Category: Reinaldo Escobar

This September 4 is the first step in a process that will end on February 24, 2018, when Cuban citizens will find out who has been designated to fill the seats of the Council of State, particularly its president. This Monday the process starts as a “pilot experience” in a single constituency of each of the country’s 168 municipalities. Voting will take place in the other constituencies during the month of September.

The Government is concerned that these candidate nominating assemblies will allow an unwelcome candidate to make it through. Not only do they fear an opponent who belongs to an anti-government organization, but in a secluded district someone might appear who has the reputation of not applauding with sufficient enthusiasm.

To prevent such a thing from happening, the allegorical appeal of the Pioneers as guardians of the ballot boxes is of little use. With plenty of time in advance, a harsh-demeanored seguroso—State Security agent—will have visited anyone who intends to run independently.

It will not be necessary to show the ‘instruments’ to the nonconforming, it will be enough to warn of the fatal consequences that such daring might bring. Someone will remind them that they have a grandparent admitted to the hospital, a child who hopes to be a college student some day, a brother who is applying for a license to be self-employed, or a pig that fattens in their yard without permission.

If the threats do not take effect and the disobedient show up to be proposed in the nomination assembly, the work will be finished by the militants of the zone’s Party nucleus, who will have been schooled in the darkest corners of the biographies of the intrepid candidates.

Without modesty or shame they will point out some baseness such as “if he has been unfaithful to his partner, how can he be expected to be loyal to his constituents”; or mention that he buys on the black market or never shows up to perform voluntary work. Finally, the duly warned participants will be asked by a public show of hands whether the discredited aspirant will be nominated as a candidate.

On this occasion a new resource will come into play. The youth brigades of the 9th Congress of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) have programmed their agenda of activities precisely during the time period in which the nominating assemblies are held.

The initiative, which aims to carry out volunteer work and tour historical sites in tribute to the great CDR event, counts among its efforts “to support the assemblies where the people propose their candidates,” and everyone knows what this means. As Red Guards they will be watching over the purity of the proposed from the very genesis of the process.

The ballots will only bear the names of the most obedient and when the time comes to deposit them in the polls, the innocent Pioneers will have nothing to worry about.

Translator’s note: Cuban children are initiated into the Communist Party’s Pioneer movement in early elementary school and continue until adolescence, when they are expected to join the Young Communist League. The Pioneer’s motto, shouted by the children at school assemblies, is “Pioneers for communism: We will be like Che!”

Not satisfied with these assertions, Diaz-Canel insists on violating the law that regulates elections in the country, confessing to his audience, made up of cadres of the PCC, that “we are now taking every possible step to discredit this, so that people sense there is a risk. ”

The “favored youngest son” of the power elite does not hesitate to propose actions to block the opposition candidates, thus committing a crime under the current electoral law

Coincidentally, last Thursday the newspaper Granma reported on the actions that are considered crimes against the process. Among them is to violate article 171 of the legislation, which states that “every elector will only take into account, in order to determine which candidate he will cast his vote in favor of, the candidate’s personal circumstances, prestige, and ability to serve the people.”

The rules in force are strict: “The propaganda that will be offered will be the dissemination of the biographies, accompanied by reproductions of the image of the candidates.” No individual or organization is entitled to add details about any programs they support, their political tendencies, or any other publicity, to these few elements.*

The ruling party also insists that the party does not nominate any candidate, an assertion that has just been denied by Diaz-Canel when he reveals that the organization will discredit opponents or, and it’s the same thing, will post negative propaganda against them and boycott their candidacy.

The absence of electoral campaigns has been offered up years by the Government as one of the basic principles that differentiates the Cuban electoral process — which is “alien, in principle, to all forms of opportunism, demagogy and politicking” — from contemporary international political practice.

Behind the scenes there are other powerful forces: intimidation of the electorate, vigilance of State Security and tight monitoring by the Party

Beyond Cuba’s borders, campaigns of this type are based on two essential components: highlighting a candidate’s values ​​and discrediting political opponents. Unfortunately, on too many occasions the competition between programs takes second place, while personal attacks and insults prevail, intended to insure that “people have a perception of risk” of what would happen if the candidate being attacked is elected to a public position.

On the island, the Popular Power elections are presented as the upper echelon in democracy as they do not appeal to clashes between antagonists, television debates and advertising paraphernalia. However, behind the scenes there are other powerful forces: intimidation of the electorate, vigilance of State Security and tight monitoring by the Party.

Many citizens dreamed that the upcoming elections, which will end with Raul Castro’s farewell to the presidency, would be governed by a new electoral law that would allow election campaigns between different parties. Rather than relying on such changes to be driven by the powers-that-be, initiatives like #Otro18 (Another 2018) and Candidates for Change set out to promote them from the bottom up.

The fear of losing political control has, however, prevented such transformations and has led Diaz-Canel to commit an electoral crime. It is paradoxical that what the current law considers an infraction is what opponents are demanding be included in a future electoral law: the ability to run a political campaign, to present proposals, and to publicly discredit the adversary.

*Translator’s note: Briefly, election campaigning is illegal in Cuba. Candidate biographies are drafted by the Communist Party and posted, with the candidate’s photo, on a single sheet of paper in a window in the candidate’s district. In the rare instance of a candidate not approved by the party making it through the first round, the official biography will make assertions along the lines of “the candidate is a counterrevolutionary who accepts funds from foreign sources.” An example of such a biography can be seen here.

The revulsion in the face of the attack on Barcelona’s La Rambla now becomes energetic but not unanimous, because revolutionaries find it hard to condemn such actions. The reason for this timidity is simple: Marxist ideology is based on the philosophical principle that the elimination of the opposition — by means of violent action — is the only formula for solving an antagonistic contradiction.

In his well-known Message to the Peoples of the World, published in April 1967 in the journal Tricontinental, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara defined in a radical way the sentiment that should accompany every revolutionary soldier: “Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine.”

As if he is advising the jihadists of today, the guerrilla concluded his recommendation warning, “We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war.” A phrase that fits with the scene of the pedestrians who were walking along, last Thursday, on the Paseo Marítimo in Cambrils, unaware that the terrorists were preparing to turn their stroll into tragedy.

Revolutionary morality justifies murder and can be used by members of any political or religious sect. There is no difference between killing in the name of social justice, the supremacy of a race, or the imposition of a faith. Hate is intrinsic to the Marxist dialectic because, in the face of the “other,” the position that promotes this ideology does not come to accept it, but to annihilate it. Where the two do not fit, the solution is not to enlarge the space but to eliminate the excess.

Revolutionaries suspect that if they renounce this maxim they will lose the power they obtained by force, and that by showing themselves too tolerant they weaken their authority. A guerrilla, although disguised in the suit and tie of a statesman, knows that he cannot undermine the legitimacy of the armed struggle or violent acts, because they are part of his ideological DNA, they are in each of the chromosomes of his political actions.

These radicals, once they have society under control, undertake another form of extermination against their political opponents. They cut off their economic autonomy, prohibit their free association through laws, prevent them from expressing themselves in the media, and enact laws that penalize their disagreement. They are socially murdered.

The attempt to impose a single religion is similar to that of implementing the doctrine of a single party. In both cases, the promoters of fundamentalism are willing to denigrate, silence and kill “the infidels.”

That concept of “Revolution” – which is presented as his political will – is so ambiguous that it can be taken both as a result obtained and as a goal to be achieved. This theoretical hodgepodge is evidence of the lack of depth of the author’s thinking and his tendency to political opportunism, which allowed him to create slogans to encapsulate different moments.

Official media reproduce such a definition as a method for achieving dissimilar goals, the final fruit of a process or a tangle of moral values ​​close to the commandments of good behavior. However, in the absence of the violent component – which typifies any academic definition of Revolution – lies its main failure, to which is added the absence of the class approach that could be expected from a Marxist-Leninist.

The main teaching Fidel Castro has left us, which teachers warn their students they should pay attention to because “it will be on the test,” is voluntarism. The Commander-in-Chief instilled the idea that whomever is willing to defend a position at the risk of his own and others’ deaths, becomes invincible.

It does not matter if the cause to be defended is erroneous or valid. The cardinal rule, according to this theorem, is to accept a goal with unlimited enthusiasm and persevere in its realization at whatever price necessary.

Examples are the eradication of all vestiges of private property during the Revolutionary Offensive of 1968, the 1970 sugar harvest which attempted to yield 10 million tons of sugar, the idle effort to genetically transform livestock,or the purpose of combining study with work in the forgotten Schools in the Countryside. Along with these is a long list in which we should mention the energy revolution, the municipalization of universities and the extension of the cultivation of moringa.

Intensive grazing brought to Cuba by a French scientist, construction ‘microbrigades’, consecration in scientific research centers, special programs of rabbits, geese or buffalo, the doctor for 120 families, all called by the name ‘Plan Fidel’ and many other initiatives carried the personal imprint of one who considered himself an indisputable specialist on any subject he was superficially interested in.

Nothing and no one could stop Fidel Castro, except his own indiscipline and the sudden reluctance that came over him when he discovered some new object of obsession.

A monument recently erected in Crimea to his memory says that “victory is perseverance,” a bitter reminder that Fidel Castro was the worst disciple of his own teachings. He was only consistent in the act of never admitting that he was defeated, as defined in his favorite motto: “turning the setback into victory.”

Athletes may be able to inherit their legacy to win a competition seemingly against them, but in politics and economics it is nefarious to obsess over an apparently miraculous solution.

One should not persevere in the error, is also what we learned from Fidel Castro.

Many business owners fear losing their investment if draconian requirements are applied to them, but those principally affected may be the consumers. They are facing the risk that the good service and better quality that the private sector has achieved in areas such as food service, lodging, appliance repair and transportation, among many others, could be a thing of the past.

This week’s decision was preceded by official statements about illegalities and tax evasion. It is expected, then, that the upcoming regulations will aim at prioritizing the fight against violators, rather than seeking solutions such as the establishment of wholesale markets, commercial import permits or tax incentives.

Punishment and penalization seem to be the only ways in which the Cuban government deals with its citizens. On detecting irregularities the only way the government resolves them is with coercive measures, such as suspending the issuing of licenses, an increase in the number of inspectors, or the demonization of the economic prosperity achieved by the most successful.

This confrontational attitude shows that autonomous forms of management continue to be a necessary evil for the ruling party, while the figure of the small businessman remains an antagonist of the “New Man,english beach blue flag status

” which was once intended to be created. The enemy does not land on the coast or found opposition parties, but offers tasty pizzas at home, manages beauty salons and opens websites to promote its services.

The government is trapped in a contradiction. On the one hand the government wants to prevent the private sector from growing too fast, but it exhibits the sector as an example of the progress of the reforms promoted by Raúl Castro. At the end of the first half of this year, the growth of those engaged in self-employment, with 567,982 workers, has been used in international forums and debates as a sign of openness and development.

However, that figure may be affected in the coming months. When the licenses returned by those who were disappointed and failed to succeed exceeds the number of licenses issued for new affiliates. It is easy to predict a decrease or at least a paralysis in the volume. Stagnation and the duration of this slowdown will have negative repercussions on the exercise and influence of the private sector in the national economy. A digression that could cause enthusiasm to decline and paranoia to grow.

From this collection of names to what are clearly police matters, a process that should have a merely civic focus is entertwined.

One of the least known features of the island’s electoral system is precisely this lack of a permanent and independent entity that is responsible for registering voters and that deals with all the formal aspects of an electoral roll. Instead of that, it remains in the hands of a notoriously political organization like the CDRs.

In the announcements made by the official press on the elections, this detail, of transcendence importance, is ignored. The fact that, at the base of the People’s Power one can trace the signs of ideological control over this governing body, is not something that the media controlled by the Communist Party want to shine a light on.

Every time elections are called, the commissions that bring them to fruition begin to form, and after fulfilling their functions they dissolve. This process is a substitution for the National Electoral Councils with elected members that exist in other countries, and that answer to the voters and possible observers.

The 1992 Electoral Law gives the Council of State the responsibility to designate the National Electoral Commission, which, in turn, appoints members in the provinces. These make up the municipal commissions that select the members at the district and precinct level. They are the ones who choose the members of the Electoral College for each precinct.

As in a sequence of Chinese boxes of which no trace will be left, each of these commissions is dissolved as soon as the voting is over. They will only be constituted again, presumably with other members, when the Council of State calls for new elections.

In each municipality, the Registry of Voters is prepared with those who have the legal capacity to exercise the right to vote. The Law is ambiguous when it expresses that the citizen is registered, without specifying whether they do it of their own volition or if, without being consulted, they are included in the list.

A few days before the polls are opened, the printed voters lists are posted in public places. Next to the name of each voter, one can read their date of birth and personal address. In all the years that this method has been in use, few have commented on the violation of privacy represented by the disclosure of these private data.

The information is displayed for at least 30 days to provide an opportunity to correct errors or request the exclusion or inclusion of a person. A demand that can be made by the interested party, their representative, or an immediate family member.

There are very few cases of citizens who request to be excluded by on the basis of some kind of political disagreement. In fact, those who have some inclination to opposition are often erased from the lists because they did not vote in the previous elections. To demand the right to be registered is the only way that abstention is recorded in case of not voting in the elections.

Beginning on September 21, while residents of a neighborhood line up to buy bread or the latest products arriving in the ration market, the will see these election registers. Few of those who look for their names on these lists will

Instead of questioning the creation of the lists, the majority of voters will take advantage of them to discover that Roberto’s second dame is Filomeno, or that the single lady on the fifth floor just turned 50. They will find out that Yolandita was registered at birth under the name Ricardo, and that Teresa’s husband is not registered at his wife’s address. And so political control will have connected its first link.

 

Juan Goberna, one of its founders, woke up one morning and was not even aware that it was daylight. After several operations that failed to restore his sight, he decided to start using a cane. In those early days in the dark he approached Anci hoping to take a Braille course and receive a computer program that read texts aloud.

Accompanied by his wife, Goberna arrived at the NGO’s office in the municipality of Central Havana with his identity card in his pocket, five pesos in stamps and a certificate that declared him “legally blind.” “What revolutionary organizations do you belong to?” asked the clerk filling out his form.

The activist still shows indignation when he remembers the scene. “I told her I did not belong to any and from there everything changed,” he explains to 14ymedio. The official informed him that his case had to be referred to the Ministry of Justice to verify if he belonged to any “human rights” group.

Two weeks later they told him that he could not be a member of Anci because the statutes do not allow the disaffected in its ranks. After several attempts and appeals to different entities claiming his right to membership, Goberna has only had silence for answer.

Last year luck smiled on him. During a trip to Peru, organized by the Institute for Political Freedom (IPL), the idea arose, along with other activists, to create an independent entity to “visualize the difficulties faced by people with disabilities and promote a change of thinking towards them.” The organization does not discriminate against anyone because of “their physical, sensorial, intellectual, cultural or ideological characteristics.”

Today, the network has 15 active members and has managed to have representation in several provinces. In September of last year, some of these pioneers attended the VIII International Congress of Persons with Disabilities, held in Medellín, to learn about the work developed in different countries of the region.

The Network collects testimonies from people who are in a precarious situation and are victims of institutional or family neglect and has also identified at least six cases of violation of the right to join Anci, Aclifim or Ansoc for ideological reasons.

Last Saturday, during their last meeting, the members of the independent group proposed to disseminate the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to which Cuba is a signatory and whose content is scarcely known on the island. In addition, they want to disseminate updated concepts about disability, accessibility and inclusive culture, among others.

For Susana Más, an independent journalist and member of the Network, “it is unacceptable that people working in the media, intellectuals and artists who are supposed to be up to date in the use of language, work outside these concepts.” The reporter opts for a “sensitization campaign” around the term “person with disability, instead of disabled.”

Relative to the NGOs set up by the government, The Inclusive Culture Network does not consider itself an opposition organization or an enemy entity. “What we would most like to do is to cooperate with these entities, not in the spirit of disqualification or competition, but as something complementary,” insists Goberna.

For the moment, the Network is dedicated to highlighting attitudes and denouncing the existence of architectural barriers, so that those with a disability are not seen as sick, and for those around them to shed their discriminatory prejudices, indifference or pity.

The biggest difficulty they have encountered so far is the negative attitude of the institutions they go to in search of information or to file complaints: the first thing they are always asked is whether they are authorized or if they belong to an official entity.

The call for citizens to participate in these assemblies is traditionally issued by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) Organization, with a clear political origin and a strong ideological affiliation. From wall signs, personal reminders, to written citations, all are a part of the strategies to call people to vote.

In the days leading up to the meetings, the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) militants who live in each zone meet to agree on the positions depending on the directions that come from the higher levels. In these meetings they are warned how they should act in case any disaffection toward the Revolution is proposed, and which candidate enjoys the PCC’s sympathy.

Only voters of the district have the right to propose and be proposed in the assemblies of each area. In order to do so they have to ask for the floor, speak in the order granted to them and briefly explain the reason for their proposal. The nominee must show his agreement with being proposed and only then will he or she be put to a vote.

All voters may express their opinion for or against the candidate and the vote is made directly and publicly, in the same order in which each candidate was proposed. Each attendee has the right to vote for only one nominee and in the event of a tie a new nomination is initiated.

When the Electoral Law in its article 83 remarks that the vote is “public,” it minimizes one of the most important keys of the electoral system of the Island and that make it more controllable by the powers that be. At that initial stage of nomination, voters must express their preference by show of hands, that is with their faces uncovered. In a country full of masks and fears, few dare to show their neighbors a preference for a critical citizen.

When in one of these assemblies an elector proposes a candidate with a reputation of being politically uncomfortable, he knows that, immediately, the militants of the neighborhood will request the floor to discredit the nominee. The mechanism of “cauterization” of any nomination that does not conform to the tastes of the ruling party will be activated immediately.

In the midst of the meeting, a member of the PCC will warn in a loud voice, “this man is in the pay of the empire,” and someone else will speak up to express his doubts because someone “who feels himself to be Cuban votes in favor of this mercenary…” The performance seldom has to be carried out, because the instinct for self-preservation dissuades the majority of voters from suggesting a dissident for delegate.

They find it so difficult to encounter someone who, from dissenting positions, aspires to be a delegate, or to find another who dares to propose one to the assembly. How many will raise their hands in favor of a dissident after the militants make it clear they do not like the nomination? Almost nobody. This simple trick will have ensured the first and most important purge of the electoral system.

To ensure the minimum secrecy required by the vote, it would be enough to distribute a simple piece of paper among each of the participants so they could write the order of their candidate preferences. But that would add the privacy that the ruling party wants to avoid at all costs.

This variant would have the added value of eliminating the chance that someone, in the midst of counting the raised hands, violates – consciously or otherwise – the provision that allows each person to vote for only one candidate. In short, it would smooth out the process and make it more democratic and effective.

Not for nothing, was the elimination of voting on the nomination of candidates by a show of hands one of the proposals most repeated by those who believe that the current electoral process would be governed by new legislation as promised by Raul Castro in February 2015.

Changing what looks like a detail of slight importance, a methodological pedantry, would open a space for the plurality of citizen participation; it would allow us to express ourselves without fear on a critical topic: the presence of different thinking among the base.

Keeping the first piece of the Cuban electoral framework as it is now is only a way of perpetuating the fear that harms the civic action of a good part of the population. It is precisely the suppliers of this fear who prefer to leave things as they are.

Perhaps the fear its becoming irrelevant led its drafters to prefer the present tense to formulate precepts and principles for future application. A grammatical style that has confused more than one naïf, who took what they dreamed of achieving and projected it as already done.

To avoid pressures, the managers of the document also clarified that it isn’t about a “finished and static template,” but rather an “active and perfectible pattern.” This condition avoids dogmatic interpretations, but it also gives the Conceptualization a very comfortable elasticity for those who implement it.

Despite the vagueness of certain concepts, one of the statements in the text provoked strong arguments from the beginning. Item 104 of the original version read: “The concentration of property and wealth in natural or legal persons is not allowed.” A bucket of cold water for the entrepreneurs.

During the months that the document was discussed at Communist Party headquarters and among other chosen ones, no other matter provoked more debate. Some warned of the dangers of categorically denying this accumulation of wealth, and others pointed to it as the end of the present system. The latter just lost the game.

The new version softens the prohibition and clarifies that the concentration of property and material and financial wealth in non-state natural or legal persons will be regulated. The change in nuance shows that pragmatism prevailed above orthodoxy.

However, there is also no carte blanche so that a citizen can create a restaurant franchise or purchase numerous homes for rent. The Conceptualization is not deprived of the excessive scrupulousness of the official discourse that praises humility and stigmatizes the prosperous, but nor does it allow itself to be owned by those who promote strict egalitarianism.

If in the initial version of a starring element of the text was the absence of the concept of “exploitation of man by man,” whose eradication is the main objective of the socialist system, now it continues to be present through a euphemism.

In Cuba, “ownership by non-state ownership and management of part of the surplus of the work of contracted persons is allowed,” it reads; but immediately clarifies that “socialist relations of production prevail.” Something very different from what happens in “social systems based on the exploitation of the work of others,” according to this new version.

With its patches and changes, the Conceptualization has ended up being a demonstration of the different tendencies of those who participated in its final development. A sequence of ideas to please both reformers and conservatives, to sit well with both dogmatists and innovators. The editors intuited that Thomas More did not get his head cut off for writing Utopia, but for being disloyal to the King.

The concept of privatization that is presented in its pages is a good example of these contradictions. It talks of “temporary transfer of ownership or management of certain means of production owned by all the people to non-state economic actors” and goes on to warn immediately that such a transfer should not “compromise the principles of our socialism.”

To calm those who fear the distribution of the pie, the document pointed out in its first version that the state retains the capacity for strategic decision or domination over these means. Something softened in the final version, where it “maintains the exercise of the principal powers that correspond to him by virtue of the status of representative of the owner.”

The changes in the text show the fluctuations in the coming course and also its anchors in the past. The current Conceptualization presents as “particularly relevant antecedents” the Programmatic Platform born from the First Congress of the Communist Party and the Program of the Cuban Communist Party that was issued in 1986. At first, however, the document only recognized as precedent “History Will Absolve Me.”

The nuances introduced in the new version are the result of what has happened in the last year: the death of former President Fidel Castro, the crisis of the leftist governments in Latin America and the coming to power of an unpredictable actor in the United States. The document that was born to be letters chiseled in marble now looks like an elastic canvas full of patches and gaps.

If, in addition, self-employed workers were allowed to legally import and export commercially, with the required customs facilities, then these forms of management would be on an equal footing with the state companies, and be able to perform efficiently.

The underreporting of income to evade taxes is a problem that exists in most countries where citizens must pay tribute to the state treasury. As a rule, evasion of these payments is seen as a dishonest act where taxes are fair, and as an act of self-defense where the state tries to suck the blood out of entrepreneurs.

When governments have the vocation to grow the private sector, they reduce taxes, whose only role is to redistribute wealth and increase the financial capacity for social spending, but not to act as a drag to reduce individuals’ ability to grow and prosper.

Raúl Castro’s most profound mistake, when he decided to expand self-employment and the experiment of non-agricultural cooperatives, has been to do so with the purpose of depriving the state of “non-strategic activities, to generate jobs, deploy initiatives and contribute to the efficiency of the national economy in the interest of the development of our socialism.”

This opportunistic vision, of using an element alien to the economic model as the fuel to advance it, generates insurmountable contradictions. An entrepreneur who starts a business is interested in increasing his profits (according to Karl Marx) and growth. He does not care that hiring workers will reduce unemployment and that their particular efficiency will have repercussions on the country’s economy. Much less, that his good performance contributes to perfecting a system that takes advantage of his success in a circumstantial way.

The entrepreneur dreams that in his country there are laws that protect his freedom to do business, that his money is safe in the banks, and that he has the right to import and export, to receive investments, to open branches, to patent innovations without fear of unappealable seizures or sudden changes in the rules of the game. Without fearing a report will arrive on the president’s desk detailing how many times he has traveled abroad.

The entrepreneur would also like to be able to choose as a member of parliament someone proposing such laws and defending the interests of the private sector, which he does not see as a necessary evil, but as the main engine to advance the country. Not understanding this is Raul Castro’s principal mistake.

During the so-called Special Period in Time of Peace the business sold only to the distinguished workers awarded “vanguard” status and to newly married couples

That form of the socialist marketing could not be sustained for long and with the gentle winds of economic reforms the ground floor of the building was set up for private sector retailers to sell sandals, household utensils, objects for religious rituals and clothing.

Many tourists also came to acquire an ashtray with the face of Che Guevara or canvases from which shone the skin of beautiful mulatas. But a month ago the sellers were reassigned among the soulless state stores.

The authorities justify the relocations with the deterioration of the building. However, private individuals who paid rent for space in the building insist that their contracts with the state Empresa de Comercio stipulated that 30% of lease proceeds would go to repairs, which were never made.

At the end of 2012, the sellers were informed that restoration work would begin on the building, but after a few weeks and the placement of wooden beams to prop up the top floor, the works did not continue.

In order not to lose their clientele, the vendors proposed that the local government allow them to become a non-agricultural cooperative (CNA), a form of economic management which, as of January this year, had 397 examples throughout the country dedicated to food, personal and technical services.

However, the initiative did not prosper and for several weeks now the retailers have been relocated in nearby stores such as Cancha, Florida and Sublime, smaller and more poorly located.

“I have lost a lot of money in this move and also this place does not have the minimum necessary conditions,” says a clothing saleswoman with a counter in the Cancha store who preferred anonymity. However, she acknowledges that “Fin de Siglo also had problems because of the heat, the lack of windows and the constant obstructions in the sewer pipes.”

The merchant believes that if they had let the tenants invest the conditions of the ground floor would have been improved, since each year the premises collected about 3 million Cuban pesos (roughly $120k US) in rent receipts. “Why didn’t they use part of that for reconstruction?” she protests.

The merchant believes that if they had let the tenants invest the conditions of the ground floor would have been improved, since each year the premises collected about 3 million Cuban pesos in rent

Some vendors have placed handmade posters in the windows of Fin de Siglo alerting customers to their new locations. There is no obvious construction work taking place in the building but all the outlets and the bulbs from the ceiling lights are missing.

Carlos Alberto, a young jeweler wants an explanation. “When someone finds out what they are going to do there, let them come and tell me.” The artisan doubts the official version and maintains that the building will be “remodeled to become a store selling in convertible pesos” – that is to the well-to-do and tourists – a speculation which the authorities of the municipality of Central Havana do not want to comment on.

At the Sublime establishment, a CD vendor predicts a worse future for the emblematic store. “It’s going to be just like the Duplex cinema, a block away, which one day was closed because it had a problem in the bathroom and today is a ruin,” he says.

Lacking the natural beauty of the north coast, with no functioning industries and no important crops, the area is experiencing times of hardship that have worsened in recent years. On the entrance road, a rusted out anchor gives visitors a preview of the lethargy they will find here.

Only 24 miles separate the fishermen’s village from the municipal center, but it takes between four and six hours to cover the route due to the poor state of the road and the lack of public transport. On both sides of the road, the invasive marabou weed rises defiantly.

“Without tourists there is no money,” says Bururu, an informal realtor. 

Lack communication characterizes the village. Nowhere among its crowded streets has a public telephone been installed and cell phones only manage to pick up a signal near the medical clinic, due to the poor coverage of the area.

The lack of mobility also sinks the area’s small businesses. The private restaurant Comida Criollo barely survives after being opened five years. Alfredo, the paladar’s chef, says that “from time to time a foreign tourist arrives.” People who “explore every corner with a map in hand,” but they are fewer and fewer.

Of the 4 million visitors who arrived in Cuba last year, only a few dozen came to this coast without white sands or crystal clear water, where to take a dip the bather must wear shoes to avoid the mud, stones and mangrove roots.

“Without tourists there is no money,” Bururu, an informal realtor, tells 14ymedio. The high number of homes for sale has caused a collapse of prices in the area. “A two-room house with a covered porch, cistern and garden can cost less than 1,000 CUC (roughly $1,000 US),” he says.

“People do not want to stay because there is nothing to do here”

“They put a jacuzzi in the bathroom and all the furniture inside is from the mall,” says Bururú while pointing to a newly painted building. The dealer takes his time to describe the characteristics of each house, hoping to make at least one sale.

“People do not want to stay because there is nothing to do here,” he explains to the 14ymedio. The man blames the stampede on the fact that “there are no recreational options and also nowhere to work”. “[The fishing] is not as good as in other places, so it gives you something to eat but not enough to make a living,” he emphasizes.

Near the coastline, a fisherman removes the scales from a sea bass he caught that morning. “I promised it to a family that wants to celebrate the birthday of their youngest son,” he tells a woman who inquires about the price of fish.

“The fishing is very affected since they built the embankment,” says the fisherman. “This area used to get a lot of oysters, but that has decreased a lot,” he adds.

The coast has also been affected by rising sea levels, to the extent that rumors of relocating the village have increased in recent years

The narrow and rugged access road divides the wetland in two and it has lost a part of the mangroves in its southern area. “Experts came here to research it and said that cutting the flow of water had increased the salinity and that is killing the mangroves.”

In 2009 the United Nations Small Grants Program provided more than $40,000 in funding for ecosystem recovery, but eight years later the damage has hardly been reversed. “The sea water has entered the river Mala Fama inland,” says the fisherman.

The coast has also been affected by rising sea levels, to the extent that rumors of relocating the village have increased in recent years. Wooden palisades are trying to slow down the push of the waves during hurricanes, but they seem like ridiculous chopsticks in the face of the immensity of the Caribbean.

The picture of deterioration is completed by the Argentina Campsite. where for months there has been neither electricity nor water. Julia, the guard who watches the entrance of the abandoned place, is categorical. “Here in Florida Beach, the only thing that is abundant is gnats and mosquitoes.”

The ostensible presence of individuals from the military sector in power structures, especially in economic management, may lead one to think that the army enriches itself this way and that having so many resources in its hands makes it easier for it to repress the people. This reasoning thus forms part of the belief that there is some kind of division of powers and that introduces a huge error in the analysis.

The presence of colonels and generals (retired or active) in charge of tourism companies such as Gaviota, or powerful consortiums such as Gaesa, Cimex and TRD among others, may not mean the militarization of the economy as much as it means the conversion, the metamorphosis, of soldiers into managers.

Devoid of or “healed” of an authentic “working-class spirit,” they handle with the iron fists of ruthless foremen – loyal to the boss – any dispute with the workers. Their habits of discipline lead them to do what they are ordered to do without asking if it is viable or absurd. They do not demand anything for themselves and anything that improves their standard of living or working conditions (modern cars, comfortable homes, trips abroad, food and beverage baskets…) will be considered as a favor from the boss, a privilege which can be paid for only with loyalty.

Although difficult to believe, they are not backed by their cannons or their tanks, their influence is not determined by the numbers of their troops or the firepower of the armaments they control, but by the confidence that Raúl Castro has in them. It is as simple as that.

When we review the extensive documentation issued by the different spheres of the outlawed political opposition, or by the officially unrecognized civil society, we can barely observe any protest against the dominance that the military has gained over the economy in the last decade.

Civil society’s priorities are different. The liberation of political prisoners, the cessation of repression, freedom of expression and association, the right to choose leaders in plural elections… In the area of ​​economics, what is being questioned are the difficulties faced by private entrepreneurs in starting a business, limitations on access to the international market, excessive taxes, and the plunder to which the self-employed are subjected to by the inspectors.

The most perceptible concern in this sense is that placing these soldiers in key points of the economy is engineering the future economic empowerment of the ruling clans in a virtual piñata, which implies self-annihilation of the system by the heirs of power.

If it were not so dramatic it would be laughable to imagine the infinite solutions that the Cuban rulers have to circumvent “the new measures” announced by the president of the United States. All they have to do is change the name of the current monopolies and place civilian leaders in charge of supposed “second level cooperatives,” already foreseen in Guideline 15 from the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba.

This magic trick or, to use a Cubanism, “shuffling of the dominoes” would force the mammoth American bureaucracy to make a new inventory of entities with which trading is forbidden. “As the stick comes and goes,” they reorganize their forces while remaining at the helm of the country and watching Donald Trump’s term expire.

To perform this trick it will not be necessary to gather the Party together in a congress, nor to consult the constitutionalist lawyers, they would not even have to inform the Parliament. To make matters worse, in the streets there will be no protest against the chameleon gesture of the military exchanging their uniforms and their weapons for guayaberas or business cocktails.

Julia Borroto put a bottle of water in the freezer on Saturday to be ready for the line he expects to find waiting for him Monday outside the United States Embassy. This 73-year-old from Camagüey, who arrived in the capital just after Trump’s speech, remembers that Trump had said “he was going to put an end to the visas and travel, but I see that it isn’t so.”

The retiree also had another concern: the reactivation of the wet foot/dry foot policy eliminated by Obama last January. “I have two children who were plotting to go to sea. I just sent them a message to forget about it.”

The hopes of many frustrated rafters were counting on the magnate to restore the migratory privileges that Cubans enjoyed for more than two decades, but Trump defrauded them. Hundreds of migrants from the island who have been trapped in Central America on their way to the US were also waiting for that gesture that did not arrive.

Among the self-employed, concern is palpable. Homeowners who rent to tourists and private restaurant owners regret that the new policy will lead to a decline in American tourists on the island. The so-called yumas are highly desired in the private sector, especially for their generous tips.

Mary, who runs a lodging business in Old Havana, is worried. “Since the Americans began to come, I hardly have a day with empty rooms.” She had made plans on the basis of greater flexibilities and hoped “to open up more to tourism.”

On national television there is a flood of “indignant responses from the people” including no shortage of allusions to sovereignty, dignity and “the unwavering will to continue on the path despite difficulties.” The Castro regime is seizing the opportunity to reactivate the dormant propaganda machinery that had been missing its main protagonist: the enemy.

However, away from the official microphones people are indifferent or discontented with what happened. A pedicab driver swears not to know what they are talking about when he is asked about Friday’s announcements, and a retiree limits himself to commenting, “Those people who applaud Trump in Miami no longer remember when they were here standing in line for bread.”

Of the thirteen activists who met with Barack Obama during his trip to Havana, at least five expressed opinions to this newspaper about the importance of the new policy towards Cuba.

José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), was at that table in March 2016 and was also mentioned on this occasion by Donald Trump during his speech. The activist had planned to be in Miami for the occasion, but at the airport in Holguin was denied exit and was subsequently arrested.

“It is the speech that had to be given and the person who could have avoided it is Raul Castro,” the former political prisoner asserts categorically. Ferrer believes that Obama did the right thing whenhe began a new era in relations between the two countries but “the Castro regime’s response was to bite the hand that was extended to it.”

In the opinion of the opposition leader, in the last 20 months repression has multiplied and “it was obvious that a different medicine had to be administered” because “a dictatorship like this should not be rewarded, it should be punished and more so when it was given the opportunity to improve its behavior and did not do so.”

Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, was also prevented from flying to Miami to attend the event. For her, the words of the American president were clear and “if the Cuban regime accepts the conditions that Donald Trump has imposed on it, Cuba will begin to change.”

Soler believes that the Cuban government’s response is aimed at confusing the people, who “do not know exactly what is going on.” She says that Trump wants to maintain business with Cuba “but not with the military, but directly with the people,” something that the official press has not explained.

Opponent Manuel Cuesta Morúa, who manages the platform #Otro18 (Another 2018), is blunt and points out that “returning to failed policies is the best way to guarantee failure.” The measures announced by Trump, in his opinion, do not help the changes, and they once again give the Cuban government “the excuse to show its repressive nature.”

The dissident believes that the new policy tries to return the debate on democracy on the island to the scenario of conflict between Cuba and the United States, “just when it was beginning to refocus the national scenario on communication between the Cuban State and its citizens, which is where it needs to be.”

The director of the magazine Convivencia, Dagoberto Valdés, believes that there is a remarkable difference between the discourse itself “which seems a return to the past with the use of a language of confrontation, and the so-called concrete measures that have been taken.”

For Valdés there is no major reversal of Obama’s policy. “The trips of the Cuban Americans, the embassy, ​​the remittances are maintained… and the possibility of a negotiating table remains open when the Cuban Government makes reforms related to human rights.”

Journalist Miriam Celaya predicted that the speech would not be “what the most radical in Miami and the so-called hard line of the Cuban opposition expected. What is coming is a process and it does not mean that from tomorrow no more Americans will come to the Island and that negotiations of all kinds are finished,” she says.

In her usual poignant style, she adds that “regardless of all the fanfare and the bells and whistles, regardless of how abundant the smiles, and no matter how much people laughed at Trump’s jokes, it doesn’t seem that the changes are going to be as promising as those who are proclaiming that it’s all over for the government.”

Celaya sheds light on the fact that the official statement of the Cuban government “manifests its intention to maintain dialogue and relations within the framework of respect.” This is a great difference with other times when a speech like that “would have provoked a ‘march of the fighting people’ and a military mobilization.”

Instead, officialdom has opted for declarations and revolutionary slogans in the national media. But in the streets, that rhetoric is just silent. “People are tired of all this history,” says a fisherman on the Havana Malecon. “There is no one who can fix it, but no one who can sink it.”

Trump will try to please the voices asking him to tighten the screws on Havana. Sanctions, cutting back and revoking the measures taken during the thaw are among the demands of those who bet on confrontation, a strategy that has had half a century to demonstrate its ineffectiveness.

The president will especially address himself to those who insist on “turning off the tap,” cutting off communication and shutting down supplies to the longest dictatorship in the West, as if such measures will cut off the electricity, water supply or internet access to the homes of the Community Party elite.

It is symptomatic that demands for economic strangulation rarely spring from those who wait long hours for a bus, depend daily on the bread that is distributed in the rationed market and have to stretch a monthly salary that is barely enough to survive on for a week.

On the other hand, blaming Obama’s “soft hand” for the wreck of normalization leads one to forget that those in charge in Cuba did not seize the opportunity for fear of losing control. They were more frightened by Obama’s speech at the Gran Teatro de La Habana than by any threat of military intervention.

Those who have aspired for decades to unconditional surrender, to revengeful justice, and to “all or nothing” with Castroism, did not lose any time in putting roadblocks in the way of the process started on 17 December 2014. Starting this Friday they will be forced to accept everything that happens after Trump’s decisions, or to recognize this is not the way to emerge from a dictatorship.

The figures for arbitrary arrests compiled by the Cuban Human Rights Commission are unlikely to decline significantly, the Ladies in White will still be unable to march down Fifth Avenue in the west of Havana, and opposition groups will remain illegal and persecuted by the police.

What will be the foreseeable consequences on the Island of a return to the politics of the cudgel? An increase in repression and a better positioning of the more conservative sectors. The Plaza of the Revolution, the tyranny of the Castros, the regime… or whatever you prefer to call it, will not be alone in facing the tightening of the screws from Washington.

Russia, China, Angola, Nicolas Maduro and comrades from North Korea, Congo, Zimbabwe and Iran will rush to take sides with Raul Castro. Meanwhile, in the streets of the Island the population will mark Trump’s measures with renewed “marches of the fighting people,” shouting anti-imperialist slogans and accepting the postponement of the old promises of the Revolution.

Faced with “the new onslaught from the empire” the government will reinforce its aptitude for entrenchment. In the upper echelons of power there will be no cracks or disagreements. Persecutors will strengthen their power and enjoy the impunity to crush any resistance.

Trump will not achieve, with his new measures, a new march by university students with a “Down with the Dictatorship” poster, nor will the unions call for a general strike against the government, nor will the farmers march to the cities demanding land.

It is not even clear whether the president will serve out four years in office, cornered as he is by political scandals, alleged Kremlin intervention in the elections that brought him to power and his unfortunate way of managing politics through incendiary treatises or threats.

His decisions will not provoke another Maleconazo on the island like the one of August of 1994. That popular protest was spurred by the desire to escape the country, not change it. Those dramatic events were not sparked by the opposition, nor did they generate political changes, just the Rafter Crisis.

Such an outbreak would be a nightmare for a leader with a marked nationalism and an evident anti-immigrant phobia.

This Friday the American president will have his moment in front of the Cuban exile. The applause for him will be short-lived. The placebo effect of his announcements will dissipate to give way to the stubborn reality that no decision of a foreign government will change Cuba, regardless of whether Barack Obama or Donald Trump is at the head of it.