple and an encouragement; more than ideology, it was a virtue.”

This virtue, this form of being liberal with which we identify ourselves, as Vargas Llosa said in a text where he reclaims the intellectual heritage of Ortega y Gasset, is “based on tolerance and respect, in a love for culture, a desire for coexistence with others, with the other, with others, and a firm defense of freedom as a supreme value.”

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

The chef José Andrés cooking in the kitchen of the 14ymedio newsroom. (14ymedio)
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)
Panel at the Sedon Forum in Arizona last week. (@McCainInstitute)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, 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 8th 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)
Raul Castro during the reading of the principal report to the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party. (Internet)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, 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)
The Palace of Conventions during the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, 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 55th 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.