TRANSLATORS – Page 238 – Translating Cuba

Havanans Comment on "The Wonder" of Their City / Iván García

City of Havana – One of the New7Wonder Cities of the World.

Ivan Garcia, 6 June 2016 — From Miraflores, south of Havana, Sergio comes twice a week with his wheelbarrow to the dump on Calle 100 in Marianao to pick up old junk that he later sells for a few pesos in a traveling fair in the slums of La Víbora.

Among the things he has for sale are a book with a red cover about the external debt signed by Fidel Castro, a crumpled police novel by Daniel Chavarría, three faded blouses, two cut-up pairs of jeans and some carpentry tools. continue reading

The first sale of the day is celebrated with a half-liter of the worst possible alcohol, bought for 10 Cuban pesos at an old bus stop. The dozen ragged men and women who meet every day on the corner of the Plaza Roja have burned all their bridges.

Their skin is an ashy color, their feet have ulcers, and their lost look is caused by the effects of alcohol and poor nutrition. Some carry the HIV virus and, when they get drunk, they mutilate themselves.

Sergio lives in a wooden hovel with a tile roof, surrounded by bags of crushed tin cans and useless refuse. It has no potable water and is lit by a single electric light bulb. He sleeps on a dirty mat and uses a plastic bucket for his “business,” which he later spills into a stinking rivulet in Miraflores, near Los Pinos.

If you ask him for three wishes, he would answer: “To eat hot food, to have enough money to buy a drink and to die soon.” Cubans like Sergio don’t make plans for more than one month. They don’t save money for their daughter’s fifteenth birthday party or something unforeseen. Their future is now.

When he’s asked about Havana, chosen as one of the New7Wonder Cities of the World in December 2014, he thinks you’re pulling his leg. “Havana is a Wonder City? And they say we’re the crazy ones. A place where water is distributed on alternate days, the gunk and dirt are everywhere you look, the people pee and shit anywhere, and transportation is terrible can never be a Wonder City,” comments Sergio.

Against all odds, Magda has been able to remodel her house, buy new furniture and live like God requires, “thanks to the beauty shop I have.” In her house she has modern electric appliances, air conditioning in the three rooms, and every summer she spends a week with her husband and children in a five-star hotel in Varadero.

Although she has café con leche for breakfast and two meals a day, she smiles before offering an appraisal on Havana. “I worked in Foreign Commerce and traveled through half of Europe. Then I visited the United States, and I can assure you that the Cuban capital doesn’t fulfill any parameter that would put it in that category. The miracle of Havana is that, in spite of the authorities’ apathy and abandonment, it’s still standing,” says Magda.

Diana is an architect and recognizes that the architecture in Havana is distinctive. “But 70 percent of the buildings are very deteriorated. The infrastructure is terrible. And they haven’t found a way to modernize the aqueduct, not even the drains in the low areas. Only in Old Havana do they remodel. It’s a city with an architectural variety that not many cities in the world have. Each neighborhood is different. The vegetation is abundant and looks impressive from the other side of the bay, but it would be very pretentious to categorize it as a Wonder City.”

Joan, a dark, hyperkinetic man from San Leopoldo in the heart of the capital, who lives from what falls off the back of a truck, considers it offensive to have a cultural program June 7 to 11 to celebrate the unusual honor.

“Dude, the role supports everything they put in. It’s hard to swallow this story. I invite those who chose Havana to come spend a few days in my house. There are leaks on all sides. We have to buy water or fill pails from a barrel because it’s been 20 years since water came out of the pipes. What’s fucked up isn’t living so badly: it’s that we can’t see things getting better. The problem is that Cuba is in fashion now, and these awards are part of the package,” Joan points out.

Behind the shabby, unpainted facades, the dirt, the streets full of potholes and leaking water, the beauty of a cosmopolitan, different city can still be perceived. But many people in Havana think that these hidden charms aren’t sufficient to give a prize to the former Villa of San Cristóbal, 97 years after its founding, now that it doesn’t stand up to torrential downpours or hurricane-force winds.

To really evaluate Havana you have to live there. From an air-conditioned car or drinking a beer in the Factoría of the Old Plaza, the city is pure mirage.

Note: In a competition organized for New7Wonders, a Swiss foundation, in December 2014, Havana joined La Paz (Bolivia), Doha (Qatar), Durban (South Africa), Beirut (Lebanon), Vigan (Philippines) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). The official declaration of Havana as a Wonder City of the World was made on June 7, 2016. In 1982, UNESCO declared Old Havana a World Heritage Site.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Harsh Reality / Fernando Dámaso

Fernando Damaso, 17 May 2016 — In the few available spaces for people to express their opinions in the official Cuban media (letters to the editor of “Granma,” “Rebellious Youth,” a page of “Workers”, “Ordinary People Talking” on Havana Channel, “Cuba Says” on Cubavision, and others), they complain about and attack useless, bureaucratic, irresponsible and lazy officials, who don’t do what they’re supposed to do and let problems mount up and increase. The editors of these spaces are no better. The criticisms are not forwarded, but remain stuck at square one. They are rarely sent on to the relevant government ministries or organisations. It seems that these deplorable events only occur because of officials’ mistakes, since, higher up, everything is perfect and there is no responsibility for any of it. continue reading

Nevertheless, it cannot be that so many officials of different organisations and departments (The Electric Company, Postal Service, ETECSA (the phone company)), Public Health, Education, Housing, Planning, Water and Drainage, Communes, Transport, Employment and Social Security, Justice, the National Bank, National Assembly of Peoples’ Power, etc.) could be so unprofessional and inept.

We have to ask whether these “qualities” are not also to be found in these organisations and institutions and, logically, in the “system.” In reality, it seems that it is the latter which doesn’t work, for the simple reason that it achieves nothing. More than fifty five years with the same worsening problems, many new ones too, and nothing solved, clearly demonstrates that.

They can continue appealing to patriotism, discipline, efficiency and whatever else they want, but as long as they fail to satisfy the ever-increasing needs of the people and allow them to freely develop their initiatives and talents, it’s a waste of time.

Unfortunately, and not just in Cuba, socialism has shown itself to be a “political, economic and social system” which has totally failed.

Translated by GH

Why Military Service Should Be Abolished in Cuba / Iván García

Ivan Garcia, 23 April 2016 — They work as a pair. Raciel, a black man almost six feet tall, with long arms and legs and a pock-marked complexion, is in charge of the fumigation equipment, while Yilsander, a light-skinned, pudgy man, carries a black bag and a clipboard, where he writes down the houses that have already been disinfected in the search ordered by Raúl Castro to minimize the presence of the mosquito that transmits dengue, chikungunya and zika.

Below a torrid sun, the two go house by house in the Havana neighborhood of Víbora. They wear olive-green pants, caps and shirts, the uniform designed by some sadistic tailor who ignored the tropical temperature of the island. And they have on horrifyingly heavy boots with steel tips on the toes. continue reading

Raciel, 19, is sweating buckets, and he smokes a cigarette below the doorway of a shop on Carmen Street, contiguous to the Plaza Roja, in the heart of Víbora. He’s a native of Cienfuegos, 300 kilometers to the southeast of Havana. Yilsander, 20 years old, was born in Mayabeque, a province that was improvised in 2010 by the Regime to prove how effective certain administrative and political transformations were.

“When I got to my unit (a tank unit in Managua, south of the Capital), my feet were full of open blisters,” comments Raciel. “The life of a recruit is very hard. The worst food, abuse from the officials, and they pay us 21 pesos a month.” “It’s shit, brother,” says Yilsander, and he wipes his face with a handkerchief soaked with sweat.

A month ago, 9,000 recruits, low-level officials, officials and police began participating in the fumigation and sanitation of the country. In spite of the heat and the 10-hour days, Raciel and Yilsander prefer this work to the tense sessions on military preparation.

“From six in the morning we have to be marching or training in the heat, with guns that weigh a ton. Or cleaning the tanks, arming and disarming the guns. It’s fucked up, because if Cuba is now friends with the Yankees, they’re not going to invade,” says Yilsander, the more loquacious of the two.

Both agree that Active Military Service, known before as General Military Service or Obligatory Military Service, makes no sense. “Do you know how much money is wasted on taking care of equipment that should be in a museum?” asks Raciel.

Too much money for an economy that is leaking on all sides. According to statistics, there are more than 85,000 armed men and around 6,000,000 men and women between the ages of 17 and 49 available for the armed forces in case of war.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) encompasses three armies: western, central and eastern, plus a navy and an air force. Also, a battalion of elite troops and a youth army that performs agricultural and construction work in captive conditions and with ridiculous salaries.

The FAR and MININT (Ministry of the Interior) are the principal tools of social control in Cuba. They manage 75 percent of the national economy. The Council of State and the Politburo, as well as different ministries and first-rate business enterprises are commanded by active or retired soldiers, who have exchanged their olive-green uniforms for white guayaberas.

According to Daniel, an economist, the FAR devours “between 3.8 and 4.0 percent of the GDP. Perhaps more. And it generates expenses of billions of pesos and convertible money into maintaining armaments, military preparation and privileges. A FAR official earns around 1,200 pesos a month and has access to housing, recreation, clothing and food, all subsidized by the State.”

In a survey of 24 young people between 14 to 29 years old, they unanimously prefer abolishing Active Military Service. “Military service in Cuba should be professional and voluntary. Let a solider commit himself for five to ten years and earn a decent salary,” says Diosbel, a baccalaureate student.

For Onel, who is in his second year of studying telecommunications engineering, the disproportionate expense, the emigration from Cuba and the accelerated aging of the population are important elements in favor of designing a new strategy of defense.

“I don’t think it’s worth it to join the army for one or two years, for young people with the sufficient potential to become scientists, engineers, computer programmers. Before the new panorama, the FAR should restructure itself. It should essentially assist the population in the case of disasters or hurricanes. A small, professional armed forces, with no more than 30,000 men, would be the ideal for a country that is getting older, and which is in a permanent economic crisis,” adds Onel.

In the golden years of Fidel Castro’s revolution, the FAR had 1,000,000 men in arms. Cuba, a poor country, in the ’80s, for the first time in its history participated in two civil wars simultaneously in Ethiopia and Angola, sending 50,000 soldiers at its own expense.

“One day of war costs the United States millions of dollars. And Cuba spent 16 years in Angola. I’m convinced that this waste of resources, men and money was the beginning of the Special Period that the country experienced later,” said Daniel, the economist.

When the secret archives of the State pavilion are opened some day, we will be able to know the amount of money squandered on wars outside Cuban borders, on the preparation of foreign guerrilla fighters and on subsidies to Latin America and Africa.

In this twenty-first century, no one wants to attack Cuba. Military service should be abolished.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Legal Framework for the Enemy / Cubanet, Miriam Celaya

Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 2 June 2016 — The phrase uttered by Castro I a few years ago, when he confessed that no one knew how to build socialism, remains in the minds of many Cubans. Most of us, stunned and unbelieving, wondered back then what they had been doing for all previous decades, when the official discourse specifically maintained that we were immersed in the construction of this idyllic “society, qualitatively superior to capitalism”.

However, the successor to the throne, Castro II, apparently does believe to know how socialism is built, not socialism as the soviet manuals indicated, but something similar to it: a gestational namesake that, in reality, would only be the consumption of the State capitalist monopoly, the absolute eldest son of the Galician-Birán caste, his close followers and their offspring. continue reading

In fact, the General has even calculated even how much “prep time” will elapse until we can view this wonder: exactly 13 years, i.e. from the year 2017, when the new National Plan for Economic and Social Development (PNDES) will be defined and approved until 2030, when the “successful” implementation of the Guidelines has fertilized the field for “socialist development”. The PNDES is the complement and the tool of the Conceptualization Project (PC), as discussed in a previous article.

Let the new bricklayers get ready, the ones that will stir together the new mixture that the Castro regime brings us, if we assume the folly as a certainty, the promised “socialism” could start to be built just 70 years after the takeover of power by the guerrillas who are still in the warpath from the heights of comfort of the Palace of the Revolution, far removed from ordinary people’s daily hardships.

Of course, we’re dealing with an amazing accumulation of chimeras. First among them is the assumption that there are Cubans who are ready to read and seriously analyze documents flowing from last April’s secret conclave of the Druids. The other — no less dreamy — is that anyone (including their own promoters) will take seriously the contents that are summarized in them. And, finally, there is the alienation of the ideal “model” from where we diverge to project the future of a country that doesn’t even have a present, in which the predominant demographic features are the low birth rate, the rapid aging of the population and the unstoppable emigration abroad. It is unlikely that the ruling caste will have enough slaves in the endowment to build another “revolutionary” lie of such magnitude.

But it is not my intention to dwell on another analysis of senile — though not naïve at all — utopias, but to focus on some shady elements which, paradoxically, are part of a kind of glossary, presented under the title Meaning Of Terms Used In Documents Presented At The Seventh Congress Of The CCP, which establishes, in 33 categories, the new battery of Castro concepts “over property and socialism,” so that the most educated population on the planet might fully understand the scope of such illustrious pages.

But, just like the bedsheet that’s too short to cover your toes, the glossary in question does not mask the demons that the Castro regime is trying to conjure. An example that jumps out is that the concept of “private property” – acknowledged as one of the forms of property for the Cuban Model (subsection d of point 120 PC) — is not included in the list of glossed definitions for either document.

Instead, ersatz categories, such as Non-State Ownership, Personal Property, or Common Proprietor of the Basic Means Of Production, euphemisms intended to blend for the sake of a purported “common interest” the rights of individuals to manage, control, inherit or dispose of their property. In Cuba, such an interest has already be determined by “the leading role of the socialist State in the economy” and that stands for “State-owned” – the so-called “socialist property of all the people” — in “the backbone of the entire system of property of the socialist society”(point 123, PC).

This guiding character of the State, in turn, is strictly based on “the principles of our socialism,” therefore the “projects of personal life, family and collective” are also selected by free will and responsibility “of each person, but within the political-ideological framework outlined by the CCP, and, in any case, the individual and family projects can be conceived “as counter or antagonistic towards the collectives.” In this equation, “collectives” equals people-society and, especially, State. Contradictorily, individuals or entities defined as “common owners” are included among the “non-State forms” of property.

If the reader has not understood a thing, this is the purpose of the official tabloid. I will simplify it to a minimum: the State (Castro and his conga-line) is the representative of the people (everyone else who is a native of Cuba) and as such, he is the one who controls everyone’s property, including assets that presumably do not belong to the State. As a corollary of this legal-theoretical aberration, the “people” own everything but every day is more deprived in assets, capital and rights; while the State collects and manages all the wealth and benefits of the nominal owners, it establishes production strategies (although they not produce anything) and it launches the legal and political order of the “owner-people.”

Another notable omission in the glossary is the latest type of property mentioned in section 120 of the CP, “property of mass political organizations and other forms of association” – implicitly understood in these institutions created by the government-State-party to ensure its control of society, which fittingly overlaps within the generic concept of “socialist civil society” (glossary term number 10).

Interestingly, unlike other forms of property, “political organizations of the masses, social, and others …” (Sub-paragraph e, point 120 of the PC) enjoy a special privilege, as these associations “have legal personality and work in the established framework “(point 188 PC) and “can receive State or other support, in the interest of the country’s advancements and its well-being” (section 190 PC).

There is no need to be an accomplished analyst to discover the Castro trick. When organizations created for the State’s own service — such as the CDR, FMC, CTC, FEEM, FEU, OPC, UPEC, UNEAC* and a whole long list of “foundations” defined as “socialist civil society” — are acknowledged as “properties” with legal personality and independent from the State and then the rights of these organizations are legitimized to receive “help” (financing? donations?) from the State or from “others” (institutions, organizations or other foreign actors?). This not only justifies the permanence of a monstrous unproductive and parasitic institutional structure within a country in debt and in perennial economic crisis, but frees the State-Party-Government from the burden that support for them implies, and in addition converts them into potential tax contributors to the State itself.

Taking this analysis a step further, it is difficult not to relate the category “socialist civil society” and the official recognition of the form of ownership of ” political organizations of the masses, social, and others …” — defined in the glossary as a “form of non-State ownership” — with the easing measures dictated by the US government regarding the approval of bank loans and other benefits for non-State entrepreneurs. It would not be surprising if socialist civil society becomes the entrepreneurs of the future. Suffice it to remember that the origin of the capital of many of the tycoons of today’s Russia stems from the workings of the institutions created by the Soviet State. If this seems a bit twisted to the readers, be aware that, in effect, it is.

And since everything seems to be thought out, not by chance, concept number 6 of the glossary (forms of non-State-owned property) literally states in paragraph 4 that “the possibilities of different non-State forms for the effective management and efficient use of resources” must contribute “to the development of the national economy, instead of being a burden to the socialist State.” That is, all must pay income taxes to the State.

Obviously, regardless of the unworkable nature of almost all Castro plans, we must not lose sight of the obvious intention of making a comprehensive legal framework for the whole society, which is to be favorable to its interests as a military and political enterprise. Such a framework would cover both the minimum formal requirements to satisfy legal scruples for the sake of appearances from abroad and to legitimize the Castro transition to State capitalism disguised as socialism.

So it is that we finally know that, hereinafter, when the power elite speaks of how to “construct socialism” it will actually be referring to how to best consolidate the private emporium founded by the two most illustrious sons of… Birán**.

There will be no shortage of those who think that this is causing too much worry, that the absurdity of the official plans is, in itself, the warranty of its failure. Those who think that way might be forgetting how much damage it has caused us as a nation to underestimate the mimetic and survival skills of the Castro regime. Personally, I agree with those who believe that we would be better off if we kept our enemies under close scrutiny, even if we are convinced that they are in agony. And I don’t know anyone who is more deserving of the title of enemies of the Cuban people than the Castro brothers.

Translator’s note:

*The acronyms stand for: CDR – Committees for the Defense of the Revolution; FMC, Federation of Cuban Women; CTC, Cuban Workers Center; FEEM, Federation of High School Students ; FEU, Federation of University Students; OPC, Cuban Patriotic Organization; UPEC, Cuban Journalists Union; UNEAC, Cuban Writers and Artists Union.

*The birthplace of Fidel and Raul Castro

Translated by Norma Whiting

Cuban Opposition Deplores Secrecy of Cuba-EU Negotiations / 14ymedio, Mario Felix Lleonart

Conference on European Union-Cuba relations held this Tuesday at the European Parliament in Brussels (ALDE)

14ymedio, Mario Felix Lleonart, Brussels, 1 June 2016 – Cuban representatives who participated in the conference in the European Parliament held last Tuesday in Brussels about relations between the European Union and Cuba were skeptical about the cooperation agreement that will be signed by both sides at the end of the year, or at the latest, at the beginning of 2017.

The Island’s delegation – Rosa Maria Paya, promotor of the Cuba Decides campaign; Pedro Fuentes Cid, spokesman for the Historical Center of Political Prisoners; and the author of these lines, a Baptist pastor and manager of the Cuban National Conference – lamented that civil Cuban society has not been taken into account in the negotiations for the agreement that will substitute for the European Union Common Position which, since 1996, has delineated relations of the twenty-eight EU countries with the Island. continue reading

Also present at the meeting, organized by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), were Ben Nupnau, official from the European Foreign Service Division for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and Pavel Telicka, vice-president of ALDE.

Nupnau expressed Europe’s good intentions for the positive effects that the cooperation agreement could have on democratization and respect for human rights in the Cuba. Nevertheless, the Cubans present argued that the Island’s government had not given the EU any expectation of guarantees about human rights and democratic freedoms, given the persistent signs of verifiable repression in 54 Sundays of harassment of the Ladies in White and the monthly statistics of arbitrary detentions produced by Cuba’s Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission.

The Island’s delegation pointed out the secret character that so far tarnishes the agreement and questioned the fact that neither European nor Cuban citizens had been able to express opinions about its contents.

The delegation also encouraged the EU, if it is in competition with the United States with respect to Cuba, to also compete in support of civil society. The panelists emphasized that, in spite of pressure by Cuban negotiators, the US had not given up doing so, while the EU only supports civil society as conceived of or endorsed by the government in Havana, the very one that has tried to muzzle it.

The EU, according to participants in the meeting, must be aware of the close relations that the Cuban government has with enemies of Europe and of democracy such as North Korea, Russia and Belarus.

The Cuban ambassador in Brussels, Norma Goicochea Estenoz, declined the invitation to participate in the meeting and sent an email to explain that she could not meet in the same place as “mercenaries.” The diplomat acted consistently with the intransigent position of the Cuban government, capable of sitting down to negotiate with the biggest powers, even when, as in the case of the United States, it has to do with its historical enemy, but refusing to engage in dialog with its own people, whom it thus insults and denigrates.

On Wednesday, the official presented a complaint to the European Foreign Service about the ALDE conference. Some supposed that it was going to make clear that its embassy had nothing to do with certain attendees who took advantage of public intervention time in order to question the legitimacy of the panelists, matching the views given in her email. It is supposed that those who suspect that may be right, given that the reason for her urgent visit to the European chancery was to again lash out against the panelists and, in turn, also against Telicka and ALDE.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Prague Happily Infects its Visitors / Dora Leonor Mesa

Dora Leonor Mesa, 2 May 2016 — Some years ago I referred to how well Vaclav Havel knew the Cubans. I never imagined that one day I would travel to the capital of the Czech Republic: Prague, the city of 100 towers. My husband always spoke to me with nostalgia for that city which he visited several times during his years as an athlete on the Cuban gymnastics team.

In 2015 I discovered Prague when I went as a delegate to the Forum 2000, an exceptional event dedicated to education and democracy. As scheduled, keeping my promise to the Infant of Prague was among my priorities, and I attended a Mass in his church. Some time ago I wrote a book of poems dedicated to the Infant of Prague that may someday be published. continue reading

The Moldava River is known through the famous Czech composer, Smetana. Kafka’s house formed part of my obligations as a visitor. I live and was born in Cuba, converted in mid-century into an authentic reality show of the famous writer’s work.

I spent 10 very busy days, in which I savored Czech, Hindu and Japanese cuisine (sushi, at last!). I’m not used to drinking beer. Also, it’s expensive in Cuba (at least $1.00 for 330 ml). Sometimes we can’t even pay for our daily food.

Imagine a common Cuban family buying alcoholic beverages! Confidentially, I can say that I always thought the popularity of Czech beer was an exaggeration of alcoholics.

Nonsense! said my insides.

Previously, I had drunk beer in Germany, where the excellence of the beer is part of the national culture. In Prague, almost by chance, I tried a glass of beer. Later I surprised myself by drinking it fearlessly with meals. A gigantic pitcher, one liter or more.

So when I attend some activity or event, no matter where, and I’m offered beer, I try to verify, discreetly, its provenance.

God forgive me if in Cuba I give myself the luxury of wanting to drink only the Cacique and Obama brands. To clarify, Obama beer is really called “President.” There is still no explanation for why the Cuban people changed the name, long before there was talk about Barack Obama’s visit to the island.

To conclude, and seriously analyzing my actual disdain for beer that isn’t Czech, I believe that the Czechs use magic formulas to convert those who drink it into loyal experts. Something like a vaccination against beers that have no class.

At least for me, Prague isn’t only a symbol of marvelous glassware, good clothing and democracy. I now also imagine, with pleasure:

Being in Cuba with a pitcher full of Czech beer!

Translated by Anonymous and Regina Anavy

Cuban Alternative Journalism: Challenges and Commitments / Iván García

In the homage that the Club of Independent Cuban Writers paid the poet, Rafael Alcides, January 26, 2016, among other independent journalists were Luis Cino (shirt with blue and white stripes), Iván García (dark red shirt) and Jorge Olivera (black jacket), who was a political prisoner during the Black Spring of 2003.

Ivan Garcia, 3 May 2016 — One morning in 1996, the poet and journalist, Raúl Rivero, Director of the press agency Independent Cuba Press, called me at home in Víbora, to ask me to cover the trial of a dissident in a municipal court in Cerro.

The reporter, Ariel de Castro Tapia, (presently living in Turkey) and I were to write up a statement after the judicial ruling and read it on the Radio Martí news broadcast at noon. continue reading

“Improvise, but the news has to go out,” Rivero told me, haltingly. There were many problems. At that time, there were no cell phones or Internet rooms in Cuba, and Twitter and Facebook were the stuff of science fiction.

The trial was attended by agents of State Security. We verified the number of a public telephone from which, although we couldn’t communicate directly with Radio Martí, we were able to establish a point of connection.

We called Rivero so he could inform the broadcasting station, and with the number we gave him Radio Martí communicated with us every half hour. A source inside the trial came out at each break and told us how things were going. A few minutes after the ruling was read, we went on the air with Radio Martí News.

We did all this with only a notebook and a pen. Necessity generates creativity. Like many independent journalists in the ’90s, I took notes by hand and then cleaned them up on an old, Soviet-era typewriter.

Once, a European journalist gave his laptop to Cuba Press as a gift. Raúl Rivero decided that my mother, Tania Quintero, Ariel and I – we all lived near each other in La Víbora – would share it. But the novelty brought us a problem.

At that time, State Security had unleashed a spectacular hunt for computers. Around 10:00 in the morning of June 2, 1997, agents of counterintelligence, commanded by an official who identified himself as Pepín, tore apart the house in search of the laptop.

They didn’t find it. By foresight, we had hidden it somewhere else. We decided to return the laptop to Raúl Rivero and to continue using the typewriter. Once we edited our notes, we read them from a fixed line.

Until Fidel Castro’s raid in March of 2003, when he imprisoned 75 peaceful dissidents, among them 27 reporters, the texts of independent journalists were read by telephone, and collaborators in Miami posted them on websites.

In spite of harassment from the political police, the arrests, acts of repudiation and threats, we wrote from our own perspective about that other Cuba that the regime wanted to hide, without any fuss or pretensions to heroism.

I give this personal anecdote as an example of the fact that you don’t always need sophisticated computer or audiovisual equipment to do journalism in Cuba, one of the worst countries in the world for the profession.

Of course, with good tools and monetary backing, you can do a better journalism, above all, outside Havana. The reality of the capital isn’t the same as that of Villa Clara, Las Tunas or Guantánamo.

But you can do high-quality work with just a few resources. If there is any doubt, just read Periodismo de Barrio (Community Journalism), a project begun by Elaine Díaz, ex-professor of the Faculty of Communication at the University of Havana, who, with a part of the money she received from a scholarship at Harvard, is creating wonderful Cuban journalism.

Today there’s a boom in free journalism. Whatever its bias or format, the independent press is enjoying good health. Havana Times, On Cuba Magazine and El Estornudo (The Sneeze) and El Toque(The Touch) are some examples of alternative media. And several publications specializing in sports, fashion, art and cooking circulate on the Internet, all Made in Cuba.

There is also a more committed journalism, openly anti-Castro, which supports a real democracy, like Primavera Digital (Digital Spring), managed by Juan González Febles and edited by Luis Cino, one the best ungagged journalists. They don’t mince words. They call the Castro Regime a dictatorship, and they don’t turn away from criticizing the dissidence either.

High-style journalism costs money. But the reporters for Primavera Digital stopped receiving money from Switzerland two years ago, and they continue publishing a weekly without one cent coming from the exterior.

Yoani Sánchez administers 14ymedio, a daily whose articles present a balanced point of view. Dagoberto Valdés directs Convivencia (Coexistence) in Pinar del Río. And in almost every province there is some dissident media.

In a parallel manner, audiovisual journalism is taking steps. Ignacio González, Claudio Fuentes and Augusto César San Martín figure among its best exponents.

Ignacio is a man of many talents. Hyperkinetic and creative, he has an online review named En Caliente Prensa Libre (In Caliente Free Press). He has just created a debate program named La Ventana (The Window). And he is thinking about the release of a news website.

There are now more alternative journalists, women and men, who write freely. At the present time, around 300 reporters work for independent media or foreign newspapers.

The quality has improved. Specialists have surged in subjects like economics, history or politics such as Arnaldo Ramos, Orlando Freyre Santana, Osmar Laffita, Miriam Celaya or Dimas Castellanos. Young people like María Matienzo, Yusimí Rodríguez, Marcia Cairo, Ana León, Adriana Zamora, Luz Escobar and Lourdes Gómez perform “street” journalism.

In the sphere of investigation, Elaine Díaz and her group of reporters in Periodismo de Barrio (Community Journalism), and Waldo Fernández Cuenca, author of a book that details how Fidel Castro’s censorship against the press began, do more exhaustive reporting about Cuban society. Others, like Regina Coyula, collaborate with the international media.

There are many challenges and difficulties, mainly from the State, which continues to control the flow of information with an iron hand. The political police still harass and blackmail alternative journalists to keep them from working. Because of these pressures and threats, many have left Cuba, opting for exile.

When you look for the nations with the least freedom of expression on the world map, Cuba is colored red, belonging to the countries with the least press freedom.

Of course the State hasn’t actually killed any journalist. They kill them in another way. They convert them into state reporters, scribes and ventriloquists. Or they try to recruit them as snitches.

Alternative journalism still has some room to maneuver for its growth. We’re always going to be at a technological disadvantage, and we can’t compete with the foreign agencies for “scoops.” Our strength lies in telling stories from another context and showing the variety of opinions that exist on the Island.

One piece of advice for Cuban journalists: Don’t throw away your old typewriter (I still have mine). In an autocracy like Cuba, you never know when you might need it.

Translated by Regina Anavy

The New Gospel, According to the General / Cubanet, Miriam Celaya

Raúl Castro has slipped the designs of the PCC into a tabloid with documents analyzed and approved during the VII Congress of the Cuban Communist Party

Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 26 May 2016 — The Cuban Party-State-Government has just published a tabloid containing two of the root documents analyzed and approved during the VII Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) last April, 2016. These are the Project for the Conceptualization for the Economic and Social Model of Socialist Development Project and for the National Project Plan for Economic and Social Development Until 2030: Proposal Of Country’s Vision, Core And Strategic Sectors.

No doubt this is a case of “partial declassification”, considering that the four documents adopted in April’s occult ritual were of a strictly secret character. The discussion and approval, produced in covert conditions, involved about a thousand of the anointed (so-called “delegates”) and, according to official figures 3,500 “guests.” continue reading

The two remaining mysterious scrolls have yet to be declassified, namely, the Report on the Results of the Implementation of the Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution, with the Update of the Guidelines for the period 2016-2021, which contains the Working Party In Compliance With Those Approved At The First National Conference Objectives And Guidelines Of The First Secretary Of The Central Committee, i.e., the sacred commandments of the General-President himself.

The first thing that draws attention to this tabloid’s disclosure is the indifference of the Cuban population, which has not given any importance to a document where, presumably, the destiny of the nation was plotted and established. In contrast, some foreign news agencies have unleashed a wave of comments that tend to magnify those documents as if they were the creation of a miracle, focusing the spotlight on what they consider the big news: the alleged acknowledgement of “private property” by the PCC, including medium size and small businesses in that category. At the same time, the media’s most audacious analysts suggest the Cuban government has employed certain political will to enhance or enable the development of this type of economic management.

Such a mirage, agitated by the “co-responsible” of Havana’s accredited press–so diligent in legitimizing the official discourse of the ruling elite as refractory to delve into a serious and thorough investigation of the Cuban reality–part of a misinterpretation of point 91 of the “Conceptualization…”, which textually exposes “another transformation that will contribute to the economy, employment and well-being of the population is the recognition of the complementary role of private ownership over certain means of production …”.

However, it is known that true private property is only possible in societies where individuals, groups or business entities are able to exercise the right to own, control, inherit, manage and produce their goods and capital in order to achieve wealth. Those rights include the possibility of developing their properties according to their abilities, or acquiring (including importing) raw materials, machinery, equipment and all documents necessary for the development of their commercial or productive activity, which implies the existence of a lawful framework providing legal guarantees to the “owners.” That is not the case in Cuba, as should be known in the circles of the accredited press.

In fact, the newly published document endorses the opposite of what can be expected where real private property exists, as described in point #104: “the concentration of property and wealth in natural or legal non-State persons or entities is not allowed, in accordance with what has been legislated, in a manner consistent with the principles of our socialism,” and, if this were not enough, they hammer another nail on the coffin of the illusory “private property” in section 201, when it dictates: “the state regulates the constitution, dissolution, liquidation and restructuring of legal entities of all forms of property. It defines their areas of policies and principal activities.”

But the most relevant value of “The Project of Conceptualization …” is the huge number of conflicting and mutually exclusive elements, which clearly reflects not only the extent and depth of the Cuban socio-economic crisis, but the impossibility of getting it resolved from the political and legal framework established in the last 57 years.

This is evident throughout the entire document, but a few key issues that contradict the ideological assumptions on which it is intended to build the “Model” are more than sufficient. Suppose we look at the case of foreign investments, a kind of property that is currently being officially acknowledged by the government as “a source of development and means of accessing capital, technology, markets and managerial experience, which contributes production clusters and in the resolution of major structural imbalances…” (Item #90).

On the other hand, the principle that the economic system is planned, regulated and controlled by the State is sustained. The State also controls relations with international economies (point 203).

So the solution to the structural crisis of Cuba’s socialism is found in the forms of capitalist production, but the distribution of wealth stemming from market relations through foreign trade and foreign (capitalist) investment will be exerted by the socialist state. Then the wealth from capitalist production capacity would be state-socialist property, since, as stated by paragraph 124, “the State acts as a representative of the owner, which is the people.”

The colossal nationalization of the economy continues to be maintained, since, in its capacity as representative of the owners, the State decides and controls the destinies of the corporate profits of socialist property of all the people, after [the owners’] fulfillment of tax obligations and other commitments, (point 148).

This “representation” includes the regulation and control of institutions, companies and communications media as a strategic resource of the State–which is to say, the state monopoly of the media–“according to the policy designed” by the CCP, “preserving technology sovereignty, in compliance with the legislation established on matters of defense and national security” (points 110 and 111), in which it presupposes ratification of Law 88 (Gag Law).

Of course, the role of the State (government and one-party at the same time) as “patriarch” manager of wealth and properties under “representative of the people” is more than questionable, in a nation where presidential elections have not been held in over 60 years, and where more than 70% of the population was born after 1959 and has never had the opportunity to legitimize such paternity.

This is precisely what determines that the “new” proposal–absurdly futuristic, but almost identical to all the discursive rhetoric of the preceding decades–from the same octogenarian and retrograde ruling elite, does not arouse the interest of ordinary Cubans in the least. Why “debate” about the same old fait accompli? they ask themselves with the same apathy that dominates Cuban society.

Few have stopped to think that, with the popular “debate” which, it’s rumored, will take place around these documents, the ruling caste aims to “legitimize” the consecration of state capitalism for their own benefit, and will continue to cling to power beyond the biological possibilities of the olive-green banditos. This seems to be expressed in the presentation of the behemoth in question: we are facing the strategic legacy of the “historic generation” to new generations.

It is not possible to exhaust in a single article all the ambiguous rabbit trails that slither along the 330 points of the Conceptualization Project. For now, let’s summarize that they are the “good news” that Saint Raúl, of the olive-green, bearer of a truth that has certainly been revealed to him by his predecessor, the Great Orate: if we stick to the concept of “Revolution” of that wise old man, if the “Guidelines” are met and if the results of the implementation of these are effective, in the year 2030 Cubans will be in a position to “build a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable nation.”

Let no one be surprised if, in the coming weeks, the number of emigrants from this impossible island increases exponentially.

Translated by Norma Whiting

The Castros Will Miss Obama / Iván García

President Obama on Cuba's favorite comedy show (see details below) — President Obama on Cuba’s favorite comedy show (see details below)

Ivan Garcia, 23 May 2016 — It was a warm autumn night in 2015. The Mikasuki casino, in a swamp in the Everglades, thirty minutes from downtown Miami, was crammed full of anxious people, frantically pressing buttons on the slot-machine screen.

The cushioned floor absorbed the footsteps of good-natured assistants who manoeuvred about like the captain of a drifting gondola, carrying their trays of drinks. continue reading

Some friends had taken me there so that I could see what the inside of a casino was like. I had returned from a three day journey to Costa Rica, intending to write various stories about Cubans stuck in Central America.

In Miami I chatted with some fellow-countrymen to find out their opinion about the fourth migration wave which was in progress and had led to the exodus of nearly 50 thousand Cubans in a year and a half.

In Sun City (as Miami is referred to) opinions were divided. People like Tomás, born in Caibarién, Santa Clara province, and retired from an electric company in Florida, voted with both hands up for Obama to repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act.

“It is the worst Cubans who are coming here. People who are naturally lazy and always shouting. With three months of cardsharping, and with their Social Security money, they go to the island to speculate with rented gold chains. Only when there is no more Cuban Adjustment Act, will the Castros just have to get on with it”, he said while knocking back a whiskey on the rocks.

At his side, a friend, a fisherman in his spare time, and also retired, was counting the hours until Obama leaves office, “he can go to Kenya or Nigeria, I don’t know, so long as he goes”, he said.

The Anglo-Saxon Americans I spoke to had a very bad opinion of Obama. They called him weak, that he had destroyed the middle class, they accused him of letting the Chinese steal their jobs, and that economic growth was a smoke-screen, because the new jobs were low quality and badly-paid.

Like many redneck Americans they yearned for someone like Donald Trump. Nevertheless, when they came to the subject of Obama and his policy on Cuba, although opinions varied for and against, the majority came to the conclusion that the greatest beneficiary was the government in Havana.

Good luck is seizing opportunities. And, one year and five months after the historic 17th of December, when the cold-war enemies agreed to raise a white flag, the return for the Cuban people has been very poor.

When you talk to the Cuban man in the street, many of them feel that a golden opportunity has been missed to reconstruct a stalled economy from the ground up and create a environment favourable to microenterprises and small family businesses.

After 17-D, things moved from exaggerated hope to blackest pessimism. In Havana, the recurring theme for many young people and adults are their plans to emigrate.

The olive green government’s wasted opportunity is what led Saúl, owner of a food business, to gather together as much money as possible in order to then leave with his family to go to the United States.

“I am up to here with their lies. The Communist Party Congress was the last straw. All that happened with the re-establishment of relations with the Americans, was the government gained time to prepare its plan of succession. Nothing is going to change in Cuba”, the businessman assured me.

Two months after Obama’s visit to Havana, people still remember the Secret Service paraphernalia, Air Force One, and The Beast, as his Cadillac is called. Quite a few people have kept or downloaded the whole of the speech made by the American president at the Alicia Alonso theatre.

They think of it as a swindle. Obama’s speech and the affection it generated in Cuba perhaps was the origin of an abrupt relapse in the Castro regime.

Although the government Talibans continue to think of digging trenches and planning imaginary combats with windmills, their myopia has cut them off from the wishes of the people.

People want to live in the best way they can. Receive reasonable salaries, have more than a black coffee for breakfast, and have a comfortable house to live in. Cuba is an albatross around their necks. Ignoring the opinions of its people, the government has bet on rigid fundamentalism and the insane defence of its positions.

Perhaps in 2017 the autocrats will miss Obama. In 114 years of the republic, no US president has offered his hand with such unexpected frankness to the Cuban people.

In my opinion, the government has calculated wrongly. For them, their ideology and the broken record of their propaganda has counted for more than the possibility of building a modern democratic nation.

When in November the US elections take place–and the Rolling Stones concert in Havana, and the catwalk glamour of Chanel along the Paseo del Prado have become anecdotes–then honest government officials will appreciate Obama’s gesture.

But I think by that time it will be too late. As always, the Castro brothers have decided for all of us the way forward for the nation.

Photo: Obama playing dominoes with the comedians Pánfilo, Facundo and Chequera. According to the columnist Mauricio Vicent in El País, “every Monday night at 8.30, when Cuban TV’s news, which takes a quick glance at the real national problems, has only just finished, Vivir del Cuento (Living to tell the tale), the most popular and most watched comedy programme, comes on in everyones’ homes. Pánfilo, its protagonist, is a grumpy retired man, who suffers the same day to day problems as any of his countrymen and who has spent half his life standing in lines”. …Taken by Martí News, which in turn took it from the White House website. The photo was taken in Havana, 21st March 2016, by Peter Souza, official White House photographer (Thank you).

Translated by GH

Soldiers in Business: Bad Deal / Cubanet, Luis Cino Alvarez

Soldiers in the economy: A bad deal (photo EFE)

Cubanet.org, Luis Cino Alvarez, Havana, 30 May 2016 – The survival of the Castro regime increasingly appears to be in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR). And not only because of the generals who run some of the most important ministries but also because of the general-businessmen of the Enterprise Administration Group (GAESA).

GAESA, whose managing director is Colonel Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, father of one of Raul Castro’s grandsons, invoices more than a billion dollars a year. It has sugar plants, the TRDs (Hard Currency Collection Stores), Caribe and Gaviota, which impose abusive taxes on commodity prices, the Almacenes Universales SA, farms, mills, telecommunications and computer industry, trade zones, etc. And if that were not enough, having most of the hotel and marina capacity, it governs tourism, one of the country’s main sources of foreign income. continue reading

Some things borrowed from capitalism have functioned successfully in FAR’s enterprises.

At the beginning of 1985, after the shipwreck of the Economic Planning and Management System copied from the Soviet model, FAR implemented the Business Improvement System on a trial basis in the company “Ernesto Guevara,” in Manicaragua, Villa Clara, the largest facility of the Military Industries Union.

The experiment was supervised by General Casas Regueiro, who kept General Raul Castro, then FAR Minister, regularly informed about the matter.

Two years later, the experiment was extended to the military industries throughout the country.

The Business Improvement System (SPE), which Raul Castro called “the most profound and transcendent change to the economy,” copied capitalist forms of organization and administration: corporations, joint stock companies, management contracts and partnerships with foreign companies.

SPE permitted the Cuban army to ride out the worst years of the Special Period. If it was not introduced on a national level it was for fear of its consequences, which would have been worse than those of shock therapy.

In 1994, Fidel Castro, pressured by the deteriorating situation, agreed that a group of businesses from the Basic Industry Ministry would enter the SPE on an experimental basis. Later 100 more businesses were incorporated.

In 1997, the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party adopted the SPE as an economic strategy. After Raul’s succession, the extension of business improvement to the entire Cuban economy was conceived as a long-term strategy for preserving the status quo.

At the end of the last decade, when more than 400 businesses that implemented SPE were the most efficient in the country in terms of costs and results, it seemed that the Cuban economy was beginning to move to general application of that system. But it was a too-artificial model to extrapolate it to the rest of the national economy. To begin with, the unaffordable and disastrous enterprise system in Cuban pesos was not compatible with business improvement in dollars.

With SPE, the military men played the economy to advantage. Their businesses bore fruit in a greenhouse environment. They did not have to face labor or capital competition, they had unlimited access to state resources and benefitted from disciplined labor accustomed to obeying orders. Production factors, prices and marketing were at their disposal. Investments were provided by foreign businessmen prepared for unscrupulous deals in exchange for a minimum participation in the businesses.

Although they have had relatively modest success, there is not much to learn from the FAR businesses. And that is because a nation is not governed as if it were an armored division.* War is one thing, and managing a country’s economy efficiently is something else, although both things use bellicose language interchangeably.

FAR, dragging its old slogans and obsolete Soviet weapons, also reflects the system’s wear and tear and the distortions of current Cuban society.

Military men crammed into businesses can become problematic in the not-too-long term. Distanced from the interests of the people, they contribute to the system’s continuity. But they will always be stalked by temptation. Contact with foreign capitalists foments greed and corruption. This has been happening for some years.

When they feel their privileges and properties granted by the proprietary state threatened, their loyalty to the bosses or their successors will be put to the test. We will see what will happen then.

About the Author: Luis Cino Alvarez

*Translator’s note: An allusion to Cuba’s hero of independence José Martí’s words to General Maximo Gomez during the independence struggle: “A nation is not founded, General, as a military camp is commanded.”

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Without Haste and With Many Pauses / Somos+, Joanna Columbie

Raul Castro speaking at the recent 7th Congress of the Cuban Communist Party

Somos+, Joanna Columbié, 24 May 2016 — The Cuban economic model, one that is imprecise, vague, and very particular to Cuba, does not manage to meet the needs of the Cuban people. The nominal wage does not come close to the actual salary that a Cuban citizen needs to cover their basic necessities and, in this respect as in many others, the Guidelines set forth in the previous Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba have failed to be implemented effectively; according to official figures, only 21% of the proposals have actually been carried out.

In Cuban president Raúl Castro’s own words, this whole process should be carried out “without haste but without pause,” however we should ask ourselves whether this phrase can ever be realistic for the Cuban people. Having to wait over 57 years for the promises made by Fidel Castro in his speech known as “History Will Absolve Me” to be put into effect puts this current wait into question. continue reading

It is not the first time that a similar process has been implemented in Cuba. Appearing to recognise the mistakes that have been made, necessary rectifications of mistakes and negative trends have been set out on more than one occasion, in each case with the apparent objective of distracting the population, making sure that their attention is diverted away from the serious economic and social situation that has plagued the country at various points in history.

And now Raúl is back at the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (known as the PCC) with the same discourse. Nothing has changed and in his speech he repeats this same fateful phrase that has led to many a frustrated hope for the people of Cuba and many a useless plan.

Part of the population hoped that this 7th Congress would bring change, change that has to happen sooner or later, but we did not think that it would come via a party that has lost its reason for being in this society, if it ever had one. Remaining in the same political confinement to which we are accustomed will not be a sufficient reason for the opposition movements in Cuba to walk step by step towards necessary change, even though the communists finish their congress in the same way it started: without haste and with many pauses.

Translated by E Hill

“I Am Prepared To Go to Prison Today,” says Berta Soler / 14ymedio

Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, during the art exhibit by El Sexto in Miami, Florida. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 29 May 2016 – From early hours Sunday a major police operation surrounded the headquarters of the Ladies in White in the Havana neighborhood of Lawton, according to denunciations by several activists from that organization. At least “13 women and four opponents were brutally intercepted outside the house” and forced into police cars in the last 13 hours, dissident Luisa Ramona Toscano Kendelan said by telephone to 14ymedio. continue reading

The group that surrounded the property included, as has become customary, a conga line with music through powerful speakers and signs that use the opposition campaign slogan “We All March” together with the phrases “with Fidel,” “with the Revolution” and “with socialism.”

At several points in the city similar operations prevented the women who form part of the human rights organization from reaching Santa Rita Church. Several on-scene witnesses report that at least two Ladies in White had managed to reach the vicinity of the parish on the western periphery of Havana.

Minutes before her arrest and in statements to this daily, Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, declared that she was ready to confront the risks of leaving her organization’s headquarters in order to exercise the right of “peaceful demonstration.” She explained that she was prepared to go “to prison to await the trial” with which they threatened her last week for a charge of resisting the authorities.

“I am prepared, I have my blood pressure monitor, my pills, shots, personal hygiene articles, flip flops … I carry it all. I am again going to commit the crime they accuse me of, so I expect to end up in the Manto Negro women’s prison.”

In the morning hours in the Matanzas province, Lady in White Leticia Ramos Herreria, who urged agents to take her directly to prison to await trial, was detained. Nevertheless, the State Security officers responded to her that “it was still not time.”

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Cuban Migrants Criticize The High Prices Of Airfares To Mexico / 14ymedio, Mario Penton

Cuban migrants stranded in Mexico wait to buy airplane tickets to Mexico

14ymedio, Mario Penton, Miami, 6 May 2016 — Accustomed to standing in long lines on the island, thousands of Cuban migrants stranded in Panama were waiting for hours Friday to buy an airline ticket to Mexico. Among these “middle class rafters” criticism was rising over the high price of airfares which has reached $805 for an adult ticket.

José Antonio Quesada and his wife, both lawyers, are among those who were waiting in the sun today to get tickets. As of May 5, the Panamanian Government authorized the sale of airline for Cuban migrants and at least 800 of them have already purchased their tickets to continue their journey. continue reading

The two attorneys spent 1,669 dollars in tickets, including the trip by bus to the airport, the equivalent of more than five years wages for a in Cuba. Both have managed to raise the money with the help of relatives in Miami, but they are concerned because they have no more cash for when they reach the U.S. border.

Quesada and his wife traveled from the island to Ecuador with the intention of settling there and improving their economic condition. However, the obstacles to legalizing their residence and finding jobs pushed them to make a difficult journey through Colombia and the Darién jungle. They departed with the hope of taking advantage of Cuban Adjustment Act which grants immigration benefits to all residents of the island who reach United States.

Now the two professionals are among the lucky ones who have been able to purchase a ticket for flights starting next Monday to the city of Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas State, Mexico. The cost of the trip by plane for a child between 2 and 11 years is $332 whereas for a child under a year the amount drops to $160.

The sale of tickets has been marked by the absence of official statements from the Panamanian president’s office, which arouses suspicions among migrants, who fear shady dealings with regards to prices or lack of transparency in the process. “The Government does not give us information,” complains the Cuban Elizander Roque.

As of noon this Friday hundreds of migrants from the island had undertaken, on their own, to travel to the David’s Mall, 25 miles from the shelters where they are staying in Los Planes, Gualaca, to buy tickets.

The prices have surprised Sisleydis Moret, a 25-year-old Cuban who says she feels “desperate” at not having enough money to buy them, due to the expenses of supporting herself during her stay in Panama.

The ticket from Panama to Mexico costs $805 per each adult. (Courtesy)

Her companion in the hostel, Keily Arteaga, age 29, is in a similar situation. “The news was like a bucket of cold water,” she says and comments that, “now we don’t have the money they are asking for.”

Arteaga, who resides in a house in San Isidro, left Ecuador because she was not able to legalize her immigration status. She had “a good job” but she was illegal, which mean that “all the doors” were closed to her, she explains. She says she has taken advantage of “all of this turmoil” of the immigration crisis in Central America to reach Panama.

Those who travel accompanied by several family members experience the most delicate situation. Isleyda Lelle said she was glad to hear that tickets sales had begun to Mexico, but now she needs to wait for her mother, resident in the United States, to help her “complete” the cost of the trip for her, her brother and her sister-in-law.

For Andy Llanes, the situation is more difficult because he says that he does not have “a single dollar” to buy the ticket. “My journey was very hard, we were attacked along the way and they stole from us all that we had.” In the trip to Panama he details that his partner “was raped and now the poor woman is pregnant from the Coyote who abused her.”

Llanes says the only thing he owns is the “flip-flops” he is wearing and says that if he cannot continue the trip, he will stay in Panama because “I won’t return to Cuba even if they threaten me with death.”

Alfredo Córdoba, regional head of the National Migration Service in the Chiriqui province told 14ymedio that he still does not know what will happen to those Cubans who cannot afford the airfares.

An official source who requested anonymity explained that Cuban migrants found in Puerto Obaldia have not received their passports yet and so far there are no specific directions about whether they will or will not be part of the humanitarian program.

This newspaper has gotten in touch with both the Panama National Migration Service and the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but so far we have not received answers to our questions.

Ed. note: Since this article was written the price of the airfare was lowered and then the sale of tickets was cut off altogether. Translations of articles detailing these subsequent events will follow.

Translated by Alberto

Cuba: The Return of the Power Cuts / Ivan Garcia

Ivan Garcia, 27 May 2016 — As of three weeks ago there have been power cuts of up to three hours in different parts of Havana. Sometimes longer.

“Friday, April 29 in Altahabana (a neighbourhood in the southeast of the city), the power was cut off from eleven at night until four-thirty in the morning. Because of the heat, I spent the whole night waving a fan over my eight-month-old baby. Two days earlier, there was a three-hour outage in the afternoon,” I was told by Magda, who works at Comercio Interior.

In the central and eastern provinces, the power cuts started in the middle of March. According to Reinaldo, who lives in San Pedrito in Santiago de Cuba, 550 miles east of Havana, the blackouts aren’t the only problem. continue reading

“In some parts of Santiago we get water every eight or nine days. People store it in buckets, bowls and improvised tanks, which increases the chance of mosquitos transmitting dengue, zika and chikungunya. You can add to that the countless earthquakes you get in the months of December through March. Many families sleep in the parks because they are afraid their roofs will collapse. The power cuts in Santiago are frequent. Sometimes half an hour, and other times up to five hours,” Reinaldo told me.

In Remedios, a town in Villa Clara province, 180 miles from the capital, Odaisi, an intensive care assistant, tells me that the cuts have become worse since the end of April.

“There are two or three a week, and sometimes up to five hours, or all night. People go out in the street because of the dreadful heat. Lots of people phone the electric company but they get no reply,” Odaisis said.

Esther, who works in a substation on the outskirts of Havana, is sure it isn’t because of a fuel shortage, which is what many people think. “Fifty percent of the electricity generated in the country uses Cuban diesel. And there are new plants which run on gas. The problem is unexpected breaks in the cables, which, together with maintenance to the power stations in Matanzas and Holguín, have created power shortages in peak hours.”

A power company official, who preferred to remain anonymous, didn’t think that the present cuts will get as bad as the ones in the years of the Special Period [a time of severe crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the elimination of its aid to Cuba].

“No way. The country is much better prepared to deal with electricity supply. Thousands of kilometres of cable have been replaced, transformers and connections have been renewed, and power distribution losses, which got to thirty percent, have fallen to five percent. There is also more modern equipment in the power plants, and we have a contract with Russia to build two new power stations and modernise four others. Our present problem is due to breakages, but we will sort them out in the month of May,” the official assured me.

But Noel, who works at CUPET, the initials of the Cuba Petrol Company, is doubtful. “Out of the 105 thousand barrels a day we were receiving from Venezuela two years ago, now we only get sixty thousand, and my bosses tell me that they expect it to reduce further down to forty thousand or fewer barrels. In Venezuela, because of the drought, and the bad technical state of their power stations, there are constant power cuts outside of Caracas. To that you can add the economic crisis and the fact that oil exports represent ninety-five percent of their income.”

Although a barrel of oil has fallen from over a hundred dollars a barrel a few years ago to a little under thirty dollars on the international market, Orelvis, an economist, believes that the Cuban government doesn’t have enough money to buy fuel.

“Bartering with Venezuela is the perfect business deal. Medical services in exchange for oil, and part of the oil gets re-exported. Now electricity generation in the country has increased. More hotels and private businesses consuming more, and some of the people with money to buy things have air conditioning and electrical appliances in their houses. I think there has been a setback in electricity production, but I don’t think that the situation can be as serious as in the 90’s, and the Special Period, but people need to be ready for programmed blackouts in the coming months,” he thought.

Raisa, a technician in the electric company sees the problem differently. “Every province and town in the country has an assigned level of fuel consumption, and, for various reasons, most of them are consuming more. That, plus the recent breakdowns, are the cause of the latest outages.”

But it’s difficult to convince the Cuban in the street with technical arguments. There is nothing they like less than a power cut.

“It’s one damn thing after another. A screw-up getting any food. Salaries which are too low, not enough public transport, and now they are telling us that if the drought continues, the water supply will be cut in Havana. And, the cherry on the cake, more power cuts. It’s too much. We have had these problems for nearly sixty years, and they have never come up with a definitive solution,” complains Adelberto, a pensioner.

The electricity cuts in Cuba are cyclical. For one reason or another, they always recur. It’s one of the pernicious legacies of Fidel Castro’s revolution.

Translated by GH

The Step-Motherland’s Droit de Seigneur / 14ymedio, Miriam Celaya

Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo and Minister of Development, Ana Pastor, greeting Raúl Castro. (EFE / Estudios Revolución)

14ymedio, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 23 May 2016 — Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, recently made his second visit to Cuba. Unlike his first, in November 2014–when the general-president did not deign to meet with him—this time his “highest excellency” Spanish Foreign Minister was emphatically welcomed by the upper echelons of power.

This new attitude between both sides is not so strange, since García-Margallo was in a “democratic” mode in 2014, triggering the olive-green gerontocracy’s suspicion and displeasure. Now, the Chancellor has come solely in a business mode, with the mission to strengthen and expand as much as possible Spain’s investments in Cuba before the resources of the powerful northern neighbor intrude (for a second time) in the territory of the former Spanish colony, once again depriving Spain of its devalued Crown jewel. continue reading

This time, the Castro’s media monopoly reported cryptically, in a brief note, the exchange with “the distinguished visitor,” who was accompanied by senior officials in the fields of Development and Cooperation of the Spanish Government and by the Ambassador of that country in Cuba, citing “positive relations between the two nations” and “the recent signing of agreements in Madrid regularizing Cuban’s intermediate and long term debt,” which “creates favorable conditions” for strengthening of relations between the two countries.

There is no doubt that the current scenario proved advantageous for the Spanish Chancellor when talking business with the satrapy

On Cuba’s side, the meeting was attended by the Foreign Minister, a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, and the Foreign Affairs Deputy Minister. It was obviously a business visit that was took place in greatest secrecy.

So, as usual, details of interest did not reach the public about bilateral economic issues, debt terms and repayment of potential Spanish investments, although it is known that Spain is one of Cuba’s main trading partners and has maintained a strong business presence for more than two decades in Cuba, especially in the tourist and hotel field. Therefore, these should be topics of importance for the population, in the midst of the deep Cuban crisis.

In another sense, but equally secret, there were the activities carried out by the same Spanish Foreign Minister during his previous visit. Less than two years ago, the now “most excellent” visitor raised great distress at the Palace of the Revolution when he delivered the keynote On Living through the Transition: a Biographical View of Change in Spain–also behind closed doors and in the presence of a handpicked audience—in such a government space as the Higher Institute of International Relations. The piece established a comparison between the Spanish reality at the end of the Franco era, the beginning of the process of democratic transition, and the Cuban reality today, under the late Castro regime.

In retrospect, it is fair to concede that—although García-Margallo’s speech in November 2014 in Havana did not reach the national media—none of the governments and representatives of democratic nations who had visited us until then had so boldly expressed criticism towards Cuban official policy nor had they spoken about the importance of freedoms of speech, press, assembly and association.

However, on his first visit, the Spanish Foreign Minister did not enjoy the same privileges as US President Barack Obama, whose speech–directed to all Cubans and not to a select group of Castro’s faithful—was broadcast in real time through Cuban media, and it made a deep impression in the minds of ordinary people. Of course, the US president is not one to be provoked.

It is as if favoring the protection of the interests of Spanish business in Cuba must necessarily involve forgetting the exclusion Cubans live under, so exploited by those same entrepreneurs

That explains why Cubans did not learn about the audacity of García-Margallo, the first representative of a democratic government who mentioned, before an official venue’s microphone, ideas as subversive as the importance of political party pluralism as a pillar of democracy and national harmony, efficiency of peaceful political transitions in order to achieve true lasting changes, and the regaining of freedoms violated by long lasting autocratic regimes.

On that occasion, García-Margallo referred to the need for monetary unification and acceleration of changes in Cuba, decentralization of decision-making, ratification of the United Nations covenants on civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, and freedom of association, among other topics that are also taboo for the Cuban government.

In short, we would need to point that, when comparing the Spanish foreign minister’s approach on his first visit to Cuba with his second, there is no doubt that there was a setback in terms of defense of human rights and democracy for Cubans, as if favoring the protection of the interests of Spanish business in Cuba must necessarily involve forgetting the exclusion Cubans live under, so exploited by those same entrepreneurs. All this goes against the grain of the hypocrisy of officials of that country, who, when it is convenient for them, make reference to “the close historical, cultural and blood ties that bind our two nations.”

Now it turns out that García-Margallo has even chosen to be the interpreter of the wishes of the Cuban people, so his purely business mission in Cuba is not only justified by the large presence of Spanish capital in the former “always faithful island of Cuba” but because “the Cuban people now primarily want progress and economic development, and we will help in that change.” Unfortunately, we do not know how he will manage to do that. For now, freedom and the ratification of the covenants, blah, blah, blah … is still pending. Ah, Spanish politicians, always so fickle!

If Cuban rulers of the past 57 years are so very “Spanish,” it is not surprising that things in Cuba are so very topsy-turvy

However, the current considerate stance of the Spanish authorities towards Castro once again addresses the question of “roots,” no matter the tree. According to media allegations, Mr. Garcia-Margallo recently stated “in Cuba, apart from human relationships, Fidel’s and Raul’s father was a soldier who fought on the side of our troops during the [War of] Independence, and he later changed sides,” so the dictator brothers “are very, very Spanish.”

Well, finally! That explains everything: if Cuban rulers of the past 57 years are so very “Spanish” it is not surprising that things in Cuba are so very topsy-turvy, and even less strange that now—in the midst of the transition from Castro-communism to Castro-capitalism—the step-motherland’s claim for a certain droit de seigneur is being encouraged from La Moncloa*, especially when history, always so whimsical, seems to be closing another cycle that–bridging the gaps—mimics that episode over a hundred years ago when Spain and the US were quarreling over the spoils of the Island-in-ruins.

*Official Madrid residence of the Spanish Prime Minister

Translated by Norma Whiting

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