Cuban Newspaper
14ymedio, Havana, 8 January 2016 – On the Youth Labor Army’s half-empty market stands at 17th and K Street in Havana, this morning, there were only green tomatoes and some very low quality food. The year has begun with a marked shortage that some attribute to the year-end festivities, while others point to a possible introduction of price controls as the cause of the food shortages.
14ymedio, Havana, 12 January 2016 – The Cuban division of Melia Hotels International opened a recruitment process in Spain this Tuesday, that will run until 5 February. The Spanish company is looking for some twenty professionals in cuisine and hospitality for its facilities in Cuba.
Candidates with at least two years experience can apply for the positions through the website Turijobs.com, or participate in recruitment days being arranged in Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Madrid and Malaga.
The company is looking for food and beverage managers, executive chefs, sous chefs, pastry chefs and room managers, and will cover the cost of flights from Spain to Cuba and offer free full service housing, according to the listings on the web.
Salaries are not specified, but they are guaranteeing “a competitive salary commensurate to the position” and are offering “real opportunities for professional development and promotion.”
14ymedio, Havana, 14 January 2016 – The Somos+ (We Are More) opposition movement held its national convention Thursday, despite the arrest of several participants and a strong police operation around its site in Havana. The home of Eliecer Avila, leader of the organization, was surrounded by several police patrols at dawn, and only those who entered the home several hours or days earlier were able to attend.
Despite the obstacles, Somos+ issued a statement announcing,”We are holding the convention!” The activists were referring to a meeting held on 14 January to decide on the program ahead of time. The speeches, lectures and presentations were digitized to be able to project them in case their protagonists were not able to arrive at the site.
Groups of government sympathizers, dressed in plain clothes, threateningly warned off any curious person who wanted to take pictures around the site, or access the house on Esperanza Street in the Cerro district, where the event took place. continue reading
According to Pedro Acosta, who was prevented from reaching Avila’s house, the police deployment included several patrol cars and motorcycles. “I was surprised by this display of police force, because I hadn’t noticed any abnormal situation in the neighborhood.” A motorcycle with a sidecar stopped next to Acosta to ask for his identify card. When he said he wasn’t carrying it, the police ordered him, “Get in, citizen!” In the vehicle, they drove along several streets in Havana and let him out on 26th Avenue. “And this?” Acosta asked them, continuing his story, “They started up and the one driving addressed me for the first time telling me that next time I wouldn’t forget my ID card.”
At seven in the evening the siege on Avila’s house continues, according to what he himself told Acosta by phone.
The police also intercepted Angel Santiesteban and prevented him from reaching the house, said Avila.
In the text released this Thursday, the leadership of Somos+ explains that they tried to rent a space for their most important annual meeting. However, those in charge of the locales – both state and private – were intimidated by State Security and so would not rent to them.
Several members of the movement who live outside the capital were threatened and, in several cases, arrested to prevent them from traveling to Havana. Among these was Johana Columbie, who lives in Camaguey and who, with police stationed outside her house, sent a letter to the convention ensuring them that the recent events, rather than frightening her, had given her “strength to continue.”
Other activists such as Alexey Games and Franky Rojas received police summonses received this morning, while the movement coordinator in the province of Las Tunas, Pedro Escalona, was arrested and released just a few hours ago.
Eliecer Avila and Manuel Diaz Mons, general coordinator of Somos+ were arbitrarily detained and warned not to hold the convention.
On its digital page, the movement thanked Amnesty International – in particular Louise Tillotson, investigator for Cuba and the Caribbean – for having contacted their members and for showing concern in the face of the latest developments.
The convention had as its central theme “how to live with the internet in Cuba so as not to have to emigrate, not to have to jump into the sea, or cross so many borders, without having the power within Cuba to run businesses, labor cooperatives, produce resources,” according to Avila.
14ymedio/EFE, Tapachula (Mexico), 14 January 2016 — The first 180 Cuban migrants covered by an agreement to help them reach the United States, set off on the final stage of their odyssey after entering Mexican territory from Guatemala this Wednesday.
The 139 men and 41 women reached the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas aboard four buses, guarded by the National Civil Police and the Guatemalan Office of Human Rights.
The Human Rights Ombudsman in the municipality of Coatepeque, Jose Maldonado, said that “the accompaniment and verification for twelve hours” through Guatemalan territory was carried out in the framework of a pilot program following the agreement with Costa Rica, El Salvador and Mexico to help Cubans on their way to the US. continue reading
The migrants were received on the premises of the National Institute of Migration (INM) located in Ciudad Hidalgo, a few yards from the border. In these offices, staff conducted the process by which the Cubans received a pass allowing them to travel through Mexico for 20 days by which time they should have made it to the United States. The measure is covered in Article 42 of the Immigration Law that permits foreigners to be authorized to enter the country for “humanitarian reasons.”
Also participating in the process were personnel from the National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH), the Red Cross and several non-government organizations that defend migrants.
On their arrival at the federal facility at the Rodolfo Robles border crossing at Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, the travelers expressed their goal of reaching the United States to reunite with their families, as in the case of Olanis Diaz, a native of Havana, who will see her father in Miami, Florida, after a hard journey.
The Mexican press, which is covering the journey of the Cubans, printed several testimonies from the migrants who expressed their gratefulness to the country.
“What we want is to be on our way as soon as possible. We don’t want to stay in Mexico, not because we don’t like it, but because in Miami part of my family is waiting for me, my sister, my nephew, whom I haven’t seen for a long time,” one migrant told the newspaper Milenio.
The newspaper also reflected the desperation suffered by the Cubans when they saw their path cut off in Costa Rica last November, when the migration crisis began. “I tell my compatriots left behind, don’t forget your dreams, and keep going,” said one of the newcomers to North America.
“We are grateful to the town of La Cruz and the Government of Costa Rica; thanks to them this dream has become possible,” another of the migrants, a young man of 27 who hopes to join his mother in Miami, told the Mexican newspaper El Universal.
After the two hours required by the immigration process, Cubans left the offices and boarded four other buses, contracted for by the INM to take them the 27 miles from Ciudad Hidalgo to Tapachula, where they can buy plane or bus tickets to continue their journey to the north.
After being stranded for two months on Costa Rica’s border with Nicaragua amid a diplomatic dispute between the countries, the Cubans considered it “an achievement to arrive at Mexico’s southern border.”
Although they still do not know the steps they will have to take to continue their journey, they expect the rest of the journey to be organized by themselves and, on reaching the United States, expect benefits under the Cuban Adjustment Act.
Leonel Chirino, a 30-year-old baseball player, who arrived on the first bus, sent a message of “peace” to the more than 7,000 if their compatriots who are still in Costa Rica, from where the first group left Tuesday night by air to El Salvador, and from there by land through Guatemala and then Mexico.
I assure you “that you will all be able to leave, everything is well planned, everything is well coordinated, we are first in line for visa and we are all going to reach the United States.”
The journey from Costa Rica to Mexican territory was coordinated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The Costa Rican Foreign Minister congratulated El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico for the flexibility they showed and added that they will continue working “very hard on behalf of all Cuban migrants who remain in the country.”
“Our opinion, which will have to be taken into account by other countries, is that this process has met all expectations. People have arrived safely, healthy, happy and on time. Everything has gone very well and we hope that the region will say the same,” he said at a news conference.
This coming 18 January a technical meeting is scheduled in Guatemala which will be attended by representatives of Central American governments, to assess the first transfer of migrants.
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 14 January 2016 — In recent days, after the “threat” suggested by General President Raul Castro that there would be price controls on agricultural products, the official media have been generous with reports and analysis about the rising prices and sudden shortages. We collected opinions from the protagonists – producers, vendors and consumers – to shine a light on the absence of a compelling elucidation, supported by arguments that would explain a phenomenon like this occurring in a “scientific” economic system.
Everything seems to indicate that it is not possible to achieve a “peaceful coexistence” between the socialist system of production and a form of production and trade that responds to the rules of supply and demand. continue reading
As far as is known, no tomato grower has been forced to throw his harvest to the pigs because he can’t sell it at the price demanded. In the markets in Havana and in many of the provincial capitals, there are always enough customers with the necessary purchasing power to acquire, literally by the sack, everything that is on display in the stalls.
Playing with numbers difficult to confirm but easy to imagine, it is calculated that 10% of the economically active population enjoys 80% of the products and services sold. This means that the remaining 90% will have to settle for 20% of what appears in the markets. This, obviously, generates shortages and rising prices.
What is produced and sold under the rules of the market will be absorbed, for the most part, by those who produce and sell within that system, without their feeling compelled to refuse the crumbs from the ration market or any of the subsidized public services.
The rest, sometimes call the working class or other names – the “people” or “ordinary Cubans” – are obliged to acquire their most basic necessities, those not supplied in the ‘basic market basket’ from the ration system, from the TRDs – initials that, literally, stand for “Hard Currency Collection Stores” – and the agricultural markets. Every peso rise in prices in either place means an irreparable loss to the family table, unless you have recourse to “the diversion of resources” (i.e. taking things home from your workplace, for your own use or to sell to others), “the struggle” (more or less the same thing), or “invention” (also the same thing), or any other euphemism that masks the commission of a minor crime.
Farmers know that if they produce double they would have to market their products at half the price, which means working harder to earn the same. Barbers who can’t keep up charging one convertible peso for each haircut, or snack shop owners who sell soft drinks in front of their establishments, can only raise their prices. That six-Cuban-peso cheese pizza that solved the problem of lunch in early 2007 is now only a memory. A closed circuit of prosperity has taken shape, where those excluded are state employees who are not stealing, retired people without family abroad, unsuccessful entrepreneurs, and those who depend on social security.
The emerging Cuban middle class has a particular vision on how to replenish “the expenditures of socially necessary labor” in their hectic work, far from the state’s criteria, cemented in the belief that the rationed and subsidized basic market basket allows it to reproduce the salaried workforce under its control.
The promised solution to the problem, announced outside the program in the last session of the National Assembly, so far has been represented only by a couple of “calls” to produce more, launched by the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) and the agricultural workers union. Faced with the empty food stalls and the little signs with their inflated prices, many wonder why, if this was the solution, they didn’t call for it much earlier.
14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 13 January 2016 – Several scribbled papers and a severe headache is what Claribel got this Monday, when the self-employed dressmaker started to fill out her tax form. With the recent start of the tax campaign for the 2015 tax year, doubts are arising about how best to comply with the duties to the Treasury.
Officials of the National Tax Administration Office (ONAT) call on people not to delay and to pay their taxes before the 30 April, deadline. The chief of the state entity, Yamile Perez Diaz, criticized those delinquent during a press conference last week, although she added that “greater discipline and a tax-paying culture” is evident in the country. continue reading
This year ONAT has added the ability for taxpayers to send the main form, known as DJ-08, by email. The move could speed up receipt of the document and guarantee that it reaches the right hands, instead of getting lost in the inefficient Cuban postal service.
However, the improvements announced are not enough for people like Claribel, who for most of her life only heard about taxes as an evil of the capitalist past. For her, filling out the declaration presents obstacles almost impossible to overcome. “Next year I’ll hire someone to help me even though I will have to give them give part of my earnings,” she says.
Mairell Naranjo offers financial advice to small private businesses and also handles all of the license holder’s ONAT paperwork. Her specialty is the payment of monthly and quarterly taxes, plus the preparation of the tax return.
Services like those offered by Naranjo are well received among the the country’s 496,400 self-employed. Computerized tools that help keep track of a business and accurately calculate profits and taxes have also begun to be available.
Under the name Cuentapro, a tax program sold on the informal market that allows “efficient management of accounts,” according to Alexander, the young man who created it. It keeps a thorough record of payments to employees, costs for buying goods, and un-taxed earnings, letting the self-employed person know “what goes into our pocket and what we have to give ONAT,” says one of the sellers of the software.
Like every year, those who meet their tax obligations before 28 February will be entitled to a discount of 5%. Last year, only 67% of taxpayers filed for this benefit.
In 2015, the gross income declared by the self-employed totaled 3.825 billion Cuban pesos. This represented an increase of one billion over the previous year. However, 68,000 taxpayers were called to account by ONAT for declaring incomes below those estimated by the tax administration itself.
14ymedio Zunilda Mata, Havana, 11 January 2016 – The number of self-employed workers in Cuba decreased throughout 2015, as confirmed by the official press on Monday. In the middle of last year there were 504,600 people working for themselves, while at the end of December the number was 496,400.
Of those working in the private sector, 65% are in the provinces of Havana, Matanzas, Villa Clara, Camaguey, Holguin and Santiago de Cuba, as detailed in a report by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. continue reading
Among the activities with the greatest weight in the private sector are preaparing and selling food, with 56,270 licenses granted; the transport of freight and passengers with 50,482 self-employed workers; and the leasing of houses, rooms and spaces with a total of 28,634 self-employed people.
These occupations are followed by telecommunication agents, which total 24,195 across the island, while contract workers total 114,000, 22% of self-employed Cubans.
In its report, the ministry states that of the total number of people authorized to be self-employed, at least 17% are paid by the state sector. Youth and women account for 30% of all self-employed in the country and retirees represent 12%.
At present, there are just over 200 activities approved for this type of non-state labor. The high taxes, the absence of a wholesale market, the excessive controls and the inability to import commercial goods, hinder the performance of the sector.
The decrease in the number of self-employed could be interpreted as hitting the “natural limit” in self-employment since the flexibilities initiated in 2010. However, specialists at the Ministry of Labor and Social Security expect the number to grow “gradually,” and that added to this form of management will be “a set of dining establishments and services to the population” that will remain under state ownership.
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, 11 January 2016 – The sun wasn’t even up when they heard the pounding on the door and the house became a chaos of police and demolition brigades. Amid the screams of the family’s children and the alarm of the faithful, the temple of the Fire and Dynamics evangelical movement in Camaguey was torn down, and its pastor, Bernado Quesada, was detained at the police station for hours.
On Monday, 14ymedio spoke by phone with the pastor about what happened last Friday and the current situation at his place of worship. continue reading
Escobar. Have you received a call from the Cuban Council of Churches to investigate what happened?
Quesada. To our knowledge, we have not received any calls. Furthermore, the Cuban Council of Churches has been completely divorced from our church.
Escobar. What is the situation now at the temple?
Quesada. It doesn’t exist, it was completely demolished. However, yesterday, we came to worship at the place where it had been. The turnout was massive, even people who hadn’t come to our church for days, came to show their support. The support has been widespread.
I stood under an almond tree and below its branches we held the services, we worship… however we can.
Escobar. Who flocks to the temple?
Quesada. People come from everywhere. We’ve only been here three years, since October 2012 and we have a congregation of over 500 people. Before coming here, I was pastor of the Fire and Dynamics Church in Macareño, Santa Cruz del Sur. I am also the founder of the apostolic reform in Cuba since 2013, when a group of pastors tired of hypocrisy and a form of “doing church” that was a little bogged down, too passive and attached to the existing system in Cuba.
So we began the apostolic reform on the island, which today has about 50 churches nationwide.
Escobar. What do you think prompted the authorities to demolish the temple?
Quesada. Everything that is independent or has nothing to do with the officialdom, they really hate it, they do not like it. We’ve spent years holding events at the national level, and they see this as a threat, because it is our churches – right now – that are growing the most, adding the greatest number of people.
Escobar. Is your church legally recognized?
Quesada. We want them to enroll us within the Law on Associations and Worship. We have asked repeatedly to be allowed to complete the process for legalizing our church, but even if there wasn’t a law of association, it is not possible. We have addressed the institutions orally and in writing, at all levels from national to municipal, we have also made claims, sent letters signed by dozens of people to demand we be recognized but they do not respond.
Escobar. But why did they deny you recognition?
Quesada. They said we were independent, we had nothing to do with the government. They accused us of being “a church paid by the CIA” and a few years ago they told us we were part of the “Bush plan” and we wanted to do a church in parallel to the existing one. All that, because we have not stopped stomping our feet and raising our voice.
Escobar. And is what they are saying true?
Quesada. It is a slander. So we’ve been punished. For example, we spent almost ten years unable to leave Cuba because they did not give us permission to travel. Since we founded our church until the so-called immigration and travel reform of 2013, several of us were not allowed to travel abroad.
Escobar. How are the relations of the church with the Office of Religious Affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party?
Quesada. Mrs. Caridad Diego, who heads the office, wants no part of us. For more than ten years we have not been invited to any activity or event.
Escobar. How do you plan to continue your work as a pastor now that you no longer have a temple?
Quesada. The temple is not a building. The temple is not a ceiling. The temple is its people.
Escobar. What do you think the authorities will do now?
Quesada. After they committed this madness, they are scared. There are still police patrols in some of the main streets leading to our temple. They are worried because they have very few arguments to explain why they did something like this.
Escobar. What were the reasons the Institute of Physical Planning gave to explain the demolition?
Quesada. They said it was built from materials that had been purchased illegally, but it is clear – knowing the monster – that were we were not going to make a mistake like that. Those were the rumors they put out there, for the fools. They also started to put out that “the pastor works for the CIA and has a car full of toys.” Nonsense, not arguments.
Escobar. Will you make a claim?
Quesada. No, we will not. We will not spend ink on that. It is fruitless. We have too much of God for such a little devil.
14ymedio, Havana, 12 January 2016 — Nestled in urban areas, organopónicos — urban farm plots — are committed to bringing root crops and other vegetables to the tables of those living farther from farmland. If the initiative initially offered cheaper prices than other agricultural markets, currently their directors call for “selling at prices that support the population, without affecting the need to make it worthwhile for the producers,” a goal that still hasn’t stopped working.
14ymedio, Havana, 11 January 2016 – The repressive actions against the Cuban opposition were repeated this Sunday across the country. It is estimated that more than 200 activists were arrested, according to independent reports. The police also arrested Eliecer Avila, the leader of the Somos+ (We Are More) Movement, and warned him that they would not allow the annual convention of his organization, planned for 14 January, to be held.
In Havana, the Ladies in White marched as they do every Sunday on Fifth Avenue, in the west of the capital city, accompanied on this occasion by two dozen activists. At the end of the pilgrimage they were violently arrested, according to testimony from witnesses at the scene. continue reading
In the east of the country, the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) reported dozens of arrests of its members when they tried to reach the sanctuary of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, in Santiago de Cuba. The general coordinator of the organization, Jose Daniel Ferrer, had warned that they would be “protesting the assaults by the repressive forces to stop activities for children.”
Several dissident groups suffered searches of their homes and confiscations associated with 6 January, the Day of the Three Kings – a day before the Revolution when Cuban children received gifts for Christmas. Toys, treats and audio equipment were seized by the police in different areas of the country to avoid the celebrations organized by activists for children in their neighborhoods.
14ymedio, Havana, 9 January 2016 — The independent movement Somos+ (We Are More) is experiencing intense days as its annual convention approaches, due to a strong police operation against its members. The arrest of activist Joanna Columbie last Thursday in Santiago de Cuba, raised the tension around the event scheduled for 14 January several degrees.
Police pressure has included threats to the majority of Somos+’s members living in Cuba, and police warnings that the meeting would not be permitted. The national coordinator of the group, Manuel Diaz Mons, was also arrested and later released, after an exaggerate options in which several vinyl posters with the Somos+ logo were confiscated. continue reading
There whereabouts of Joanne Columbie remain unknown. If is the second occasion in less than six months in which the former municipal education methodologist has been jailed to prevent her traveling to Havana for a Somos+ meeting. Last September she was taken to the police station in the city of Cespedes in Camaguey, where she lives.
Members of the group strongly denounced the police operation that tool place “in several provinces against people with responsibilities for preparing for the annual convention.” The activists also reported that several members of the organization had their email service cut off by the State entity Nauta.
In a document released Friday, the leader of the organization, Eliecer Avila, condemned “energetically these actions against a peaceful convention,” and warned that they would go ahead with plans to hold the meeting.
Somos+ is a movement created in March of 2013 by Avila, who defined it from its beginning as a group “concerned with opinions and with ideas for future, that many of us share.”
14ymedio, Desde Aqui, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 11 January 2016 — In fewer than one hundred days Cuba’s current leaders will make public their proposals looking ahead to the year 2021. The Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba could be the last opportunity left to the self-named “historic generation of the Revolution” to make concrete proposals to solve specific problems. The conclave also represents an occasion to outline a road map of eventual relief, through the often announced, “conceptualization of the model.”
However, having the opportunity to elaborate proposals for the future is very different from counting on the receivers of the promises being able to believe in them. continue reading
Free citizens, in modern democracies, are usually impatient with leaders who don’t meet the terms of what they say they will do. They punish them at the ballot boxes and take to the streets to demand their resignations. The inmates of a prison, in contrast, easily renew their hopes that improvements will come, because the only alternative is to jump the walls of the prison or to plot a riot, where they would be playing with their lives.
A simplified list of the unfinished business of the Cuban government would include aspects such as the insufficiency of wages, the dual monetary system, the lack of productivity and the lack of attractions for foreign investment. To that we would have to add issues of housing, public transportation, shortages and communications. Not to mention deeper issues, such as the lack of political and economic rights.
But students who fail to complete their school assignments have limited chances to get their work re-graded or to take special exams. Nor can they repeat a grade in school every time they want, because there is a limit – let’s say a moral one – to asking for another opportunity, and another limit for granting it.
To many it may seem exaggerated to compare the situation of Cubans with those of prisoners in jail, but it would be even more absurd to equate them with the citizens of a functioning democracy. The truth is that those who do not want to escape, or who are not disposed to riot, convinced they have no power to decide anything at the polls, may be tempted to offer another opportunity, but not in response to just any promise!
The Cuban leaders repeatedly failed. They have not been able to shape the “New Man,” nor have they brought material prosperity and economic equality. They have not eliminated poverty, nor slums; they have not been able to peer into the socialism that 29 years ago they said “now, indeed,” they would construct. The only decent thing that remains is to propose a profound and immediate change.
They have fewer than one hundred days in which to do it.
14ymedio, Luz Escobar, 10 January 2016 – A Cuban jaded in the cynicism of the present travels back in time to the year 1960 searching for the lost epic. The story of someone who wants to regain the enthusiasm around a social project that turned into something very different from the dream, will move and amuse those who see the latest short film directed by Eduardo del Llano.
Epic is a touching portrait of some people’s disappointment and others’ Utopia, blending the absurd, science fiction and drama. Its director, scriptwriter and principal architect talks with 14ymedio about his latest film “creature” and other demons of filmmaking.
Escobar. With your latest short film Epic are you returning to science fiction?
Del Llano. In Epic science fiction is like an anomalous element that allows me to make contact between a Cuban of today and another from the sixties. This latter is also a Cuban who is real and very important in Cuban culture, a Cuban who existed just at that moment when everything was epic, when everyone believed in the Utopia, and it seemed like everything would turn out well. The expectations generated in contrasting the Utopia with the actual result, obviously would have been impossible in a strictly realistic narrative. continue reading
The idea was to be able to present, with a more or less logical premise – one that allows the viewer to suspend disbelief – a Cuban of the present and another from the past, both situated on the two extremes of the chain, not the food chain but the utopian ideological chain.
Escobar. Epic was presented at the last Havana Film Festival. Will it go into regular screenings in the coming months?
Del Llano. I don’t know if will be scheduled, but I don’t much care. For me, it was very important that it was shown in the last Festival, although they gave me the worst possible times. At the Chaplin Theater, on a Sunday at ten in the morning, and, even worse than that, at the Infanta multiplex on Saturday at half an hour past midnight. Even I didn’t go there…
Escobar. How did the audience react?
Del Llano. People had a kind of catharsis. When it ended they clapped and even shouted “Bravo!”
Escobar. Surely this short will circulate in the weekly packet. How do you deal with piracy?
Del Llano. It has been a problem. I think I know pretty well how to make a movie up to the moment it ends, but I don’t have the slightest idea what to do with it then. Internally, I have no problems with the packet, I think it’s the Cuban equivalent of any broadcaster in the world. Where there is everything from the most ridiculous like Case Closed, to the highest quality Scandinavia cinema.
Escobar. Sex Machine Productions is a pioneer among independent producers. How has it managed to survive despite having no legal recognition?
Del Llano. Sex Machine Productions was a gentleman’s agreement between Frank Delgado, Luis Alberto Garcia and Nestor Jimenez. We agreed that we would do things like this as a cooperative, where I pay what I can and if at some point we hit it big and earn a lot of money, it will be distributed based on determined percentages that we adjust at that time, but it is not a producer in and of itself.
Sex Machine Productions is me. There are shorts where the character of Nicanor* does not appear, nor is there Frank’s music, nor do Luis Alberto or Nestor act in it, but it comes out under the same logo.
Escobar. You have feature films and many shorts. In what format do you feel more comfortable?
Del Llano. At one time I said that would only make shorts, not out of conviction, but because I felt comfortable with the shorts. Even my two feature films are not very long, one is 61 minutes and the other 73 minutes.
Escobar. What genre do you prefer?
Del Llano. I always thought – and I’m paying for it firsthand – that in Cuban cinema we should have science fiction, terror, erotica. I took the risk and now I’m coming up against the idea that, “and now this movie doesn’t seem Cuban because there are no prostitutes and no salsa music.”
Escobar. Are you a part of the group of filmmakers that is promoting a new Film Law, the so-called G-20 group?
Del Llano. There are a lot of misconceptions about what the G-20 is. We are a gathering of filmmakers where there are no directors, no art directors, no photography directors, and we meet as if as we are going to put fifty or sixty people to the task of writing a text, we choose a kind a “central committee” so there is an executive arm.
If at a meeting there is an agreement to draft a document, they are responsible for writing it. This is the G-20, but it is not “20 filmmakers fighting for a Film Law in Cuba,” because we are much more than that. Nor are we always the same people, although there are faces that remain, out of respect and visibility, which is the case with Fernando Perez.
Escobar. What have you achieved with your demands?
Del Llano. From the beginning we have tried to work with what is established, because it is about a law, not about a revolt. We have tried to fit it into the legislation that already exists, but also to start expanding it. At the first meetings there were representatives from the Ministry of Culture, I don’t know if there was also anyone from the Cuban Writers and Artists Union (UNEAC), but they don’t come anymore. I feel like they are waiting for us to get tired.
The October meeting last year ended with the adoption of a draft Film Law. The ball is now in their court.
Escobar. And so what’s missing?
Del Llano. What’s missing is someone who comes along and says, “this isn’t the way to do this and this”… to see it through the eyes of the censor, of the other side. In this sense we are a little stagnant, which doesn’t mean we are going to give up. We are not going to stop insisting, but we see no response.
Escobar. The last meeting was fraught with tension…
Del Llano. Hopefully not, but I suspect that the last meeting where the incident occurred with Eliecer Avila, they are going to use that to say, “See what happens when you meet,” and then throw some more shit on is. I Am not aware that it is going to be like this, but I suspect it.
The same attitude of ejecting someone from a gathering because they are considered “counterrevolutionary” is as if they were some Saint Benedict that you can’t get rid of, as if they were synonymous with a provocateur. Eliecer was sitting behind me and remained silent the whole time. Even when the issue came up of throwing him out.
Then, indeed, ICACI and UNEAC appeared saying, “we are revolutionary filmmakers.” So they did respond to this. What worries me is that the ICAIC, which the whole time has said it is on our side, reacted with this level of intolerance against someone who thinks differently.
Escobar. What projects are you working on?
Del Llano. What I have in hand are fake documentaries. I really like this format that few in Cuba have done. I did The Truth About G2 [Cuba’s State intelligence service], and the things that I have in mind come from that. For example, I published a novel last year and when Luis Alberto Garcia read it he said to me, “We have to make this novel into a movie.” For now it would be hard to do that because it requires an enormous budget.
It is titled Bonsai and is about a town in Pinar del Rio which is isolated from the rest of Cuba and there they build communism, but by chance. Even the things they do they don’t do well, but it comes out fine, thanks to chance. They construct a viable communism, with freedom, with democracy, with positive economic results, like it should have been, where everyone in the world does well.
I would love to film that story.
*Translator’s note: Nicanor O’Donnell, played by Luis Alberto Garcia, is the “anti-hero” character in several of Del Llano’s films. Read more here. The films are on YouTube, in Spanish
14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Miami, 9 January 2016 – I couldn’t avoid the sense of déjà vu. It brought to mind Eduardo Suarez, formerly with El Mundo, a professional of the image with a fine instinct for the news. Hugo Chavez’s photographs being expelled from the new Venezuelan National Assembly brought back to me the unforgettable episodes at the end of European communism, with the statues of Stalin rolling on the ground in the midst of a glorious dust.
Somehow, what happened in Caracas is a continuation of those events. It is with good reason that the Chavistas and their fellow travelers proclaimed themselves cultivators of 21st Century Socialism, although with much less violence than that of the 20th century, but with the same level of incompetence and perhaps even more corruption. It was the enormous amount of patronage, collectivism and disdain for the ways of liberal democracy that allowed this to happen, in the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the total discrediting of Marxist superstitions. continue reading
Henry Ramos Allup, the new president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, has done well, starting his work without fear. Not only does he have reason behind him, but also the Constitution and two-thirds of the seats in parliament. According to a Datincorp survey, 81% of Venezuelans reject Nicolas Maduro’s call to ignore the decisions of the new parliament.
The clearest priority of this anguished society is to relieve its grave economic problems, but this rescue operation begins by respecting the popular will, expressed in the designation of 112 deputies, not one less, and in releasing to the streets the hundreds of unjustly imprisoned political prisoners, led by Leopold Lopez and Antonia Ledezma. Venezuela’s national poet, Andres Eloy Blanco, anticipated it many years ago: “I sowed the stars / held in the heart / and it was good like the day / the prisoners were freed.”
Former Spanish president Felipe Gonzalez warned Maduro with great urgency. Venezuela is heading into a humanitarian crisis. Bad governance has decimated the productive capacity of the country, there is not enough food, medicine nor the money to import them, and international credit is finished.
As Maduro continued to chat with the birds, indifferent to reality, and as his new minister of the economy can’t find his right hand and ended up pulverizing the rubble, the only hope for rectification is the set of measures that can be taken by the National Assembly.
Second, inflation takes off and the government responds with price controls and the printing of money, which worsens the crisis. The third stage is complete chaos: shortages, an exponential increase in poverty, and a virtual collapse of the system.
The fourth, which Venezuelans should be experiencing now if Maduro weren’t so blatantly ignorant, is the adjustment. Prices must be reconciled, public spending cut and the productive apparatus revitalized by opening the doors to entrepreneurs and national and foreign investors, which requires respect for private property and a trustworthy judicial system.
21st Century Socialism arose with the petrodollars of Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, under the treacherous direction of the Castros, and will end up with the collapse of this artificial, absurd and, above all, unaffordable, little world. Fortunately, as happened with the communist counties of Europe, the transition will probably be peaceful and carried out via legitimate elections. He who kills through ballot box, dies through the ballot box.
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 9 January 2015 — A neighborhood without a church, cemetery or cultural center. That was Alamar in East Havana until late last year, when the Enguayabera recreational complex opened. A mass of concrete that for decades was an abandoned ruin, now seeks to offer the more than 100,000 people in the area a different option to boredom and alcohol.
The district’s residents are delighted with the new place, although many of its areas are not yet up and running. Since the nineties the hall, which was built to house a factory making guayabera shirts, had been converted into a public toilet and garbage dump. “The rats were driving us crazy,” said a neighbor whose ground floor apartment was affected by the abandoned factory. continue reading
Now, the old textile factory located on 162nd Street is newly painted and trucks come and go hauling away the trash. At the entrance, some photographs show the deterioration that overcame the building during the “Special Period” – after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of its subsidies to Cuba – when the factory was forced to stop production and send its workers home.
Enguayabera is trying to emulate the popular Cuban Art Factory* in Havana’s Plaza district but, unlike that center, it will be administered entirely by state entities. The place has four cinemas with a capacity of 40 seats, a small theater, and party space where the whole complex was opened on 29 December with a concert by Manolito Simonet y su Trabuco.
For now, the literary café, ice cream shops and the shops operated by Artex and the Cuban Fund of Cultural Assets attract the most people during the day. Although the wifi area trumps everything atthis point, as an alternative for those who, until recently, had to travel to the Pan American Village or wifi zones in more central parts of Havana in order to connect.
The space also has a playground and three inflatable parks, but the huge puppets that make up the latter were not inflated this week, to the frustration of the children and their parents who arrived, excited by television reports about the new attractions. The sense of a rushed opening permeates the place, but does not diminish the enthusiasm of many.
With two teenagers, Yusmila has lived in the area since she was a child and commented to this newspaper about her relief, now that her family will have recreational opportunities so close to home. “I don’t let them go into Havana after six in the evening and they were really bored at home,” said the woman, for whom “the ability to go to the movies 200 yards from here is a blessing.”
However, others are more skeptical about the cultural offerings promoted by Enguayabera. A young taxi driver who operates on the route between Havana’s Central Park and Alamar commented on this. As a self-employed worker, it seems excessive to him to have “four movie theaters, in a time when people have everything at home with the weekly packet.”
The man also recognizes that the new cultural center will affect him directly because, as he confesses, “all those who will now entertain themselves in Alamar are customers I will lose because they won’t need to go here and there to get to a disco or a movie theater.”
Eusebio Mitjans has lived for 35 years in the neighborhood that was supposed to be the home of the “New Man,” but which ended up becoming a dysfunctional bedroom city filled with prefabricated blocks. He spent dozens of hours in voluntary work on the construction of the guayabera factory during the eighties, and now says he feels “satisfied” because the site is being renovated for young people.
Sitting with Mitjans on Thursday in the site’s literary café was his 20-year-old niece. The young woman asked the waitress if there was a program yet for the authors who would be presenting their works. But the clerk just shrugged her shoulders and didn’t answer. “In Alamar there are more writers than buildings, and now all they need is to publish their books,” said the young woman.
All around her is the glittering appearance of the new. The nightmare of the parishioners is that one bad day it will all collapse into ruins, as happened once already to the guayabera factory.
*Translator’s note: See articles here, from The Havana Times, and here from the Washington Post.
