Category: AUTHORS

A Better Cuba is More Possible Than Ever / 14ymedio, Pedro Campos

Dawn breaks in Havana (14ymedio)
Dawn breaking over Havana (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Pedro Campos, Havana, 16 January 2015 — The resumption of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States and the beginning of the normalization of ties of every kind between both countries, which implies the elimination of the political blockade that the great power of the north sustained against the small Caribbean Island, opens a compass of hope and a new space that, taken good advantage of by all the constructive and democratic Cuban forces, creates — as never before — the conditions for a better Cuba for all Cubans.

Some at the extremes consider that this approach could distance, rather than bring closer, a better future for all citizens. Some because they believe that it will prolong and consolidate the Castro dictatorship, others because the “empire” will appropriate the economy and the hearts of Cubans. continue reading

Apart from the narrow sectarian interests that may be hiding behind these visions, none of them seem to realize the full benefits of this event for the vast majority of the Cuban people, their democratic hopes, their creativity, their productive forces and especially for their sovereignty as authentic decision maker and executor of their own future.

Some time ago I wrote that if the solutions to the problems of the Cuban people are entrusted to the help and benevolence of the powerful northern neighbor it would mean handing over the country for a miserable pittance. To ignore the advantages of a constructive and peaceful relationship with the U.S., would condemn the nation “besieged citadel” to the mercy of nationalist opportunism of all kinds.

Move the country along the path between those positions from a major and growing participation of citizens in decisions of all kinds, in politics and in economics, is the key and, at the same time, the great challenge of the Cuban democratic left .

The “update of the model” promoted by the government of Raul Castro, ceding to cooperatives and self-employment a secondary space in the economy, giving priority to state enterprises and leaving unmet his own assertion that the State should not run enterprises, without understanding the significance of free labor, associated or not for socialism, and forgetting the initial objectives of this Revolution, which does not belong to them but to all the people, about the reestablishment of democracy.

If in parallel with the process of negotiations with the US and its participation in supporting the development of the economy there is not a deepening of the process of socialization of property through the extension of self-employment, small and medium enterprises of all types, cooperatives, and worker participation in management, administration and distribution of the profits of state enterprises, with democratization and diversification of institutions of political participation at all levels, Cuba runs the risk of moving from a monopoly decadent state capitalism, imposed in the name of a socialism that has ever existed, to a form of authoritarian State capitalism, controlled by a political-military elite in association with the great American capital.

We have to recognize the presidents of the United States and Cuba have taken this step to create primary conditions for a country better than has ever been possible. But let this opportunity opens the way to the Cuba “with all and for the good of all” that Martí dreamed of and for which several generations of Cubans fought for nearly two centuries, relying on the citizens themselves and their own intelligence.

This is the time for dialogue and consultation, prudential waiting and popular and democratic alliances working with the interests of the majority.

If Raul and his inner circle want to consolidate their position and bring the upgrade of the model  to fruition, they will have to remove all the obstacles imposed by the heavy burden of the old neo-Stalinist party bureaucracy that controls the mass organizations, electoral processes, local authorities and state enterprises, and seek an alliance with the workers and the middle classes, opening every possible space.

We must avoid foreign companies ending up investing only in cooperation with state enterprises, without real independence to contact for labor, without credit or possibilities to develop small and medium sized businesses, with private or associated capital.

In this sense, the Investment Law will be relaxed and become a simple law of businesses, so that Cuban capital sources of whatever dimension, inside the country and abroad, can deploy their initiatives.

The State has to open the possibilities for external and internal trade, as currently their control remains the main cause of high prices which prevents the lowering of the costs of input and of a wide range popular consumer goods, especially food.

Another aspect to immediately review is the tax law that continues to tax revenues, not profits — a factor limiting the expansion of emerging companies — and to eliminate all the paraphernalia of absurd permissions to open businesses and cooperatives, whether in services or production.

All the constructive and peaceful forces in the country should, within and outside the government, within and outside Cuba, set aside grudges and revenge and engage in a national dialogue that makes possible a shared path of national progress towards a new constitution, democratic in its content, and towards how to achieve it.

The upcoming elections to the National Assembly of People’s Power are moving forward. This is a good opportunity for the government to demonstrate its commitment to democracy, to end the legal repression of of the political activism of those who think differently, to facilitate the expansion of freedom of expression and association, and to make changes to the electoral law that enable more democratic forms of putting forward candidates, and direct elections of mayors, provincial governors and the President of the Republic.

The nation will move forward with everyone it it will never be. None of its parts is entitled to hijack the future for narrow interests.

From the defense of the positions of the Participatory and Democratic Socialism, we advocate consultation, dialogue, meeting, national reconciliation and prosperity for the Cuban people in an atmosphere of peace and democracy.

A better Cuba is more possible than ever. To achieve is it is the responsibility of all Cubans of goodwill.

16 January 2015

Gratitude / Miriam Celaya

Though I’m several days behind, I get to access my blog to publicly thank all friends and the media who remained attentive and concerned for us during the repressive raid of the final days of 2014.

My son, Victor Ariel González, freelance journalist and 14ymedio.com reporter, was arrested around noon on the 30th, as he left his building to come to our home for lunch, just when his father and I came by to pick him up. Thanks to that strange coincidence, he was the only one of dozens of detainees whose whereabouts was known, since we got in the police car with him, which took all three of us to the Guanabacoa police station, where he remained under arrest until December 31st, when he was freed in the afternoon hours while we stayed outside the station.

During the 25 and one-half hours that he was held there, we received dozens of calls from friends inside and outside Cuba: Yoani Sánchez, who was kept informed of the entire situation through social networks; my friends and colleagues at Cubanet, who also reported every detail and the names of the detainees; Elizardo Sánchez of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights; Laritza Diversent of Cubalex, who kept in touch with us, advising us of the law and whose directions were very significant to put pressure, according to the rights validated by law, for the release of Victor Ariel. Luzbely Escobar and countless colleagues and fellow travelers were in constant contact with us. continue reading

I don’t want to ignore the messages and calls of support I received from different parts of Cuba and abroad: friends from the Coexistence group; Henry Constantin from Camagüey; my friend Frank from Guanabo; of Marta and Eugenio, my essential and everlasting friends from Kendall; my dear cousin from Hialeah, and many others I will not mention because I prefer not to expose them, as they live in Cuba and are valuable anonymous activists.

I assure you that solidarity and strength all of you offered me were crucial to overcome the difficult hours of helplessness, powerlessness and worry about the fate of our son. However, I experienced the satisfaction of confronting at least three of the hired guns with my truths.

I never thought that another individual’s hatred towards me would be capable of making me so strong and of provoking such a comforting feeling. That’s what they are, mere instruments of hatred of a regime that is more brutal the more it is feared.

It makes an impression to see these young lackeys, blind and submissive at the service of a dictatorship which they will outlive. If I didn’t despise them so much, I think I would feel sorry for them.

Both the minions of the political police and the uniformed police, cohorts in the outrage, were nervous. It is absurd to see how fearful they become in the face of the simple possibility that we Cubans may express ourselves freely. An artist barely announces a performance and the terrors of the regime are unleashed, sending its dogs to lock up even people who did not have the least intention to participate in the event.

Also because of fear, they made efforts to get my husband and me to leave the police station.  Relatives of those detained for common crimes stared at us curiously, but also with respect, listening attentively at our every word.

“I recommend you go home. Victor Ariel will remain under investigation for a minimum of 24 hours”, said a young clown (from counterintelligence) dressed in plainclothes, who — among other cute remarks — threatened to arrest me “for contempt.”

“If it’s 24 months, I will not move from this spot until you free him. I don’t know if you were born of a woman, but the one you have locked up there, with no reason and violating his rights, is my son. Lock me up if you feel like you must.” That etcetera left, very upset.

Meanwhile, many friends were getting ready to join us to gather in front of the police station and demand the release of Victor Ariel, if he remained imprisoned for more than a day. I had told this to the police, and I’m sure they were anxious that their bosses would free my son soon.

Finally they took him to the back of the building, secretly, to avoid celebratory scenes in front of their little prison, and returned him in a patrol car to his home. His father and I were informed of this by a uniformed individual, and we anticipated his arrival to greet him on the first floor of his building, where they left him.

I also want to share with readers the pride I feel for my son’s straightforward attitude, who returned with an ever-wide smile and in very high spirits. Around the time he was imprisoned, he refused to take food or water, in protest against the arbitrary detention.

Not for a moment did I doubt his fortitude, despite the threat of the instructor at Villa Marista, who assured him “if you keep doing what you are doing we are going prosecute you legally. Let that be a warning to you.” Victor Ariel did not sign the official warning or the detention documents, but simply replied to that executioner, “I will keep on writing.”

I will too. And I will be with him in all circumstances for certain, however difficult it may be.  I know that there are difficult times ahead, but I also know that I will be able to count on you. We will not be lacking in the faith and confidence that you have shown us.

Again, all of you, thank you!

Translated by Norma Whiting

5 January 2015

Cuba is the Black Sheep of Human Rights / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar & Elizardo Sanchez

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 10 December 2014* — Coinciding with the observance of International Human Rights Day today, we spoke with Elizardo Sánchez, spokesman for the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) in Havana to review the current situation on the Island.

Q:  Today the whole world commemorates Human Rights Day. What is the situation in our country at the close of 2014? Do we have reasons for hope or for worry?

A:  The general scene of civil, political, labor and other fundamental rights continues to worsen. Although the rate of detentions for political reasons has diminished in recent months, this is because the government has understood that this type of arrest portrays a very negative image. It did the same before when it decided to reduce the number of political prisoners, which is currently at around 110 persons.

Nonetheless, the government has not reformed any laws, and it has not given up its repressive and threatening mission against all of society. Therefore, it cannot be said that the situation has improved. Unless a miracle occurs, it will continue to worsen.

Q: What are the repressive methods which are most used at this moment?

A:  There has been a metamorphosis insofar as repression for political reasons is concerned. It no longer consists of lengthy prison sentences, or even of extended detentions. Instead, what occurs frequently are short-term arrests with the added element of other forms of intimidation, such as vandalism, including rocks being thrown at houses or residences being ransacked. There are also physical aggressions, which have increased throughout the year, be they overt or covert. continue reading

The repressive apparatus can be quite creative in its activities, such as taking the clothes off activists on some remote highway–or leaving them without shoes, which results in these people having to walk many miles barefoot to get home. This is in addition to the psychological effect inflicted on any individual when part of their clothing is taken from them.

Q: The Cuban government has called for this day to be observed throughout the country. How do you assess this new attitude?

A: We have been following the official media and we heard their calls for this day to be observed in parks and public places. Doing so, they neutralize any initiative undertaken by the independent civil society. An example is the announcement by the Ladies in White to meet today at the centrally-located corner of L and 23rd Streets. Very likely, this event will be quashed. The government will try to not have so much recourse to detentions, in keeping with the repressive trend this past year, 2014.

Q: Do you believe that Cuba will one day come to be a referee of human rights, even a regional watchdog to ensure their implementation?

A: This is the dream of many of ours. But, unfortunately, Cuba is today the black sheep of human rights within the inter-American sphere and the world. This is so because Cuba encourages abuses and blocks any attempt to bring forth certain complaints to the United Nations, as in the case of its complicity with the regime of North Korea.

Q:  Would you say that there is an International Committee of Human Rights Violators?

A: The great violators of human rights tend to act in conjunction with the rest, shielding themselves behind each other and lending mutual support. That is, not only is there a negative situation maintained within the country, but the Cuban regime provides negative leadership at the international level, much more than any other government does. This is quite contrary to the leadership role that the Republic of Cuba took in the drafting of the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Our diplomats at that time were second only to the French and the North Americans in terms of leading that task.

We therefore hope that Cuba will again become a bastion in the defense of human rights, and that the whole infrastructure that the regime has in place today for its own ends will help to create congresses that promote respect for fundamental rights at the continental level. May those halls and convention centers provide space for the formation, popularization, protection and training of human rights defenders throughout the world.

*Translator’s note: This interview took place a week before Barack Obama’s announcement of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba.

 Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

10 December 2014

Sunday: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo at Northwestern University for a Free Cuba, Damn It!

"Get out of Cuba TYRANT" / This island is MINE"

Tempting the Cuban Transition

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

FOLLOW THIS EVENT ONLINE HERE and HERE

Since December 17th, when President Obama and General Raul Castro performed their simultaneous speeches, many Americans insist on congratulating me. I wonder why no Cuban has congratulated me so far, and why I still haven’t congratulated any other Cuban, whether in favor or against the US embargo against our country, whether on the Island or in exile.

I always respond to my foreign colleagues with a twisted-smiling emoticon. As a writer, I’m aware that language is not enough when feelings and facts seem altogether indistinguishable.

Let’s try now an answer from the viewpoint of digital dissidence, from the initial skepticism about the Cuban alternative blogosphere to the enthusiasm of today about the achievements of cyber-activists on the Island. So that tomorrow’s disappointment doesn’t take us by surprise. continue reading

Let me start by recalling that many people think that Cubans have already waited for democracy for so long, that we could wait for just a little longer. President Obama, with his historical speech for the “normalization” of US-Cuba relations, is also legitimizing a non-normal government that has never consulted my people about our rights to live in truth and liberty.

Obama’s military counterpart, Raul Castro, successor by blood of his brother Fidel, didn’t grant a single demand of our civil society, recently best represented through peaceful cyber-activism. The octogenarian made obvious that communism with the surplus value of State capitalism was the model to be imposed to all Cubans, whose civic leaders were left out during the secret negotiations between power elites. If many pro-democracy activists feel betrayed it is because blogging on the Island was struggling precisely for citizens’ voices to be taken into account, and to hold accountable our personalistic regime. But transparency, like heaven, can wait.

Rafael Rojas, a renowned Cuban essayist summarizes this in his book The Art of Waiting. Oswaldo Payá, founder of the Christian Liberation Movement on the island, called this self-transition a Fraudulent Change. Rojas is forbidden to live in his country. Payá, who collected more than 25,000 signatures in order to constitutionally democratize our society, like Polish priest Popiełuszko in the mid-80s, was assassinated in July 2012 after a car crash provoked by the secret police.

The Obama administration is not willing to mention deadly details like this in his New Deal with Cuba, designed so that the Revolution mutates in the Chinese way from dictatorship to dictatocracy. The White House seeks to make profits before other competing nations invest in the Island, as well as to prevent social unrest that could end in a migratory stampede towards South Florida. Since 1959, the Castros have always been using such a “human missile” crisis to negotiate with the US.

The struggle of civil resistance in Cuba is as long as the Revolution itself, which has abolished all kind of dissent. That’s why our nation is split apart, with 20% of our population residing elsewhere, in a kind of pedestrian’s plebiscite in which we Cubans say farewell to our proletarian paradise.

During the last years a small group of critical bloggers have been reporting insights behind the Cuban Curtain, most of them available at the websites VocesCubanas.com, HavanaTimes.org, and translated to English by the volunteer project TranslatingCuba.com.

Several of these independent communicators, like Yoani Sanchez —the blogger of Generation Y— have received international awards and, after the migratory reform that abolished the exit permit that turned all Cubans into hostages, many have been invited to forums that empower our impact on global public opinion, making more visible the cause of denouncing human rights violations, but also raising awareness about the complexities of day-to-day life in such a closed society, where marginalization and corruption have replaced ideology by inertia, discipline by deception, and ethics by extortion, with an anthropological damage that it will take generations to heal.

Cuban bloggers are usually not members of any opposition organizations, all of which are illegal under the rule of one political party, one press, one worker’s union, one non independent judicial and legislative system. But bloggers have helped many opposition leaders and political prisoners to reshape their communication strategy, by teaching them —in independent projects like the Blogger Academy and Festival Click— how to use social networks under the restrictive conditions of Cuba; a country that still offers no public internet service, despite the fiber optic cable that connects us with Venezuela. Although Obama has offered to let American communication companies to provide internet to the Island, Castro has declined because of national security concerns. So we are still waiting for the lifting of this other embargo of the Cuban government against the Cuban people.

Besides censorship, interrogations, threats, public repudiation, arrests, and job dismissal against independent bloggers, the Ministry of the Interior has created an official blogosphere that now outnumbers the critical voices of Cuban cyberspace. They connect to the internet in their workplaces and mainly from the infamous University of Information Sciences, where the ironically-called Operation Truth searches the web to counteract any inconvenient tendency, by distorting forums and even by digital bullying. Thus, the belligerency of the Revolution has been copy-and-pasted into the virtual space. This is why Cuba is rated as an “internet predator” by the NGOs committed to freedom of expression, like Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Given this harassment, some Cuban bloggers have ceased posting in their websites so as not to bring more difficulties to their family life. Others still publish but prefer not to be involved in confrontational events, like the photo-documentary contest “Pixel Country” or the filmed community debates “Estado de Sats” . Still others have committed exile . The majority of this civil minority keeps on organizing new initiatives like the free-lance 14yMedio.com for citizen journalism. The more fragile we become, the greater our certainty that we owe a more inclusive society to future generations. But without international solidarity we are helpless . The time to stop 21st century totalitarianisms is none other than today.

Castroism, with its dynastic style, is trying not to disappear with the original Castros and a 2.0 generation is already in position: Mariela Castro (now Deputy in the National Assembly) and Alejandro Castro (a high-ranked intelligence officer: our tropical version of Vladimir Putin). The successful marketing campaign of The Cuban Revolution is being reloaded. For example, questioning the Cuban establishment in US academies, sometimes is considered as non-progressive . At the same time, official bloggers are being authorized by the government to get training and fellowships in America, and then go back to Cuba as think tanks of our status quo.

The US Chamber of Commerce and Cuban American millionaires are eager not to be excluded from the investment schedule, despite that foreign companies can only pay their workers through monopolistic State enterprises, which retain most of their salaries. While Cuban army professionals are mutating from military to managers, in order to run our half-Marxist and half-market economy.

I’m not the spokesperson  of disenchantment, since I still trust in a Cuba with respect for universal values like life, mercy, beauty, truth and liberty —the most natural and yet so difficult to attain in times of tyranny. The responsibility of every free man and woman of the world is to stand with the Cuban people who deserve not to wait any longer for our free nation.

The Guidelines that Failed / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar

Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party
Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 16 January 2015 — After so many years of demanding an end to the American blockade, the Cuban government discovered it is not prepared even for the first relaxations which its neighbor to the north has implemented with unprecedented agility. It turns out that the entire scaffolding erected by way of the 33 Guidelines agreed to at the Sixth Communist Party Congress is insufficient, if not crippling, before the prospects on the horizon.

Perhaps the most glaring inconsistency between the American apertures and the Cuban bureaucracy’s stubbornness, is with in regards to remittances for the development of private initiatives, including small farmers, which the United States will authorize without limitations.

From this side, putting this measure into practice could be interpreted as a violation of the regulations in the Foreign Investment Law, which restrict the entrance of money to operate businesses to legal entities, that is, State entities or those authorized by the State. Not to mention what it means to receive money for humanitarian projects or to support the Cuban people through the activities of human rights organizations. continue reading

Among the advantages that might have difficulty being fully implemented on the island because of ideological restrictions, is access to the Internet. A decade ago, the country viewed World Wide Web like science fiction, but now there is a generation that knows what it is and that realizes what they’re missing by not being connected.

The new general license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control facilitates the establishment of commercial telecommunications facilities and authorizes additional services related to communication via the Internet. As of that decision, it is no longer possible to blame the “criminal imperialist blockade” for the existing limitations and they will have to choose between accepting the free flow of information or displaying the unmasked repressive face of the prohibitions.

There is a working hypothesis in which they could produce a kind of recycling operation where the elements and the military structure, along with other spheres considered ’reliable,’ assume the role of “approved private entrepreneurs.” Then, through a network of relationships, the funds will go to the ruling elite. The failure of this idea is that there has to be someone on the other side willing to provide financing to an unknown party, and that seems highly unlikely.

The Cuban government has shown a special knack for generating euphemisms that mask reality. Instead of the term “unemployed” these people are called “available,” and private businesses are called “the non-state sector of the economy.”

But the full acceptance of private ownership of the means of production requires tremendous linguistic effort to find a new name. For the simple reason that private owners find a way to empower themselves and to grow, threatening the role of centralized socialist planning system as the principle engine of the national economy. The dinosaur state production mode, devoid of the injection of capital which the private sector could count on, could not compete.

The other risk factor for the Cuban government will be the influx of Americans in Cuba. Although the restrictions against tourist travel formally remain in place, the new permissions are so broad that they could lead to an uncontrollable avalanche. The appetite for communication, and for tipping, will be at its highest level. Private restaurants, B&Bs, street musicians and hookers of every kind will be in their element and surely it will be all the same to them whether they get dollars or convertible pesos.

In the face of each of these new measures, the dilemma is the same. Whether to make a vain attempt to maintain the rigid control now established, or to let everyone do as they wish and let prosperity become an individual goal and not a planned program. Anyone who knows the natural elusive escaped-slave nature of this people, know it will be very hard to put internal brakes on the tremendous impact that is coming.

Will we have to wait, perhaps, for the 7th Cuban Communist Party Congress, announced for 2016, for new and more flexible guidelines to put the country in sync with its new reality? Hopefully not.

Miami: The Havana That Could Not Be / Ivan Garcia

miami_aerial_view_f-620x330As the plane begins its descent towards Miami on a flight from San Diego, the first thing a resident of Cuba notices is the incredible number of lights that at this hour, five-thirty in the morning, can be seen from plane.

As big US cities go, Miami is one of the smallest in terms of land mass. Its 35.78 square miles accommodates more than 400,000 people, making it one of the most densely populated cities in the country, comparable to New York, San Francisco and Chicago.

This is no small thing. It has been only 501 years since the morning of April 1513 when Juan Ponce de Leon set foot on a Florida beach and claimed this entire swath of land and its adjacent keys for the kingdom of Spain.

That is not long period of a time for a city. Rome has been around for millennia, while Babylon, Egypt and Jerusalem were architectural marvels long before Miami, or even the thirteen colonies, first appeared on a map.

This is the wonder of the United States. Along with its magnificent constitution, democratic system, and economic and military might, this society’s greatest strength is its ability to reinvent itself and assimilate cultural differences. continue reading

There is no other nation on earth where the child of immigrants can aspire to a seat in the Senate or consider a run for the presidency. While in other countries foreigners might remain foreigners for generations or perhaps for their entire lives, in the United States if you work hard and are daring, talented and creative, you have a 99% chance of success.

No one in the United States questions these qualities of being in the forefront and uniqueness. Ask any Cuban, Colombian, Brazilian or Russian resident in Miami.

Things can go badly, but it is always possible for those with dedication and talent to get ahead. Cubans fled to this warm coastal town after Fidel Castro took power at gunpoint in January 1959.

Members of Cuba’s elite — distinguished architects, accomplished physicians, people who knew how to generate wealth — arrived here in the 1960s.

They turned a peaceful swampland where retirees came to live out their days into the proud city that is today’s Miami. Of course, immigrants from around the world also made their own contributions.

But numbers and statistics do not lie. Several members of the US Congress are from Cuba. Florida legislators as well as numerous mayors and public officials are also of Cuban descent.

The ascent of Miami’s Cubans is a palpable demonstration of the centrifugal forces that are unleashed by political and economic freedom. Ninety miles from Miami lies Havana.

It is a metropolis which fifty-six years ago was beyond comparison to Miami or any other city in Latin America.  Havana always was and still is a beguiling city despite its decay.

Havana has an urban layout better than that of Miami. It is a pedestrian-oriented city with miles of colonnaded arcades impossible to find in the sunny American city.

Downtown Miami, replete with skyscrapers, recalls Havana’s Vedado district in the 1950s, when construction began on a slew of technologically advanced tall buildings.

At that time Havana had three tunnels as well as several casinos and bars where the likes of Bebo Valdes sang boleros and played piano.

Whether you like it or not, the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution brought on a regression in the urban order. If Castro come to power in 2014 rather than 1959, Havana would have been a magnificent capital, with skyscrapers all along its coast and examples of its unique architecture mixed in, much like San Juan.

But it was not to be. By cutting off generations of riches at their roots and centralizing the economy, Castro opened the floodgates, so that the most talented people abandoned the country. The strength of all that creativity and hard work planted the flag in Miami.

As you tour the city and see Miami Beach, the Marlin’s baseball stadium, the Heat’s American Airlines Stadium, the Brickell financial center and the recent additions to the port, you cannot help but be impressed with the vitality of its inhabitants.

Clean, well-lit streets, a lot of greenery and quality infrastructure. There are always flaws. Urban transport is disgusting; there are beggars and Little Haiti is scary.

Neighborhoods look like designs in the Sims game. Pretty, tidy and recently painted. Although not as solid as those residences in Miramar, Jaimanitas and Fontaner in Havana which were built by the relatives of those Cubans who today live in Coral Gables, Hialeah or Doral in Miami.

Miami is the key to the survival of the olive-green autocracy. The billions of dollars and the merchandise are a blood transfusion for the regime and poor relatives in Cuba.

Cubans on the other side of the Straits, shortly after arriving, notice the difference. They are still talking with that crazy accent that mistreats the Castilian language.

They still talk too loud and some have taken with them, to the Florida media the bad taste and kitsch inherited from a system that spread mediocrity. But they are free citizens.

They rant equally about the Castros and Obama. About learning how to manage economically and legally in capitalism. Because the United States is a not a country, it’s a business. And the newcomer is taught how to deal with debts and taxes.

Miami is what Havana couldn’t be. With an excess of light, an abundance of food, and without Fidel Castro.

Ivan Garcia

Photo: Aerial view of Miami. Taken from the blog Gorge Mess.

Notebook of a Journey (VI)

30 December 2014

The ‘Cabanuelas’ for Religious Freedom / 14ymedio, Mario Felix Lleonart

: Children during a celebration of the Day of the Kings at Taguayabon Church (M. F. Lleonart Barroso)
: Children during a celebration of the Day of the Kings at Taguayabon Church (M. F. Lleonart Barroso)

14ymedio, Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso, 16 January 2015 – Cuban peasants have a tradition that they carry out at the beginning of year. They observe the first twelve days of January and complete the observation – in a countdown – with the following twelve days until they get to the 24th day. They have the idea that what happened in the natural environment on those dates can yield some insight on how the year will be.

If it rains on the third day, that means for the men of the field that the same thing will occur in the third month. This way they get an idea of whether the year will be rainy or dry, if there will be hurricanes, much heat or if it will feel cold in the limited winter. The farming traditions call these days that the farmers think of as a preamble to the months of the year cabanuelas.

For those of us who form part of the religious sphere in Cuba, the last year ended with new perspectives on the relations with our counterparts in the United States. After the announcement by President Barack Obama last December 17, there have been more than a few citizens from that country who have been interested in how they might help us in the most effective way, given the opportunities that are opening up. continue reading

The new scenario is positive for those churches on the Island who never stopped maintaining fraternal relations with their peers in the northern country, in spite of all those years that intervened in and served as obstacles to those ties.

Nevertheless, nothing is gained if perspectives feed only on the bright side, ignoring realities present in the landscape. If that were done, one would fall into very illusory readings extremely loaded with subjectivity. There is no doubt about the good intentions of the whole world, of American churches and even of President Barack Obama, but on what obstacles will those good intentions stumble?

In our country there are great impediments that limit exchange in the religious area and that form part of what many call “the internal blockade.” In order for the recently announced policies to have the desired effect, at least the following changes will have to occur on a national level:

  1. The Office of Attention to Religious Matters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba must disappear. It is unacceptable that an office embedded in an atheist organization, which is also the only legally recognized party, tries to resolve everything concerning religion in the country.
  2. The Register of Associations by the Justice Ministry of Cuba must act with total independence and not under pressure, as occurs now, coming principally from the Office of Attention to Religious Matters. To begin, it should agree to the legalization of dozens of religious groups that for years have aspired to it.
  3. A Worship Law must be created and approved by all the people to defend religious liberties. In spite of its imperative need until now it has been conspicuous by its absence.
  4. The monopoly and privileges that the said office grants to the Counsel of Churches of Cuba, which does not shield most religious institutions as was intended, must end.

Furthermore, the Baptist Resurrection Church, in the rural community of Rosalia, celebrated Day of the Kings or Epiphany at the beginning of the year. Given that January 6 was a work day, they decided to celebrate it on the weekend and announced it to the residents of the place. The Communist Party in Camajuani and Taguayabon ordered our celebrations counteracted. With such objective they dedicated significant funds so that cultural and culinary institutions would carry out collateral activities, not with the healthy desire to entertain the people, but with the unhealthy one of “confronting” us.

If I stick to this view and the reading of these hard facts, I could prophesy that in spite of the good wishes of the world that is opening up to Cub, the religious scene does not begin well at all for our country, given the obstinacy of those who occupy political and military power. Nevertheless, when I see that in spite of the police apparatus our celebration of the Kings triumphed in a church full of children, I return to optimism and believe that so many good wishes will come to a good end.

Translated by MLK

Behind the Performances / Cubanet, Miriam Celaya

cartel-cover

  • To think that the “common Cuban on the street” –not the dissidents or the usual disobedient individuals- would spontaneously make use of the open microphones at “that” Square, to demand rights from the government is naive, a utopia. The idea is beautiful and romantic, but far, far away from reality.

cubanet square logoHAVANA, Cuba. – During the final days of 2014 and the first three of 2015, the bells have been ringing for artist Tania Bruguera and the wave of arrests sparked by her announcement of the performance Tatlin’s Whisper # 6, after which she intended to provide a minute of freedom of expression for the common Cuban at the Plaza “de la Revolución” itself.

Authorities responded with their usual violence, detaining several dozen dissidents, opposition activists, journalists, and other members of the independent civil society and tossing them into dungeons. Some of the detainees had not even intended to participate in the event, and were arrested only for the crime of leaving their homes on the “wrong” day.

Comments on the subject have swarmed the digital media, as befits the case of such a recognized and award-winning artist as Bruguera, with a prolific career, though she was almost totally unknown to the potential recipients of her performance. continue reading

Tania Bruguera, in short, has suffered the same fate that the other members of the opposition and of the independent civil society have faced for decades: censorship and repression by the regime, while those same “common Cubans” suffer from the proverbial ignorance –be it as a result of misinformation or disinterest. So we reaffirm the urgent need to avail all Cubans of the bulk of information that allows them the civic empowerment and the willingness to come out as actors of the changes.

Ineptness or intention?

The reasons for Tania Bruguera’s intention to perform are too well-known and are more than justified. The repression orchestrated by the Cuban government, however, though predictable, is counterproductive at a time when it should strive to present a more tolerant face.

The General-President has lost a golden opportunity to score before the international public opinion somewhat, showing such an outrageous stupidity that could only be understood if he had the deliberate intention to launch a challenge to Barack Obama’s conciliatory position and the democratic world as a whole.

Anyone who knows the Cuban reality knows that it would have been very easy for the dictatorship to annihilate the “Tatlin effect” and, incidentally, make a fool of the artist using its usual methods. Namely, to let her reach her stage and her microphones, and then control or prevent entrance to the “counterrevolutionaries” – probably the only Cubans who would have dared to exercise their freedom of expression publicly and to voice their opinions and demands – mobilize its more loyal militants (and also their milidummies) to fill the space and to have them take the microphone to launch the usual praises of the revolution and its leaders.

They could even have used their agents, infiltrated in the opposition ranks, to offer the “mad-dog faces” of those who want to see the end of the socialist paradise, to have faked their support for Bruguera’s play by sharing the Plaza’s venue with works of La Colmenita, or by simultaneously celebrating any other “cultural act” with the participation of the many artists who usually lend themselves for such cases. It would have been, no doubt, a massive event, and the General-President would have shown the world, at the same time as the existence of “the most genuine and spontaneous freedom of expression of the Cuban people,” the firm commitment by the people to the revolution and its unquestionable conquests.

He chose, however, brutality, a disproportionate official reaction that sends misleading signals that are inconsistent with the relaxed atmosphere that we should be starting to breathe with the burial of the war hatchets after half a century of confrontation with the natural enemy of the people. But did anyone really expect a different outcome?

Behind the performances

There are those who wonder, following the events, if Tania Bruguera’s performance was worth it, since it turned into an occasion of unleashed repression at a time of year when family traditions are of peace and celebration. The answer to this depends on the artist’s objectives, not on the reaction by the Cuban government.

If her intention was to draw attention to international public opinion about the dictatorial nature of the government, the mere purpose was a success and was worth it. But its price, namely, the official repressive reaction, is the norm in Cuba – as is well known by independent civil society on the Island, with decades of first-hand resistance against the government – and the artist is not responsible for this.

On the other hand, exercising civic rights and free expression of all kinds are worth the effort, be it a performance or simply an everyday practice, but we must not enhance the facts or attribute to the artistic event the capability of “obstructing the normalization” of relations between Cuba and the US.  The propensity for drama is definitively one of the evils that we Cubans drag with us, which turns us into myopic politicians.

So, to pretend that “common Cubans” – not “mercenary” dissidents, or the usual disobedient individuals – could make spontaneous use of open microphones in a public place (particularly “that” public place) for citizens’ complaints and demanding of rights from the government is naive, a utopia, or a combination of both. The idea is beautiful and romantic, but far, far away from reality.

Let’s idealize it: the fact that ordinary Cubans, immersed in survival, need venues for freedom, does not mean that they are ready to openly challenge the government, especially if after the performances they will continue to be inevitably tied to this Island prison. A lot more is needed to overcome the fear of one minute on stage and before a microphone.

A quick poll is sufficient to verify that the recipients were unaware of the act. In fact, neither the artist’s proposal nor the wave of related arrests has emerged in national public opinion.

Havana residents who this last December 30th observed the unusual police presence in the areas adjacent to the Plaza never knew what it was about, and probably did not give it  much importance. We have to understand them: those were the days of the agricultural fair and, as the last straw, in many municipalities, chickens “for the people” were being distributed.

It’s not cynicism, but realism. In terms of rights, we Cubans we have a long way to go, including –by the way – overcoming the temptation to place on the desk of the US Presidential demands that the Cuban authorities will be responsible for complying with. At least, such is the opinion of this Cuban, for whom the exercise of freedom of expression has always been practice, not performance.

Translated by Norma Whiting

Look at Me, Miami and, If You Value Your Death, Don’t Cry / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Alan Gross, like every North American who comes in contact with the Castro regime and defends it even from within a captivity of little lies — attacking his own government with million-dollar demands — is a bad man. Gross’s little suicide threats, his lack of solidarity with Cubans in exile and civil society on the Island, his backward religiosity of psalms and miracle-mongering, his complicit silence as to the assassinations committed by the Castro regime while he was supposedly in prison, his lawyer subsidized by Havana, his support of the lifting of an embargo that had not appeared to be his concern when he was contracted by USAID, his servile flattery of President Obama, his admiring loyalty to the sacrosanct balls of Raúl, his suspicious loss of dentition at the record pace of one tooth per year, his (and his wife’s) insipid leftist pose, in short, what a fossil, what fealty, what Submerged States of Fidelity…

Meanwhile, the triumphal return to the Island of the 5 deadly spies, with their muscles worthy of hand-to-hand combat, their vacant stares of those who know themselves to be puppets of a dismal power that can pulverize them at any time, with their exaggerated dentitions, surrounded by a people who for decades have not been even plebes, a perverse and impoverished populace, terrified in their fear that swings from meanness to mediocrity, jabbering with the neighbors in a language that we free Cubans do not know because it is a jargon of the stable, of the State.

My Fellow Cubans, let us not kid ourselves. The stupidity of our country can be reined-in by taking advantage of this umpteenth criminal juncture in our history. We will never live in liberty. The Earth is cursed against our volatile beauty. The race that inhabits the Island is infected and cannot be decontaminated. The lucid ones, the virtuous ones, escape without ever looking over their shoulders, or else they will pay the brave price of being martyrs killed in cold blood, like the holy souls Laura Pollán and Oswaldo Payá. continue reading

The stampede cannot be stopped now in Miami. It is too late for us to remain so close to evil. We must run away, further and further to the north of the world. Throughout generations upon generations, the Castroites have become millionaires in South Florida. Castroism is the factual and media-conscious law in the Cuban exile community. It is the majority. The Cuban-American sensibility in itself is an insular invention: with that nostalgia bent-over and submissive to a frigid Fidelism, with that vernacular that sounds taken out of Google Talk, with those gold trinkets of 19.59 carats and eyebrows groomed to delirium. Please.

The legislators of Florida count for nothing. What does rule is the corrupting power of the mafias that Fidel has institutionalized in Miami, from the church to the academy, from the marinas to the slaughterhouses, from the swamp to the cane field, from the airport to its horrendous museums and mausoleums, with their fairs and their colleges and their constant kitsch, from the restaurants to the Revolution itself.

Miami has made its best effort, but today Miami is millions of Alan Grosses and Five Heroes. Forget all that about them being spies, My Brothers and Sisters. Miami is the pure heroism of unpunished horror. The Battle of Florida was lost. Not even Castro won. Miami won, which reproduced and grounded a kind of Castroism little by little during decadent decades. Take a look in the malls, My Poor People–take those little checkered shirts that are sold in bulk off their hangers. You’ll see the labels of Cuban State Security, My Poor Love. The tackiness and the vulgarity. It’s the dirty trick somewhere between magic and secretiveness. As in Cuba, there is not even one word said by Cubans that isn’t false. Castroism is that: the outer shell of Cubanness, its disposability, its hahaha.

My Fellow Cubans, it is time to recognize that not only do we not want changes in our nation, but that we abundantly want to never again have a nation. The experience of having been subjects of the Kingdom of Death is irreparable. Now we will all die very alone, somnolent in a peevish rhetoric that debases us. We deserve to remain dead for the rest of our lifeless biographies.

Nobody is sadder than we. Nobody is more “We” than I.

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

18 December 2014

Raul Castro’s Pyrrhic Victory / Ivan Garcia

Photo: From the internet

After the jubilation over the arrival in Cuba of the three spies imprisoned in the US comes to an end, when the campaign of tributes in the official media is over and the lights installed on the stands for government agents to hear the people’s applause are turned off, the government of Raúl Castro will have to draw up plans for the future.

An unknown future. The US trade and financial embargo has yet to face a real legislative battle in Congress. But, on President Obama’s orders, the Cuban state is now able to buy US goods from overseas-based companies and make telecommunication deals to allow ordinary Cubans to connect to the Internet at a reasonable cost.

One way or another, the regime’s state-owned companies, when they had money available, always bought merchandise in the US. If you look around the hard currency shops, you will see domestic appliances made in the USA, Californian apples and Coca Cola soft drinks.

Henceforth, buying “Yankee” products will be simpler. Cuba could buy hundreds of GM buses to improve the dismal urban public transport. continue reading

Also, thousands of Dell or HP computers so that Cuban schools may renew their equipment and access the Internet. Except for universities, the remainder of Cuban public schools on the island lack Internet connection.

The government can already buy, by applying for a licence, tons of drugs to fight childhood cancer, which government propaganda told us were unavailable because of the strict embargo.

As well as tiles, sanitary fittings, quality building materials, so people can renovate their dilapidated houses.

The list of what the government can do to improve Cubans’ quality of life is a long one. Curiously, the state press hasn’t printed a single line about the road map set out by Obama for helping Cubans.

Nothing but intolerance and a do-nothing attitude towards dissidents was to be expected. Let us accept that beatings, mistreatment and verbal assaults on the peaceful opposition will continue.

But let us hope that, beginning in January 2015, the regime will devise a strategy to allow Cubans to live under a “prosperous and sustainable Socialism.”

That will involve building no fewer than 100,000 homes a year. Repairing destroyed hospitals and medical centres. Increasing the production of beans, foodstuffs and fruits, among other things.

Finally, and best of all, the promised glass of milk for everybody will land on our tables and Cubans will be able to have a proper breakfast. My mouth is watering thinking of being able to buy beef, shrimp and fish at reasonable prices.

The government can already start repairing the old aqueduct which, according to official information, fails to deliver 60% of its drinking water to its users.

And one would be able to go to a “Gringo” bank to apply for a loan to build housing in the more than 50 insalubrious neighborhoods existing in Havana.

I hope that Castro II will not place restrictions on the self-employed to be able to directly arrange for a credit line with US financial institutions.

And, in passing, expand the Foreign Investment Act, by authorizing Cubans on the Island to invest in small or medium-sized businesses.

After making peace with the enemy, the costly procedures for Cubans living overseas should be revoked when they visit their homeland.

Fortunately, on the opposite side of the pavement the “evil Americans” are no longer lying in wait, threatening the little Caribbean island merely for having chosen a different political model.

Something else to think about is that exile Cubans should have the right to dual citizenship, should be able to vote in local elections from their countries, and be able to run for the boring and tedious national Parliament.

The bottom line is that, except for “mercenaries” like Carlos Alberto Montaner, Raúl Rivero or Zoé Valdés, the great majority of emigrants are crying out for an end to the embargo and peaceful relations between both nations, according to the official media.

Then, the argument of being an embattled country will become old news. Now the US are a brotherly country. A neighbor that, since the XIX century, shared with our freedom fighters their right to independence from Spain, as a Cuban female journalist movingly mentioned on Cuban TV.

By domino effect the price of powder milk will go down, as well as the tax on the dollar, a tax levied by Fidel Castro in 2005.

I shall awake any morning in 2015 with the news that the hard-currency shops would have stopped implementing the abnormal tax of up to 400% on items.

It can be expected that the government will review prices à la Qatar for the sale of cars. And now that we will be able to hook up with any underwater US cable bordering our shores Internet will be the cheapest in the world.

Since self-employed workers are not criminals or counterrevolutionaries, it would be desirable for the magnanimous regime to listen to them and implement a reduction of the absurd taxes levied.

This time, for sure, the sought after wholesale market for private business owners will be opened. And, probably, hastily but surely, there will be a review to increase all salaries of workers and employees, that 90-odd-per-cent which voted in favor of the perpetuity of Castro-style Socialism.

As Castro II is convinced that the revolution can be stretched out for an additional 570 years with such citizens as Cubans, a substantial increase of the retirement benefits for our long-suffering senior citizens, the greatest losers of the timid reforms undertaken, must be in the offing.

The new rules of the game are a test for Raúl Castro and his government. It will now remain to be seen whether the embargo or the system is to blame for the disappearance of beef and seafood from the national diet.

Let us grant the autocracy in olive-green fatigues 100 days to implement improvements in the Cubans’ quality of life. The clock is already ticking.

Iván García

Translated by la Val-Davidoise

Activists present proposals for the next phase of US / Cuba relations

From L to R, top row and then bottom row: Antonio Rodiles, Félix Navarro, Berta Soler, Ángel Moya and Ailer González are some of the activists who signed the roadmap with proposals for a new stage between the United States and Cuba.
From L to R, top row and then bottom row: Antonio Rodiles, Félix Navarro, Berta Soler, Ángel Moya and Ailer González are some of the activists who signed the roadmap with proposals for a new stage between the United States and Cuba.

14ymedio, 16 January 2014 – This Friday, almost 300 activists, artists, journalists, academics and trade unionists representing diverse groups within the Cuban opposition presented a roadmap of proposals for what the civil society movement hopes to see beyond the reestablishment of US/Cuba diplomatic relations.

The statement by the Forum for Rights and Freedoms was presented on Thursday at the headquarters of Estado de SATS in Havana.

The principal objective of this initiative is to enable Cubans to be the lead players in the changes that lie ahead for Cuba, and to ensure that the new relationship with the US will bring real changes to benefit civil society on the Island.

“We find ourselves facing two options,” the document states. “One is to accept the mutation of the regime to one of authoritarian capitalism, wherein Cubans will have to resign themselves to pittances, while the heirs of the Castro regime dispose of our rights and assets. The other choice is to demand concrete and measurable changes that will lead to the formation of a true democracy.” continue reading

The proposals focus mainly on human rights and freedoms, and are based on the principles expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They seek to establish a multi-party democracy in which citizens will be able to directly and transparently elect their leaders.

The text outlines seven principal points. It seeks, first of all, the immediate release and overturning of convictions of all political prisoners; the elimination of the concept of “pre-criminal dangerousness” from the Cuban penal code, as well as all other standards that could contribute to justifying arbitrary detentions; and the reestablishment of constitutional-level judicial guarantees that will ensure the implementation of due process in judicial procedures.

In a similar vein, the statement calls for repealing all those articles of the Constitution and laws that violate the International Covenants on Human Rights, and restrict freedoms of expression, association, trade union membership, assembly, movement and conscience.

In conclusion, the document promotes the creation of a series of greatly important laws: a new Law of Association to include a multi-party system and guarantee rights of assembly, as per the standards of the International Labour Organization; a new Communication Media law that guarantees the right of expression and flow of information; and, finally, a new Election Law that emphases a multi-party system and transparent elections.

The Forum for Rights and Freedoms submits this document as a first step towards transitioning to a true democracy, and hopes to have the support of the international community.

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

 

Forum for Rights and Freedoms / Estado de Sats (see endnote)

Announcements made by United States President Barack Obama and his administration have sparked an intense controversy about the Cuban conflict. Many opponents and civil society activists, within the island and in exile, have lamented, especially, the lack of transparency and the unilateral and unconditional nature of the new measures.

It is indisputable and indispensable that Cubans be primarily responsible for the fate of our nation, but we also expect an effective commitment from the democratic community to the defense of fundamental freedoms and the establishment of the Rule of Law in Cuba.

We who experience daily the violations of the Cuban regime and those who from exile have suffered and are suffering the totalitarianism in their home country, are key players in a process of transition. To ignore many of our voices and to act from a single view of the problem, undermines objectivity and endangers any political dialogue.

We are faced with two options. First, to accept the mutation of the regime to an authoritarian capitalism, wherein Cubans will have to resign themselves to pittances, while the heirs of the Castro regime dispose of our rights and wealth. Second, to demand concrete and measurable changes that will lead to the formation of a true democracy.

The demand to restore our freedoms is a prerequisite for a successful political transition. Over these long 56 years of the dictatorship of a single party, there have been multiple demands from activists and the opposition who have called for the full exercise of those freedoms inherent to human beings, and they have paid a high price for these demands. continue reading

The violation of fundamental rights in our country is validated by the current legal system. We therefore consider that the ratification and above all the legal implementation of the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, with their optional protocols, is a key tool as a precondition and roadmap to solve the Cuban conflict. Equally, the rules of the International Labour Organization give us a precise guide as to how to work on the legal system of labor issues and trade union freedoms.

We hope that Latin American countries, the European Union, Canada, the Holy See and the United States, as important political actors in the Cuban situation, join us in this reasonable and urgent demand. We have taken as a reference the partnership agreement signed between the European Union and Central America in 2012, with a clear emphasis on respect for human rights and the promotion of democracy.

Upon ratification of these agreements we propose the following Roadmap to ensure the effective and prompt implementation of the commitments agreed to:

  • Immediate release and cancellation of sentences all political prisoners (Amnesty decreed)
  • With regards to the Constitution, laws, regulations, procedures and administrative practices: repeal of all those articles that violate the International Covenants and relate to the freedoms of expression, association and trade unions, assembly, movement, conscience and religion, economic and cultural. Establish full guarantees for the exercise of those freedoms
  • With regards to the Penal Code: elimination of the concept of pre-criminal dangerousness, as well as all rules that can contribute to arrests, arbitrary detentions and acts of harassment in violation of agreements made
  • Restoration of judicial and constitutional guarantees to the right of due process
  • New Law of Association that includes a multiparty system and guarantees for the freedom of assembly. With regards to trade union rights it must take into account the standards set by the ILO
  • New Media Law that guarantees freedom of expression and the free flow of information
  • New election law (Restoration of National Sovereignty)

We believe that every step must be conditioned on the progress of the roadmap mentioned above, based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Our ultimate goal is to move to a true democracy with political pluralism, judicial independence, freedom and human rights. Where Cubans can through consultation and free and transparent elections, as well as the realization of a constituent assembly, define the destiny of our nation.

All genuine actors of the opposition and civil society, through their projects and demands, within the island and in exile, have to be an active part of any process that seeks a solution to the Cuban conflict.

At stake is the very future of the nation. We exercise the great responsibility that is ours.

Note: The Forum does belong to Estado de Sats (State of Sats). Those signing this Roadmap are artists, journalists, academics, trade unionists and opponents of various groups within the island and in exile.

Signatures are still being accepted:

  1. Ada María López Canino
  2. Adelma Guerra
  3. Adis Niria Dallet Argüelles
  4. Adnaloy Rodríguez Díaz
  5. Adonis Salgado Pérez
  6. Adrian Perez Mendoza
  7. Agustín López canino
  8. Aida Norma Roque
  9. Aidé Gallardo Salazar
  10. Ailer González Mena
  11. Alberto Sanchez Martiatu
  12. Alejandro Raga
  13. Alejandro Garcia Arias
  14. Alexis Pérez Lescailles
  15. Alexis Jardines
  16. Alfredo Guillermo Rodríguez
  17. Alina Brouwer
  18. Alina de la C García
  19. Aliuska Gómez García
  20. Amelia Suarez Naranjo
  21. Ana Torricella Morales
  22. Anay Peñalver Subit
  23. Andrés Pérez Suarez
  24. Ángel De Fana
  25. Ángel Luis Díaz
  26. Ángel Luis Martín
  27. Ángel Moya Acosta
  28. Ángel Santiesteban Prats
  29. Anislay Escalona Polo
  30. Antonio G. Rodiles
  31. Arelis Blanco Coello
  32. Arelis Rodríguez Silva
  33. Ariadna Mena Rubio
  34. Ariel Gonzalez Cuevas
  35. Ariobel Castillo Villalba
  36. Armando Abascal Serrano
  37. Armando Peraza Hernández
  38. Bárbara Rodríguez Vizcaíno
  39. Barbara Viera Rodriguez
  40. Benito Fojaco Iser
  41. Berta Soler Fernández
  42. Borris Larramendi
  43. Camilo Ernesto Olivera Peidro
  44. Caridad Ramírez
  45. Caridad Valdés Soriano
  46. Carlos Lázaro Tamayo Frías
  47. Carlos M Figueroa Álvarez
  48. Carlos M Hernández
  49. Carlos Manuel Figueroa
  50. Carlos Orlando Olivera Martinez
  51. Carlos Rodríguez Seruto
  52. Cecilia Guerra Alfonso
  53. Claudio Fuentes Madan
  54. Cristina Xiomara Duques
  55. Dairon Moisés Torre Paz
  56. Dairy Coello Basulto
  57. Daisy Artiles del Sol
  58. Damaris Reve Rodríguez
  59. Damarys Moya Portieles
  60. Damián Albert Suviaut
  61. Danai López Perdomo
  62. Danaise Muños López
  63. Dandy Lazo
  64. David Águila Montero
  65. Delises González Borrego
  66. Digna Rodriguez Ibanez
  67. Duvier Blanco Acosta
  68. Edely Orlando Suarez
  69. Eduardo González Molina
  70. Eduardo Marcos Pacheco Ortiz
  71. Egberto Ángel Escobedo Morales
  72. Elena Larrinaga
  73. Elías Amor
  74. Enrico M. Santí
  75. Enrique Díaz Rodríguez
  76. Enrique Martínez Marín
  77. Enrique Rafael Valido
  78. Eralidis Frometa Polanco
  79. Ernesto Gutiérrez
  80. Ernesto Fonseca Garcia
  81. Ernesto Hernandez Busto
  82. Esteban Ajetes Abascal
  83. Eugenia Díaz Hernández
  84. Eugenio Hernández Hernández
  85. Evelin Pineda Concepción
  86. Félix Navarro
  87. Félix Perez Palenzuela
  88. Francisco Rangel Manzano
  89. Francisco Valido
  90. Frank Calzón
  91. Frank Cosme Valdés
  92. Gisela Sánchez Baños
  93. Gladis Capote Roque
  94. Gloria Samper Oliva
  95. Gorki Águila
  96. Guillermo Fariñas Hernández
  97. Guillermo García V
  98. Gustavo Garabito Gómez
  99. Haymee Moya Montes de Oca
  100. Hugo Damian Prieto Blanco
  101. Igdariz Pérez Ponciano
  102. Ignacio Blanco Jimenez
  103. Iris Quindelan
  104. Iván Founier Costa
  105. Ivonne de las Mercedes Abreu
  106. Jaime Suchlicki
  107. Jaqueline Bone Hechevarria
  108. Jaqueline Cutiño Leite
  109. Jeovani Díaz López
  110. Jesús Aristides Hernandez Pérez
  111. Joel Brito
  112. Jordanca Borquinelis
  113. Jorge Enrique Carbonell
  114. Jorge Luis Artiles Montiel
  115. Jorge Luis García Ostia
  116. Jorge Luis Romero Becerra
  117. Jorge Luis Trujillo González
  118. Jorge Olivera Castillo
  119. Jorge Rodríguez Rivero
  120. José Agustín Benítez López
  121. José Azel
  122. Jose G. Ramón Castillo
  123. José Díaz silva
  124. José Hernandez Lopez
  125. José Ignacio Brito
  126. José Luis León Pérez
  127. José Ramón Polo Borges
  128. José Raúl Rodriguez Rangel
  129. Juan Alberto de la Nuez Ramirez
  130. Juan Antonio Blanco
  131. Juan Carlos Linares Balmaseda
  132. Juan González Febles
  133. Juan Manuel Lora Vidal
  134. Julia Herrera Roque
  135. Julio Aleaga Pesant
  136. Julio Antonio Ramírez
  137. Julio Herrera Roque
  138. Julio Rojas Portal
  139. Kessell Rodríguez Rodríguez
  140. Kirenia Molina
  141. Laritza Olivares Dinza
  142. Laudelina Alcalde García
  143. Laura Marante
  144. Laura Marante Delgado
  145. Lazara B. Sendiña Recalde
  146. Lazara M Borrego Guzmán
  147. Lázaro Díaz Sánchez
  148. Lazaro Mendoza Garcia
  149. Lázaro Fresneda Fernández
  150. Lázaro Luis Ruíz Hechevarria
  151. Lázaro R Armenteros Martorel
  152. Lázaro Yosvani Montesino
  153. Lázaro Yuri Valle Roca
  154. León Padrón Azcui
  155. Liset Naranjo
  156. Lismeirys Quintana Ávila
  157. Livan Serafín
  158. Lourdes Esquivel
  159. Lucia Molina Villegas
  160. Lucinda González Gómez
  161. Luis Alberto Cruz Silva
  162. Luis Bárbaro Ortega Avenza
  163. Luis Cino Álvarez
  164. Luis Enrique Labrador Díaz
  165. Luis Jesús Gutiérrez Campos
  166. Luisa R Toscano
  167. Maikel Norton Cordero
  168. Mailen González González
  169. Manuel Aguirre Labarrere
  170. Marcelino Lorenzo Fernández
  171. Margarita Rodríguez Díaz
  172. María Acon Sardiñas
  173. María cristina Labrada Varona
  174. María Josefa Sardiñas
  175. María Rosa Rodríguez Molina
  176. Marislaidys Sánchez Vargas
  177. Maritza concepción Salmiento
  178. Mark Alonso Parada
  179. Marta Belquis Rodríguez González
  180. Mayelin Peña Bullain
  181. Mayelin Santiesteban López
  182. Maylin González González
  183. Melvia Aguilera
  184. Mercedes Pérez
  185. Merenis Herry García
  186. Mijail Bonito
  187. Miguel Ángel Tamayo Frías
  188. Miguel Daniel Borroto Vázquez
  189. Miguel Farinas Quey
  190. Mista Ricardo Torres
  191. Nelson Rodríguez Chartrand
  192. Nilo Gilbert Arencibia
  193. Noelvis León López
  194. O Díaz Becerra
  195. Odelin Alfonso torna
  196. Olaida del Castillo Trujillo
  197. Olga Lidia Torres iglesias
  198. Omar Suarez Campo
  199. Orlando Rodriguez Rodriguez
  200. Orlando Villar de Armas
  201. Oscar Luis Milian Reinoso
  202. Oslien Noda Fonseca
  203. Osmal Laffita Rojas
  204. Osmani Díaz Cristo
  205. Oylin Hernández Rodríguez
  206. Paulino Estévez Jiménez
  207. Pedro Fontanal Miranda
  208. Pedro Roig
  209. Quirenia Díaz Argüelles
  210. Rachel Gamboa Campos
  211. Rafael Hernández Blanco
  212. Rafael Rodríguez Rivero
  213. Raisel Rodríguez Rivero
  214. Ramon Alejandro Munoz Gonzalez
  215. Ramón Jiménez Arencibia
  216. Ramón Mor Hernández
  217. Ramon Zamoza Rodriguez
  218. Raquel María Rodríguez Morejón
  219. Raúl Borges Álvarez
  220. Regla Ríos Casado
  221. Reinaldo Figueros
  222. Reinaldo Martínez
  223. Roberto Arsenio López Ramos
  224. Roberto Pupo Tejeda
  225. Rogelio Fabio Hurtado Rodríguez
  226. Rolando Ferrer Espinosa
  227. Rolando Reyes Rabanal
  228. Rolando Rodríguez Rivero
  229. Ronny Gámez Luna
  230. Rosalinda Visiedo Gómez
  231. Roxilene Sotolongo Cruz
  232. Saúl González
  233. Santiago Jordan Rios
  234. Sebastian Arcos
  235. Serafín Moran Santiago
  236. Serafín Moran Santiago
  237. Sergio Girat Estrada
  238. Smith Cantillo Pérez
  239. Sodrelis Torruella Poncio
  240. Sonia Álvarez Campello
  241. Sonia Garro Alfonso
  242. Stewe Maikel Pardo Valdez
  243. Tamara Rodríguez Quesada
  244. Ubaldo Herrero Hernández
  245. Vicente Campanioni
  246. Vicente Sebastián Borges
  247. Virgen Coello Basulto
  248. Vladimir Ortiz Suarez
  249. Vladimir Turru Paez
  250. Xiomara de las M Cruz Miranda
  251. Yadelys Montano León
  252. Yaimel Rodríguez Arroyo
  253. Yamile Borges Hurtado
  254. Yamile Garro Alfonso
  255. Yamile Naranjo
  256. Yaneisi Herrera Cabrales
  257. Yanisel Bosa Garrido
  258. Yanitza Estrada Liranza
  259. Yasil Fernández Denis
  260. Yasmani Barroso Bergolla
  261. Yasmani Barroso Pergolla
  262. Yasmani Cuesta González
  263. Yelky Páez Rodríguez
  264. Yeniset Aguilera
  265. Yoan Guzmán Díaz
  266. Yoisy Jaramillo Sánchez
  267. Yolanda Santana Ayala
  268. Yoraida Peña Padilla
  269. Yosbani Arce Blanco
  270. Yuleidis Ortiz
  271. Yuliet Margarita Rodríguez Báez
  272. Yulinne Tamayo Frías
  273. Yuneisis Coto Casino
  274. Yuniesqui Gainza
  275. Yuniset Amores Aguilera
  276. Yurineisi Alemán
  277. Yurleani Tamayo Martínez
  278. Yuslaidis Balero Concepción
  279. Zaqueo Báez Guerrero
  280. Zenen Daniel Cruz
  281. Zulema Lay

The Park of Lost Connections / 14ymedio, Yosmany Mayeta Labrada

Recreational Technology Center of Santiago de Cuba (14ymedio).
Recreational Technology Center of Santiago de Cuba (14ymedio).

14ymedio, Yosmany Mayeta Labrada, Santiago de Cuba, 16 January 2015 — “Happiness in the home of the poor is brief,” said a young man a few days ago who had been excited about connecting to the Internet through the WiFi network in a park in Santiago de Cuba. The Telecommunications Company of Cuba (ETECSA) denied this Monday the news that users could navigate the web from their phones, tablets or laptops in the new Recreational Technology Center of this city, as the official website Cubaperiodistas (Cuba Journalists) had indicated.

But a worker from the Center itself, who asked to remain anonymous, assures 14ymedio that there has been a change from the initial plan. “At first, the service that would be provided was wireless access to the internet, but after revealing the information and seeing the media coverage that it caused, the authorities decided that they will only supply a connection to the intranet without any cost.” continue reading

The Recreational Technology Center is located near Ferreiro Park and will open this coming January 28. Its facilities will offer services in an Internet navigation room with computers for public use. Also they will teach classes for children, teens and adults who want to learn to use computers and other new technologies.

Specialists consulted by this paper assure that the users obtain more secure connections accessing the Internet with WiFi, thus ETECSA would lose some control over what the web surfers send and receive. Such an advantage would be so remarkable, that many suspected from the first that it was a false report.

Yusmila Reyna, an independent journalist, maintained she had “no hope.” The reporter was skeptical that the Cuban government would offer those facilities “in a place where pro-democratic activism is stronger.”

Poster with WiFi announcement at the Technology Center (14ymedio)
Poster with WiFi announcement at the Technology Center (14ymedio)

Lazaro Borrero, resident of the Mariana de la Torre neighborhood, thinks that the announcement of wireless connection to the worldwide web “had made many people very happy because they thought they would be able to connect directly to the Internet.” Now, with the denial having been made by the state enterprise, in which they also confirmed that they will only offer navigation service on an intranet – that is a network with sites hosted only within Cuba – the young man laments in frustration: “Again, we are back to normal.”

Sulianne Gomez, a young university student, did not believe at first the rumors from fellow students but then thought that if it was true, it would be very positive to “access bibliographies that today we do not have and also to enter sites like Facebook and Twitter with greater speed.” Currently the connection that university students use in their educational center is characterized by low quality and slowness, plus several digital portals and social networks are blocked.

In this situation, the illegal use of wireless networks was a palliative for some. Liudmila Cedeno, computer enthusiast, used to connect to a wireless network clandestinely. “Fifty of us gathered in the Plaza de Marte Park near the Rex hotel, which had an open network, and with the Freedom application we accessed the Internet.” However, “after several months of doing it, the government authorities together with the National Police decided to come down on the people who were gathered there.”

Another young man who did not want to give his name and confessed to being one of those who met to download, taking advantage of the hotel’s open signal, says that he managed to watch the police seize laptops, tablets, and mobile phones, besides imposing fines of up to 2,000 pesos on those who used that connection without authorization.

The hope of those who lacked that chance focused then on the possible service that the Recreational Technological Center would offer. Ridel Brea says that all the teens with smart phones had created great expectations. “They were like crazy people searching for telephones with WiFi to be able to connect, and now what they have is great despair,” he laments.

The chance for a wireless connection to the global network would have been an alternative to the few navigation rooms that the province has, which usually are jammed by high demand and the deterioration of their infrastructure. Santiaguans lament the lost connections that appeared in the headlines of an official media but, at least for now, it does not appear that they are going to reach the park.

Translated by MLK

Personal Epitaph to Fidel Castro / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

By Jeovany Jimenez Vega

“Here rests a man who died millions of times” should be the epitaph engraved on the marble that finally covers him. By then, some will feel despondent, as if the earth were caving in on them; while others, no doubt, will receive the news with terrestrial joy. But absolutely everyone will be in agreement about something: that on that day the most loved and most hated man of the last two centuries in Cuba will have ceased to exist.

But Fidel Castro will not have died that day, because before then, little by little, he will have suffered millions of prior deaths. For some, for example, he has been dead since that first morning when he “couldn’t find” the way from Moncada while another group of reliable men were being sacrificed in the assault; and for others, he died when he legalized the death penalty at the beginning of 1959, every time echoes of gunfire from La Cabaña were heard; or perhaps a few months after that, when amid all the mystery the sea swallowed Camilo’s hat–and he was pronounced dead after just three days of dubious “searching.”

continue reading

But later, thousands of Cubans buried Fidel Castro when, after having denied it many times, he suddenly announced out of nowhere that he was communist–even after having accused “traitor,” Huberto Matos, in a brief trial, of being the very same thing–and declaring without apology the socialist character of a Revolution that didn’t belong to him, but rather to the people listening to him with surprise.

Some days later, he would die again for other thousands of Cubans when they learned about the day Che Guevara died, abandoned by Manila [his code word for Havana], in the desolation of the Bolivian highlands.

Certainly for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Fidel Castro died once and for all that fateful day in March of ’68, when the “Revolutionary Offensive” usurped every family-owned business without the slightest compensation—an act of vulgar and unpunished looting that betrayed those who, just 15 years earlier, he had called “the people” in his self-defense during the Moncada trial.

Also for millions of people in the Third World, he must have died in ’79, when as president of the Non-Aligned Movement, he preferred to be a chameleon and said nothing while Afghanistan, a member state of that world organization, endured an insidious attack by insurgent troops of the Soviet army, the unconditional ally of the incorrigible bearded one. Or perhaps, for those same millions, he already had died slightly more than a decade earlier, when he applauded the emergence of those same Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia there to extinguish fervor for the Prague Spring.

But not all of his deaths were so grandiloquent and transcendental, because Fidel Castro also suffered many routine deaths during those dark decades: he died every time a Cuban was humiliated at the door of an off-limits hotel or of one of those elitist stores open only to tourists; each time family members were separated or a life was lost at sea because there was no legal way to emigrate from their prison; each time sincerity was punished and, under his personal aegis, hypocrisy and duplicity were praised; every time a defenseless Cuban was beaten while trying to exercise rights that had been taken away, each time a repudiation rally was carried out; he died every time a father was imprisoned or one of his sons was robbed of his future; the great dictator also died with each truncated dream and with each empty plate.

Nonetheless, it’s certain that when the death of Fidel Castro is finally announced–the death of his physical waste, I mean–the news will make headlines everywhere. Then every editorial board or columnist should take some time for reflection, because beyond all the love or hate generated by the eternal bearded one, it is imperative that we learn once and for all the lesson, so that no other people, ever, under no circumstance or latitude whatsoever, once again deposits the same power in the hands of a single man, regardless of how beautiful, just or sublime the cause he proposes appears to be.

But when Fidel Castro suffers his definitive death, it will inevitably be the day when Cuba wakes up with the sun of truth and, with its light, opens Pandora’s box: only then will we be able to know the exact magnitude of his megalomania, re-examine his true face, the mask hidden beneath so many decades of false rhetoric and unmeasured devotion to a personality with sick ways resulting in a pathology of character that extended across an entire society for more than half a century.

He whose dream was to pass for a genius will have left in his barren path nothing less than a country in the most absurd financial ruin and, what’s worse, buried in an abyss of moral ruins. And, if the gospel promises, “by their fruit you will recognize them,” then for that day, on which he will definitively die, my people will finally calibrate in all its magnitude the reach of his betrayal and his proverbial demagoguery.

Precisely now, when all around him there is a ridiculous pact to be silent about facts of indisputable transcendence, while many are making jokes about the idea of his death or his tacitly accepted decrepitude, I raise my prayer to heaven: may God offer him many more years of life, enough so that any day in our near future he shall be granted, in the midst of his well deserved mental fog, intermittent lapses of absolute lucidity.

I would ask God for those days, or minutes, of total lucidity for the tyrant, but it’s important that there be enough of them so that he who caused us so much harm has crystal clear awareness of how my country and my people raised themselves up from the ruins as soon as they could break free; as it will be in the future, the homeland was truly better once emancipated from his despotism.

I would ask God for those few days of lucidity, before returning to ash what was ash, so He may again submerge him in darkness to dodder without glory, ruminating on his permanent defeat. Then, yes, Fidel Castro will depart for the eternal misery that he deserves, as a tenuous and embarrassing memory…and not exactly absolved by History.

Translated by: Kathy Fox

15 January 2015

 

Some Questions / Fernando Damaso

(29 July 2013) Although the Cuban government, since the beginning of the scandal of the North Korean ship carrying obsolete weapons for repair from Cuba, has been extremely careful, making no public statements, trying to lower its profile and keep it simple, which would adversely affect its relations in the region and internationally, the appearance yesterday, the 28th, in the official press of a letter from the historical leader, dated 27 July 2013 at 6:30 in the morning, where he refers to the matter indirectly (“Recently they tried to slander our Revolution, trying to present the Chief of State and the Cuban Government, deceiving the United Nations and other heads of state accusing it of underhanded conduct”) raises some questions. continue reading

If the Head of State and Government refrains from addressing the issue, possibly waiting for the opinion of the United Nations, why doesn’t the historic leader do same? Also, why establish a priori, before the results of the UN investigation, which constitutes a slander? The method of accusing first in the role of a victim, which gave results in the past, is no longer effective.

If the letter was signed on the 26th at six hours and five minutes in the morning, why in its first paragraph does it refer to the 26 as if it were a date to come (and it had already been July 26 for six hours and five minutes)? And it also speaks of delegations who plan to travel to Cuba, which they had already done and were in Santiago, as the event (commemorating the 60th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada barracks) would begin within 55 minutes.

These inconsistencies are sobering and keep on the table the main question: who has the responsibility for the screw-up?

29 July 2013