Category: TRANSLATORS

Message from Ramiro Guerra / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate

I have just received your message about Pavon’s unbelievable appearance on national television a few days ago; I saw the commercial for it, but I couldn’t bring myself to get unnecessarily irritated by watching him in view of the revulsion I feel for this man. He is in the habit of coming out from time to time like a phantom from the dead, in important places, and then disappearing afterwards. A few years ago he turned up in the corridors at UNEAC [Writers and Artists Union of Cuba] and I let Aurora Bosch know, who was the then president of the Dance Section, that she could not count on my presence there as long as that person was walking around the floors of UNEAC.

Some time passed, which I have forgotten about now, and she let me know that he had disappeared and I could return to the institution. I didn’t bother looking for the programme in which the person would appear, unconsciously rejecting the possibility which you now point out, that “a revival” may occur with the additional appearance of the deservedly-forgotten Serguera, partner-in-crime of the cultural disaster of the 70’s. All that had to happen was for him, whose name I have forgotten, to appear, take the reins of the performing arts at that sad opportunity, and he swept the theatre into the shadow of the Revolution. The dance also suffered the setback of making me disappear, although, strangely, I believe that I was one of the few who kept a salary which should have gone to pay into a ghostly bag which was created and was kept going for various years in equally phantasmal parts of the area of the National Opera Council.

Important names from the theatrical movement were “peremptorily” sent to the Ministry of Work, where the only options for work they had was filling holes in the road or digging graves in the cemetery. The puppet theatre was mercilessly destroyed and its beautiful puppets were sent to Cayo Cruz to the rubbish dump which then existed in the bay. And the Camejos were especially harassed and erased from the national culture.

Meanwhile, my work, el Decálogo del Apocalipsis, which was supposed to have opened, according to the invitation printed in beautiful bright red with the date 15th April 1971, after a year’s hard work and enormous expense in costumes and scenery and should have been an important milestone in the development of contemporary dance in Cuba, and whose absence has been regretted by following generations of art school graduates in this area, who lost the model dances I promoted over 12 years and which marked the successful development of a dance movement rooted in a national identity but also informed by the vanguard movements of the era.

A lot has been written about this phenomenon by the choreographers who followed me, especially Marianela Boan, inheritor of my creative work with her group Danzabierta.

What you have told me in the message I received has opened my eyes to the danger, which seems fundamental in these days of possible changes in the direction of the country’s cultural policy, of the appearance of those phantoms from the past who want to return in an opportunistic search for new laurels.

The fact that the national tv dragged them out of the grave of oblivion gives us notice of a new storm.

Ramiro Guerra

Translated by GH

Why Don’t Cubans Want to Have Kids? / Ivan Garcia

1-MATERNIDAD-620x330In its official discourse, the government suggests with pride that Cubans have gone from being housewives to being academics with ambitious projects.

The regime alleges that most women postpone motherhood until they have passed 30 years of age, the same as in the First World, for the sake of their professional careers.  Opponents and dissident journalists point in another direction.

They assert that it is a problem more of an economic nature than professional pretensions.  After Fidel Castro took power in January 1959, the doors of the working world opened to many women who lived maintained by their husbands, raising children, completing domestic chores and listening to radio soap operas.

But in spite of women having a more relevant role in all spheres of public life — except in politics, where they are a distinct minority — since 30 years ago, they have on average less than one child by the conclusion of their reproductive years.

I consulted 18 childless women aged between 19 and 43.  Also six mothers with young children about the difficulties and shortages in raising a baby.

The figures are disturbing.  The Cuban people are aging.  And decreasing.  More people die than are born.  Other bad news is that less than one girl is born for each woman capable of bearing children.

Let’s review some numbers.  The average age in Cuba is 38 years.  In 2025 it will rise to 44.  By then more than 26% will be more than 60 years old.

In 2030, 3.3 million people will exceed that age.  Currently the group of Cubans older than 60 is 17.8%.  Greater than the segment of children under 14 years which is 17.3%.

The gap, according to analysts, has to grow.  Emigration is one of the factors that hampers maternity in Cuba.  More than 30 thousand people leave each year for the United States or somewhere else on the planet in order to improve their precarious living conditions.  The majority of those emigrants are young women and men with good academic training.  It is a tragedy.

Yudelis, a 21-year-old university student, is clear.  ”One of the causes of women not wanting to have children is the economic situation, which is burning.  I myself live in a house with three different generations.  My parents, my grandparents and I.  My boyfriend has the same situation in his home.  If we were to marry and try to have children, where would we live?”

Yudelis finds only one answer:  ”To emigrate, nothing else occurs to me if I want to start a family.  If I wait for things to improve economically in Cuba, I would never have children.  It’s been bad since I was born.  I do not believe things will improve in some five years.”

Eighty-five percent of the 18 women surveyed who do not have children think that the economic factor is key to not starting a family.  Eleven of them live in homes with numerous family members and without the best conditions (62% of dwellings on the island are in fair or poor condition).

 Elsa Lidia, 41-years-old, still has no child.  She watches the calendar with worry.  ”I don’t have much time.  But I live on a tenement, in a little room with a barbecue.  Five of us live in 30 square meters.  My parents’ room is separated by a plasterboard partition.  My sister and I sleep on the bed.  My brother sleeps on a cot in the living room.  I have a had a formal relationship for years.  My partner wants to have children.  But how?  With my salary of 450 pesos (20 dollars) as a mid-level technician I will never be able to aspire to buy myself an apartment with a price of 10 to 20 thousand dollars.”

The future for Elsa Lidia is a bad word.  ”I have no family abroad.  My life project is day-to-day.  When I think what is going to become of me in five years I panic.”

Some of the women surveyed who still are not mothers live in good houses, are high-caliber professionals, and receive dollars from relatives living abroad.

“But I do not want to raise my child surrounded by uncertainty.  With the anguish of whether I will be able to feed him well, buy him clothes, shoes, toys…  With my salary I cannot guarantee a good level of life.  It is very difficult to have a family in Cuba in the current economic conditions,” says Sulia, an architect.

I was investigating with mothers who have children 5 years and under.  After the flower bouquet and the unmatched emotion of childbirth, four of six consulted suffer deprivations in raising them.

And it is not a medical problem.  During pregnancy the State guarantees a daily dose of iron and vitamin complex called Pre-natal.  In the neighborhood offices or clinics they keep track.  They advise them about adequate weight and they receive free advice about how and for how much time to breastfeed the future baby.

Even through the lean ration book they offer them an extra quota of three pounds a month of beef and fish.  And some extra kilos of root vegetables.  Maybe those attentions, rare in a poor Third World country, have provoked the Save the Children organization, with headquarters in London, for the second consecutive year to consider Cuba as “the best country in America to be a mother.”

Probably the British NGO ignores the problems that begin after birth.

I spoke with Yadira, a young computer science graduate.  ”I have had three abortions.  I took contraceptive pills.  But even so I got pregnant and it was dangerous for me to undergo another D and C.  I cannot stand another.  We fixed the room as we could.  The family gave me a crib.  Through the ration booklet, the State offers you 10 meters of antiseptic cloth and gauze to make diapers, baby cologne, a pair of shoes, a cream for the baby, three soaps and a baby bottle, among other things.  It costs 85 pesos.  But it is not enough.  If the child gets sick, as mine is, problems increase.”

The pediatrician recommended that Yadira buy in one of the foreign currency stores the formula NAM by Nestle; each can costs more than 4 CUC.  ”The baby was consuming two or three cans a month.  We had to sell personal articles to be able to buy them for him.”

According to the consulted mothers, some with more solvency than others, the advisable thing is to save no less than 600 dollars and to be able to guarantee a proper layette.  The prices of strollers, playpens and walkers are sky-high.

One rocking cradle between 110 and 130 CUC.  A playpen between 80 and 140 CUC. The stroller between 60 and 180.  A crib mattress exceeds 50 CUC (the average salary in Cuba is 20 dollars a month, and one CUC, with exchange fees and taxes, is a little less than one dollar).

“Add to all that, as he grows, food, clothes, shoes toys, walks and birthdays.  Even having the money, there are articles that are scarce and cost a lot I work to get them. One does not regret having a child, but in Cuba it is very hard,” says Yadira while her two-year old son sleeps rocking in an iron chair.

 Iván García

Photo:  Hospital Materno Ramon Gonzalez Coro de Havana.  Taken from The Hard Test of Maternity.

Translated by mlk

5 October 2013

About Alfredo Guevara’s Words / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate, Maria de las Mercedes Santiesteban

The first thing you notice about the document presented by Alfredo Guevara is its dreadful wording. A man, who has always prided himself on his clarity and intelligence, has written a text which is hard to read, repetitive and unoriginal. The first, very long, paragraph demonstrates this:

The Writers and Artists Union of Cuba [UNEAC] interprets and takes on that ethical, Martiana [pertaining to the ideas of José Martí] and Fidelista [pertaining to the ideas of Fidel Castro] lesson, of opposing, by use of its authority and prestige, the impunity of that abuse of power demonstrated by our television in trampling on its ethical obligations and developing or trying to advance a plan which is in opposition to the cultural policy of the Revolution, a policy of respect and praise for creative freedom and intellectual work, and the intellectual qualities which make it possible.

It isn’t clear what is “the plan which is in opposition to the cultural policy of the Revolution”. Up to now, what they were criticising and questioning was, in the first place, the appearance of the “grey triad” composed of Pavón-Serguera-Quesada and everything they might stand for in terms of a set-back to the national culture. Guevara goes off on another track and accuses the television of “trampling on its ethical obligations”; practically accusing them of being traitors although he quickly makes it clear that all the programs dreamed up by the “great communicator” are just fine: he does not want people to in any way to misunderstand what he is saying.

Further on, another confusing paragraph:

“… it is the people who deserve to be, who are, and who must be, the real protagonists in the war of ideas, if an instrument, which has ended up being usurped in certain respects, is not to develop another campaign of praising vulgarity, imitating the worst programs put out by the Empire (the US), and which favours the destruction of our language, which is the reflection of the clarity, structure and exercise and expression of thought.”

Why? On the basis of what premises? We don’t know.

Guevara never mentions the names of Pavón-Serguera-Quesada, nor acknowledges any awareness that the centre of the debate is the general cultural policy of the country; many want to take it further than that, and demand that the problems in the production sector are looked at. Guevara directs his attack at television, which seems like a good idea to me, because a large part of the programming is rubbish and vulgar.

But where has Guevara been all this time? Why has he decided to criticise it now if this problem has existed for years? Why is he diverting, or trying to divert, the centre of the debate? Could it be because he is afraid that the snowball is growing too big and that, in a moment of such tension, unprecedented in the history of these forty nine years, people are going to question the very essence of the system, as happened in 1991 during the phony and manipulative “Appeal to the 4th Party Congress”?

Cuban television is a ruthless media, intolerably politicised, with a rigid news bulletin structure and the added irritation that every time they want to do so – which has been frequently – they interrupt the simple entertainment programs to insert the transmission of long boring political events. Many people leave the television switched on, without sound, waiting patiently until the function ends and the soap opera starts. But, as far as the people who direct the television are concerned – who are not the directors of the television but the ideologues, or The Ideologue, of the Party – that doesn’t matter very much.

In order to get a bit of fresh air, people have invented lots of ways of avoiding the tedious official refrains. I remember that in 1993 Havana was filled with home-made satellite dishes which, angled towards the Habana Libre Hotel, caught the Miami channels. This was abruptly interrupted because the government was not going to put up with the people having a different source of information. continue reading

What is happening now is something similar and thousands of people, for the “modest” price of ten convertible pesos, are enjoying “alternative broadcasts”, watching different news programs and forgetting all the day-to-day hustle and bustle. Those programs, it’s true, for the most part, are dreadful, in terribly bad taste: as Guevara correctly puts it, they are the “glorification of vulgarity, mimicking the worst of the programs put out by the Empire”.

What’s strange in all this is not “the foreign channels”, as they’re called, what’s worse and more worrying is that people are willing to pay the equivalent of an average monthly salary to watch such productions. Why doesn’t anybody ask themselves what happened in all of those years of “wholesale” culture?

Why, after all that genuine effort which the country made to elevate the cultural level of the people, what they want is to watch the worst television from the United States? (and, by the way, the best programs offered in our television are also from that country, like the Discovery Channel and National Geographic documentaries, just to give two examples).

Guevara continues:

The highest authorities in our executive, such as the Ministry of Culture and the Party, have been aware, from the start, of my indignant rejection, which I have expressed directly, as it is my business to do, from the very start, in relation to the repeated mistreatment to which the Cuban intellectuals have been subject and, in practice, the intelligence which the Revolution has awoken, making it part of our education, so that it may be, and has started to be, the most important asset in our society in this epoch, the first century in which knowledge becomes the most important spiritual, economic and social area of wealth.

What is “the repeated mistreatment to which the Cuban intellectuals have been subject” that Guevara talks about? The presence of the “ash-grey-looking trio” or “the belligerent, usurping ignorance” of the television functionaries? It isn’t clear. Guevara assures us that he has rejected it with indignation, I don’t doubt it, although we don’t know where or when he did it.

Finally, he ends up with a very serious accusation:

What has happened now is not just an affront to the Cuban intelligencia, to our culture in its artistic expression, it has been – it is – a trap laid for Fidel and Raúl by mediocrity and belligerent ignorance; a game played by interests determined to confuse and divide.

A trap for Fidel and Raul? A game played by interests determined to confuse and divide? The trap is treason and in our country that is a capital offence, with the aggravating factor that now, the Comandante can’t even defend himself. The people who run the television have been named by the “highest executive”, as the mass media are a very powerful weapon for the transmission of ideology, among many other things. So, those people who run those media want to confuse and divide? Is Guevara talking about some kind of conspiracy, is there some kind of “micro fracción” [a sector of the left in 1960’s Cuba regarded as a threat by Castro] which has infiltrated our TV channels?

Although confused, that doesn’t stop Guevara’s accusations from being very serious – he energetically supports the “Declaración del Secretariado de la UNEAC”, a document most people consider inadequate, stupid and nothing special. Fortunately, the debate carries on. Let’s hope that all the injustice, abuse of power and dogmas are reversible, for the good of our culture and all of us.

María de las Mercedes Santiesteban

Havana, January 22, 2007

Translated by GH

Cuba Professionalizes Sports / Ivan Garcia

deporte-cuba-620x330Now we know why the national baseball season didn’t start in October. The delay was not due to the rains, as reported by the sports authorities.

The plot was different. Technocrats and political mandarins put the finishing touches on a project that would allow better wages for athletes. The new rules will apply starting November 3rd, when the winter baseball season begins.

It was imperative to change the concepts governing sports in Cuba. After Fidel Castro abolished professional sports in 1961, a pyramid of schools and training centers was created to fashion high-performance athletes.

Funded by a deposit of rubles, material resources, and coaches from the now-vanished USSR and other Eastern European nations, the sports movement in Cuba experienced a spectacular increase in quality.

The island was always a pool of talent in baseball and boxing. But after 1959, sports that were exotic to Cuban fans, such as water polo, handball, Greco-Roman wrestling, or judo – thanks to coaches who arrived from the cold or from the thug state of North Korea – made it possible for Cuba to win Olympic, PanAmerican, and World medals in those disciplines.

Others like basketball or volleyball, greatly accepted in the university and school setting, took off dramatically. Like the litter of communist countries with the USSR at the head, Cuba used sport as a showcase trying to prove the superiority of the Marxist-Leninist system over modern Western capitalism.

There were plenty of champions. They came in series, like sausages, from the sports schools. Beef was missing and misery was socialized, but the average Cuban was proud of their achievements in sports.

They labeled the entire feat with the term ”amateurs.” Something that was false. By amateurs only they had a salary. They played, trained, and competed throughout the year just as their professional counterparts.

But they earned workers’ wages. With the arrival in 1990 of the “special period,” a static economic crisis lasting 23 years, sports took a nose dive. The propaganda bubble burst, in which Fidel Castro saw the athletes as warriors and the competitions as battlefields.

Low wages – an athlete earned a salary according to his or her profession – was the key to nearly a thousand athletes leaving their homeland, from 1991 to now.

To this was added the stupid policies that prohibited athletes from playing on professional teams and managing their finances without official authorization. The six-figure salaries that some Cuban ball players earn in the Major Leagues was and remains an incentive for young talents who want to try their luck in the best baseball in the world.

The bleeding had to be stopped. The new regulations can certainly reduce the desertions in sports like volleyball and others, where the main circuits are in Europe and are not affected by the laws of the U.S. embargo, and the athletes don’t have to defect from Cuba in order to compete.

But it remains to be seen whether the signing of athletes will be handled by a representative designated by the player or by the state enterprise Cubadeportes, charging very high fees.

Either way, it is a leap forward. A first step. A positive one, if we see that 70% of elite athletes live in poverty.

It is good that a player earns a salary in line with the cost of living in Cuba. They contribute to the major national entertainment for five months of the year. Doctors, teachers, and other professionals, should be similarly compensated, but that’s another story.

The new regulations do not say how training conditions will be improved, stadiums will be repaired, or athletes will be provided with a balanced diet.

Neither do they explain how the whole new salary framework of the National Series will be funded. Will they create companies that see the sport as a business or will the state continue to subsidize the sport?

It is already a fact that the regime of General Raul Castro has buried a hundred meters underground the “amateur sports” falsehood. It was logical. It constituted a burden on the impoverished local economy.

These new measures also send a message to the magnates of the Major Leagues in the United States: Cuba wants to participate in the Big Show. They have now opened the gate.

Iván García

Photo: Taken from Martí Noticias

Translated by Tomás A.

1 October 2013

Visiting the USA / Mario Lleonart

Alongside a national poster campaign announced in November by Billy Graham.

Contrary to predictions since 9/11 my wife and I are in USA.  It has been so intense that the time to write in my blog Cubano Confesante has been null.  But now is the time, in the midst of a tight agenda I will attempt to stamp a few lines where we’ll provide testimony, at least the most important parts of our stay in the nation of our admired Billy Graham.

Translated by – LYD

1 October 2013

The School Fraud Epidemic in Cuba / Ivan Garcia

1-FRAUD-ESCOLAR-620x330Josuan, 16 years old, a second year high school student, narrowly missed involvement in a notorious fraud case.

“A week before the news was published in the newspaper Granma, a fellow classmate and me, we thought about purchasing the math final exam for $12 CUC.  It was an open secret that the exam was already circulating around Havana.  The tests and grades is normal”, says the student from Havana.

On June 27, the Granma newspaper, Communist Party organ, acknowledged the existence of a massive fraud.  A person who works at the printer where the 11th grade exams were reproduced, along with two teachers from the Arroyo Naranjo town, were accused of “removing an exam with lucrative intent”.

According to some students, the tests were being sold for between $10 and $15 CUC.  Although the news was highlighted in the official newspaper, school fraud in Cuba is symptomatic.  It’s a national epidemic.

Let’s examine the cause of school fraud and its variants.  Between 1970-1990, fraud was never a lucrative business.  It was a procedure to consolidate and showcase the image that Fidel Castro liked to sell of the Cuban Revolution.

For Castro, success was a question of statistics and numbers.  At the beginning of his political discourses, without pause and from memory, he would recite a long list of numbers, attempting to demonstrate that the Revolution was superior to any other government that existed prior to 1959.  From the low infant death rate, to  the thousands of doctors graduated annually, to the millions of professionals formed “thanks to the Revolution”.

Education was one of the jewels in Castro’s crown.  With the objective of maintaining the enchantment of the statistics which were going up, education at all levels lost many integers.  The teachers were not judged by the quality of their classes.  They were “measured” — a jargon used in those years to indicate the number of students who moved up to the next grade.

It was when the education fell into “passing”.  Every year, 100% of the students, perhaps some with serious limitations would move up to the next level.  It was then, that the fraud was almost consensual.It was disguised in many ways.

Money was not the reason.  The teacher who would police the classroom while the students took the exam would leave them alone for fifteen minutes.  Enough time for the students to check their answers with the rest of their classmates.

Sometimes fraud was brazen.  A teacher would calmly copy with white chalk the answers on the blackboard.  Another way: the day before the exam, a review, the teacher would expose the whole exam to the students.

It was a time in which we were useful numbers to keep Castro’s propaganda afloat.  These waters have now been muddied.  Cyclically, the official press has denounced notorious cases of fraud, which freely occur in middle and high schools.

With the advent of the “Special Period”, the country got hit with a stagnation economic crisis that has now lasted 22 years.  Salaries are now jokes in bad taste.  With the loss of value of the Cuban peso, the quality of teaching has fallen even lower.  Thousands of teacher left for exile or deserted to better paid trades.

It’s common to see a former teacher selling ice cream or cleaning floors in a five-star hotel.  Poverty — with too many teachers without vocation or knowledge — into which public education has now sunk, has caused teachers to use tests in lucrative ways.

This happens from elementary to high school.  “For 100 Cuban pesos weekly, the deputy director of a school, reviewed material with the kids before the final exams.  On that exam, was all the material she reviewed”, said the father of a student.

But if you want to see fraud in a larger scale, visit the night schools or trade schools.  “At the school where I go to get my high school degree, for 5 CUC they sell the final exams.  It’s barefaced.  If you don’t have money, they accept gifts like a perfume or a Lebron James shirt”, said a young man.

About the gaps in grammar or simple arithmetic of the students who start college, a college professor said: “They come with notable deficiencies.  They do not have the basic mathematics knowledge and show major orthographic blunders.  Geography or History, before taking the exams, they learn the lessons punctually”.

Those blunders in school education, are one of the signs of thousands of mediocre teachers and professionals.  90% of Cuban doctors that attempt to revalidate their degrees outside the island fail.  The same happens with civil or telecommunications engineers.

Cuba is a nation of high educational indices; to talk about quality that’s another thing.

It’s rare for a student born after the Castro Revolution not to have engaged in fraud.  If you never did it, raise your hand.

Ivan Garcia

Picture – Taken from Marti News

Translated by – LYD

28 September 2013

In Treble Clef* / Rosa Maria Rodriguez

The killer sun that perches over Cuba every year hit me harder this August because I had to go several times to the branch of ETESCA in Casino Deportivo to use the online navigation room there.  It is two kilometers from my house and there is no way to get there except on foot, with the heat from the asphalt under my soles and the midday sun burning my skin.

Private taxis charge two CUCs or the equivalent in Cuban pesos to transport someone from Monaco there.  At that location there are only three sad little machines for a population of several thousand inhabitants. One of the two gatekeepers — the plump “nice lady,” who at times dozes off in her chair from boredom — takes reservations and watches over the three spots while the neighbors from the buildings across the street rest in their homes, perhaps in order to combat the drowsiness that every so often makes her nod off.  So in addition to waiting and fighting with the line of people, you must also “take a number” from the drowsy caregiver.

The saddest thing is when it urges you to connect yet you discover that you have no credit left on a card that costs $4.50 CUCs per hour and that is only valid for a month.  If your purchase happens to coincide with a special discount on telephone service that the company — the only one in Cuba — offers, it becomes a really irritating problem.  The special offer leads to demographic congestion at the entrance, sidewalk and flowerbeds of the store location because the employees inside make you wait in the sun, yes, the tropical sun.

It is outrageous that the store’s online customers must suffer these and other obscene indignities, which force them to have to type an incredible number of words per minute. If you go on sale days, you are reduced to waiting in a single line for everything, even though refilling the card is a simpler and quicker transaction than the tell-me-your-life-story process required for a telephone service contract.

This summer pentagram coincided with the school vacations.  Wherever one went everything was full, and that cyber place could not be an exception.  One resting his rear in front of his computer somewhat tired and frustrated by the wait and also from having to endure the heat and the network administrator disabling the right click, making it impossible to “copy and paste.”  That is to say, that although one brings a post previously written, you have to transcribe it onto their machines and consume more connection time.  The speed is that of the oxcart, maybe because of the incapacity of the computer or the spy programs that they install on the server to monitor what the users do and write.

This September I returned and everything continues more or less the same.  As far as what individuals may have at home, no one loses hope in spite of the blockade on computers and information — among many others — by the Cuban authorities. Never mind, it seems we still have to “tiptoe” to navigate barefoot on the hot asphalt of a dictatorship with an exhausted political discourse, but that still keeps an iron grip on many aspects of national life.

*Translator’s note: A play on words; in Spanish “the key of sun” is “treble clef.”

 Translated by mlk

24 September 2013

Conference for Over-40s in the Casa de las Americas / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate, Isbel Diaz Torres

Yes, it would appear that the themes discussed yesterday at the Casa de las Américas [an institution in Havana to promote inter-cultural links with other countries <transl.>] were not of interest for the future of Cuban culture and thought. It seems like they were trying to mend fences (with every justification) with some of the victims of a period which was not just grey but invisible.

For many like me, knowledge of this part of our cultural history is limited to commentaries about some benchmarks and readings between the lines in essays and spaces such as those in magazines like Temas or Criterios. Nevertheless, the youngest artists, researchers, and intellectuals in general who wanted to attend had to be content with the iron barriers which were put up at our beloved Casa. “There isn’t space,” they said, and it was certainly true: there was no room for us in that coterie.

The sad thing in all this is that perhaps it would not have been like that, it is very possible that if they had asked our Desiderio if that was the auditorium he had in mind for his cycle of conferences, the reply would have been in the negative. And it isn’t because those who got in did not deserve to do so, but because those of us who were stuck outside would have had the right to attend as future makers of Cuban culture.

There are those who think that it was all just a problem of organisation, there are those who are more suspicious, but the fact of the matter is we couldn’t get in. How many invitations intended for members of the  Asociación Hermanos Saíz, did not go out from the National Council? Why did the UNEAC [Writers and Artists Union of Cuba] manage the entire organisational process, helping themselves to  an enormous quota? And what about the University of Havana? It’s very possible that half of the people who were inside, if they hadn’t been expressly invited, would have remained in their houses, and that is not as innocent a speculation as you might think. How concerned must they be about Cuban history and culture to go to such major and controversial conferences as are arranged by the Centro Teórico-Cultural Criterios [Criterios Theoretical-Cultural Center] and confront the faces of those who usually get in, the stares of those who yesterday were among the chosen?

Fortunately, deep-thinking people were also up there, people who, apart from their artistic merits, have always been in the habit of expressing their opinion, debating, confronting, being heretical. But that isn’t enough: we should also be there, and that doesn’t seem to me to require any more justification. One of those people excluded said that maybe it was better for us to be outside instead of inside, maybe we were playing our own particular part in the history; maybe, I would now say, we were demonstrating that that is not just about the past but also about our difficult present.

I welcome the entry of this debate into the schedule of the Cuban intellectuals, those who suffered the “Pavonato“, those of us who now gather the fruits of those injuries and perhaps confront others of a similar nature. I am confident that the seats at the upcoming conferences in this cycle will be available for those of us who are interested in listening so as to know what to do about the future of our culture. continue reading

Lic. Isbel Díaz Torres

Writer, member of the Asociación Hermanos Saíz

Wednesday, January 31, 2007.

CONFERENCE FOR THE UNDER-40S

OK, as you must know by now, there has been a Conference for the youngsters … or conferences … or, the workshop “The Cultural Policy of the Revolution”, as it was put on the invitations distributed by the Centro Teórico-Cultural Criterios and the Asociación Hermanos Saíz.It took place last Friday (February 23rd) at 2 pm in the ISA. [University of Arts of Cuba]

Who was invited? Well, although I don’t have the figures, there were plenty of people there, the great majority youngsters. Intellectuals from every branch of the arts, researchers, writers, from the AHS (higher-ups and ordinary members), students from the University, and creative people from many provinces of the country. Perhaps this time too they didn’t achieve an ideal auditorium, in order to generate a real debate, but I think we can agree that that’s a really difficult task. But, as Alain Ortiz said,  ”the significance of the meeting lay in its multigenerational representation”.

I have conflicting impressions of this. On one side I feel satisfaction at having been a part of this debate, at having had the opportunity to speak freely, like many other young people there, and at having discussed topics which cannot be put off regarding our culture and politics. As has happened more than once, it is gratifying to feel that Abel listens to us and takes us into account. But, on the other hand, I also feel, as do some of my friends right now, that there is no confidence in any immediate solution to many of the questions which were put, and that, at the end of the day, that is what really matters. The tone of excusing the situation on the part of  Iroel Sánchez (Director of the Cuban Book Institute) and at certain times of Abel himself was somewhat discouraging. We young people are in a hurry, that’s for sure. Many of the things we are asking for we should have had yesterday, and without waiting in hope that perhaps they will give it to us tomorrow.

Nevertheless, I want to be optimistic, “miracles are slow in arriving” as Silvio says, but we can see the lights on the horizon. This process which has been unleashed is irreversible, in my judgement, and I feel that the Revolution is plagued by rich contradictions, which will become more marked if we are successful in taking advantage of them. I am not talking about opportunism, but about not leaving those issues we are concerned about locked away in the filing cabinet and insisting that they are addressed and resolved. I feel that much of what we are now suffering is truly due to the fact that the injuries were not healed at the time they were inflicted. It’s like trying to conceal a piece of meat under the mattress: the putrefaction and bad smell will come out in time. That time is now. Tools such as the web and emails are in our favor, silence is impossible.

Up to this moment I haven’t noticed that this workshop has had any impact; neither in the national press, nor in emails. That worries me a lot, because I think it was a profitable debate, some ground was gained. Are we only interested in obtaining an emotional release by complaining about our misfortune, or do we want to really structure this debate? It is essential that we are fully aware of what we are doing. I am not talking about a plan of action, or anything like that; we all have our own ideas and important differences. But the desire to renew things, to be truly revolutionary, must not be lost after a short period of high spirits, but it should become part of our daily lives.

For the moment, here I  publish my words in the “meeting with the young people”. The text was short, in accordance with the moderator’s request to not go over three minutes, but “I have said what I wanted to on time and with a smile”, and, above all, very honestly, which is the important thing.

Instituto Superior de Arte, Friday, February 23rd, 2007

Hello everybody.

I have an insistent thought over and over in my mind, which started when this avalanche of emails and statements first invaded the Cuban intellectual world. The question is: Will all of this make any practical sense?

What is a Cultural Policy? Does a “Cultural Policy” decide which works are aesthetically worthy, and which aren’t? Will it help me to understand whether rock is better than timba [a style of Cuban dance music], whether performance is better than landscape painting, if our own writers are better than foreign ones, if reggaeton is erotic or pornographic? Is a “Cultural Policy” something which helps black people? Gays? Provincial artists?Is that what it is? Is it something you write into the Constitution of the Republic, or put in decrees, or which you download as “guidance from higher organisations” in meetings of the Party or the UJC? [Young Communist League]. Does a “Cultural Policy” tell you what is revolutionary and what is counter-revolutionary?

In my opinion, the Cuban Cultural Policy, so tied up with the spheres of power, and very often more than tied up, subordinated to the apparatus of state, fortunately has not been immovable, but has moved in parallel with the development of this nation. Many times it has remained at the mercy of orders remote from the culture itself: international situations, “defining moments”, hare-brained ideas, which, in the mind of some executive committee become transformed into laws, etc. There have been moments of greater or lesser permissiveness, sometimes of tolerance and, why not?, also of real understanding. But is that what we really need now: to be grateful for the arrival of a moment of greater tolerance? To sing a Requiem to Social Realism and a Hallelujah to postmodernism? I think that would be a frivolous attitude on our part.

Since I was a kid, I have been taught that true transformations, or at least the most necessary ones, are those which spring from the roots of evil things. Later on I learned for myself how difficult they are, since they presuppose, above all, identifying the evils; which requires a strong dose of wisdom, detachment and love. But who wants easy tasks? We need true transformations and for that we have to “think Revolution”. This doesn’t just have to do with the world of the arts or the intellect, but all of society, all the country, of the Revolution.

Cuban society is a society of fear, as well as other more comforting descriptions which could be applied. It’s possible that a similar name could be applied to other societies right now, where forces which are superior and invisible determine the destinies of their inhabitants, which might be a sign of the times, but at the end of the day we are responsible for our society, for our Revolution. I don’t have the theoretical tools in order to demonstrate that fear has been established in our country, but names such as “Pavonato”, “Five Grey Years”, “Secrecy”, “Mystery Syndrome”, will give you an idea of what I am talking about. A process as sad as this for this nation’s soul cannot be shaken off that easily; the bruises they were showing following my message “Conference for the over-40s” showed me how far we still are from having left the disastrous influences of fear. The censors are there, they exist, they occupy positions from where they can harm us. When will they be recognised as counter-revolutionaries? When will we have a television which reflects our society with its contradictions, instead of investing time and money in inane slots for self-glorification. When will we have daring and inquisitive journalists? Why does nobody over there on the outside know we are here saying these things?

The cultural policy we need is one which encourages the exercise of criticism wherever it comes from; one that, from a position which is ecumenical and non-paternalistic, embraces creative activity; one that does not have “The Institution” acting as its headquarters, even when “The Institution” supports the creator, but that its guiding light is in the cultural activity itself; one that teaches us how to converse.

We need both old and new (but distinct) streams. We cannot give ourselves the luxury of letting names like Gramsci, Trotsky, Varela (to mention a few) be only known in intellectual circles and totally alien to Cuban knowledge  and practice.On the other hand, we young people cannot continue waiting for others to design spaces for free expression, for criticism, the power to generate these spaces  and multiply them lies in our own hands.

GIFTS (The right human time, 1962 Herberto Padilla)

(…) And nevertheless, you had things to say:
dreams, desires, journeys, agonizing resolutions;
other voices (or, another voice) did not distort
your great love nor your true angers.

Isbel Díaz Torres

Translated by GH

Link to original post
31 January 2007

Cuban Adolescents Facing an Employment Contract / Dora Leonor Mesa

By Lic. Dora Mesa Crespo Coordinator of the Cuban Association for the Development of Early Childhood Education, and Lic. Odalina Guerrero Lara, Attorney for the Cuban Law Association.

Labor Law is a system of principles governing employment relations.  Thus, we understand that the essence of Labor Law is precisely the employment relationship.

Analysis of the draft Labor Code Law [1]

Chapter III. EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT. Section One Formalities and the Capacity To Make Employment Contracts

Article 20 (Chapter III) provides:

ARTICLE 20: The employment relationship between employer and employee is formalized with an employment contract…

In the Draft of the Labor Law Code, hereinafter Draft, when it defines Contract, it omits that Article 20 refers only to an individual contract.

The Individual Employment Contract is entered into individually between the employee and the employer, which can be a person, although reality shows us that in one employment relationship there can be many physical or legal parties, simultaneously or successively, corresponding to the employer.

The Draft of the Labor Code, Chapter III, Article 20 explains it in the following manner:

Acticle 20.  The employment relationship between the employee and the employer is formalized via an Employment Contract, in which the employee, on one side, is committed to perform the work, follow disciplinary rules and the employer on his side, is required to pay wages to the employee and will guarantee safe working conditions, labor rights and social security which are established by legislation.  The contract will be considered null if there are any violations to this Law.

The employment relationship

Per professor Cavazos, the employment relationship starts at the same moment in which the employee begins work; however, the employment contract is achieved with the simple fact of agreement.  Therefore, there could be instances of the existence of an employment contract without an employment relationship; it occurs when a contract is entered into and it is agreed that the service will be performed at a later time.

The existence of an employment relationship presumes the existence of a contract, between the party performing the work and the one that receives it; it presumes the employment relationship, and the lack of agreement is always imputable to the employer.

Chapter I GENERAL DISPOSITIONS, First Section, Principles and Fundamentals to Employment Law.  Perhaps to make it easier for the employees, the legal article defines the ones subjects to the “employment relationship”, (Article 9), identifies the employer and worker, but omits the description of the “employment relationship” which does exist when defining the contract, but with an inexplicable omission as to what an “Individual Work Contract” relates to.

In the section that relates to Contracts (articles 26 through 28) it really refers to the length of time of the individual relationships of employment as established in Chapter III, Draft of the Labor Code Law.

Chapter III Employment Contract – Second Section – Types of Employment Contracts

ARTICLE 26: Types of employment contracts used:

a) For an undetermined time, the work is to be undertaken in character permanent in nature and it doesn’t express the date of termination;

b) for a determined time, for the execution of a determined work or project, to complete potential or emergent work, for seasonal work or for the fulfillment of social work, for a trial period, to fill in for absent employees due to justified causes protected to continue for an undetermined time; they are arranged to be performed in a permanent manner and it doesn’t express a termination date.

Therefore, in a legal definition, it’s said that there is a contract when two or more parties, with contractual capacity agree under a common declaration of intent, meant to regulate their rights and obligations.

In modern law, the employment contract is not freed to the autonomy of the contractual parties, the law imposes limitations, fundamentally intended to protect the rights and obligations of the employee, or beneficiary, especially if they are under the age of 18.

There is a reciprocal relationship between both parties in an employment contract.  By adhering to the limitations, what is a right to one party it becomes an obligation to the other.  This is the legal relationship that is protected by the legal bodies.

[1]  http://www.trabajadores.cu/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Anteproyecto-Ley-Codigo-TRabajo-Cuba-2013.pdf

Translated by – LYD

16 September 2013

Teenagers’ Access to Cuban Universities

Source – Access to Cuban Universities of Qualified Workers and Trade School Graduates, Mesa Crespo, D.L.

Although Cuba’s reputation as an advanced third world country with regards to education, annually thousand of students and workers under the age of 18 don’t have access to college level education due to social and governmental obstacles.

The Youth Code, a law implemented in 1978 and approved by the National Assembly of Popular Power, the supreme organization of the State power, explains in one of its articles that newly graduated students from basic education (up to 9th grade) can continue their education depending on their academic performance and political and social attitude.

In reality, new directives and resolutions added to the code present obstacles to the academic development of a portion of the students, who due to their age are considered adolescents.

Since the 90’s, social investigative centers run by the government have conducted studies, where diverse realities among the Cuban youth were identified: disintegration and poor social mobility in the most vulnerable population sectors and the incipient lack of motivation to continue college education.

This post belongs to a series that attempts to analyze the access to higher education of the students attending polytechnics; especially those classified as “qualified workers” who are a part of the Technical and Professional Education (ETP).  After this analysis we can concentrate on the deep fundamental aspects related to the socioeconomic and educational environment at this level of education.

The term “polytechnic student” applies to qualified workers, which refers both to the studies for qualified workers — in some specialties that relates learning a trade or skill — and to the category known as mid-level, known generically in Cuba as mid-technicians.  The differentiations between the two level of students will be made when the need arises in the coming articles in order to better understand the topic.

Translated by – LYD

2 September 2013

dreaming in gUSAno* / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The dreams begin, comrades.

Noises in hotel rooms.  I begin to hear noises in the hotel rooms where I stay from coast to coast in the United States.

In Cuba, I was never a victim of the homeland paranoia; I only had the certainty of being spied on with criminal cruelty. Millimetric, butcher. I am sorry for Castroism: it failed to sow in me the syndrome of suspicion.

But, in Philadelphia, for example, or in Washington DC, in LA, in Miami, in La Crosse, in Madison, in Chicago, in Boston and who knows in what other city of the union, it is very different.  There are hotels, those labyrinths that in Cuba are a rarity in terms of civility.  And in the hotels things are heard late at nights.  Sounds, whispers.  And a cosmic cold that penetrates the soul and only then do you understand that you do not exist here.

Halfway through the late hours of the night, frantic knocks on my room door wake me up.  Or not.  Perhaps they are at the room across, who knows.  The fact is that I wait and wait, but the assault does not repeat itself. Until the next day, during the wee hours of the night, at any time after the silent midnight.

They drag cleaning carts at random times. They scratch the parquet or the cardboard walls that make every building Made in USA.” They walk loudly.  They speak a language of unknown accent that in Havana I would have perceived as English.  There are little permanent lights that come in through the curtains or fall from the ceiling tiles in the form of a sea of alarms that never cease.  And then begin my dreams. My North American dreams.  North American dreams about Cuba, it is understood.

At this point in history, to dream of Cuba is purely a preservation instinct.  I dream that I am back there, of course. And I laugh, I laugh like a madman.

I laugh at the assassins paid by the powers-that-be who did not arrest me or search my things with the twisted pleasure of rapists at the airport customs. I see things as if they were very small, dilapidated, but with an insane shine, like a drug addict.  I see the houses of my city, the ones that I can recognize with my eyes closed.  I see the small house of wooden planks, the only one in my life, the one in which I was born and died several times in Lawton; and I see my sacred objects, the ones I barely said goodbye to; and then someone tells me (usually someone I loved a lot, but not anymore): “When are you returning to the United States?”

“Never,” I reply, and suddenly I cannot breathe in the dream, and at that point I invariably wake up crying.  With pouting.  A baby’s cry, a cry of mental patient.

To return.

Cuba.

Never.

The United States.

The agony of the fighting fish.  Their branchiae wide open, like swords. The oxygen of an atmosphere  that will never be my atmosphere. Not having ground under my dreams.  To be without existing.  Orlando, Orlando…why have you forsaken us…?

I open my eyes. It is not dawning yet. I want to forget. My temples hurt. There are weird noises in the rooms around me. I am alone.  Desolate.

If one day I go out on a walk, if it snows, and I get lost erasing my footsteps, who and when is going to ask about me?  Who takes care of me?  Who misses me?  Who will feel sorry for my loved ones if one bad day my country’s military death reaches me by edict so that I do not live my life after Fidel?

I turn to the other side of the bed. I sleep naked. I curl up under the blankets and sheets which the American hotels provide me from coast to coast in the nation.  The beds are cold here. More than exciting, they are pure erection. I cannot resist myself.

Nor am I sleepy now, but I surrender very quickly.  I yawn, I must be exhausted. I nod. I myself make the noises and whispers that are going to reach, incognito, the other room.  Strange. I do not stop myself. It is warm and tender like the deep light of the northern skies.  Like the smile of teenagers who dispense insipid dishes at a cafeteria while they complete their PhD. I swallow air. I retain it. I am choking. I am not here.

I think about collecting all the Cuban dreams of exile.  They are not here.

I am asleep, we are asleep.  Soon it is about to be dawn.

*Translator’s note: The word “Dreaming” appears in English in the original. “Gusano” (worm) here refers to the insult hurled by the Cuban regime and its vassals at every person who has opposed the regime in any way, or who has left the country to escape it.

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

29 September 2013

Bathing Alternate Days / Rosa Maria Rodriguez

Image taken from Todo Fugas

Every other night between 8:00 and 10:00 the zone where I live “has its turn” at the water, and when it runs for a while, my block shows itself off like a shiny glass mirror.  It is because the conducting pipe from the aqueduct “comes out” in that section — and in many others in different blocks, neighborhoods and municipalities — and in the absence of street cleaner cars, which have not been seen in years in Havana neighborhoods, we are left the impotent alternative of watching as the water leaks out cleaning and polishing my asphalt artery under the opaque light of an ephemeral Chinese fixture.

In Vibora it is now tradition that each time it rains the roadways flood and the neighbors and pedestrians feel like wrecks adrift on the water and waste, because they do not sweep the streets and the trash from the containers that they begrudgingly pick up are dragged to the nearest drainage and clog them.  After the downpour passes, it is common to see much filth trapped by the tires of parked cars on the side of the street and much filth and various objects — buoyant or not — change places because of the waters.

It is ironic to sit in front of the television and see spots directed at citizens that speak of hygienic-sanitary measures and encourage the saving of the vital liquid in our homes, which seems fine to me.  ”Drop by drop water is depleted,” says one of these.  We all know the importance of this liquid for satisfying fundamental human needs, and industrial activities and very necessary energy resources depend on it.

Nevertheless, the vital liquid that we consume domestically is contaminated with waste water due to the quantity of broken pipes and drains that exist and that are the result of years of negligence.  In the same way, while in many places in Havana the leaks are public, in others they have not had running water for years, months or days because of the poor organization and distribution of the supply and because the aqueduct networks are too old.  Almost all date to before 1959, so that in more than 54 years there has not existed the political will to solve this paramount subject for the people.

When a pipe breaks in the street and the neighbors call the state entity “Havana Water,” their plumbers show up as if they were tire patchers, armed with pieces of tubeless tires for wrapping the pipe and solving the problem as if it were a flat tire.

Maybe some think that I should be happy because my block is bathed on alternate days but there are so many places in our country and in the Cuban capital that lack that valuable liquid, that I cannot help but think of the cleanliness that many public offices in Cuba also need, whose bureaucrats do not stay in them because of their efficient management or for the service they offer the people who supposedly elected them, but because of their unconditional adherence to a contaminated regime of administrative inefficiencies and sewer politics for decades.

Translated by mlk

28 September 2013

I Like That They Call Me “Papi” / Luis Cino Alvarez

Havana, Cuba, September, www.cubanet.org – Lately, with guys over the age of 40, in addition to “Tío,” “Puro” and very rarely “Señor, the younger generation calls us “Papi.”

As sexists as we still are — sorry, Mariela Castro —  it is still a bit startling.

They call the taxi driver “Papi,” a guy with a criminal face who can barely hide that he’s up to no good; a young man who looks like a metrosexual, all very ambivalent: gelled hair, waxed eyebrows, piercing in his left eyebrow, tight top which shows his well sculpted arms, and chest hairs showing signs of prior shaving and even the top of his underwear showing the name of Versace that sticks out two inches above his pants, which also, by the way, are hanging almost to his crotch.

And how about if the one calling you “Papi” is a good-looking girl made up like a porn star?  First, make sure that is not a man. If it really is a girl, then perhaps there no need for a sweet little compliment.  Within the next hour she can ask you to light her cigarette and then turn her back on you, shaking her assets without even thanking you. As if everyone in the universe deserved it.

She might also be a hooker looking for clients.  Chances are that nothing will happen, because the money you have is not enough to pay her fee; perhaps you don’t have a place to take her; or you are afraid of the place where she could take you and where two or three of her followers could be waiting to fleece you; fear of AIDS might stop you; or you’re turned off by her warnings that you have to pay her in advance, use a condom, not take too long, and not kiss her (the prostitutes in Cuba do not kiss on the mouth).

In many instances, when you really look at her, you have to be a championship pervert to overcome the weight of your conscience and do it with a girl who could easily be your daughter and who you can tell from a mile away is hungry.

Now it doesn’t bother me when they call me “Papi.”  Perhaps I would feel uncomfortable if they called me “Señor. Especially if it is a young girl. I feel that if they don’t address me in familiar terms it is because I look as old as a Polynesian turtle.  Too old for them to call me “Papi.” And that is much worse.

From Cubanet, September 6, 2013

Luis Cino Alvarrez — luicino2012@gmail.com

Translated by – LYD

 

I am the Woman Who was Raped by an Immigration Officer in the Bahamas / CID

My name is Maireni Saborio Gonzales, I am 23 years old and I live in city of Caibarien, Villa Clara.  I left as a boat person or rafter on September 25, 2012 and I was jailed for 11 months in the Carmicheal Center located in Nassau Bahamas, where later on I was deported back to Cuba on August 21, 2013.

While in Bahamas, I psychologically suffered very much.  I was the woman who was raped by the immigration officer in Bahamas.

I am very afraid to be in this country – Cuba – because I declared myself as dissident on some United States’ radio stations, on the internet and I repudiated wanting to return to Cuba in all instances.

I am under a lot of tension due to all the things that have happened to me; I also had to denounce the Bahamian authorities because of their lack of protection during the time I was imprisoned, due to the sexual assaults that I suffered on several occasions and I am under pressure too because I was returned to a country where I haven’t been able to find a job and I feel that I am under surveillance at all times.

I was one of the women who stitched their mouths shut; I surrendered my beauty and I shaved my head to collaborate with my compatriots, 24 Cubans completely bald.  I did two hunger strikes, one that lasted 18 days and the second one that lasted 16 days, and there were men on strike too.

The Bahamian government detained me because I tried to kill myself due to the psychological stress that I was under.  They detained me and took me to a mental institution in which around March I took a mixture of 20 different medications so I could take my life.  Afterwards, they took me to the Silent Hospital, another medical institution which the Bahamanians have on the island of Nassau to treat the mentally ill.

As I said before, there they gave me medications and wouldn’t tell me anything about what was going to happen with our situation and I was extremely stressed.

We witnessed beatings, we saw our compatriots be beaten, the video that is going around the world is not a lie, this video is real and we lived it and we, the women, decided to go through everything that happened because nothing that you see in those photos and on the internet is a lie and we decided to do it because we were tired of these things and of existing under those horrific conditions in which we found ourselves where we didn’t even have drinking water and we had to sleep on the floor and we couldn’t communicate with our families and we were continually sexually harassed.

In addition to seeing how they mistreated our compatriots, we had no human rights, no one we could count on and we lived in this place in this concentration camp that was horrible and what we wanted was for the whole world to see what was happening and what happens with all these Cubans. We were a little more than forty Cubans who were in the detention center, we aren’t criminals and the only thing we were looking for was a window to freedom and I ask, please, that everyone who sees this video knows what is is real and help us so that one day we can see the freedom we so greatly desire.

Translated by – LYD and RST

13 September 2013

Decent Work / Dora Leonor Mesa

Poverty is the cause and reason that makes the worker particularly vulnerable to psychological stress.

Source: IX Meeting of the Mixed Committee

OIT- OMS sobre Medicina del Trabajo (1984)

Juan Somavia defined it as “productive labor in which freedom, equality, security and dignity are conditions,  rights are respected and fair wage payment exists as well as social protection”.

The notion of decent work amounts then “to what people expect in their working lives”, a productive work with: Fair pay; Safety in the workplace; Social protection of families; Better perspectives for personal development and social integration; Freedom for individuals to express their concerns, organize and take part in the decisions that affect their life; Equality of opportunity and treatment for women and men.

What is the Decent Work?

Is an important condition to overcome poverty, reduce social inequalities and ensure sustainable development and a democratic government.

The impact of improper working conditions

Impact in numbers; Early aging; Workforce exhaustion; Mental health deterioration; Work stress; Absenteeism

Work related illnesses will double by year 2020 if no changes occur.  Per the Work Ministry in Japan, some cases including suicides are on the rise: 13 cases in 1995; 18 cases in 1996; 23 cases in 1997; 355 cases in 2005

Karoshi (death due to excess work): First case in 1969.

Causes of death: Heart attacks and strokes including subarachnoid hemorrhage (18.4%); cerebral hemorrhage (17.2%); heart attack or brain stroke (6.8%); myocardial infarction (9.8%); heart failure (18.7%); other causes (29.1%), including among them illnesses of rationalization.

The National Defense Council of the Victims of Death from Overwork (karoshi), is an institution that helps the victim’s families to obtain compensation and in many cases, fight endless judicial battles; it’s considered that karoshi affects annually around 10,000 Japanese employees.

Who commits suicide?: Any social status; Work hours with a medium of 10-12 hours without rest days.

What happens in China?: The life expectancy of the “brains” that lead the technology park in Zhongguancun, north of Beijing, considered the Chinese “Silicon Valley” is 54 years and 70% risk of death from “karoshi” (death due to excess work).

It also happens in Europe: The Appellate Court in Riom (Puy-de Dome) confirmed it in February 2000; In January 20, 1997 a man was found hanged, having been threatened with dismissal.

What is burn-out?  Some define it as a psychological retirement from work as an answer to dissatisfaction and excessive stress.

Dynamic Definition of burn-out: Labor Stress / Tiredness / Defensive Attitudes:  Rigidity, Cynicism and Indifference; Demand – Available Resources / Tension; Fatigue, Irritability.

Absenteeism: An employee who is absent from work “without reason” is showing his desire to leave that job forever.

How can we intervene to prevent this?: With the improvement of working conditions.  Improving the quality of the job is the central requirement to ensure health and security at work; so decent works exists.  It’s essential to prevention.

Translated by – LYD

23 September 2013