Reinaldo Escobar – Page 2 – Translating Cuba

Cuban Election Results are the Fruit of Repression

The lack of enthusiasm marked the March 26th elections, the preliminary results of which point to the lowest participation since 1959. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 27 March 2023 — It is not possible to scientifically or judicially prove that the official results of the voting to approve the delegates to Parliament were fraudulent, but it is difficult to believe them. Even believing it to the letter, the conclusion is that they are the fruit of neither revolutionary enthusiasm nor of the conviction that those candidates will represent the interests of the population.

There will be plenty of time to analyze the numbers in detail and to calculate how much the abstention results were influence by the prior “scrubbing” of the voter registries to reduce them by almost four percentage points relative to the voters registered during the referendum on the Family Code.

In the municipal polls, where the results of the district votes are reconciled, a report is drafted which goes “up to the province.” These proceedings are not public, but the provinces cannot alter their data to achieve a deceitful total without counting on the complicit silence of the members of the electoral polls. The same thing occurs when the provinces submit their reports to the National Electoral Commission. Alina Balseiro, the president of the National Electoral Council cannot inflate the sum of the data that are sent by the provinces, which also are not public, without hundreds of people knowing and maintaining their silence.

It may not qualify as “fraud” that the oppressive atmosphere that sent an undetermined number of voters, who attended for fear of being labeled disaffected, to the polls. But the degree of pretense required to attend that parody of an election knowing that the preferred candidates are not being elected, without believing one bit of the electoral process, being intimately in disagreement with the political system that declares itself valid by “the majority presence at the polls” is evidently fraudulent. It is most similar to those marriage of convenience that the judicial system of most countries annul when the pretense is discovered. continue reading

The submission occurs when faced with the lack of alternatives, or worse, to keep the escape hatch open to the desired alternatives. We will never know how many of those who did not dare abstain opted for behaving well because they are awaiting the conclusion of their parole process to leave to the U.S., or desiring to be sent on an internationalist mission or a sporting or cultural event where they plan on deserting.

Or because their child aspires to go to university or because they are that child; because they cannot survive on their salary, but rather from what they call the “hustle” and their work place offers a way of surviving on corruption and, for that, one must be as invisible as possible.

The victory declared by the dictatorship feeds off of those individual defeats.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Nightmare of a Cuban-Russian Couple, Pursued in Both Countries For Their Rejection of The War in Ukraine

Cuban citizen Carlos Jiménez, and his Russian wife Daria, pictured in a Havana street. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 24 March 2023 — Before being forced to escape from Russia because of the threat of his being recruited to fight in the war in Ukraine, the Cuban Carlos Jiménez was living a quiet life with his wife Daria in Kushelevskaya Doroga, St Petersburg.

They met whilst studying philology at the hydrometeorological University in Russia which, although it sounds odd, has a prestigious program of language and literature studies. Carlos already spoke the language because as a child he lived in Moscow for five years when his father worked at the Cuban Embassy.

These days he is an admirer of Russian culture, amongst other things Russian, because of the influence of his wife. Through her he got to know the writer Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita), the works of Dimitri Yemets, a children’s writer whose books are the most Russian that he has ever read in his life, he says. Through Daria he got to know the Russian rock group bi-2, which has become his favourite, and he has seen the best of Russian theatre and cinema and also Soviet cinema.

The young couple are currently in Havana. She is very scared of what could happen to him. He is very scared of what could happen to her. The nightmare began in Russia and has kept going for them all the way to Cuba.

One afternoon, two armed men banged heavily on the young couple’s door in St.Petersburg, looking for men to fight in the Ukraine war. “At that moment we knew we couldn’t stay in Russia”, says Carlos. We took out all of our savings, sold everything that we owned, which wasn’t much, and set off towards Armenia. We couldn’t ask for help from my wife’s family because being a foreigner I wasn’t well received there”. continue reading

It wasn’t a matter of choice, Armenia was just the first destination possible for them because Russia had already cancelled almost all flights to other countries. There they found that the cost of accommodation rose massively because of the sheer numbers of Russians that were emigrating and because of this there was no other option for them than to travel to Havana — at the beginning of January of this year. Havana is where Carlos is officially allowed to stay, in his parent’s house. He knew that staying there would be difficult because of their differences in ideology, but he had no other option. Daria was also not well received by Carlos’s parents.

“On the morning of the 8th of March a uniformed guy came into our room, accompanied by my father. He didn’t even bother to knock this time. He was an ’immigration official’. He said that my wife had been in the country longer than was allowed for foreigners, but this was a lie because we had only been there for 55 days and you are allowed 90 days. He was very strange and aggressive. He couldn’t explain the actual objectives of his visit and kept changing his story, saying that there had been complaints about noise, but without explaining who had made the complaints. Finally he set a date for a meeting for a different day at the immigration office in East Havana. For the whole time he refused to even speak directly to my wife”.

One hour after this supposed immigration official left the house, Carlos got a telephone call commanding him to turn up at the police station.

“At this station, where we had to wait for more than two hours, they took me to an office where the presence of my wife was ’not allowed’. There, three armed men lectured me about my poor conduct, and the most surprising thing was that they said they had witnesses! The door opened and then in came my parents, who lied! — so much about me and about Daria. But they could not even look me in the eyes”.

The couple still have to attend a meeting of the 9th of March, presumably to clarify Davina’s status as a migrant.

“That was not an immigration office nor even a police one. There, they shouted at us they insulted us, they threw chairs and banged on the table and did everything to intimidate us and humiliate us. They tried to frighten us in every way possible. They interrogated me about our motives for leaving Russia and about my contacts — about friends I have here in Cuba who they take to be troublemakers”.

“They also even argued that our marriage was not legal because we didn’t get married in Cuba and because of this my wife could not live here with me. They wouldn’t even allow me to interpret for her, and she hardly knows any Spanish. When I tried to explain to her what was happening they told me to shut up, saying that only they had the right to speak”.

After hours of interrogation they gave us another meeting arrangement, this time at the central immigration office, and they left us with the threat that we would ’pay’ for our insolence.

The first thing that occurred to Daria was to contact the Russian Consulate in Havana to ask for help. Because she’d always heard that Cuba and Russia were friends and brothers, she supposed that everything would be okay, that it had all been a misunderstanding.

With the help of Carlos as a translator Daria told this newspaper “We called the consulate and explained my situation, then a man told me that there was another number that I should call. When I dialled this number a few moments later the same voice came back at me not even trying to hide his laughter; this made me realise that here they would not help us so-called ’traitors’”.

When finally they got to speak to the actual Immigration Office they were spun yet another tale: they were told that the real problem was Daria’s economic insolvency. Also a complete lie.

“They told us we have to leave the country immediately. But we don’t have any ticket to travel anywhere, because we don’t know where we can go! We are in a terrible situation. We can’t stay in Cuba because the secret police are after us and neither can we go back to Russia because there’s no security for us there either”.

She says something in Russian which Carlos doesn’t translate straightaway. They take each other by the hand, and at length he says: “We’re so scared that something terrible could happen to us”.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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To Vote or Abstain on March 26? For Once Cubans Are on the Same Page

Those who go to the polls on March 26 will do so for three different motives: conviction, inertia or fear. (Xinhua)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, March 13, 2023 — It can be said that, for the first time in more than sixty years, Cubans opposed to the regime have (almost) unanimously agreed that abstention is an appropriate response to the Communist Party’s call for a “united vote” on March 26 in favor of the list of candidates that will make up the tenth Parliamentary Legislature.

I say “almost” because, on an individual level, there are citizens who would like to show up just so they can cancel, or not fill out, their ballots. Some even want to make the defiant gesture of not going into the voting booth, where the right to secretly mark one’s preference with an X is exercised. “I’m going to tell the people at the table that I don’t believe in this process and drop a blank ballot into the box in front of them,” a friend promises.

Those who do go to the polls will do so for three different motives: conviction, inertia or fear. Of the five or four (or perhaps only three) million who go to their polling stations, most will do so out of fear, or because of that defense mechanism masked as inertia. “I don’t want to get into trouble,” say the fearful. “Why make a fuss if they’re going to do whatever they want anyway?” ask those who vote out of inertia.

Who are the true believers? (I say this in all seriousness.) They are the ones who feel the candidates who appear on the ballot actually represent them. True, they do not know what these people think because candidates are prohibited by law from coming up with proposals or campaigning on platforms that might make an electorate swoon. But for reasons I cannot fathom, they deduce from head shots and biographical data that these men and women will raise their hands in Parliament to vote in favor of what matters to their constituents. continue reading

There are others, less naive but more disciplined, who are also convinced. They are the ones who, if the party tells them they must vote for the entire ticket, they will do so, without their blind obedience weighing on their consciences.

Among the dissenters’ motivations for abstaining, one has to consider the lack of alternatives.

On previous occasions, especially for elections on a municipal level, some were incentivized to get out and vote for a candidate who was, or seemed to be, at odds with the government. That can be ruled out in this case because the list of candidates submitted by the Commission of Candidacies for the National Assembly is airtight. Not a single suspect among them.

In the last two elections, the referendum on the constitution and on the Family Code, there were also different options.

In the case of the former, there was the idea that voting a resounding NO would signal one’s refusal to accept the dominance of the Communist Party and the irrevocability of the system. Others, however, believed that voting — even if it was in the negative — gave legitimacy to a bogus referendum. No consensus was reached and the division between the NO supporters and the abstainers weakened their message.

In the referendum on the Family Code, official propaganda had people believe the only option was to vote for it. And since it addressed the specific interests of the LGBTI community, as well as those who sought a legal pathway for surrogate pregnancies, neither a NO vote nor an abstention could be read as a clear expression of disagreement with the government.

This time is different.

Neither supporters of strong-man rule, nor those with generational prejudices, nor even those with a propensity for notoriety and who always have something different to say; neither Trumpists nor Obama-ists; neither radicals nor moderates have come forward to argue for voting NO, for abstaining, for staying home, or for whatever else you want to call it.

When Fulgencio Batista organized sham elections in 1958, Cuba had 2,310,262 citizens with the right to vote. Only 46% of them went to the polls. None of those elected to public office managed to take up their positions because there was, what appeared to be at the time, a popular revolution.

The triumphant regime never forgave the roughly million-and-a-half citizens who went to the polls that year out of conviction, fear or inertia. They were not allowed to join the sole political party or hold important public office. In the tell-all forms that had to be filled out for almost anything, there was always the question about whether or not one had participated in the 1958 elections.

I hope that, in a future democratic Cuba, this is never allowed to happen again.

Iranian Refugee Keivan Esfandiyar Has Been Trapped in Cuba for More Than Four Years

Esfandiyar, in addition to being a teacher, has a degree as a nurse anesthetist. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 20 February 2023 — Keivan Esfandiyar taught teenagers aged 13 to 16 years at a school in Tehran, and although he taught Experimental Sciences, he used to make comments in class and with his colleagues about human rights, democracy and civil liberties. One day he received a summons to appear before the Judiciary and he knew then that he could no longer remain in his country.

Born in Tehran in March 1988, Esfandiyar, in addition to being a teacher, has a degree as a nurse anesthetist. He is married, he lost his mother when he was very young, but the rest of his family is in the Persian country. In November 2018 he arrived in Havana and after spending more than four years, he can no longer tolerate his status as a refugee in Cuba and his main concern is how to emigrate to any country that is not Iran.

This week, Esfandiyar spoke with 14ymedio from a funeral home in Central Havana, a place to evade prying eyes and also a symbol of the fatalistic state in which he feels his life on the Island has become.

Question: How did an Iranian end up as a refugee in Cuba?

Response: The most logical thing was to go to Turkey, with whom we share a border, but right now there are more than three million Syrian refugees there and a growing number of Afghans who are fleeing the Taliban and the situation is very difficult.

Q: Did you know that the Cuban regime is a friend of the Iranian government?

R: I learned that later, but what I do know is that Turkey is friendlier than Cuba to the Iranian dictators. They have returned thousands of Iranian refugees, many ended up in prison and several were executed. Cuba hasn’t returned any.

Q: But, why Cuba?

R: A friend told me that at least 15 Iranian refugees had been received here and that they were protected by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices. I then consulted the internet, read that in Cuba there was security and good health services and I entered through the airport in Havana with a tourist visa.

Q: Was it difficult for you to make the decision to emigrate?

R: In Iran, in every office, in every school or institution belonging to the government there is a man from the security forces. This man is responsible for surveilling, being aware and pressuring others to inform on their colleagues. They, in turn, inform their bosses at the political police. I was viewed as a bad influence on those young people, as an enemy of the government. They kill for those reasons. It was difficult to make the decision, but I had no other choice. continue reading

Q: You said that you spent two years as an “asylum seeker” and another two years as a refugee. You receive economic support for refugees from UNHCR which covers the basics. How has it been going for you in Cuba?

A: I live like a Cuban, with problems in the water supply, power outages, lining up to buy food and looking for medicine on the black market, but with the added difficulty that they see me and treat me like a foreigner who is here as a tourist, which makes people think I’m rich.

Not long ago I asked a man on the street to let me light my cigarette with his lighter. He was a middle-aged man with a respectable appearance who said, very seriously, “Give me 50 pesos and I’ll light your cigarette.”

Neither my wife nor I have a work permit, we spend the day in the small room we rent in a licensed private house, we do not have the luxury of doing anything fun like dining in a restaurant or going to the beach. The only advantage we have is that among Cubans we have not felt racism nor xenophobia.

Q: You place your hope in obtaining refuge in another country, especially the United States. What processes have you gone through or plan to undertake to achieve your objective?

R: I should say that UNHCR is not the problem, but rather the countries that should give us refugee visas. Canada does not receive any and the European countries have the idea that refugees who are in Cuba are the responsibility of the United States Embassy, but those offices have been closed for a long time and have not processed a case similar to ours through UNHCR. Now we have a bit of hope because they now have people working in the consulate.

Q: In August 2022 your daughter Viana was born in Havana; she is registered as a Cuban. Does that change the situation?

R: We decided to have a child now because we did not know if time would run out. We hope that with Cuban emigration [Directorate of Identification, Immigration and Foreigners] there won’t be a problem [for their daughter to leave the country], but they have told us that the Americans no longer provide refuge to Cubans and other countries have the same problem.

Q: How has it been for you with the free public health?

R: For the last year, we’ve had a card issued by the Red Cross, which states that it serves to “receive services at Health Units authorized by the Ministry of Health,” but the problem is that it is very difficult to obtain the medicine. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and I need to take pills called sertraline and for five months, the pharmacies have not stocked them. This issue is not viewed as serious enough to obtain refuge in other countries. If I were diabetic it would be viewed as an emergency situation.

Sometimes I believe they are waiting for me to go completely crazy to process my case.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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The Useless Diversity of the Cuban Parliament

Official propaganda defines the Cuban Parliament as a showcase of national diversity. (Minrex)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 17 February 2023 — Beyond any semantic or etymological definition, the action of parleying is always interpreted as an act of negotiation between individuals or entities that, having different interests, try to reach an agreement.

Hence, the most desirable feature of a Parliament, as a government formula, is that the various political tendencies are represented in it, provided that their presence is proportional to the preference of the citizens expressed in the vote. Easy to say.

Since 1976, Cuba has had a kind of Parliament called the National Assembly of People’s Power. The official propaganda defines it as a showcase of national diversity, which is intended to be demonstrated with the data of its composition that reflect how many women and men, whites, blacks and mestizos, artists, athletes, scientists, workers and farmers, have a seat.

It is significant, even surprising, that the balance in the proportions of this diversity is the product of the random will of the proponents and not (as it seems to be) the result of meticulous planning.

But a balance based on the variety of genders, ages, races and occupational profiles, even when it responds to a mathematical model in relation to the proportion of these elements in reality, fails to disturb the monopoly of that political tendency that manifests itself in a more that 90% communist militancy. A militancy — that is active membership in the Communist party — which in real life does not exceed 7% of the population.

This perhaps explains why, in almost half a century, not a single proposal brought by the Government to Parliament has been disapproved, and even worse, that they have all been approved unanimously or by an overwhelming majority. It’s called partisan discipline. continue reading

The fact that the only political party allowed in the country is the Communist Party, like its youth organization, does not mean that there are not other citizens who feel liberal, Christian-Democratic, social-democratic, environmentalist or any other denomination and, even more so, who would like to see themselves represented in Parliament and who, given the opportunity to freely present their proposals, would have followers, meaning voters.

To make matters worse, when the voting process (not the election) takes place to approve the candidacy of the deputies to Parliament, the voters only know the photo and a biographical summary of the candidates that they have to approve according to their municipality.* Election campaigning is prohibited and with this prohibition the promotion of different platforms that compete to conquer the electorate is prevented.

When in the polling station a citizen votes in favor of the candidacy of one of those proposed on the list for their district, they find out that the candidate served on some internationalist mission, is an engineer and is 42 years old, but the voter does not have the slightest idea of how this candidate will raise their hand in Parliament when something that interests this voter is being discussed.

If that deputy is the one who is going to vote on behalf of his constituents, the latter should know if their candidate wants to favor the socialist state company or if he chooses to benefit non-state forms of production and services; if he prefers to propose relaxations in immigration laws or new restrictions; if he agrees or is against expanding the right to property or whether professionals can practice on their own; that private parties can import for the purpose of marketing; if the freely convertible currency stores should be expanded or eliminated; whether to continue building hotels or to build houses and many other things.

If being black, white or mulatto, man or woman, peasant or intellectual could define the political position of the deputy at these crossroads (which are the ones that matter), the proclaimed diversity of the National Assembly would make sense.

If that diverse condition does not contribute to the way in which you are going to vote on behalf of your constituents, then it is useless.

*Translator’s note: The only ’campaigning’ that is allowed is the posting in a window of a one page ’biography’ of each candidate, with their photo, and this bio is not prepared by the candidate themselves. In one election, independent candidates’ biographies described them as “counterrevolutionaries.” In the final round of elections there is only one candidate for each position; voters can vote yes or no, or deface the ballot or turn it in blank.

The Last Cuban Parliament With the ‘Historicals’

Among the 470 proposed candidates, and who will surely be elected, 128 deputies from the previous legislature repeat: they are the supervening ones. (Twitter/Cuban Parliament)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 12 February 2023 — If the massive abstention is as successful as the opposition expects in the electoral process scheduled for March 26, none of what is outlined here would make sense.

The Cuban Parliament scheduled for the X Legislature of the National Assembly could be the last to have the presence of members of the so-called “historical generation”: Raúl Castro, Ramiro Valdés, José Ramón Machado Ventura, Guillermo García and Ramón Pardo Guerra — all nonagenarians — will return to their seats again, but they will have very little chance of being around to be re-elected in 2028.

In the recently released list of candidates, the notable absences are striking: the one who was held as the manager of the Ordering Task*, Marino Murillo; the Minister of Culture, Alpidio Alonso; the Minister of Science, Technology and the Environment, Elba Rosa Pérez Montoya; the Minister of Education Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella; the Comptroller of the Republic Gladys María Bejerano; Rodrigo Malmierca, Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment; Samuel Carlos Rodiles Planas, President of the Physical Planning Institute; and the cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo; they no longer they will raise their hands again to approve what they propose.

Among the 470 candidates proposed, who will surely be elected, 128 deputies from the previous legislature repeat: they are the survivors of the drastic reduction of the number of seats in Parliament. continue reading

If the current occupant of the position of President of the Republic were not appointed to repeat his mandate (which is unlikely, but possible), a member of Parliament under 60 years of age would have to be elected by law. These repeaters are supposedly the ones who would have the best chances against the upstarts.

Among them there are 33 born between 1963 and 1968 who on this occasion meet the requirement of not exceeding 60 years of age to be appointed as president of the Republic, but who by the next election, in 2028, would already be past that age.

This forecast can be closer to reality if it is specified that, among the 33 blessed (and punished) by the almanac, only 4 are members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party: Manuel Marrero Cruz, who is also Prime Minister; Roberto Tomás Morales Ojeda who is the second in the hierarchy in the structure of the Communist Party; Marta Ayala Ávila, General Director of the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology; and Teresa María Amarelle Boué, who is a member of the Political Bureau for being the general secretary of the Federation of Cuban Women.

Four others belong to the Council of State and also appear on the Central Committee, these are: Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Miriam Nicado García, Homero Acosta Álvarez and Ana María Mari Machado.

I conclude the list with: Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, and Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca, members of the Central Committee and first secretaries of the communist party in the provinces; José Ángel Portal Miranda, Minister of Public Health; Inés María Chapman Waugh, Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic; and Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, member of the Secretariat and head of the Ideological Department in the Central Committee of the Party.

This hypothetical investiture, even if they have no aspirations, is presented to these 13 as a last chance. In five years the list of possible suitors would be made up of virtually unknown people, unless the age requirement is modified.

There can always be surprises. The first would be that Miguel Díaz-Canel does not continue in the position of President of the Republic. The second is that someone is appointed to replace him who is not mentioned in the previous paragraphs.

It is not that the country is inevitably headed for a radical change, nor that because another person mentioned here is placed at the helm of the nation, these changes will occur in the necessary direction, depth and speed. It is not about that, but that the changes towards democracy and economic freedoms are the main demand that is being called for with more pressure from within and from without, and that nothing would delay this process of change more than the continuity that is proclaimed today as a motto from power.

*Translator’s note: Tarea ordenamiento = the [so-called] ‘Ordering Task’, is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and many other measures related to the economy.

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I Have a Friend Unjustly Imprisoned, His Name is Jose Daniel Ferrer

José Daniel Ferrer, leader of Unpacu, who is now imprisoned in Santiago de Cuba, shown in a file image. The sign reads “On Hunger Strike” (Capture)

Note from Translating Cuba: Somehow this article from December of last year got ‘missed’ and so we are posting it now.

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Desde Aquí, Havana, 12 December 2022 — I could add more names to the title, mentioning, for example, Félix Navarro or Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, but Jose (here without an accent) is the one who is having the worst time of all my friends in prison and he is one of all the prisoners for whom I have most appreciation.

Many see José Daniel Ferrer as that grim face that shoots slogans with an almost military tone, but I know the other one, the one who laughs at himself and who has more reading matter than all his jailers and most significantly, more than all those who identify themselves as “counterintelligence officers,” more than the prosecutors who put together his case, more than the judges who sentenced him.

In that dark corner that is euphemistically defined as a “punishment cell” Jose fights with an army of insatiable mosquitoes that suck his blood and leave him unbearably itchy. He does his best to ignore a permanent noise that doesn’t let him sleep or concentrate. Those are his worst enemies; worse than the henchmen who hijack his mail, kick him in the head, and mistreat his family.

During these Christmas days, while we enjoy the family warmth, Jose remains half-naked and only enduring the low temperatures of this tropical winter, in a humid and pestilential cell, but I know that his suffering is different. José Daniel Ferrer is suffering for us. The lines that have to be stood in to buy food hurt him, the blackouts hurt him, the loss of wages, the gag that does not allow protest, the sentences of the other innocents. continue reading

Everyone who has a friend unjustly imprisoned feels guilty for not doing something to free him: Write letters, make a public protest, organize a rescue team. José Daniel Ferrer has plenty of political maturity to understand everyone who has abandoned him; to understand those who, due to opportunism, ambition or cowardice, do nothing to get him out of there.

José Daniel Ferrer is my friend and he is unjustly imprisoned.

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Cuba: January 1959, Dorado was a Shampoo and the Utopia was a Fraud

It is not an exaggeration to associate that communist utopia with Pinocchio’s Land of Toys, imagined by Collodi, where vacations begin on January 1st and end on December 31st. (Netflix)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 4 January 2022 — The main marketing operation of certain leftist politics throughout the 20th century and so far in the 21st has been to sell an elusive product labeled utopia.

Any remotely decent person should feel miserable if they don’t agree with that chimera that tends to associate itself to an unreachable horizon, which should guide those who instead of believing that “a possible world is better” maintain that “a better world is possible.”

While it seems like a play on words, in the difference between one optic and the other lie the lives of nations and of people, because what is advisable at the end of the path is what determines the route and the route is the day-to-day, the life of those who purchase tickets to one destination or another.

Politicians shouldn’t have the right to place the fantasies of poets in their electoral programs nor in their justifications for holding on to power. Rarely have poets converted their verses into electoral slogans, though they’ve declared parties, “party until it stains,” as Gabriel Celaya defined “the necessary verses” when he said, “They are cries in the heavens and acts on earth.”

But the acts on earth have different consequences than cries in the heavens because time on earth is human and heavenly time is ethereal. This is why it is possible to say that Eden was the first documented utopia and, as is well known, it is Adam’s fault that it didn’t work. The first human disobeyed the rules and, with that, thwarted the original plan. The consequence was that Adam, along with his long lineage, was condemned to earning his sustenance through sweat, that is, work.

Karl Marx, who rarely needed to work to feed his family, imagined communist society as a place where material goods flowed, where those who benefited from them were free to spend their time on many recreational activities and where work would no longer be necessary, but rather be done for pleasure. continue reading

It is not an exaggeration to associate that communist utopia with Pinocchio’s Land of Toys, imagined by Collodi, where vacations begin on January 1st and end on December 31st. Work was not necessary, nor was school, but those who let themselves be fooled by these promises ended up dumb.

It is legitimate to suspect that leaders who promote these political utopias, be it scientific communism or 21st century socialism, know perfectly well that their biggest promises — those that are set in the long term, and for which they demand nameless sacrifices — will never be fulfilled. This is why triumphalism becomes a common denominator of these “leaders of peoples” who, in light of good will, appear to be blind, naive or delusional, when they are actually just cynical.

There are plenty of historical, literary and mystical examples that demonstrate the gross manipulation to which those individuals recruited into fanatical sects with the hope of reaching paradise on earth are subjected. Behind the slogans, teeming with bad poetry used to mobilize the masses, there is usually some theoretical foundation, almost always difficult to understand, for the consumption of the newly initiated. Further back, or further down, lies that unspeakable truth that is not even put on the table when the hierarchs are designing their ambitious plans.

In those cabals, everyone wears their mask and they all know the others wear them as well. Utopia is invoked like an invisible specter, the memory of some founding father is revered, and any act that suggests an intent to reveal the great secret is viewed with distrust… until one day reality appears at the window or knocks down the door.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuba is Worth Less Every Day and the New Generations Will Inherit an Exhausted Country

Every day this country is worth less, because it has been decapitalized and because it continues to decapitalize. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 27 December 2022 — Reading economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe in an article published in 2003, a few weeks after his inclusion among the Black Spring prisoners, I learned and understood the importance of the concept of “decapitalization of the material base” in the Cuban economy, especially with regard to the absence of investments and modernization in infrastructure and industry that cause our economy to be less and less competitive in the international market.

Although I do not have reliable data to prove it, I could assure you that the process, instead of being reversed, has become more acute in the past 20 years. It is enough to try to travel by plane from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, to read the official data of the decreasing sugar production, to suffer the energy debacle, to go to a specialist’s office in a hospital or, simply, to try to walk along the sidewalks of a city without looking down.

The inventory of calamities is overwhelming and confirms the hypothesis that if someone added the value that everything has on the Island, they would come to the conclusion that every day this country is worth less, because it has been decapitalized and continues to do so.

To this national drama is now added another of a personal, private nature, but one which has social consequences. It occurs within families where there is an accumulation of transferable goods from parents to children, from grandparents to grandchildren. These goods have also been degraded, due to their excessive use and the diminished quality of what has been acquired.

I am talking about homes, furniture, kitchen utensils, tools, books, appliances, which are obtained with countless sacrifices and carefully taken care of and maintained so that they will be enjoyed by those who come behind. In this way, despite their probable impairment, things achieve some transcendence because they exceed the limits of their intended use and go further. continue reading

The current migration crisis led mostly by the youngest, in addition to aggravating the human decapitalization of the nation, brings as a collateral consequence the fact that everything accumulated by the family, regardless of its market value, becomes inconsequential, and the impact of any possible improvement in social services is minimized.

To whom do we leave that collection of Latin American literature where there is almost everything written by Mario Vargas Llosa, all of Alejo Carpentier, all of Gabriel García Márquez, almost all of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and even all of Padura? To whom do we leave the Centennial Edition (1953) of the Complete Works of José Martí, the complete poetry of Lezama Lima, the recordings of Celia Cruz? Who is going to keep the drill, the polisher, the collection of screwdrivers, the microwave oven, the many-inch flat-screen TV, when there is no one left to leave it to?

How much are those things worth, already decapitalized, which have lost all significance? People are fixing up their properties to escape. The house is offered with everything inside because Cuba is becoming a country without heirs. “My house for a ticket to Nicaragua,” is said with the same gravity that William Shakespeare put in the mouth of the English king Richard III when he offered his kingdom for a horse.

And it’s worth asking, when it is verified that those in charge in Cuba only invest in hotels and golf courses while everything else is decapitalized: to whom do they intend to leave it?

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This article was originally published in the magazine Convivencia.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba: The Other Euthanasia

Raúl Castro, during a session of the National Assembly of People’s Power last week. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 19 December 2022 — The approval of the right to euthanasia announced by the Cuban Ministry of Public Health hasn’t brought about, as one would suppose and desire, a wide debate between its supporters and its critics.

The idea of offering a “dignified death”, of avoiding a prolonged and painful agony, is supported when there’s scientific confirmation that the person’s illness is both incurable and lethal and when it’s the expressed desire of the patient themself (or of their closest relatives, if they should find themself incapable of expressing their will).

It’s the tenacity of the self preservation instinct that can counter the idea of euthanasia (and all forms of suicide), and it can reappear as a change of heart at the last moment, when the process of switching off life is already irreversible. On the other hand, religious considerations which leave the decision in the hands of God oppose the practice.

It’s very tempting to apply the argument in favour of euthanasia in other areas of life. When a successful farm is affected by a blight, it’s best to pull up the sown field and plough the earth; when a company becomes unproductive and despite refurbishments continues to make a loss, the best solution is liquidation; when a whole economic, social and political system doesn’t produce the hoped-for results, you need to change it.

To not beat about the bush, this moribund Cuban type of socialism deserves the application of a merciful euthanasia, above all so that it stops causing such unnecessary pain to all the 11 million patients who suffer under it. There’s an abundance of evidence that the ills contracted under the rules of this system are incurable and that sooner or later the collapse will come without warning.

It’s the self-preservation instinct of a group of people who still cling to their privileges and ideologies that counters this social euthanasia — ideologies with shades of pseudo-religion that invoke the blood spilled in arriving at where we are, from a people still committed to dead leaders of the past and continuing to believe in the blurry illusion of a prosperous future.

It wouldn’t occur to anyone, including myself, to commit suicide even if everything indicated that I were about to suffer a horrible, painful and prolonged departure, but we Cubans don’t have to go on supporting “this” and from here on I’m daring to recommend a “dignified death” for the whole process. And the only ’will’ to take into account here is the will of those who are suffering.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Ordering Task* and the Law of Gravity

Alejandro Gil Fernández, Cuba’s deputy minister and minister of Economy and Planning, before the National Assembly of the People’s Power of Cuba. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 12 December 2022 — In February 1970, while doing my work as a journalist (still a student) to cover the sugar harvest in the municipality of Florida, I attended an important meeting chaired by Armando Hart Dávalos, the member of the Political Bureau assigned to guarantee the goal corresponding to the province of Camagüey to produce 10 million tons of sugar that year.

The central point of the meeting was to examine the fullfilment of the commitments of the different sectors of the municipality to complete the number of macheteros [cane cutters] that would be part of the Jesús Suárez Gayol brigade.

One by one, the committed local bosses explained the causes of their non-compliance. The dairy company’s boss argued that if he lost one more man from the dairy farms it would not be possible to satisfy the supply of milk to the population; the head of the trade sector explained that not one more store could be closed; that of the railway workshops alleged that without mechanics the trains could not be moved, and the head of Forestry justified himself by invoking the inability to protect the forests with the few personnel at his disposal.

Armando Hart did not flinch. As if he had not paid attention to the arguments, he said that he was not there to hear excuses but to convey to them the news that the initial commitments had been insufficient and that now there were higher goals. After reading the new figures assigned to each sector, he said: “I hope you know how to fulfil this new task of the Revolution.”

One by one, each local boss promised to send more men to the cane fields.

I, who had not yet turned 23, published in a municipal tabloid named Al Machete my first critical journalistic text, where I questioned the honesty of the local officials. “At what time were they lying: when they said they could not meet the goal or when they promised to meet a higher one?” I wondered then. Still without questioning the honesty of the national leader, who thought he had looked good by demanding something impossible. continue reading

Two days later, one of those little bosses attacked me for that text, and I still keep my promise to keep him anonymous. “Look, young man,” he told me as he took off his hat, “If in the name of the Revolution a leader tells you to jump into the void from a great height, you can jump or fake that you are going to make the leap; what you can’t do is mention the law of gravity.” He paused and finished: “Or are you going to tell him that he’s stupid?”

That unforgettable lesson of wisdom and survival — not honesty — came to my mind when I read the justifications that were intended to explain, in the last plenary session of the Central Committee of the Party, why the measures taken by the Government to face the crisis have not had the expected result.

As is known, the 10 million tons of sugar were not produced in 1970. Surely Armando Hart knew it in advance along with everyone who knew something about the harvest, but no one dared to reveal the stupidity of the purpose.

How is it possible that those who plan the economy today do not take reality into account? How can you make a plan and then blame the “blockade” for your non-compliance? Did the planners assume that the restrictive measures imposed by the United States were going to be lifted, that there would be no administrative corruption, that no cyclones or accidents would occur?

Did they forget the law of gravity?

*Translator’s note: The “Ordering Task” is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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“We Will Never Return to Cuba, We Will Not Have the Exiles’ Crick in the Neck”

The exhibition ’Martín Domínguez El exilio otro’ was inaugurated at the Taller Gorría Gallery, in Old Havana on December 5. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 6 December 2022 — An exhibition entitled Martín Domínguez El exilio otro [the Other Exile], inaugurated at the Taller Gorría Gallery in Old Havana on December 5 (coincidentally, the Day of the Builder in Cuba), did justice to the Spanish architect Martín Domínguez Esteban (1897-1970) who was behind works as important as the Focsa building, Radiocentro (today the Yara cinema and headquarters of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television), the current Ministry of Communications, the Marianao City Hall and numerous homes.

We say that he “was behind” because his name did not appear as a signing architect but as “treasurer” or “decorator” and this was because Domínguez never managed to have his professional title revalidated in Cuba.

He escaped from Francoist Spain where he had been “purged for life” for his role in building the military defenses of the Republican side of Madrid in 1936. He arrived in Havana, by the way, in January 1937 and stayed in this city for more than a quarter of a century.

Despite the burden of not being able to show a recognized title, many used his services, including former president Ramón Grau San Martín, who entrusted him with his summer residence in Varadero. continue reading

His son relates that Domínguez replied that he felt conservative in regards to the private family and liberal in politics. (14ymedio)

At the beginning of the Revolution, he participated in the construction of popular houses promoted by the National Institute of Savings and Housing. His reputation led him to the office of Commander Ernesto Guevara, who openly asked him for his political position. His son relates that Domínguez replied that he felt conservative in regards to the private family and liberal in politics. “We’re doing badly, Galician,” said the Argentine, and that same day he decided to leave Cuba.

He collected what he could carry in his car and put it on the ferry that still offered trips between Havana and Miami. He was in that city for a very short time because he decided to settle in New York.

Still in Miami, his son, a clever boy with the same name and who has also followed a career as an architect, was probing him to find out how that adventure would end. And this was the unforgettable response he received: “We are never going to return to Cuba. We are not going to have the exiles’ crick in the neck, like the Spaniards who said ’in two months we will be back in Madrid’. We are not going back to Cuba, we must look ahead and rebuild.”

And he didn’t come back. He died in New York in September 1970 at the age of 72 knowing that wherever he went he left a lasting and useful mark. His work is studied today on the subject of Modern Cuban Architecture. This exhibition, which will be open to the public until December 12, pays tribute to him and fills an unacceptable gap in the memory of Cubans.

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Fears Are Justified as Cuba’s New Penal Code Takes Effect

Is it the intention of the dictatorship, from now on, to severely penalize any discrepancy? (Cuba debate)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 30 November 2022 — There are at least three ways to analyze Cuba’s new Penal Code that comes into force this first of December.

The first is paralyzing and ends in the acceptance of the idea that everything a citizen does that deviates one millimeter from what is convenient for the Government or the Communist Party represents a reason to be sentenced to prison. Here, especially inscribed, is the gaze of those who are political opponents, social activists or independent journalists.

This analysis pays attention to Article 119, which punishes with the death penalty anyone who uses force to change the system; Article 120, which penalizes anyone who demands the same but exercising “arbitrarily any right or freedom recognized in the Constitution of the Republic” with up to ten years in prison; and Article 143, which also punishes with ten years anyone who receives funds or finances for activities against the State and its constitutional order.”

The second way of reading the new Code is based on the optimistic belief that the principle of social injuriousness (Article 1.3) will be fully applied, through which, “in order to impose a sanction, it is required that the act produce an injury to legal property of entities protected by law, or endangers them or risks causing it.” If the damage caused is not demonstrated in court, there will be no crime for which to be convicted.

This point of view pays attention to Article 180, which penalizes the official who maliciously promotes the persecution of a person “whose innocence is known,” or to Article 181, which punishes the public official who “applies or orders the application of a security measure without an order from the competent court,” which is supposed to nullify the prohibitions against leaving the country or the limitations on movement to which dissatisfied people are arbitrarily subjected.

The third way of facing the Code is from the point of view that regardless of what is written in the document, “these people,” those who are in charge in Cuba, will always do whatever they want, and it makes no sense to try to determine the degree of threat or relief that the new legal body represents.

Beyond the views on the Code, the bets on what will happen with the new regulations move between two options: the dictatorship will severely penalize any discrepancy; or, simply, it calculates that the icy breath of a terrible threat will be enough to neutralize the opponents, reduce them to silence or incite them to moderation. We will know soon.

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Of Monuments and Ashes: Fidel Castro in Moscow

Detail of Fidel Castro statue in Moscow. (Sputnik)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 15 November 2022 — Looking at a photo of a recently unveiled statue in Moscow, I was reminded of the joke about the man who asked to borrow money. “I swear on my father’s ashes,” he said, promising to repay the loan promptly. Almost convinced, the would-be lender said he did not know the man’s father had died. “He hasn’t,” said the borrower, “but he smokes a lot.”

After Fidel Castro decided to quit smoking (at least in public), no senior government or party official was ever seen with a cigar or cigarette again. The decision to immortalize Castro in bronze with “the smoking gun” in his hands, to say nothing of the deceased’s wish that no statues of him be erected, perpetuates the image that he was a chain smoker.

There are other less monumental statues of Castro in South Africa, Mexico and Vietnam (the latter looking vaguely Asian) but the one in Moscow is the most imposing.

The ten-foot-tall figure stands on a rock in front of a bas-relief map of Cuba. His left boot points toward the eastern provinces, his right to Pinar del Rio. Located in Moscow’s Sokol district, in a square that has borne his name since 2017, the piece was jointly sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Russian Military-Historical Society. Estimated to have cost 35,000 dollars, it is the work of sculptor Alexei Chebanenko and architect Andrei Bely.

Those who grew up in the Soviet Union might well remember that, when the comandante visited Moscow for the first time, in May 1963, he impertinently strode down plane’s boarding stair with a cigar in his mouth. Those close to him say this was to prevent having to exchange the traditional kiss with his Russian hosts, a gesture that a homophobic guy like Castro could not tolerate.*

This historic slight may be why it was decided to portray him with such an unusual object in his hand. Chebanenko was even careful to include some fledgeling ashes at the tip of the cigar. Cuban officials, who promise to pay the money they owe the Russians, can swear by them.

*Archival footage is available here.

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Abstaining in Cuban Elections Means Disagreeing Politically

Campaign for not voting in the next Cuban elections. (Reynier Leyva Novo)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, November 21, 2022 — Once again, abstention appears as an option to demonstrate political disagreement in Cuba. It already happened in 2019 when the Constitution of the Republic was put to the vote, 15.6% abstained, more recently in the referendum where the Family Code was approved, 25.88% abstained, and it now appears before the elections of the district delegates next Sunday, November 27, where abstention is estimated to exceed 30%. The time when Cubans went to Electoral Colleges to choose their delegates with apparent enthusiasm are long gone.

The numbers are boring and overwhelm the reader, but to understand what will happen on this occasion it is essential to review them.

The approximately eight and a half million registered voters in the country will decide, among 26,746 candidates, who will be the 12,427 district delegates that will make up the 168 Municipal Assemblies of People’s Power.

According to official data, among the candidates there are 18,621 who are affiliated with the Communist Party or the Union of Young Communists, and only 125 who don’t belong to these political organizations. Considering that dissenters with the Government are inclined not to go to the polls, it can be assumed that the militants will have an advantage to fill the positions.

No opponent, not even a declared dissatisfied person, managed or was interested in presenting as a possible candidate in any of the 44,929 area assemblies held and in which, by show of hands, the voters proposed the names of those who will appear on the ballots. A few recorded attempts ended in obstacles to prevent a person from leaving their house or other tricks to make it impossible for the “inconvenient” to participate in these area assemblies, traditionally convened by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), controlled by the Party and monitored by State Security. continue reading

The next time Cubans with the right to vote will be summoned to the polls will be in 2023, when the renewal of the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP) will happen. On that occasion the voters will not be in the situation of electing, but rather of approving, a list of people proposed for deputies that will be presented by the National Candidacy Commission. This list will have the same number of names as there are seats in Parliament.

It remains to be decided how many members the ANPP will have in 2023, but the Electoral Law establishes that at least half of them will come from the members of the Municipal Assemblies. If the current figure of more or less 600 deputies were maintained, the Candidacy Commission would have the opportunity to select about 300 of its preference among the 12,427 who are elected on Sunday.

To the extent that, as planned for 2023, the total number of parliamentarians is reduced, the presence of those who come from the base elected by the voters will also be reduced. The other half will come from government officials, military personnel, party cadres and some athlete, artist or scientist “committed to the process,” who will give the ANPP an appearance of plurality, alien to the diversity of ideological tendencies.

Not only will the political will to demonstrate nonconformity be a reason not to go to the polls, but also the indifference of citizens, who perceive the uselessness of the local bodies of so-called “people’s power,” will also have an enormous weight.

The frequent blackouts, growing inflation, shortages, the deterioration of health services, long lines to acquire basic necessities, and the loss of values overwhelm the vast majority of the population that sees its deputies raising their hands unanimously to approve everything proposed by the Government, but the decisions taken there don’t alleviate anguish or solve the problems.

Going to the polling stations is increasingly a formal act where citizens only worry about being seen, because staying at home marks them, betrays them. So fear is for many the only reason to simulate that they vote for candidates who will pretend to govern on behalf of the people.

The enthusiasm has been over for a while; now the fear is beginning to end.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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