The 20th of May, its Place in Cuba / Dimas Castellano

Dimas Castellano, 21 May 2021 — Not because it was expected does it cease to be a surprise. The collapse of sugar production in the recently concluded harvest, in addition to being the biggest disaster suffered by that industry in the history of Cuba, constitutes definitive proof of the incapacity of the totalitarian model implemented after 1959.

Of the 1.2 million tons planned for the 2020-2021 harvest — after six months of milling — the total did not exceed 816,000 tons; a quantity very similar to the 807,000 tons  produced in 1891.

It is not a drop caused by temporary factors — US embargo, fuel, breakages, soil moisture or Covid-19 — but a sustained decline for decades, whose first signal was emitted by the monumental voluntarist campaign to produce ten million tons in 1970. The pompous slogan of “Not a pound less” ended with a million and a half tons less, and with the economy and society dislocated. And, despite the fact that the goals were reduced year after year, what was planned was never fulfilled. In 2001, the volume of sugar produced declined to 3.5 million tons, an amount that Cuba had already reached in 1918.

The government’s response, steeped in military culture, was to appoint a major general in 2001 to head the sector, who launched an operation known as “New sugar architecture”, made up of two fronts: “Restructuring of the sugar industry ” and “Tarea Álvaro Reynoso”, whose goal was to produce six million tons of sugar, a figure that had been reached in the 1950s.

Once the initiative was launched, and using the argument that prices had fallen the international market, and making use of that other enemy of the economy that is voluntarism, the Government decided to close 71 of the 156 existing sugar mills and redistribute the 60% of sugarcane land for other crops. Which further upset the depressed economy.

The 2003 harvest produced 2.1 million tons, which made the government face the dilemma of importing sugar for domestic consumption or failing to comply with foreign commitments. The 2005 harvest fell to 1.3 million tons: the lowest in the last hundred years.

The results demonstrated the difference between directing the military, where the individual interest does not count, and economic work, in which individual interest is a determining factor; confirmed by the pronouncement of José Martí, addressed to General Máximo Gómez: “A people is not established, General, like a military camp is run.” continue reading

In 2008, in the face of the crisis — labeled by the president of the State Council as a matter of maximum national security — a solution was once again sought where it was not to be found. The Municipal Delegations of Agriculture were created to control closer to the productive base, ignoring that the controls from the “dad” State to the “child” producers in the midst of the imbalance between salary and cost of living generates corruption. Agronomists, livestock keepers, and veterinarians were turned into comprehensive specialists, equipped with transportation and fuel to control reports and supervise producers. The result: the 2010 harvest fell to 1.1 million tons; less than the 1.23 million produced in 1905 during the government of Tomás Estrada Palma.

The search for a solution anywhere but within the inefficient state ownership and centralized planning led to the Guidelines for the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution, approved at the VI Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) in 2011, which reaffirmed that line. To stop the decline and increase the derivatives of sugar cane, the Ministry of Sugar was replaced by the AZCUBA group; it announced that the 2013-2014 harvest targeted 1.8 million tons, and would be the best in the last decade. For greater guarantee, the then Second Secretary of the PCC, José Ramón Machado Ventura, toured a many of the sugar mills appealing to conscience. And yet, the best harvest of the last decade failed to meet its goal.

Just two months after the start of the current harvest (2020-2021), the official news that the amount of sugar provided by the government in the regulated family basket corresponding to the months of January and February was assured indicated that something was very wrong. It was the signal that once again the plan would not be met. It wasn’t a surprise since of the 44-45 mills that ground in the prior harvest, only 38 did so in the current year, and of those 14 delayed the start of the season.

Since AZCUBA was created ten years ago, it has not yet fulfilled a single one of its plans, and last year was so disastrous that for the first time the amount of sugar produced by the country was not disclosed.

Cuba was at one time the main producer and exporter of sugar in the world. In 1894 it was already producing a million tons. In 1925 it produced 5.16 million, and in 1952 it set a record of 7.13 million tons.

The conversion of the largest sugar complex in the world into one of the least efficient producers is the most irrefutable proof of the incapacity of the model, implemented in Cuba after 1959. Despite this, last April the VIII Congress of the PCC determined that the state enterprise and the socialist planning system would continue to be the main form for the direction of the national economy.

The sugar industry, a symbol of the history and culture of the Cuban nation since the 19th century, ceased to be so. A symbol that wisdom condensed into a phrase that defines our identity: “Without sugar there is no country.” And then what, if we are running out of sugar?

Translated by Wilfredo Diaz Echevarria 

Cuba’s New Laws, a Strategy for the Debacle / Dimas Castellano

Dimas Castellanos, 1 July 2021 —  To improve the image of Cuban laws — outdated with respect to the international legal system — the Supreme People’s Court (TSP) submitted four preliminary drafts to the National Assembly of People’s Power for approval: Law on the Courts of Justice, Code of Proceedings, Law on Administrative Procedure and Law on Criminal Procedure. According to the president of the TSP, Rubén Remigio Ferro, it is “the most innovative proposal and the one that most intensely impacts the rights and guarantees of citizens vis-à-vis the Administration.”

In the following lines I present three factors that call into question the statement of the president of the TSP: 1- The subordination of the judiciary, 2- The international covenants ,and 3- The reason for the preliminary draft laws

Subordination of the judiciary power 

Constitutionalism, the foundation of governance, emerged in history as a necessity to establish limits to power. In Cuba, although it debuted at the beginning of the 19th century, it took shape in the Constitution of the Republic in Arms (Guáimaro (1869), which adopted the type of republican government, deposited sovereignty in the people, endorsed the division of powers and prohibited attacking the freedoms of worship, the press, peaceful assembly, teaching and petition or any other inalienable right of the people. From that root the Mambise constitutions of Jimagüayú (1895) and the Yaya (1897) were nourished.

The 1901 Constitution incorporated the essence and spirit of habeas corpus (a legal institution that requires the detainee to be presented within a certain period of time before the Court, which could order his immediate release), freedom of expression, the rights of assembly and association and freedom of movement. For its part, the 1940 Constitution endorsed the division of public powers, declared punishable any act of prohibition or limitation of the citizen to participate in the political life of the nation and incorporated new instruments that made it a model of democratic legislation for its time throughout the continent.

In 1959, when the 1940 Constitution was replaced by provisional statutes that governed for 17 years (the Basic Law), constitutionalism suffered a setback that was endorsed in the 1976 Constitution: the division of powers, equality before the law, freedom of speech, of press, assembly, association and demonstration. Among other rights, freedoms were subordinated to the Communist Party (PCC), declared the highest governing force of society and the State. Since then, the Judiciary, exercised by the Supreme Court, has never enjoyed independence up to today.

International covenants

If, as the president of the TSP said, “it’s a proposal that impacts the rights and guarantees of citizens,” why are the pacts — signed by Cuba in 2008 — on Civil and Political Rights, and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of the United Nations, which would have a greater impact on citizens, not ratified? continue reading

Since the aforementioned covenants “are based on the recognition of the dignity and equal and inalienable rights inherent in all human beings,” the signatory States “commit to respect and guarantee to all individuals who are in their territory and are subject to their jurisdiction, the rights recognized” in them; therefore, once ratified they are mandatory, which requires national legislation to correspond to them.

The reasons for the non-ratification seem to be related to the fact that in 2008, Cuba, in addition to holding the presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement, was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC). Failure to sign them constituted a flagrant contradiction with the exercise of such responsibilities. In other words, the signing was the result of a situation, not of a political will for the improvement of human rights.

Why the draft laws?

On three occasions (2009, 2013 and 2018), the Government of Cuba was the subject of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which is carried out by the HRC on the members of the United Nations. On all three occasions, along with the recognition of certain advances, the HRC made hundreds of requests and recommendations and urged the island’s authorities to suspend short detentions, harassment and other repressive measures against independent activists and journalists; to reduce government control over the Internet; to allow delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit Cuban prisons without restrictions; and to ratify the International Covenants signed by Cuba in 2008.

The European Parliament at its plenary session from June 7 to 10, 2021, issued a resolution on human rights in Cuba, in which it condemned the existence of political prisoners, political persecution, acts of harassment and arbitrary detention of dissidents; attacks against artists of the San Isidro Movement, peaceful dissidents, independent journalists, human rights defenders and members of the political opposition; urged the Cuban authorities to release all political prisoners and detainees arbitrarily for exercising freedom of expression and assembly; called for the repeal of laws that violate freedom of expression such as decrees 249 and 370; warned that 199 cases of political prisoners had been registered, in addition to 65 new cases of political imprisonment in the last 12 months.

The European Union, in its “Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World,” on June 28, recognized that in Cuba “freedom of expression, association and assembly continued to be subject to significant restrictions in 2020, with reports of numerous arbitrary arrests and detentions.” Freedom of movement “suffered new restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, since strict measures to contain the spread of the virus were used against activists.” Freedom of the press was among the ten least free countries. Contempt and the spread of epidemics were used to restrict citizen information on social networks, while several journalists and bloggers were fined under Decree 370. The document referred to restrictions on domestic and foreign travel and measures that prevent individuals from leaving their homes, which amounts to house arrest. It concludes by saying that the Government “doesn’t usually support the recommendations coming from EU member states.”

These requirements and recommendations, previously ignored, in the face of the worsening of the crisis forced the Cuban Government to change the external image without altering its totalitarian nature, which explains that while the draft laws were presented, arbitrary arrests and accusations, abuses and harassment against those who make use of freedom of expression are maintained against members of the San Isidro Movement, of the 27-N and other opponents, journalists and activists.

The solution to the deep crisis in which Cuba is immersed — the worst in its history — calls for putting the legal norms in line with those of the rest of the world and with its own history. The strategy of putting on makeup is the road to disaster.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Three Blows to the Agreement for Political Dialogue and Cooperation Between Cuba and the EU / Dimas Castellano

Guardia de Lituania ante la bandera de la UE. (AFP)

Dimas Castellano, 7 July 2021 — The democratization of Cuba, a Western country laboring under a totalitarian government in the twenty-first century, is an urgent necessity. Cubans, who lack the space and freedom to participate as agents of that change, require international support. After 25 years of mutual relations, the European Union (EU) has shown the requisite conditions to satisfy that role as a partner.

The European Economic Community (EEC) was created in 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. With the signing of the Maastricht Treaty after more than three decades in development, it added political ties to its economic relations and went on to be named the European Community (EC). At the summit meeting of the heads of state or governments of the member countries, it then became the EU.  

In 1996, the EU, whose members maintained bilateral relations with Cuba, assumed a Common Position with the objective of “fostering a transition to democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as a sustainable recovery and an improvement of living standards for the Cuban people.”

A retrospective view of 25 years of relations with Cuba bears this out.

In 2002, Cuba sought to be incorporated into the Cotonou Agreement, a cooperation agreement between the EU and countries of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, in which the parties are obligated to respect human rights and fundamental liberties.

In 2003, as the application was about to be approved, the imprisonment of 75 peaceful combatants and the execution by firing squad of three young people who attempted to flee Cuba, disrupted the negotiations. In response, the EU limited its governmental visits to Cuba, reduced its participation in cultural events and invited the opposition to participate in receptions for the national festivals of its member states.    continue reading

In 2008, while the majority of the 75 prisoners remained in jail, and the effects of the crisis were exacerbated by the destruction caused by hurricanes Gustav and Ike, the government decided to restart relations with the EU, which had been disrupted since 2003.

The chancellor, Felipe Pérez Roque, declared that the government of Cuba would make “clear gestures of recognition” of European policies if the EU did not vote in favor of the resolution on Cuba by the UN Human Rights Commission and added that by doing so “Cuba would sign the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the following day.” In other words, the signing of the covenant would not be predicated on a desire to improve the human rights situation in Cuba. Rather, it was political blackmail, which explains why the signature was never ratified. In the meantime, the chancellors of the EU countries revoked the 2003 sanctions and introduced a “renewed commitment” to the Common Position.

In 2010, Cuba denied entry to the Spanish MEP Luis Yáñez, and the political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in a hunger strike. These incidents were condemned by the European Parliament. Deteriorating relations along with internal incidents led to a pledge to free all political prisoners involved in the case of the 75 activists.  

In 2014, in response to the release of the political prisoners, the EU authorized the start of negotiations to establish the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement with Cuba, signed in March 2016 in the presence of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, and the Cuban chancellor Bruno Rodríguez.

From that moment to the first and second EU-Cuba Joint Council (in May 2018 and September 2019, respectively), there was no progress regarding human rights.

More recently, in June 2021, Cuba’s conduct received three forceful blows that indicate a possily decisive turn:

On the 10th of that month the European Parliament condemned the existence of political prisoners, the persecution and arbitrary detention of dissidents, and insisted that the Cuban authorities release all political prisoners and those who were arbitrarily detained for exercising the freedom of expression and assembly.

On the 20th, in its Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World, the EU recognized that in Cuba freedom of expression, association and assembly remain subject to important restrictions, and it affirmed that the government of Cuba is not inclined to support the recommendations of the EU member states.

On the 30th, the Lithuanian Parliament, the only country that had not ratified the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement, upped the ante: It demanded “the unconditional release of political prisoners” and mentioned by name the persecutions of Tania Bruguera, Luis Manuel Otro Alcántara, Maykel Castillo, Denis Solís, Luis Robles and those held as a result of the protest on Obispo Street, among others, and thereupon declared that “it is not politically advisable to ratify the Agreement, effectively nullifying it.  

These events have created an unforeseen scenario in Cuba-EU relations.

What lies behind these events was a dismantling of civil society after 1959, the suppression of the most basic civil and political rights, the elimination of private property on the means of production, and the monopoly of the party/state/government over politics, culture, education, and the media.

The current government of Cuba, essentially the same one that debuted in 1959, incurred responsibilities and interests it is prepared to defend. This explains the limited and contradictory nature of its reforms, and at the same time, it reflects its great weaknesses, disguised by impotent gestures and speeches. Within this complex scenario lies the importance of the EU as a partner toward democracy.

“The only thing that can save the Agreement is a public dialogue with civil society and the execution of the European Parliament’s resolution of last June 10th.”

One desirable and beneficial solution to achieve the agenda of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement would be to make at least five demands additional of Cuba:

Require concrete actions and not verbal agreements for help, as has occurred since the Common Position was adopted in 1996.

Freedom for all political prisoners, an end to arbitrary detentions, persecution and any other violations of rights and human dignity.

The addition of Cuba to the Covenant of Political and Civil Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights signed in 2008.

The coupling of Cuban law to the United Nations Charter as well as all international instruments of law.

The fomenting of spaces, mechanisms, exchanges, and cooperation with independent civil society in Cuba, establishing direct relations between associations of civil society of both parties without state control.

These minimal requirements, based on Cuba’s needs and on its relations with the EU for twenty-five years, should definitively constitute the lodestar for current and future relations for the good of Cuba, the Cuban people, and the EU.

Translated by Cristina Saavedra

The Cuban Embargo: Another Resolution? Or Elimination of Internal Obstacles? / Dimas Castellano

Dimas Castellano, Havana, 23 May 2021 — The embargo enacted by the U.S. against the Cuban government in 1962 was ridiculed for its ineffectiveness until the Soviet subsidies disappeared. As of that moment, it was described as the primary cause of all ills, including sexual rights, according to the words of Manuel Vázquez, Deputy Director of CENESEX, on May 13, 2021. Since then, year after year, Cuba has presented resolutions before the United Nations General Assembly to force its elimination.

When Cuba presented the first resolution in 1992, 59 countries voted in favor. In 2016, with diplomatic relations re-established, it presented the twenty-fifth resolution, without a single vote against it, since Israel and the U.S. abstained. With those results, the maximum possible at the UN, it exhausted the resolutions route, as compliance with them is not mandatory; at the same time a new scenario was launched with the Obama Administration.

In contrast with the ten administrations that preceded it (Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush), Barack Obama did not demand as a premise the democratization of Cuba. In its place, he expanded travel permits, eased commercial restrictions for private enterprises and smallholder Cuban farmers, increased the limits on remittances and donations, expanded commercial exports of goods and services and provided commercial telecommunications and internet services at low prices.

These measures resulted in increased travel to Cuba, the arrival of cruise ships, the resumption of flights and direct mail transport, the establishment of agreements with telecommunications companies, and negotiations between other countries and Cuba. For its part, the Government of the Island limited itself to allowing Cubans to travel abroad without requiring permission from the Government, and to sell their cars and houses; measures indicative of how far Cuban rights had declined, but nothing that favored their empowerment.

With previous administrations there weren’t any arrangements because they demanded conditions; with Obama’s, which did not make demands, there weren’t any either: U.S. changed its policies, Cuba did not.

In that context, during his electoral campaign, Donald Trump announced that he’d revise the established policy toward Cuba. Once elected, in June 2017, he signed the “National Security Presidential Memorandum on Strengthening the Policy of the United States toward Cuba.” And in November of that year, the Departments of Treasury and Commerce, through their offices of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), and the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) rolled it out.

Lost was the opportunity to negotiate; in 2017 the Cuban government presented the twenty-sixth resolution against the embargo and criticized the National Security Presidential Memorandum. That line, which was not edited in 2018, 2019 nor 2020, will have a new episode next June when Havana presents its thirtieth resolution with the same arguments, “the blockade is illegal, immoral and constitutes a major obstacle to Cuba’s economic and social development.”

A different point of departure requires one to consider two of the primary reasons for the embargo: the elimination of private property in Cuba and the guerrillas in Latin America. continue reading

The first began by eliminating the large estates (1959), it continued with the elimination of properties owned by large American businesses (1960), and it ended by sweeping the tens of thousands of small establishments that had survived the wave of confiscation (1968).

The second reason manifest itself since the first days of the revolution with the training of guerrillas to export the revolution, the first episodes of which took place in Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua and Paraguay.

Both events, by affecting American interests, resulted in the rupture of diplomatic relations and support for the Bay of Pigs landing in 1961 and the embargo in 1962.

The actions and reactions of both parties resulted in a confrontational escalation which included the installation of Soviet mid-range missiles in Cuba and the naval blockade in 1962, and other actions to date.

In the midst of this confrontation rights and freedoms, which reached their peak in the Constitution of 1940, and placed Cuba among the countries with the highest standard of living in Latin America, disappeared from the Island. With power concentrated in the leader, power in the State and independent civil society replaced by one created and subordinate to power, inefficiency took shape. The government response was limited to introducing reform measures with a predetermined border: state property, the single party, and the conservation of power; which are the primary causes of the Cuban nation’s structural crisis.

The hopes of the Island’s authorities for a change in policy with the new administration in the U.S. are gone with the wind. Four months since taking office the message from Washington has been, “Cuba is not a priority for the U.S. any change goes through human rights and the Biden Administration is not Obama’s.”

After proving that the Cuban government cannot determine the U.S. policy and that resistance has its limits, only one path remains: internal change.

The U.S. does not prohibit dealing with private Cuban business owners. Thus, if the Government of Cuba allows its citizens to legally create small and medium enterprises; hand over or sell land for use by producers; eliminate the monopolies held by Acopio and Comercio Exterior so that Cubans may freely buy and sell; eradicate the Foreign Investment Law so Cubans may invest in their country, then the enomony and services would gradually eradicate the shortages. . . But most importantly, the arguments for maintaining the embargo would be dismantled and the U.S. Congress would be free to proceed with eliminating it.

The Cuban authorities, instead of continuing to present resolutions, could do what is within their reach: eliminate the ideological or other obstacles, stop clinging to nationalization, centralized planning and the absence of freedoms which constitute the primary reasons for the Cuban crisis. It is not about an act of surrender before the “enemy”; but rather a gesture toward the nation and toward the people the Government supposedly represents. It would be like adding content to the cliché “thinking as a country.”

It has nothing to do with utopia. The U.S. unleashed upon Vietnam triple the number of bombs used during World War II; 15% of the population perished or was wounded; 60% of towns in South Vietnam were destroyed. At the end of the war, Vietnam faced a U.S. embargo. Instead of presenting resolutions at the U.N, Vietnam introduced a market economy. As a result, the embargo was lifted. In 2010, Vietnam achieved its goal of joining the group of middle-income countries; in 2014 it was the twenty-eight largest exporter in the world; and in 2016 it was en route to becoming an industrialized nation.

If the Cuban government did not take advantage of the opportunity offered by the Obama Administration and the economy continues declining, why don’t we think like a country and as a result eliminate the internal blockade? What is the reason for not doing so?

El Blog de Dimas

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

Why Don’t Foreign Baseball Players Flee Their Countries and Why Didn’t Cuban Players Flee Before 1959? / Dimas Castellano

César Prieto, Cuban baseball second baseman in the uniform of the Cienfuegos team.

Dimas Castellano, Havana, 31 May 2021 — César Prieto, second baseman for the Cienfuegos Elefantes and member of the Cuba team at the Americas Pre-Olympic Tournament, escaped on May 26 as soon as the delegation arrived in Florida. The frequency of this occurrence, although not considered newsworthy, becomes of analysis.

Why do Cuban baseball players, who before 1959 never used to flee their country, do so now? Why don’t players from other countries do so? The answer lies in history. Let us go there:

In Havana, between 1939 and 1943, five Amateur World Series were held, of which the Cubans won four. In the 1940s, the Cuban League was founded with the Havana, Almendares, Cienfuegos, and Marianao teams, and the Gran Estadio del Cerro [the Grand Stadium of El Cerro, today known as the Latin American Stadium] became the headquarters of Cuban baseball.

In 1949 the Caribbean Series, which opened in Havana, won seven of the 12 editions in which it participated — the last five in a row. Since 1954 the Cuban Sugar Kings (a Minor League team affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds, based in Havana, that played at the Triple-A level from 1954 to 1960) played half the time in the Cerro stadium and the other half overseas.

In 1960, Cuba had 98 players in the Major Leagues and 68 were candidates for the Hall of Fame. The Cuban League was the main circuit in Latin America and second in the world. These and many other achievements turned baseball into a passion in Cuba. continue reading

Although the General Directorate of Sports was created in the 1940s, amateur and professional baseball was managed by private companies and civil institutions. Starting in February 1961, with the creation of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER), the rules of the game changed. Professional sports were banned, North American baseball broadcasts were suspended, and anyone who tried to participate in “slave” baseball was branded a traitor.

Baseball was nothing but a particular case of the absorption of everything and everyone by the State, which assumed all expenses in exchange for absolute control and fidelity. Athletes turned into “gladiators” were sent to represent the State in international competitions.

The sport’s subordination to non-sports-related factors is illustrated by the discourse of the Leader of the Revolution:

1- “Someday when the yanquis decide to coexist with our country, we will beat them also in baseball, and then the advantage of revolutionary sport over exploited sport will be proven” (January 1962).

2- “Professional sport was eradicated, and above all, it was eradicated in that sport, which was one of the most popular: baseball” (January 1967).

3- “The essence of the success of our sport is the disappearance of professionalism” (March 1970), and:

4- “If in other countries of Latin America there is no social revolution… no matter how much technique [they use]; no matter how many coaches they hire; no matter how many things they come up with, they will not be able to obtain the successes that Cuba obtains in the sport.” (October 1975).

The exodus

Given the INDER’s prohibitions, many of the Cubans who participated in the Major Leagues settled in the United States. In 1980 a group of them left the country through the port of Mariel, including Bárbaro Garvey, the first Cuban from the National Series who played, in 1984, with the Detroit Tigers.

He was followed by others such as pitcher Edilberto Oropesa and shortstop Rey Ordoñez. In 1991 René Arocha, pitcher for the Industriales, was the first to leave an official delegation. After him, Euclides Rojas — a reliever from the same team, who escaped with his family by sea in a homemade boat during the Maleconazo stampede in 1994 — did the same.

The permanence of the getaway, and the ineffectiveness of repressive measures to stop it, indicate the existence of a deep cause, whose common denominator is the inability of the athletes to realize their dreams in Cuba. Some like Orestes Miñoso — a glory of baseball for all time — died without ever returning to their homeland. Others, as Euclides Rojas declared, did not leave to play ball, but to seek freedom.

Subordinate baseball

With the rise of the totalitarian system began the decline of Cuban baseball. Our supremacy was established in the Central American, Pan American, and world amateur competitions — what was prematurely described as the victory of the “free baseball” over “the slave baseball.”

Without its own economy, this supremacy was achieved thanks to Soviet subsidies. At the Munich Olympics (1972), the year in which Cuba entered the Council for Economic Aid (CAME), the Cuban team ranked fourteenth in the medal count. In Barcelona (1992), it rose to fifth place. However, in Rio de Janeiro (2016), Cuba dropped to eighteenth place — four below where it had been in 1972.

Another demonstration of decline was at the World Baseball Classic. In the first version (2006), Cuba ranked second. In the second version (2009), it went to fifth place. In the third version (2013), the Cuban mentor assured that the team would win, but they couldn’t get beyond the fifth position. The final reckoning came with the sweep they suffered in 2013 at the hands of North American university students, whom Cuba had previously defeated in eight out of ten playoffs.

Finally, after 53 years of absence from the Caribbean Series, Cuba rejoined in the 56th edition (2014), played on Margarita Island, Venezuela, where it ranked last.

The results leave no doubt: the controversy between “free” and “slave” baseball was decided in favor of the latter.

The “blockade”?

The official explanation that the “blockade” imposed by the United States is the cause of the disaster and that Cuban baseball players cannot take part in the competitive circuits of that country hides the fact that the conflict began with Cuba’s decision to ban professional baseball and to classify disobedient players as traitors. Such a hackneyed argument is used to try to sustain the unsustainable.

In March 2017, the Cuban national baseball director, Yosvani Aragón, declared that “there will be no unified team until the United States eliminates the embargo rules that affect baseball players — and certifies that there will be no concessions that involve opening doors to those who have disavowed their country or abandoned delegations that were counting on their efforts.”

However, nothing is said about the responsibility borne by Cuban totalitarianism, much less about correcting this error, and even less about restoring freedom to baseball and Cuban baseball players.

Meanwhile, as happens with the economy, there is an insistence on getting out of the stagnation using slogans and speeches. On May 20, six days before César Prieto’s escape, the president of Cuba appeared at training to repeat the well-known harangues to the “gladiators” of the team.

Upon learning of César’s departure, the official statement from the Cuban Baseball Federation says that the athlete’s decision is “contrary to the commitment made to the people.” Fearing that others would follow his example, they ordered — according to what is known — a confiscation of delegation members’ phones to prevent further escapes. And, it is said, César’s family will be evicted from the house that the Government gave him, which shows that such a gift is in exchange for submission.

This behavior on the part of the State explains the degree of dependency to which Cuban athletes are subjected and the true cause of the escapes. The dependency in which the sport is held and the lack of freedom of the athletes provide the answer to why Cuban ballplayers did not flee before 1959, why they flee now, and why players from other countries do not flee.

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Yes, Cuba is a Failed State / Dimas Castellanos

A street in Havana. (Diario de Cuba)

Dimas Castellanos, Havana, 29 November 2021– “The U.S. government is following a script, seeking to portray Cuba as a failed state,” grumbled Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla on Wednesday, November 10, during his appearance before the accredited diplomatic corps in Cuba.

Among the defining elements that characterize a failed state, those related to its economy are fundamental.

On February 19, 1959, six days after taking office as prime minister, Fidel Castro announced a government program that was supposed to “notably increase agricultural production, double the consumption capacity of agricultural workers, and erase Cuba’s  dreadful chronic unemployment figure, achieving for the people a standard of living higher than that of any other nation.” To achieve this, foreign and Cuban companies were expropriated. Three years later, in March 1962, the inefficiency resulting from these moves made necessary the introduction of the rationing book.

In March 1968, with the “Revolutionary Offensive,” nationalization reached the 55,000 micro and small enterprises that had survived, which exacerbated the inefficiency of production and services, a situation that only worsened with the attempt to produce ten million tons of sugar in 1970, which ravaged the entire economy, without achieving the outcome expected. Meanwhile, the February 1959 promise remained unfulfilled.

Soviet subsidies, amounting to 65 billion dollars in 30 years (three times more than what all of Latin America received from the US Alliance for Progress and the millions lent by the Paris Club and capitalist countries) all went straight down the drain. continue reading

The reform measure introduced after the implosion of socialism in Eastern Europe and since 2008, failed to revive productive efficiency. Today, 62 years after the promise made in that February 1959, the economic sectors in which Cuba had excelled until 1958 have degenerated to unthinkable levels.

Sugar production progressively sank until equaling figures produced back in colonial times. Coffee fell from 60,000 to 6,105 tons between 1960 and 2014, a figure not even sufficient to meet domestic demand, forcing Cuba to purchase coffee on the foreign market for domestic consumption. Measures taken to produce 24,000 tons of coffee by 2020 failed.

The production of meat, milk and cattle by-products waned to the point that they disappeared from the Cuban diet. Meanwhile, the diminished supply of pork and pork products drove up prices in an inflationary spiral.

The housing shortage —which according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean came to more than 700,000 houses through 1959— was tackled with a “battle for housing.” The first plan, from 1959 to 1970, calling for 32,000 houses per year, averaged only about 11,000. During the second plan, from 1971 to 1980, which slated 38,000 houses per year, the annual average was less than 17,000. Then in 1980, with a population of more than ten million inhabitants, the plans were for 100,000 dwellings per year, but only 40,000 were built.

In 2005, it was announced that “no less than 100,000 new homes per year would be built and completed starting in 2006.” This plan met the same fate as the previous ones: in 2008, about 45,000 were built, in 2009 the figure dropped to about 34,000, and in 2013 it fell below 26,000 homes. In 2015 about 30,000 were completed, and in 2016, according to the report presented by Marino Murillo in December 2015, the year was expected to close out with 27,480 housing units. Instead of being solved, the housing deficit has actually worsened.

Until 1958, Cuba was characterized by in-migration. Between 1959 and 1965, in contrast, the exodus of Cubans, by both legal and illegal means, generated the first great migratory wave through the Port of Camarioca in Matanzas. When travel by sea was interrupted, the thousands of Cubans who were still waiting to leave did so by means of the so-called “friendship flights,” chartered by the United States from the Varadero Airport.

By April 1973, at the end of the airlift, 260,000 Cubans had left the country. In 1980, in a second massive wave, another 125,000 Cubans emigrated. In August 1994, thousands of Havana residents staged the so-called Maleconazo, giving rise to a third migratory wave that saw approximately 33,000 Cubans abandon the island.

In recent years, through Central American countries, Russia, and any country that does not require an entry visa, thousands more Cubans, despite the great risks they face, continue to leave Cuba. This stampede began before the U.S. enacted the Cuban Adjustment Act, the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, and the parole program for Cuban doctors. If those waves occurred before and after those measures, it means that the main causes lie elsewhere.

To top it all off, according to the Government itself, in 2021 more than 500 state enterprises will post losses. Cubans spend most of their time in endless lines to buy, at very high prices, basic products such as food, toiletries and medicines; there are difficulties guaranteeing the standard quantities of milk for children under seven years of age; most families, when the school year resumes, cannot afford to buy a new pair of shoes for their children to attend school; and in the midst of the pandemic, countries that before 1959 trailed Cuba in most economic categories, recently donated humanitarian aid to alleviate our crisis.

Cuba’s contradictions rooted in its lack of freedom, which for decades have landed thousands of Cubans in prison, or exile, have been exposed and indicted with greater force by young people in a new era of information technologies and social media. The country’s youth has gradually realized the impossibility of continuing to live as they had been until now.

Protests centered on specific issues have undergone a qualitative shift in the form of demands for freedom to participate in the destiny of the nation. The San Isidro Movement, the demonstration in front of the Ministry of Culture, the 11-J (11 July) rallies and the call of the Plataforma Archipiélago for a peaceful march are all part of a civic trend towards calls for profound change.

The cause: the unfulfilled promise of February 1959, due to the unworkability of the model implemented. Cubans, most of whom supported the revolutionary process at the beginning, today demand a new accord. It is impossible to preserve the model and save the nation, since the model, by its nature, is irreformable and, therefore, unsalvageable.

This outcome, as grim as it is real, cannot be described as anything else but a failed state.

Translation from Diario de Cuba

Cuba: In Defense of Political Dialogue / Dimas Castellano

Cuban protesters on July 11th.

Emerging civil society has to prepare to deal with the current power or the one that replaces it, and that articulation requires moving through the channels of dialogue.

Dimas Castellano, 13 July 2021 — The recent events of Sunday, July 11, confirm that the Cuban crisis is deepening, that popular discontent is growing and that the Government is unable to solve it. Despite the Cuban president’s discourse, which was literally a call to civil war, the Government will have to accept the participation of Cubans as active subjects, because it is a national demands as well as a demand of foreign institutions and governments.

Given the imminence of the event, the associations of the emerging civil society need coordination to interact with each other and prepare to deal with the current power or with the one that replaces it. Coordination that requires moving through the channels of dialogue.

In the face of social conflicts, the most frequently used solution, in the history of humanity and in Cuba, is the use of violence, which by not removing the causes makes the conflicts resurface, over and over again.

In dialogue, as an art of reconciling interests, the parties, on an equal footing, always have to compromise on something. Those who consider themselves to be in an advantageous position — which is the case of the Cuban government — reject, as it has done, the first calls, but given the worsening of the crisis, continuing to refuse may have a higher price than continue reading

sitting down to dialogue and negotiate.

Why dialogue?

Because it is a form of communication in which two or more interlocutors establish an exchange of information to reach an agreement, for which dialogue is the most viable, safe and positive way.

Dialogue means talking to expose your own points of view, listening to know the opinion of the other and exploring possible solutions to the conflict. Dialogue and flexibility in negotiation enable the disputing parties to gradually resolve differences at the lowest possible cost.

If war is the continuation of politics, as defined by Clausewitz, then politics is the art of conflict resolution through dialogue and negotiation, which does not mean resignation or surrender, but an opportunity for direct communication to clarify positions, policies and proposals for changes.

As a process, dialogue includes efforts prior to negotiation to create a climate of trust, while requiring patience, flexibility, weighing in on the magnitude of demands and their gradual nature. The transformation of any violent conflict towards dialogue requires establishing communication channels between the agents involved, including those who practice violence, whether physical, verbal or moral, as is happening in Cuba against the fighters for freedom of expression.

There are no methods, rather there is only one method for conflict resolution: dialogue and negotiation. In the case of Cuba, although until now it has not yielded the expected results, it retains its validity for relations between the emerging civil society associations, between these with the State-Government Party and between the two with countries or associations of countries, such as the United States and the European Union (EU) respectively.

To be effective, in the case of Cuba, the first demand must be the promotion of rights and freedoms that allow legalized civil society to participate as a protagonist of changes in Cuba. This based on an understanding of civil society as a range of independent and autonomous associations, institutions and resources, which have public spaces and various forms of ownership over the means of production and expression.

Three examples of dialogue and negotiation in Cuba

The Zanjón Pact: After ten years of war, thousands of deaths, suffering and considerable material damage, on February 10, 1878, the Zanjón Pact was signed between most of the insurgent forces in Cuba and the Government of Spain. In exchange for peace, Spain had to implement, in Cuba, the laws related to printing, assembly and association contained in the Spanish Constitution.

The liberation of the slaves who went to war was a death blow for the institution of slavery, and from the freedoms implanted Cuban civil society arose: organs of the press, economic, cultural, fraternal, educational, instructional and recreational associations, unions and the first political parties, all of which served to restart the struggle in 1895.

The Platt Amendment: At the opening of the Constituent Convention, Military Governor Leonardo Wood told the delegates: “It will be your duty, first of all, to draft and adopt a Constitution for Cuba and, once it is finished, to formulate what should be, your judgment, the relations between Cuba and the United States.”

The commission designated for the formulation of relations, after exhausting all attempts to prevent the inclusion of the Platt Amendment, agreed to add it to the Constitution by 16 votes to 11 . The Platt Amendment endorsed the right of another country, the United States, to intervene in Cuba, omitted the Isle of Pines from the limits of the national territory and imposed the sale or lease of land for foreign naval bases.

The delegates had two options: violence or negotiation. The first, which meant suicide, implied indefinite occupation and the need to declare war on the United States. Cuba was now without the party of José Martí, who had died in combat, the Liberation Army had been demobilized, the economy was dependent on others and the island had not crystallized as a nation. In short, the country was plunged into desolation and ruin, and national self-esteemed had been weakened by years of military occupation.

The second option, negotiation, meant that, once signed, the Army of occupation withdrew, and the Republic was founded. Not the one we want, but the possible one. Sovereignty over the Isle of Pines was recovered; Civil society developed and the Platt Amendment was repealed.

The Constitutional Convention of 1940: Between 1902, together with the advances in the economic sphere, the country was immersed in conflicts over re-elections, which caused the Guerrita of 1906 and the uprising known as La Chambelona, in 1917; the massacre of thousands of black and mulatto members of the Partido Independientes de Color in 1912; and the reform of the 1901 Constitution to extend the power of President Gerardo Machado, which opened the period of struggle that led to the Revolution of 1930.

Those almost 30 years of political instability were followed by another seven until, in 1936, during the presidency of Colonel Federico Laredo Bru, a period of dialogue and negotiation was inaugurated that led to the Constitutional Assembly, where the capacity for dialogue and negotiation between communists, liberals, conservatives and social democrats was demonstrated. Together, they tackled the controversies and the result was the most advanced constitution in the region at that time, which offers a lesson in the value of negotiation for the destinies of nations.

Force is used to win, dialogue and negotiation to solve what is impossible through force, which obliges us to strengthen it as a starting point, as an essential concept, as a guiding principle and as a permanent strategy.

Cuban Protests: The Curse of Fear Has Been Broken, the Final Collapse of the System Has Begun / Dimas Castellano

Dimas Castellano, el Blog de Dimas, 13 July 2021 — “It is the ultimate breakdown of the system. It had been coming for months. The curse has irreparably been broken. The Cuban people were tired of the state acting with impunity. It has been sixty-years of abuse and humiliation. This is not an economic crisis; this is a systemic crisis.” This is how the economist Emilio Morales summed up for Diario de Cuba what happened in Cuba on Sunday, when thousands of citizens across the island took to the streets to protest, shouting “Freedom!”

After the protests Diario de Cuba interviewed Morales, political scientists Juan Antonio Blanco and Dimas Castellanos, and activist Boris Gonzalez Arenas about what happened and what it could mean for Cubans in near future and for the regime.

“In addition to being unpopular, the government’s latest economic measures have had profound adverse effects on the economy. First of all, the economy was partially dollarized without meaningful structural changes or reforms to unleash productive capacity. Then there was currency unification, whose stated objective was the elimination of the dual currency system, something that in practice has not happened. Quite the opposite,” says Morales.

This has led to “an increase in inflation, shortages in the retail sector, increased loss of purchasing power and growth in public frustration, as reflected in the protests.”

He also alludes to “the financial massacre of forcing people continue reading

to deposit dollars they have been keeping under their mattresses.”

“Adding to this is the impact of the pandemic. Covid-19 has obliterated the vaunted myth of Cuban medical prowess in the blink of an eye. The epidemiological situation in the country is very serious and highly explosive socially. The increase in the number of infections and deaths has been growing rapidly for days while at the same time public frustration is growing over the lack of governmental response,” he says.

He adds, “In the midst of this brutal humanitarian crisis, the regime has refused to accept help from the Cuban diaspora, which has tested the patience of citizens who lack medicine and food.”

For Morales, all these events “have produced a great rebellion” in which “Cubans have used their voices and social networks as weapons.”

He believes that “these events are a stern warning to the political leadership and the military that impunity has come to an end.”

“Senior career military officials without links to the mafia chieftains running the country, and whose hands are not stained with blood, are taking note of the situation. They will not part in any massacre that the puppet Diaz-Canel might order,” he says.

The economist believes, “This situation could lead to a fracture within the armed forces.”

“Most high, medium and low-ranking officers are experiencing the same hardships as ordinary Cubans: lack of food, medicine, blackouts, inflation, the humiliation of having to pay for basic necessities with dollars when their salaries are in pesos,” he says.

“It would not be the first time a dictatorship in Cuba has fallen. It would not be an an exception. There are already rumors that the families of Raul Castro and Lopez-Callejas have begun sending their relatives out of the country. If this turns out to be true, it would not come as a surprise. Large sums of money have been ferried out of the country for years. The generals and colonels commanding the troops are not going to bloody their hands repressing the people, nor are they going to lend themselves to the farce of watching that these crooks flea the country with their families,” he adds.

In regards to the government’s options for responding to what has happened, Morales believes that those in power “have run out of resources, have nothing to say and nothing to offer.”

“All they can offer is slavery, barbarity, hunger, submission and obedience. An economy in ruins, a country that exports practically nothing, that does not allow its citizens to generate wealth, that exports them as slaves and steals their wages, a government that steals the remittances from exiles and hides them in bank accounts in a third country or invests them in luxury hotels on the island while the public suffers from shortages of medicine and food, and the onslaught of a pandemic that has gotten out of control,” he laments.

What would Emilio Morales advise the Cuban government at this point? “The only possible recommendation would be to urge them to hold free, transparent elections with international supervision. Allow Cubans to generate wealth, end one-party hegemony, allow freedom of thought and association, and end political exclusion. Liberate the economy, the market, prices and put an end to parasitic centralization once and for all. Allow Cubans who live outside and inside the country to invest unhindered and with full legal guarantees. Allow citizens to save the country,” he urges.

Not that he expects the government to do any of this.

“It will try to buy time. It will not acknowledge the crisis. It will say that the thousands of Cubans who took to the streets are criminals, are mercenaries being bankrolled by imperialists. It will say that what they want is annexation and will repeat all those arguments and rhetorical idiocies they have been using for six decades to subdue the masses and justify their acts of violence.”

“In reality, what they will do is increase the repression and persecution of activists. The country will be increasingly militarized to discourage people from returning to the streets. In practice this will be unsustainable and will be very difficult to avoid,” he adds.

“It’s just a question of time. The dictatorship is demoralized. This is the last round and only a united Cuban people can overturn it. They already took the first step by going out into the streets. The curse of fear is already broken. There’s no going back. It does not matter if the internet is shut down or the phone lines are cut. The flame of freedom has already been ignited in the hearts of all Cubans and that cannot be extinguished by any dictatorship, no matter how violent and malevolent it may be. The beginning of the end has finally come,” concludes Morales.

A national rebellion

This is what political scientist Juan Antonio Blanco believes has clearly occurred.

“The regime has already lost two of its three supporting pillars. One was its ability to co-opt the public through subsidized employment, healthcare, and other policies. Investing in those things requires financial capital and political will, neither of which this government has.”

“The other pillar was ideological domination, its ability to present itself as a power allegedly legitimized by history, the voice of the downtrodden. It was their symbolic capital. The San Isidro and 27N movements ripped that apart,” states Blanco.

“The third pillar was fear of the the state’s capacity for repression. Sunday’s protests demonstrated that this fear is not insurmountable. The biggest gain of July 11 is the people suddenly discovering their own power,” he says.

“This system of domination is in crisis and getting worse.” The regime’s leadership, he believes, has no choice but to “leave or repress.” He is reluctant to give any suggestions. “I trust in its capacity for self-destruction,” he says.

Blanco believes the regime’s ruling elite will close ranks with those who have a stake in the system of repression.

“On Sunday there were police and rapid response brigades who refused calls for mobilization. We will see where their criminal foolhardiness leads them,” he says.

As for President Miguel Diaz-Canel’s ongoing denial of the seriousness of the crisis, Blanco believes it is “abject stupidity to say that the US government is so bothered by Cuba’s political system that it has manufactured all these protests.”

“It is an insult to Cubans’ intelligence. The assumption is that people are living happily so they must have been manipulated by another country that wants to put an end to this reign of harmony. The scarcity is due to an outdated system that seeks to create wealth rather than prevent the growth of poverty. After sixty-two years of experience, it is not a theoretical discussion as to whether or not the system in Cuba, and other Asian and European countries, has failed,” he says.

As for the Cuban president’s call for government supporters to confront demonstrators expressing their desire for freedom and to walk over their corpses, Blanco describes it as “an irresponsible, criminal statement which will have future legal consequences for this mediocre wimp from the ruling elite.”

Cuban political scientist Dimas Castellanos believes what has happened is “clearly a manifestation of exhaustion, hopelessness and despair.”

“It had been building and on Sunday it took a qualitative leap. I would not yet describe it as a national rebellion but it is a prelude,” he tells Diario de Cuba.

“The causes for this are not external. They are fundamentally internal, measures the government has refused to take. It has been delaying them and that is what has led us to this point. If there were the political will and an average level of intelligence, the situation could be turned around immediately,” he says.

“But that is not what they are signaling. As for the causes of the blackouts, for the pandemic, they claim everything is the fault of the United States and the embargo. There is no acknowledgement that the totalitarian system does not work, that it has failed,” he states.

Castellanos believes the basic reason for the protests “is the absence of liberties: civil, political, economic, every kind.”

“My advice would be to take measures they have been putting off: grant freedom to small producers, allow the creation of small and medium-sized businesses, do not try to save state-owned companies. Give Cubans total freedom to be active participants of their economy, with the ability to trade freely rather than having to go through an intermediaries like Acopio or state import/export monopolies,” he suggests.

In Castellos’ opinion, “the situation will not change from one day to the next but it will begin to change. The US would then have no rationale for maintaining the embargo.”

“They are trying to make excuses for their ignorance, for leaders who are confused, by claiming there is a foreign plot to overthrow the government. That is not the solution. You have to start by asking a simple question: Are Cubans free to participate as active agents in solving the problems of their country? No, they are not,” he concludes.

“Castroism will be subjected to ever greater social and international ridicule in the coming months.”

Independent journalist Boris Gonzalez Arenas, spokesperson for Council for a Democratic Transition in Cuba, notes, “Without a doubt, Sunday’s events were a spontaneous national rebellion.”

“As for the regime’s argument that it was all planned, what has happened is simply the classic, spontaneous manifestation of a people who have had enough. 2021 is no different from 1789 and the French Revolution. Desperate, hungry people, without medicine, without food, in the midst of a health crisis that the Covid has made worse,” he says.

“They have come out against Castroism, against the dictatorship, with information provided by social networks.”

Gonzalez believes “what this event most closely resembles is the crisis in Venezuela.”

“They are brutally repressing a hungry nation. Whether communism ends tomorrow or not, Castroism will be subjected to ever greater social and international ridicule in the coming months. If this degenerate conduct continues, Diaz-Canel will be another Maduro,”

The Cuban government’s first step must be to start abiding by the 2019 constitution, which it has crudely trampled on since its inception. The second is to recognize social diversity and then establish a process for political reform that will lead to a transitional system. I don’t know when, but there is no long-term possibility that communism will retain power the way it has up till now,” he says.

He denounces “what they have done in shutting down mobile phone networks. That is characteristic of communist tyrannies.”

“A tyranny as shameful as the one we have experienced in Cuba is only possible because of the denial of two basic freedoms: freedom of assembly and mobilization, and freedom of the press and expression. So, of course, the first thing they do is shut down the internet so that we cannot express ourselves,” he notes.

He is  also critical of the security forces’ repressive actions during the protests. “When shots are fired in Cuba, they are against unarmed individuals. This is a crime, state sanctioned murder, a crime against humanity,” he maintains.

By calling for acts of mass violence, Arenas contends Diaz-Canel himself has already signaled what the regime’s next step will be. “Depending on how things play out, Diaz-Canel could emerge strengthened in the eyes of Cuba’s old guard and gain the respect of powerful factions who now dismiss him.” But what will his lasting legacy be?

The Cause of the 11 July Demonstrations is Internal, the Way Out is in Democratization / Dimas Castellano

It is better to surrender arms than to fight without morals.

Dimas Castellanos, 19 July 2021 — Men can speed up or slow down historical processes, but only up to a point. The forceful popular demonstrations of 11J (July 11th), unprecedented for their massiveness and spontaneity, definitively confirmed that the crisis in Cuba has no other way out than the participation of Cubans as subjects in the destinies of their nation, that is, through democratization. To ignore this is to lead the country to a tragic outcome.

The rejection of democratization with the false argument of defending the “conquests of the revolution” can lead, as the events that have occurred indicate, to a catastrophe of incalculable consequences. After the failures harvested, the arguments put forward to continue on the same path do not stand up to serious analysis:

1- The Defense of the Revolution

By definition, the Revolution is a change in the structure of power in a short period of time that elapses from when the revolutionaries assume power until they replace the existing institutionality with another, subordinate to their ends.

This process in Cuba — extremely prolonged — began in 1959 and culminated in the 1976 Constitution. After that date, there is no revolution in Cuba, only immobility and retrogression.

The immobility, induced to “safeguard the conquests,” is nothing more than a euphemism to defend continue reading

vested interests and preserve power, which turns unresolved problems into sources of outbreaks, as happened on 11J.

The concept of revolutionary, which designates people who promote changes, is not attributable to those who choose to stop history to preserve what has been achieved. Defenders of the status quo can call themselves anything else, but not revolutionary.

2- TheBlockade

[Ed. note: The American embargo on Cuba is routinely referred to by the Cuban Government as a ’blockade’, which it is not.]

The seizures of the properties in Cuba owned by individuals or companies in the United States, which began in 1959, the attempts to export the revolution to other countries in the region, together with the reestablishment of relations with the Soviet Union — in the middle of the Cold War –were responded to by the United States with the establishment of the embargo, the reduction and suspension of the sugar quota, and the breakdown of diplomatic relations.

Thus began a confrontational escalation that for six decades has been used by the Government of Cuba to restrict the freedoms of Cubans, whose worst effect has been Cuba’s retreat from the most advanced platoon in Latin America with regards to rights and freedoms, to the group of the most backward.

The solution to this dispute does not lie in advertising campaigns or United Nations resolutions, but rather in accepting the causes and bringing them to the negotiating table instead of using it to present Cuba to the world as David before Goliath, to conceal the internal deficiencies, and to use it to make believe that any idea different from those of the Government comes from the United States, which constitutes an offense to the intelligence, culture and professionalism of Cubans.

3- The Principal Cause

In the shadow of the confrontation with the United States, the revolutionary government implemented a package of popular benefit measures (lower rents and lower prices for medicines, improvements in education and public health, the delivery of 100,000 property titles to poor peasants and the subsidy of basic products and services).

In parallel, it replaced independent civil society with associations created by and subordinate to power, suppressed freedoms, concentrated power in the leader, and concentrated ownership in the state. The most negative effect of the populist measures and the establishment of totalitarianism was the disappearance of the condition of citizen: an effect closely linked to the failures harvested, the accumulated malaise and the simultaneous explosion of 11J.

Like any system alien to human nature, Cuban totalitarianism was born doomed to failure. Its long duration lies in the demonstrated ability to subdue people through control of property, education, culture, and the media.

The embargo must cease, but since the main cause of the crisis lies in the adherence to nationalization, centralized planning and the absence of freedoms, the way out is, first in the implementation of measures of change within Cuba and then in the bilateral negotiations with the US, to retrace the path traveled — since the nationalization of US properties and the enactment of the embargo — through dialogue and negotiation.

4- The Shield

As the effectiveness to retain power is not transferable to production, the Cuban nation stagnated and began to regress. The totalitarian model was unable to generate sustained growth to meet the needs of Cubans, which is reflected, among other things, in the lack of food and medicine and in the power cuts.

Faced with the inevitable crisis, instead of escaping forward, the Cuban Government stepped on the brakes and decided to shield the totalitarian model with the 2019 Constitution, whose text preserves the causes of the setback, namely: the existence of a single political party as the superior leading political force of society and of the State; state property, the cause of economic decline as the fundamental form of the economy; the prohibition of Cubans on investing and being entrepreneurs in their country; and freedoms and rights, limited to being exercised in accordance with the ideology of the ruling party; which explains why, in the 11J demonstrations, the common cry was for freedom.

Conclusions

The solution to the crisis depends in the first place on measures aimed at empowering Cubans and banishing the exclusions of a part of the people with that aberrant slogan, “The street belongs to the revolutionaries”, which constitutes an offense to the words of the Apostle [José Martí]: Con todos y para el bien de todos” [With all and for the good of all.] Consequently, the recovery of the condition of citizen is imposed for participation as subjects, not as objects, in the solution of the nation’s problems, which are their own problems.

As the cause of the crisis is internal, democratization is the way out. It is enough to start with a minimum set of measures that allow Cubans to invest and create small and medium-sized production and service companies, produce and trade without the tutelage of the state company Acopio and Foreign Trade monopolies, leaving individuals free to associate in the way they desire, in matters of interest to them. These measures would necessarily have to be accompanied by the formation of a range of autonomous and independent associations without more state interference than is necessary for their registration, existence and operation.

Cuba and Fundamental Rights / Dimas Castellano

Dimas Castellanos, 17 January 2018 — The impact of fundamental rights on the development of society is of such magnitude and significance that it becomes impossible to comprehend the advancement, stagnation or regression of a population without accounting for it.

To mark the tenth anniversary of Convivencia (Coexistence), the current issue addresses a central theme of our magazine: the causal relationship between the loss of fundamental rights and the crisis in which Cuba now finds itself.

Introduction

Liberty — inherent in human beings — emanates from an inner conscience. That origin permits man to be free to the extent that he insists on being so, for liberty grants extraordinary power, the use of which becomes a factor in human growth and creates conditions for personal and social development.

Since men achieved establishing the existing relationship between conscious and liberty, this has come clearing a growing role in the evolution of humanity. Thanks to this relationship, even though a person is submitted to limitations or prohibitions from outside forces, the underlying layer of the liberty permits him to think and be free in such conditions. continue reading

Ignacio Agramonte (1841-1873), in defense of his thesis of Bachelor’s of Law in 1866, titled On individual rights, summarized masterfully this relationship in the following words: The right to think freely corresponds to the right of examine, of doubt, of opinion, as stages or directions from that. Fortunately, these, different from the right to speak or work, are not submitted to direct coercion and will be able to obligate one to shut up, to permanently disable, in case saying what is right that is highly unjust. But how can we be able to impede the doubt of what they say? How can we examine the actions of the rest, that which is about instills as truth, all, finally, and that about which they formulate the opinion?

The basis for this argument is that liberty is an essential and inherent right of each person; a condition such that, all intent to suppress/abolish or limit it, more than constituting an attack against humanity, it has been is and will be condemned to failure.

“To renounce one’s liberty,” said Rousseau, “is to renounce the human condition, the rights of humanity and even its duties… Such a renunciation is incompatible with human nature. To relinquish liberty is to relinquish morality.”

The fundamental rights, that is, those of consciousness, information, expression, assembly association, suffrage and habeas corpus, constitute the basis of communication, the exchange of opinions, of codes of conduct and decision-making.

The historical experience demonstrates that the maximum expression of liberty is only possible there, where the fundamental liberties are institutionalized in the rule of law.

The constitutional history of fundamental rights, whose guiding principle is located in the Magna Carta that the English nobility imposed on King John in 1215, contributed key features to the Declaration of Independence of the thirteen colonies of North America (1776) and in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the French Revolution (1789). It had a part in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and made its way into the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights approved by the United Nations (1976).

In Cuba the constitutional history of liberties has its origin in the Autonomal Government Project of Fr. José Agustín Caballero (1811); it was made flesh in the nineteenth century Mambisa constitutions and the republican constitutions of the twentieth century, whose highest expression was the constitution of 1940.

Continuing that trajectory, and in fulfillment of the Pact of Zanjón (1878), which ended the Ten Year War, laws were implemented in Cuba for freedom of the press and freedom of assembly and association. Endorsed in Article 13 of the Spanish Constitution, these laws gave birth to Cuban civil society: a whole range of associations, spaces and media that reflect plurality and diversity.

Civil society, the permanent school of civility and ethics, constitutes a solid link in the bond between citizens and their nation, culture, history and development, whose existence and functioning require the institutionalization of human rights.

Civil society as well as the State are organs of the social body. The existence of both is not indisputable–rather, what is debatable are their functions and areas of competency.

In Cuba, civil society reached its greatest development around the mid-20th century, as Fidel Castro described it when referring to the situation in Cuba before the 1952 coup [by Fulgencio Batista]: “I will tell you a story. There once was a republic. It had its constitution, its laws, its liberties; a president, a congress, and courts; everyone could associate, assemble, speak and write with full liberty. The government did not satisfy the people, but the people could change it… There was a respected and heeded public opinion, and all issues of collective interest were freely discussed. There were political parties, educational hours on the radio, debate programs on television, public events….”

The logical question that emerges from the history of freedoms in Cuba is this: How was it possible that, following the described advances in areas of rights and liberties, Cuba should regress to a situation that was more backward than what it achieved after the Peace of Zanjón?

 The Cuban Totalitarian System

If its most immediate cause is in the 1959 Revolution, the genesis of the Cuban totalitarian system lies in certain characteristics of our development as a people that contributed to the establishment of a model foreign to our history, and to human nature. Among these characteristics, the interrelation of the following four stands out:

  • The Cuban national character, resulting from the mix of diverse ethnicities and cultures that arrived in Cuba with the Europeans and Africans–some who came to enrich themselves and return home, others who were brought as slaves, neither with the intention of setting down roots in the Island.  To this, according to Fernando Ortiz, can be ascribed the psychological weakness of the Cuban character: the impulsiveness, a trait of this psychological type, that frequently drives us to commit intense acts, but rapid-fire, precipitous, unpremeditated and violent…  Men, economies, cultures, and ambitions–here, everything felt foreign, temporary, changed, like migratory birds flying over the country on its periphery, contrary and ill-fated.
  • Violence, which arrived on our shores with the Spanish warriors, took its first victims from among the aborigines, and assumed horrible forms on the sugar plantations which gave way to escapes, runaway slaves, stockades and rebellions. It was present in the attacks by the corsairs, in the banditry that ravaged our countryside, in the independence conspiracies and wars. It manifested in coups d’etat, insurgencies, gangsterism, armed assaults and terrorist acts before and after 1959. These events turned violence into political culture.
  • The utilitarian ethic, an attitude rooted in colonial and slaver tendencies – a creole variant of 18th century philosophy of utilitarianism–which found in Cuba as fertile a soil as did the sugarcane. This ethic sustained an egotistical individualism and easy living, it took form in corruption, gambling, laziness, and the violation of all that was established, eventually becoming generalized behavior. The concept of man as a means and not an end, as an object and not a subject, the priority that the Cuban-creole oligarchy ascribed to crates of sugar and coffee, the use of power for personal or group gain, the presidential re-elections, the coups d’etat and the generalized use of physical and verbal violence–all are manifestations of the utilitarian ethic that marked the mold of our national character.
  • Exclusion, which runs through the history of Cuba from beginning to end: Félix de Arrate y Acosta (1701-1765) called for the putting the rights of his class on an equal footing with those of native-born Spaniards, while excluding blacks and those whites who had not been able to amass fortunes; Francisco de Arango y Parreño (1765-1837) defended the rights and liberties of his class and the enslavement of half the Island’s population; and José Antonio Saco y López (1797-1879), whose concept of nation did not include those born in Africa nor their descendants.

Against the constitutional crisis provoked by the coup d’etat of 1952, there arose two responses: one armed, the other civil. The first was made public on 26 July 1953, with the attack on the Moncada barracks headed by Fidel Castro. Following the fraudulent elections of 1954, Fulgencio Batista reestablished the Constitution of 1940 and granted amnesty to political prisoners–among them the Moncada assailants, who in June 1955 founded the 26 of July Movement (M-26-7) to continue the armed struggle.

Fulgencio Batista’s opposition to a negotiated settlement caused the civil efforts to fail. Violence was imposed: armed movements, attacks, military conspiracies, assaults on barracks and the presidential palace–trademark acts of the movement headed by Fidel Castro, who landed in Cuba in December 1956 and after two years of waging guerilla warfare and sabotage, achieved victory over the professional army on 31 December 1958.

In 1959, the triumphant Revolution, now a source of rights, replaced (without public consent) the 1940 Constitution with the Fundamental Law of the Cuban State. This set of statutes was in force until the Constitution of 1976 was promulgated that affirmed the existence of a sole political party–the Communist one–as the dominant driving force of society and the State.

A system foreign to human nature

A revolution that proposes to liberate men while at the same time does not posit the need for a public space that allows the exercise of freedom, can only lead to the liberation of those individuals from one dependency so as to attach them to another–perhaps one more rigid than the former. Those words of Hannah Arendt are corroborated by the Cuban revolutionary process of 1959. The issue is one of such universal value that it assumes the character of a philosophical generalization. As simple as it is complex, this thesis consists in that every social project that conceives the human person as a means and not an end–besides the anthropological damage it produces–is condemned to failure.

In January 1959 the Provisional President Manuel Urrutia Lleó made public the designation of Fidel Castro as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. In the Council of Ministers, made up jointly of figures from the armed and civil struggles, José Miró Cardona assumed the office of Prime Minister. In February, when the Fundamental Law of the Cuban State was substituted for Constitution of 1940, the faculties of Chief of the Government were conferred to the Prime Minister, and the functions of Congress to the recently-created Council of Ministers. Some days later, Fidel Castro replaced José Miró Cardona, at which time the charges of Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief remained with the same person.

The Revolution meanwhile implemented a series of measures of popular benefit, tossed aside the existing institutional, political and economic culture, and proceeded in a sudden manner to “take care of” the problems inherited from an unsustainable trajectory: the concentration of power and property, and the hijacking of civil liberties.

The Spanish philosopher and essayist José Ortega y Gasset warned that the greatest dangers that today threaten civilization are the takeover of life by the State, interventionism of the State, appropriation of all social spontaneity by the State; that is, the annulment of historical spontaneity which, in the final analysis, nourishes and propels human destinies–which is summarized in Benito Mussolini’s argument: “Everything for the State, nothing against the State.”

That process, whereby civil society was swept away and in its place were established associations that are auxiliaries to power, cannot be understood outside the dispute between the Cuban government and the North American administrations. This quarrel was utilized in the name of popular sovereignty to obscure the contradictions between State and society, and to cover up the unsustainability of an inefficient model–but even more, to hijack civil liberties. As Rousseau said, “Even admitting that man can hand over his liberty, he cannot hand over that of his children, born free men. Their liberty belongs to them, and nobody has the right to dispose of it.”

The duration of this model has been so prolonged that the vast majority of Cubans today have known no other option that totalitarian socialism–wherein the economy, the culture and society are monopolized by the State, the State by a sole Party, and the Party under the rule of a Commander-in-Chief–a model that if yesterday satisfied a good portion of our grandparents, today does not satisfy their children, and much less their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

 A possible exit

Despite having access to such a rich source of thought, the events prior to 1952 led to the past: a regress that is inexplicable if one ignores the importance of Cubans’ ethical and civil formation, for which–among the many thinkers who were preoccupied and dealt with these deficiencies, I cite the following six:

  • Félix Varela y Morales (1778-1853), the first Cuban who understood the need for changes in thinking. Upon assuming the direction of the Constitution professorship of the San Carlos Seminary, Varela introduced ethics in social and political studies as the bearer of the principle of equality among all human beings, and the foundation of those rights upon which are constructed human dignity and civil participation.
  • José de la Luz y Caballero (1800-1862), who understood politics as a process and who came out against suddenness of action. From this vision, de la Luz posited a relationship among education, politics and independence, and conceived the art of education as a premise for social change. He placed his main emphasis on the conviction that liberty is the soul of the social body, and that there is no greater brake upon it than reason and virtue.
  • José Julián Martí Pérez (1853-1995), the greatest 19th century Cuban thinker, set himself the mission of directing the inconclusive independence movement. For this he established a linked relationship among party, war and republic –this last being the form and destiny — rather than conceiving war and party as mediating links to arrive at the republic. In his visionary essay, “The Future Slavery,” he more or less said the following: If the poor become habituated to asking the State for everything, they will leave off making any effort toward their subsistence, and–being that public necessities would come to be satisfied by the State–the bureaucrats would achieve an enormous influence, so that “from being slaves to the capitalists they would go on to be slaves to the bureaucrats.” These thoughts he concluded with that even more remote ideal: “I want the first law of our Republic be the reverence of Cubans for the full dignity of man.”
  •  Enrique José Varona (1849-1933) In My Counsels, written in 1939, Varona complained that the Republic had entered a period of crisis, because a great number of citizens had believed that they could disengage from public affairs. “This selfishness,” he said, “has a high price.” So high, in fact, that we have been able to lose everything. Convinced of these deficiencies, Varona understood that a new way needed to be learned, and to this he dedicated himself: education to form citizens.
  •  Fernando Ortiz Fernández (1881-1969) In his 1919 work, The Cuban Political Crisis: Causes and Remedies, Ortiz outlined our limitations: the historic lack of preparation of the Cuban people for the exercise of political rights; the ignorance of the governed that impedes their appreciating the true worth of political leaders; the deficient education within the leadership classes that keeps them from checking their selfish aims and aligning them instead with the greatest national interests; the disintegration of the diverse social elements into races and nationalities whose interests are not founded in a supreme national ideal.
  •  And Jorge Mañach Robato (1898-1961), when referring to the permanent quarrels among Cubans, said: “Every person has his small aspiration, his small ideal, his small program; but what is lacking is the aspiration, the ideal, the program of all–that supreme brotherhood of spirits that is characteristic of the most advanced civilizations.” And he added: “The individualism embedded in our race makes each one the Quixote of his own adventure. Efforts towards generous cooperation are invariably stymied. Selfless leaders do not emerge. In the legislative assemblies, in the intellectual guilds, in the academies, in the organizations, bickering spreads like weeds through the wheat fields from which we await bread for the spirit. It is all about jockeying for position.”

From this analysis we can derive a set of useful lessons for any project directed at improving the situation in which Cuban society is mired. I refer to a way towards a society less imperfect than the current one.

The analysis presented here reveals a set of useful lessons for any project directed at improving the situation in which Cuban society is mired. I refer to a way towards a society less imperfect than the current one.

The most important of the above cited lessons is that responsible public participation in the destinies of the country requires the existence of the citizen–a non-existent concept in the current Cuban political map.

Fundamental liberties must be reincorporated. In their implementation, even if introduced gradually, their indivisible character will be imposed for one simple reason: if civil and political rights constitute the basis for participating in public life, then economic, social and cultural rights are essential for the functioning of society, and the collective rights of all humanity are necessary for preserving life and the planet. Each one of these generations of rights guarantees a particular aspect, and the three in conjunction constitute the buttress for the recognition, respect and observance of the legal guarantees for their exercise.

If we accept that a social system’s degree of evolution depends of the degree of evolution of its constituents, then we must accept–whether we like it or not–that we Cubans, as people, have changed very little, and that in some aspects, we have regressed. Therefore, individual change becomes paramount. Because of all this, to paraphrase the concept of affirmative action, in Cuba there must be an educational initiative–in the absence of which there will be changes, as there have always been, but not the changes that society requires.

Therefore, that possible and necessary exit from the current crisis occurs because each Cuban occupies and makes use of his political share. To this end, the gradual reestablishment of the fundamental rights of the human person should be accompanied by a program of civic formation to serve as the basis of inner changes in the individual, without which economic and political reforms will have very little value–as those have had that were implemented during the era of the Republic up to 1958, and those that were implemented following the 1959 Revolution.

Translated by: Logan Cates and Alicia Barraqué Ellison 

Dual Currencies: Before 1959 and Today / Dimas Castellano

One peso note, Cuba, 1969

Dimas Castellanos, 22 January 2018 — The reform measures implemented in Cuba in 2008 failed: voluntarism, statism, centralized planning, and subordination to policy and ideology dashed them. The coexistence of two currencies confirms this.

In 2011 monetary unification formed part of the Guidelines approved at the Communist Party’s 6th Congress. In 2013 a timeline was announced to implement it, and there was talk of a prompt solution. In 2016 its elimination was said to be urgent.

In 2017 buying with Cuban pesos was authorized for use at retail establishments, and bills of 200, 500 and 1,000 pesos were placed in circulation to facilitate transactions. Then, in December, President Raul Castro stated: “the elimination of the dual currency system constitutes the most pivotal process to make progress on the updating of our economic model. Without solving this, it will be difficult to advance correctly.” He concluded by saying: “I must recognize that this issue has taken us too long, and its solution cannot be put off any longer.” (Granma, 22 December 2017)

In this article I limit myself to the historical background of the dual currency system; that is, its past and present. continue reading

Dual currency in Cuba before 1959

In the period between 1878 and 1895 two key events took place.

First: the explosion of the sugar industry and the export of more of 90% of Cuban sugar to the U.S.A. allowed the American Government to impose the Bill McKinley agreement on Spain, a commercial reciprocity treaty that allowed the free flow of Cuban raw materials to the American market, including sugar, which accounted for 94 of every 100 pesos the island took in.

The second: the important role of American investments in the structures of agrarian holdings, sugar plants, and mining facilities.

Both developments, after Spanish domination, facilitated the introduction of the dollar into Cuba as a monetary resource.

The Spanish centén and the French luis continued to circulate in Cuba until 1914, but official payments were made according to the exchange rate established by the dollar. In order to diminish dependency on it, in October of that year the Government of General Mario García Menocal created the National Monetary System, whose first measure was the “Economic Defense Law,” which gave rise to a national currency based on the gold standard, with the same weight and law as the American dollar.

Although it arose subordinated to the dollar, which was legal tender, after the Economic Defense Law the peso began to prevail.

In 1924 86% of the currency in circulation consisted of dollars. In 1934 an acute depreciation made it necessary to devalue the peso, which continued to function as a measurement of value, but the means of circulation was assumed by the peso de plata (silver peso) and certificados de plata (silver certificates), legal tender as of 1935.

In 1939 the Currency Destabilization Fund was founded, and in 1948 the National Bank of Cuba was created, which replaced the peso de plata with notes from the National Bank, obligatory and unlimited legal tender.

In The Monetary Unification of 1914 Elías Amor sums up the results with just a few words: “The introduction of the National Monetary System created a reliable, modern and well-built system that allowed the national currency to become a store of value, on the basis of which commercial and financial transactions and operations ensued that made possible a remarkable dynamism and growth of the economy under the Republic.”

Dual currency in today’s Cuba

The revolutionaries who rose to power in 1959, imbued with high doses of subjectivism, and believing themselves to be immune from the laws that govern economic and financial phenomena, moved to eradicate mercantile relationships and money. They nationalized the national and foreign banks, and placed these responsibilities in the hands of “loyal” people.

An example was the case of the economist Felipe Pazos Roque – founder and first president of the National Bank of Cuba, in 1948 – who, opposed to the coup d’etat of 1952, resigned his post. Pazos, who participated in the civic struggle against the Government of Fulgencio Batista, in 1959 was again assigned this responsibility, but his ideas were found not to be “loyal.” Months later he was replaced by Commander Ernesto Guevara.

Eighty years after the advent of the Cuban peso, with a deficient economy, but buoyed by Soviet subsidies, extended for ideological and geopolitical reasons, and as socialism was crumbling in Eastern Europe, Cuba was in the throes of a severe crisis, dubbed with the euphemism  “Special Period During Peacetime,” during which, between 1990 and 1994, the country’s GDP contracted 34.8%.

The Government limited itself to implementing measures to subsist, but without really changing. After 35 years of revolution and confrontation with the U.S.A., it decided to introduce, for the second time in the history of Cuba, the enemy’s currency.

To erase the negative image of the greenback, the CUC was created, a convertible peso assigned a value similar to that of the dollar, but without its attendant backing. A 10% tax was placed on the dollar, the CUC appreciated in relation to it by 8%, and ultimately achieved a one-to-one value, but the 10% tax on the dollar was maintained. In summary, Cuba features the peculiarity of having two currencies, neither of which is based on gold or on the GDP to be truly convertible.

The monetary duality exacerbated social differences and accelerated the loss of the Cuban peso’s already scant value. Its effect was evident in the inflation of prices in the black market, and meager wages and pensions. It frustrated production, reduced productivity, and lost or diminished its functions as a value of measurement and instrument for the acquisition of goods, savings, settling debts and making payments.

Monetary unification stands, along with the restitution of citizens’ liberties, as an inescapable necessity, one that cannot be put off, despite challenging conditions, particularly because the entity that must enact this unification, the Government, is the same that introduced the dual system, and until now has not demonstrated the political will necessary to carry out a critical analysis of itself and implement the only possible solution. The fact is that 60 years in power make it responsible for both the good and the bad.

The Cuban peso lacks support for the payment of goods and services sufficient to recover its functions and for it to be comparable to other international currencies. Monetary unification, by itself, will not solve the crisis. The solution calls for efficiency and an increase in production, which is impossible without major investments. Foreign because the monetary duality is an obstacle; national because the power refuses it.

A project is pressing, headed by this Government or that which replaces it, that features the decentralization of the economy, restitutes citizens’ rights and liberties, allows for the development of a middle-class, and removes the obstacles that restrain production and productivity. But none of this is possible under statization and a planned economy subordinated to the interests of those in power.

Note: Translation from DiariodeCuba.com

Three Points to Solve the Embargo / Dimas Castellano

A bicyclist in Havana. (MARTINOTICIAS)

Dimas Castellano, 20 November 2017 — On November 1, 2017, Cuba presented to the UN General Assembly the project entitled “Need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the US against Cuba.”

In his speech, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez criticized the policy contained in the Presidential National Security Memorandum on the strengthening of the US Policy towards Cuba, issued on 16 June 2017.

He criticized the prohibition of economic, commercial and financial transactions with Cuban companies linked to the Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior; the elimination of individual travel in the category of people-to-people exchanges; the prohibition of travel to Cuba outside the framework of the 12 authorized categories; the opposition to actions that promote the lifting of the “blockade”; the repeal of the Normalization of Relations Policy issued by President Obama in October 2016, and the conditioning of the suspension of the “blockade” to changes within Cuba. continue reading

Likewise, he criticized moving the issuance of visas services from Havana to US consulates in third countries; the warning to American citizens to avoid visiting Cuba; the expulsion of Cuban personnel from the Consulate General in Washington and the reduction of US personnel in the embassy in Havana.

Finally, the Cuban foreign minister said: “The blockade is the biggest obstacle to the economic and social development of Cuba.”

In 1992 only 59 countries voted in favor of the Cuban resolution and in 2016 — with the exception of the US and of Israel which abstained — all voted in favor, without affecting the US embargo in any way, because the resolutions of that body constitute recommendations and, therefore, compliance with them is not mandatory. Therefore, when obtaining the maximum possible result in the UN, action in that forum was exhausted.

From that moment on, the atmosphere of detente generated by the restoration of diplomatic relations recommended directing the solution through bilateral negotiations.

Three points to consider are the following:

The Internal Causes

As the resumption of diplomatic relations did not emerge from victory, but from the failure of both contenders, each party was obliged to change to move towards normalization.

This was what General expressed in a conversation held in 1977 with two American senators: “Our organizations are like a bridge in time of war. It is not a bridge that can be easily built, nor as quickly as it was destroyed, but if we both rebuild parts of the bridge, each one its own part, we will be able to shake hands, without winners or losers.” Inthese words the Cuban leader recognized the bilateral character of the conflict and its solution.

For these words to become relaity, the normalization of relations with the US had and will have to be accompanied by the empowerment of Cubans, with the restoration of rights and freedoms for their effective participation in national problems. And this is not at all to cede sovereignty to an external force, but to give the Cuban people the participation that belongs to them in said sovereignty.

It is a matter of retracing the road traveled since the nationalization of US property in Cuba led to the rupture of diplomatic relations and the enactment of the Embargo Law. In this confrontational context, the Cuban government dismantled the existing institutions, disarmed civil society, laid on inefficiency and avoided any commitment to human rights.

Beginning in 2008, General Raúl Castro implemented a package of measures whose main result was to reveal the exhaustion of the model and the depth of the crisis. Therefore, it is now a matter of abandoning the grasp of state control, centralized planning and the absence of freedoms that, without ignoring the negative effects of the embargo, are the main causes of the crisis in which Cuba finds itself.

Cuba-United States Relations

The policy of the Obama Administration provided an opportunity for change that was wasted by the Cuban side to remove obstacles within the country.

This policy, by not demanding the democratization of Cuba as a premise to reestablish relations, contained a danger for the conservation of power: the external contradiction would gradually shift towards internal contradictions, which explains the insoluble contradiction of the Cuban government: to change and at the same time to preserve power.

President Barack Obama issued six sets of modification: the first extended general travel permits, offered commercial facilities to Cuban private companies and small farmers, increased the amount of remittances and donations, expanded commercial exports of goods and services from the US, increased Cuba’s access to communications, and provided commercial telecommunications and internet services with lower prices.

These sets of measures were reflected in the increase of authorized trips to Cuba, the arrival of the first cruise ship from the US to Cuban ports, the resumption of flights, the start of direct mail and transportation between the two countries, the establishment of agreements with several American telecommunications companies. The measures facilitated negotiations with other countries and revived expectations and hopes for change.

If these measures — including the Presidential Directive of October 2016, aimed at trying to make the progress achieved irreversible — did not produce a greater result, it is because the corresponding measures on the Cuban side were missing, which limited itself to allowing Cubans to stay in Cuban hotels previously reserved for tourists; to buy computers, DVDs and mobile phone lines; to sell their houses or cars; to leave the country without having to ask the State for permission and to stay abroad for up to 24 months without losing their right to return; and established public WiFi access points. Measures that, more than advances, clearly denote the point t which rights in Cuba had regressed.

The Example of Vietnam

As the suspension of the Embargo is the prerogative of the US Congress and not of the UN, the practical thing since the vote in 2016 would have been to introduce in Cuba internal changes in the style of those introduced in Vietnam.

The United States dropped three times as many bombs on Vietnam as those used during the Second World War; 15% of the population was killed or injured; 60% of the villages in the south were destroyed and, after the war ended, the country faced an economic blockade and border attacks. In spite of this, after the victory, the implementation of the system of a planned economy plunged the country into hunger and superinflation until, in 1986, the “Vietnamese Renewal” was launched under the slogan of “Economic reform, political stability.”

Instead of dedicating itself, year after years to presenting UN resolutions or developing ideological campaigns against imperialism, Vietnam undertook a systematic program of reforms, based on the introduction of market mechanisms, autonomy of producers, the right of nationals to be entrepreneurs and delivery of land to the peasants who developed the initiative, interest and responsibility of the Vietnamese.

Because of the results of these measures, the US suspended the embargo on Vietnam. In 2008 the country focused it efforts on leaving the list of underdeveloped countries, in 2010 it set itself the goal of entering the group of middle-income countries, in 2014 it ranked as the twenty-eighth largest exporter in the world, and in 2016 it approved measures to move it toward becoming an industrialized nation.

Cyclones, Housing and Revolution / Dimas Castellano

Havana after Hurricane Irma. (ELSALVADOR.COM)

Dimas Castellanos, 13 October 2017 — According to information from the National Defense Council, Hurricane Irma, a category-five storm, hit Cuba between September 7 and 9, causing 14,657 houses to collapse, and another 16,646 to partially collapse, thus totaling 31,303 —not to mention the tens of thousands that suffered other kinds of damage.

Between 2002 and 2004, in the Pinar del Río province alone, Hurricanes Isidore, Lili, Charley and Ivan – categories one, two, three and five, respectively – damaged more than 98,000 properties. In 2008 the tropical storms Fay, Hanna, Gustav and Ike totally demolished around half a million houses; and in 2005, Hurricane Dennis, a category-three storm, damaged more than 80.000 homes in Pilón (Granma), more than 70% of the homes in Casilda (Trinidad), 5,241 homes in Santiago de Cuba, more than 25,000 in Granma, some 400 in Jaruco (Mayabeque), more than 3,200 in Matanzas, 8,200 in Sancti Spíritus, and 1,828 homes in the capital. continue reading

The magnitude of this damage was such that the sum of the houses damaged by cyclones alone is similar to the figure for the housing shortage that the Revolution inherited: according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the housing deficit until 1959 was of about 700,000 homes, while the pace of construction between 1946 and 1953, according Erich Trefftz, was 26,827 as an annual average, a figure that increased between 1953 and 1958.

In 1953 Fidel Castro proposed “A revolutionary government would solve the housing problem by resolutely lowering rents by 50%, sparing from any contribution those homes inhabited by their own owners, tripling taxes on rented houses, demolishing the infernal barracks and erecting in their place modern high-rises, and financing the construction of houses throughout the island on a scale never seen before, based on the idea that it is ideal, in the countryside, for each family to owns its own land, and, in the city, for each family to live in its own house or apartment.”

On October 14, 1960, in its Urban Reform Law the revolutionary government established that: “Every family has a right to decent housing, and the State will ensure this right in three stages; in the medium term, the State will build, with its own resources, homes that it will cede in permanent usufruct, free, to each family.”

The final provision of said Law stated: “Exercising the Constituent Power wielded by the Council of Ministers, this Act is declared an integral part of the Basic Law of the Republic. Consequently, this law is granted constitutional force and hierarchy.”

However, as an annual average, the first plan, from 1960 to 1970, was unable to exceed 11,000 homes; and the second plan, from 1971 to 1980, barely reached 17,000. Thus, in the first 20 years the pace of annual construction was lower than that of the period from 1946 to 1953. Thus, instead of relieving the housing shortage, it was aggravated.

To recover from the setback, it was proposed to build 100.000 per year starting in 1981, but in the first decade it was unable to exceed 40,000 per year. This plan was interrupted in 1995 by the crisis known as the “Special Period”. Carlos Lage Dávila, secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, then presented a report to the National Assembly of the People’s Power in 2005, in which he assured that due to the “improvement of the country’s financial potential,” they were going to “construct and finish no less than 100.000 new houses per year as of 2006.” That is, a second plan of 100,000 homes would be undertaken.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2008 about 45,000 were built, but in the year 2013 there were fewer than 26,000 (a figure again below the average for the period from 1946 to 1953, when the population of Cuba was half today’s). That is, in five years construction decreased by about 19.000 houses.

A conservative estimate of the non-fulfillment of the plans, and houses destroyed by atmospheric phenomena, yields a shortage greater than the 700.000 that were calculated before 1959. And this figure would be even worse if it were not for the more than two million Cubans who have left the country since 1959.

If we accept the fact that the figure remains at 700,000, at the rate of about 25,000 per year, it will take 28 years just to make up for the shortage. If we also account for Cuba’s new needs, due to demographic growth, the ageing of existing housing, the lack of maintenance, the increasing number of collapses, the shortage of construction materials, and the effects of natural phenomena … it will take about half a century. We are, then, dealing with a major housing crisis and all its implications.

The Urban Reform Act of 1960 stated that “The State, with its own resources, will build the homes, which it will give in usufruct, permanently and free, to each family.” Then the General Housing Law of 1984 defined the “microbrigade” as the main instrument for their construction. Meanwhile, the failed plan for 100,000 placed the responsibility on families, a demonstration of the incapacity of the State to tackle the housing issue alone.

An abridged account of the 50 years that separate us from the Urban Reform Law of 1960 reveals a shift, spanning from the State’s promise to build and to grant decent housing, permanently and for free, to the construction of houses with palm trees toppled by the hurricanes, with roofs of zinc tiles or asbestos cement, likely to be demolished by future hurricanes. But it also reveals the impossibility and inability of the totalitarian state to solve the housing crisis, as this would require joint action by Cubans, equipped with basic instruments, such as the rights and liberties of citizens, to contribute to the resolution of a problem as vital as housing, one of the basic components of integral human development.

Translation from DiariodeCuba.com

Last Episode of This Cuban Electoral System / Dimas Castellano

Election billboard in Cuba (MartiNoticias)

Dimas Castellanos, 7 September 2017 — The Cuban electoral system includes general elections every five years for deputies to the  National Assembly of People’s Power and delegates to provincial elections, as well as partial elections every two and a half years for district delegates and municipal assemblies.

During this month the nomination of candidates corresponding to a new election period will take place and on Sunday October 22 municipal elections will be held, a process that will culminate in February of 2018 with the designation of the new National Assembly and the election of the next revolutionary Government. (Ed. note: Due to Hurricane Irma the election calendar was extended after this article was written.) continue reading

Article five of the Constitution defines the  Cuban Communist Party (PCC) as “the leading force of society and the state,” therefore, the electoral system is designed to ensure the continuity of the PCC in power. This explains that although in the districts the people nominate and directly elect delegates, in forming the municipal, provincial and national assemblies, which is where the true power is concentrated, the Candidature Commissions, made up of the leaders of the mass organizations — constitutionally subordinated to the PCC — have the power to name 50% of the candidates, even if they have not been elected by the people.

In a context characterized by economic decline, the latent danger of the end of the subsidies from Venezuela, widespread lack of interest, moral corruption due to the need to survive and growing despair, the “elections” announced will be, in addition to the most difficult, the last under the current electoral system which, exhausted, will have to give way to a new electoral law. The reasons on which this thesis is based are the following:

In 1959: 1- The revolutionaries who came to power in 1959 were legitimized by arms; 2 – The economy that they found allowed them to lower prices and redistribute wealth, which allowed them to gain popular support; and 3 – Without any economic results, in the middle of the Cold War, they were sustained by Soviet-Venezuelan subsidies.

The current crisis of the electoral system — a reflection of the crisis of the Cuban model — is not ignored by the government. On February 23, 2015, at the 10th Plenum of the PCC Central Committee, it was announced that a new law would be adopted for the general elections of 2018. However, the setbacks suffered by the “Bolivarian” left in the region, the loss of the Parliament for Chavismo in Venezuela and the tight victory [for the government candidate] in the second round in Ecuador seem to have led to the postponement of the new law. To this is added that, in the municipal elections of April 2015 the number of Cubans who did not vote at all or who canceled their ballots totalled 1,700,000 Cubans, or 20% of the electorate.

To this complexity are added: 1- The presentation of dozens independent candidates, which despite their not representing an immediate danger for the conservation of power, is a sign of the need for changes and 2- The recent restrictive measures against private work.

The recent Resolution No. 22/2017 of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security prohibits the granting of new licenses for dozens of self-employment activities ranging from the rental of housing to the pushcart vendors selling agricultural products; activities that the State has been and is unable to carry out. It is, therefore, a setback aimed at preventing the development of an independent national middle class that Cuba needs so much in order to maintain its power.

All this has generated great concern for the Cuban authorities as evidenced by the following three facts:

  • The Granma newspaper of Thursday, July 13, 2017 reproduced the following words of Carlos Rafael Miranda Martínez, national coordinator of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (the block watch committees that are “the eyes and ears of the Revolution”), calling for a great battle. He said: “This time they must be on the front line to ensure the success of the Cuban electoral process, the great battle is to nominate colleagues and comrades with a proven revolutionary prestige, with a trajectory in favor of the neighborhood and community.”
  • The Cuban president, at the closing of the National Assembly, on July 14, 2017, said: “It is not idle to emphasize the transcendent political importance of this electoral process, which must constitute an act of revolutionary reaffirmation on the part of our people, which requires an arduous work of all the organizations and institutions.”.
  • The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution initiated the “Neighborhood discussions for the patriotic and anti-imperialist duty,” in which a bulletin of that association is discussed with the directions that its members arrive at the nomination assemblies ready.

For the reasons listed, the new generation of revolutionaries who will take over the leadership of the government in February 2018: (1) that has not been legitimized by arms or by the ballot box; (2) that will find a stagnant economy, in a frank retreat, that prevents them from having anything to offer the people; (3) in an international context without a foreign power prepared to subsidize them for ideological reasons; and (4) amid widespread weariness and discontent that will inexorably lead to a new electoral law.

Cuba, Elections and Electoral Reform / Dimas Castellano

Dimas Castellanos, 4 June 2017 — The “electoral” process which will take place in Cuba between October 2017 and  February 2018 lacks any relevance. Raúl Castro’s replacement as president does not mean he is relinquishing power, as, up until 2021, he will occupy the position of Secretary of the Communist Party, which is, constitutionally, the top man in the society and the state.

For the elections to have any influence on social progress you would need an electoral reform which would re-establish sovereignty of the people and, although in February 2015 a new electoral law was announced, it was not mentioned in the meeting of 14 June 2017.

According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from the joining together of those who wish to defend and protect their property emanates a general will to convert the cooperating parties into a collective political body.   The exercise of this general will is known as sovereignty and the people who do it are sovereign. continue reading

In Cuba the republican constitutions of 1901 and 1940 endorsed sovereignty as residing in the people, with all public powers flowing from that. In 1959, with the emerging of revolutionary power they promised they would hold elections “as soon as possible”. Seventeen years later, they enacted a law abolishing the sovereignty of the people. As long as this situation goes on in Cuba there will be no true elections.

In the year 2003, the total share of Cubans who did not go to vote and destroyed their voting papers was 6.09% of the electorate. In 2008 it went up to 7.73%, in 2013, 14.22% and in April 2015 was over 20%. That is to say 1,700,000 Cubans. In a totalitarian country without civic and political rights, these statistics demonstrate the need for a law that satisfies this part of the Cuban people. You can add to that those Cubans inclined to vote for opposition representatives – not legally recognised – as happened in the 2015 elections, when the opposition put up candidates in the Havana districts of Arroyo Naranjo and Plaza.

According to the Secretary of the unicameral Cuban parliament, in 2014, during the fourth round meetings where delegates give the electorate an accounting of what they have accomplished,  there were over 600 assemblies with fewer than half the electors present.

The present law limits the electorate’s direct voting to the Delegates of the Municipal Peoples’s Power assemblies, which may not exceed 50% of the total number of candidates. The other half is nominated by the Candidate Committees – made up of leaders of peoples’ organisations with the authority to include unelected people. Then, candidates for provincial and national positions are directly appointed by these committees. Therefore the Cuban parliament and government are the product of the decisions of these Candidate Committees, which are subordinate to the Communist Party, which cuts out the sovereignty of the people.

Transformations are needed in terms of rights – such as the right of association and a multi-party system – so that Cubans can take an active part in determining where their lives and the nation is going. Until that occurs, you can’t talk about true elections in Cuba and there is no indication that that will happen in the upcoming elections.

The absence of peoples’ power and the non-existence of the citizen as legal entity have been, and are, determining factors in the structural crisis of the Cuban model, which is reflected in  inefficient production, insufficient salaries, uncontrollable corruption, hopelessness and an unstoppable exodus.

Published in El Comercio, Lima, Peru.

Translated by GH