Translator: Mary Lou Keel – Page 4

First Group of Cuban Doctors Arrives in Miami after the End of the ‘Parole’ / 14ymedio, Mario Penton

14ymedio, Mario J. Penton, Miami, 6 February 2017 – Two dozen health professionals who abandoned their Cuban medical missions abroad arrived this afternoon at the Miami International Airport from Colombia. This is the first group to arrive in the United States after the end of the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP).

“This is a triumph for the whole Cuban American community, our organization and the offices of the Cuban American congressmen who have worked so that these guys can get the right deal, and their petitions were satisfactorily answered,” said Julio Cesar Alfonso, president of the organization Solidarity Without Borders (SSF) which supports Cuban doctors.

Yerenia Cedeno, a 28-year old Cuban doctor, characterized the situation they experienced in Venezuela as “horrible.” She escaped five months after arriving at the mission, pushed by insecurity and the precarious conditions where they worked. continue reading

“You would find out that they took the phone from this one or robbed that one on the minibus. It’s horrible,” explains Cedeno.

The doctor adds that she could not go back to Cuba because there she “would be marginalized and looked at badly.”

“They put you in another place, not in your job because they look down on you because you don’t agree with what you experienced and for what you were badly prepared,” she adds.

The doctor felt exploited in Venezuela, where she shared her work with her husband, also a doctor, who accompanied her on her trip to the United States but did not want to make a statement to the press.

Their plan is to take their little three-year old daughter who lives in Guantanamo out of Cuba and resume their studies in the United States.

“I want to work as a doctor or something similar. This is the start of a new life,” she says.

This past January 12, the then-president of the United States, Barack Obama, eliminated the CMPP, a program established under the administration of Republican George Bush that in a decade allowed the flight of more than 8,000 Cuban health professionals.

Cuban Health Personnel Received through Cuban Medical Professionals Parole

According to the non-profit organization Solidarity Without Borders, which helps integrate these doctors into the US health system, it helps those fleeing from the biggest human trafficking system in the modern history of the western hemisphere.

Arisdelqui Mora, a young Cuban who escaped the Island four years ago on a raft, waited for her half-sister Arianna Reyes, a Cuban doctor who escaped from the mission in Venezuela. The happiness of the reunion, which included the grandmother of both, received wide media coverage.

“We have been separated but during the whole time we remained in communication through the networks,” explains Mora to 14ymedio.

“They have worked a lot,” she adds.

Celia Santana, a dentist, only spent five months in Venezuela.

“Venezuela is much worse than my country. I never imagined that it would be like that. That country is a disaster, and of course the Venezuelan people are not to blame,” explains the doctor.

She spent five months awaiting the parole in order to travel to the United States.

“It’s absurd to end the program. They should have taken other measures,” she says.

“Cubans escape because of the economic situation and also because of the politics because they want freedom of expression.”

Mildre Ester Martinez, recently arrived in Miami, appreciates the help received through the media and the service of Solidarity Without Borders.

“I did not feel right. I was disgusted, disappointed by all the work we did there. I thank God to be here,” she added.

Maikel Palacios, health professional and spokesman for the group of Cubans, reminded that although Cuba has said publicly that they can rejoin the public health system, “they don’t let defectors enter the country for eight years.”

Health worker Veidy Diaz, from Cuba, is received by her family and friends on arriving at MIA from Colombia (NH).

Palacios also questioned the supposed good will of the Island’s government when the official communication from the Minister of Public Health did not mention the frozen bank accounts that the aid workers lose once they abandon the mission.

“They don’t talk about the money. There are people who have up to 7,000 dollars, and they lose it all the day they decide to escape,” he said.

The Cuban government appropriates two-thirds of the salary earned by the Cubans abroad. They are generally sent to the most remote places in deplorable working conditions. In countries like Brazil they do not have the right to receive their family while the aid program lasts, even though the laws of that country permit it.

Solidarity Without Borders is in the middle of a campaign to re-establish the Parole program for Cuban doctors. Currently they are working with the offices of Cuban American congressmen in order to present a proposal to President Donald Trump to reinstate the CMPP.

“We will keep working so that our colleagues may reach the land of freedom and in the near future the Parole program will be re-established for professionals who are in third countries,” explained the president of SSF, Julio Cesar Alfonso.

According to statistics from SSF more than 69 Cuban doctors have been killed in Venezuela in the last 10 years. The Cuban government has divulged that currently more than 50,000 professionals from the Island are dispersed throughout more than 60 countries worldwide.

Working conditions and political pressure push thousands of professionals to accept the missions proposed by the Cuban government. Even though the salary was increased in 2014, the average salary of a doctor in Cuba is about 60 dollars a month.

The massive exportation of health services has generated income for the government on the order of 8.2 billion dollars a year in 2014 according to official sources.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

The Controller Uncovers a Rosary of Mismanagement / 14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez

The Controller General of the Republic, Gladys Bejerano Portela. (Networks)

14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 28 January 2017 — What Cuban has not diverted resources from his work place? Theft from the State together with administrative negligence and corruption are among the main problems detected by the most recent National Internal Audit concluded at the end of the year.

Between October 31 and December 9, 346 economic entities from all over the country, with the exception of Guantanamo, the province most affected by Hurricane Matthew, were inspected. The 11^th edition of the exercise focused on the decentralization of administrative decision-making, non-agricultural cooperatives and the application of systems of payments for results. continue reading

Gladys Bejerano Portela stands out at the head of the process, the face of the Republic’s Controller General, created in 2009 by Raul Castro to deter administrative disorder. The official has become a nightmare for business administrators and managers, but her iron image does not seem to be enough to dissuade the corrupt.

For weeks the controller deployed an integrated exercise by hundreds of auditors, experts, students and university professors to find the holes through which resources leak. At the center of their focus were also the so-called idle inventories, vestiges of stagnation that cram warehouses or rot under the tropical sun.

Since the beginning of this year some local newspapers have begun publishing summaries of the most serious problems found by the audit, but the national report still has not been released. Presumably the entity will make an accounting before parliamentarians in the next session of the National Assembly.

In the Cienfuegos province, the Acopio Enterprise showed “serious irregularities in the area of accounting and in the management of resources, to the point that three suspected acts of criminality and corruption are under consideration,” asserted Elsa Puga Rochel, head controller in that central province.

In Matanzas alarms also sounded when auditors concluded that the results of the inspection “reflect a disfavorable situation” that is catalogued as a “setback” when compared to the same examination carried out in 2015.

In the Yumurino territory economic damage caused by the diversion of resources, administrative mismanagement, corruption and other economic ills are marked by “steady progress for the last five years,” according to Carmen Elsa Alfonso Aceguera, chief controller of the province.

In that province at least eight criminal acts were evident in four entities, and “operations of doubtful characteristics” also indicate four suspected acts of corruption in three of them: two in the Puntarenas-Caleta Hotel Complex, one in the Oasis-Canimao-Villa Artistic Complex and another in the Jovellanos Agricultural Products Marketer.

When auditors inspected the books of the Matanzas non-agricultural cooperatives they found “deficiencies in income and expense plans, problems with supplies and contracting with state entities.”

In the Pinar del Rio province, the Aqueduct and Sewage Company, the Electric Company, and the Pharmacy and Opticians stand out among the enterprises with the worst results. The chain of problems includes salary payments without corresponding productivity, aging accounts, and poorly performed inventories.

In five Villa Clara municipalities there were a whopping 325 economic deficiencies, and 30 disciplinary measures were applied. The controller general herself travelled there in order to warn local administrators that “internal control actions cannot be seen as something sporadic or the work of a day,” but must be taken on as “a form of human behavior that does not allow tolerance of the least neglect.”

In another of her interventions, in Holguin, the controller was blunt: “Without organization, discipline and control, it is impossible to achieve the prosperous and sustainable development that we have set out for ourselves.”

Raul Castro has been emphatic in suggesting that “without conformation to an environment of order, discipline and stringency in society, any result will be ephemeral.” The official press has also joined the battle against the diversion of resources, and in recent years it has published many reports about illegalities and corruption.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Fire, Neglect and Bureaucracy Sink the Moscow Restaurant / 14ymedio, Luz Escobar

Complaints about the problems caused by the ruins of the building have been repeated each year in the “Accountability Assemblies”

14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 20 January 2017 – A bird has his nest on a fragment of wall and a creeper peeps over what was once the sumptuous door of the Moscow Restaurant. Almost three decades after a fire extinguished the sparkle of the downtown location, its ruins are a headache for its closest neighbors and city authorities.

“I asked my wife to marry me under that decorated wooden ceiling,” Waldo, a 67-year-old retiree from the Cuban Radio and Television Institute, tells this newspaper. Like many of his contemporaries, he thinks that the Moscow Restaurant “was the pearl in the crown of this city” until the end of the 1980’s. continue reading

After Fidel Castro came to power and the nationalizations happened, the property stopped housing the famous Montmartre casino and cabaret. At the end of the 1960’s, the place was re-named Moscow, a nod to the Soviet Union. Bolero nights came to their end, and Solyanka soup and Russian salad took over the place.

“The food was good, and they had workers trained in the old style who treated customers with friendliness and without today’s cheek,” says Jose Ignacio, a nearby neighbor from 25th Street who assures that the complaints about the problems caused by the building’s ruins “have been repeated each year in the People’s Power Accountability Assemblies*.”

The place remains closed, with entrances covered and vegetation growing between its walls. With the years, the situation has become untenable for the neighbors. “There are a lot of mosquitoes, because when it rains, the water accumulates,” complains Monica, mother of a months-old baby who must “sleep with mosquito netting in spite of being in the city’s very downtown.”

Officials from the Provincial Administration Council commented this week on television news that “given the damage caused by the fire” and the years of neglect, the ruined property can only be demolished. “There is no chance of saving it for restoration, therefore it must be demolished,” they pronounced.

The work of taking down the building necessitates 260 cubic meters of wood for support, and no fewer than two full-time cranes hired for a year, specified the two interviewed officials. The total amount for the operation is calculated at four million Cuban pesos, but it is not a priority among the investment plans assigned to the city.

In Old Havana other more ruinous properties have been restored and function as hotels or cultural centers, but the Moscow seems to be cursed. “In an attack here they killed Antonio Blanco Rico, chief of Fulgencio Batista’s Military Intelligence,” says Gustavo, a nearby neighbor and one who proclaims himself “familiar with every inch of this city’s history.”

More than three decades after that event a voracious fire destroyed the place, and since then it has been closed. “I was born in the middle of the Special Period in the 1990’s, and I only heard stories about the Moscow Restaurant from my parents,” says a young shoe and wallet vendor at the 23^rd Street Fair.

Next to him a lady listens to the conversation and evokes the restaurant’s golden age. “They were times when a worker could pay for a meal in such a place with his salary,” she remembers. “But shortly after the Moscow burned, the USSR also came down, and all that turned to smoke and ashes.”

*Translator’s note: Regular meetings held by deputies at different levels of government with their constituents to hear from them and be “held accountable” for their performance.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

The Drama of Hundreds of Cubans Who Have Their Bags Packed / 14ymedio, Mario Penton

Hundreds of Cubans have been stranded in various Latin American countries in their flight to the US. (Archive).

14ymedio, Mario J. Penton, Havana/Miami, 14 January 2017 – Yeny Varela cried bitterly this Thursday when she heard on national television about the immediate end to the wet foot/dry foot policy.

Repatriated to Cuba from Mexico after a long month-and-a-half trip from Ecuador in 2014, and after raising the necessary funds to leave the country again, her hopes of escape from the Island were ruined.

“I did everything to get to the United States where I have my elderly aunt and uncle. I went to the embassy, and they denied me a visa, I walked from Ecuador, and the Mexicans deported me, the last thing I had managed was a work contract in Mexico for which I paid thousands of dollars, and now I have lost everything,” she laments.

At 32 years of age, this young Havanan believes that the best years of her life are behind her.

“And now where do I go?” she says. continue reading

“They (the US government) are doing that because they believe that they are going to force a change, but it’s not going to happen,” she says. Although everyone is “sick” of that system, no one can protest because “they disappear you,” she says.

“Do you really believe they are going to give you a visa at the embassy? No one believes that. Don’t you realize that once someone has a visa he’s going to stay?” she adds.

Varela is not the only one dressed up with no place to go. In Villa Clara, Rosa, age 26, had sold her house and all her belongings to begin the dangerous trip through Guyana.

Cuban women stranded while trying to make their way to the US through Central America. (EFE)

Her intention was to make the trip that thousands of other migrants have made in recent years to get to the southern border of the United States. After the immigration policy change, she is “devastated.”

“Our intent was to leave the country in order to live a little better. There are no opportunities here,” she explains. The Villarena does not plan, however, to go to the United States embassy to seek political asylum.

“I don’t involve myself in politics, that doesn’t interest me. I wanted to leave Cuba for economic reasons,” she explains.

Now she will have to start again from scratch. Meanwhile she decided to live with her mother.

Not only in Cuba were migration plans cut short. Throughout the continent hundreds of Cubans who were headed to the United States border have seen their plans thwarted.

“I never get involved in politics at all, but Obama has been worse than Pontius Pilate, seven days from leaving the presidency, it was not for him to have done such a thing,” says Maria Isabel, a Cuban who lives in Argentina and was preparing her trip to the United States.

“I have left everything behind. I was just taking a small step here in order to continue my journey,” she says.

According to the Cuban, who spent three months awaiting papers to continue to Mexico, the most misguided thing about the Obama administration’s decision is that it “tackles the consequences but not the causes.”

“How many people have risked or lost their lives? The degree of despair and frustration is so great that we can only cry,” she laments.

The latest statistics from the US Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services calculate that 56,406 Cuban citizens benefitted in the last fiscal year from the wet foot/dry foot policy.

After the resumption of relations between Cuba and the US, a migratory crisis unfolded which had regional repercussions when several thousand Cubans were stranded in Central America after Nicaragua refused to permit the islanders to pass.

With the later closure of the Costa Rican and Panamanian borders, the crisis spread to Colombia and Ecuador when those countries took steps to prevent mass migration from the Island. Two “air bridges” arranged with Mexico allowed the evacuation of the Cubans; however, since the departure of the planes from Panama in May, hundreds of other migrants continued arriving.

More than 80 Cubans on their way to the United States are in a hostel run by Caritas, a non-governmental organization tied to the Catholic Church.

One of them, Andres, says that “Obama is abominable” and that they did not expect it.

His situation was apparently made worse by the Immigration General Director’s statements only a few hours earlier that Cubans must leave the country.

However, the migrants being sheltered by Caritas have the support of the Catholic Church, which will intervene to prevent their deportation, as explained by Deacon Victor Luis Berrio, head of the organization.

At least those in Panama have protection, says Yuniel Ramos, who together with another 40 Cubans is continuing his journey through Honduras to get to the American border.

“They will have to do something with us because Cuba won’t take us back,” he adds.

But the doors to the United States are now closed for Cubans.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Film “Hands of Stone” Excluded from Havana Film Festival / 14ymedio, Zunilda Mata

New Latin American Film Festival Awards program section

14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 19 December 2016 – The New Latin American Film Festival ended as it began: marked by censorship. The exclusion of the film Santa y Andres stained the opening of Havana’s main cinematographic event with gray, and spectators were also unable to see the film Hands of Stone as punishment for the solidarity of its director, Jonathan Jakubowicz, with Cuban director Carlos Lechuga.

The film, based on the life of Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran, was initially included among the feature films that would be shown in the Festival Awards section, but it was never screened. The event’s organizers dropped contact with its director after learning of his condemnation of the censorship of Lechuga, says the Venezuelan artist. continue reading

Days before the beginning of the Festival, Jakubowicz spoke by telephone with the directors of Santa y Andres in order to assess the possibility of withdrawing his film from screening in the competition as a condemnation of censorship. After the publication of an interview with Jakubowicz in 14ymedio on December 7, the Festival’s organizers stopped writing him. “Not only with respect to the copy of the film, but about my attendance,” he says.

“As the death of Fidel Castro was announced the next day, I thought that was why, but they never wrote again. I suppose they preferred to avoid an uncomfortable situation with me in Havana, at a time of such tension for the island,” reflects the prestigious director.

For viewers who sought explanations for the absence of Hands of Stone, the Festival organization contended that the director “never sent the exhibition copy.” Although the director was planning to travel to Havana, he could not bring it personally either without confirming the trip after getting no answer from the event organization.

In the interview published by this newspaper, Jakubowicz explained that he had thought about withdrawing his film from the billing because he was afraid of becoming “that awful artist figure who supports the repressor, a frequent figure in our countries and one who has done a lot of harm to our peoples.”

However, after speaking with Lechuga and his wife, he learned that “the Festival is one of the Island’s few windows looking to the world outside,” and he decided to keep the film in the festival. But when it came time to organize sending the copy to Havana, the event organizers were silent.

“It is a shame for the Cuban public who wanted to see the film. But fine, in the end all of Cuba saw Express Kidnapping, and it is forbidden, too. Art always reaches those whom it has to reach,” Jakubowicz reflects.

Nevertheless, the director thanks the “festival for the initial invitation” and wishes it “much luck in its continued struggle to bring light to Havana’s theaters. There will be better times. The winds of changes are blowing strong and are inevitable, in Cuba as well as in Venezuela,” he asserts.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

“Cuba’s Tyrant Died,” Miami Celebrates / 14ymedio

14ymedio, 26 November 2016 – Thousands of Cubans poured into Miami’s streets in the early morning hours to celebrate the death of Fidel Castro, Cuba’s former ruler, who held onto power for almost five long decades. To the rhythm of “Our Day is Coming” by Willy Chirino and “In Case I Don’t Return,” by the late Celia Cruz, the exiles celebrated surviving the man who dominated with an iron fist the destinies of those on the Island of Cuba.

“Here we are celebrating freedom for the Cuban people. Satan has died, a man who plunged the people into misery and hunger,” said Maria Cristina Labrada Varona, member of the Ladies in White on a visit to the city of Miami. continue reading

The leader of the Democracy Movement, Ramon Saul Sanchez, explained to 14ymedio that the exiles do not rejoice at the death of a human being but “at the disappearance of a symbol that is used as a sword of Damocles against civil society activists and all who want to democratize Cuba.”

Sanchez says that “Raul and his brother Fidel Castro were responsible for making the dynastic transfer” and argues that military exercises like the Bastion 2016 were carried out in order to intimidate people and so that people did not pour into the streets.

“The Cuban is changing in his heart, he wants liberty. One day we are going to see that this happiness that is seen in the Cuban exile is going to be apparent to everyone,” said Sanchez.

Ufracio Gonzalez, a boxing trainer attending the demonstration explained that he decided to go out to the streets with his young daughter to celebrate the death of the dictator because “That man has done a lot of damage to Cubans. We have memories of suffering and bitterness.”

Not only Cubans were among the celebrators. Venezuelans and Latin Americans decided to share the joy of the exiles. Lia Fausta, a Brazilian living in Miami, says that she does not celebrate the death of Fidel Castro but a new life for Cuba and for all the countries in the Americas.

“Lula, Dilma Rousseff, Evo Morales, Nicolas Maduro, Ortega and Santos. We must free ourselves from these people who destroy the future of our young people,” she explained.

“I love Cuba. My mother was a woman who loved the Island. All my life the only thing I heard was ‘what a shame that this has happened (the Cuban Revolution) to a country that was the most beautiful in the Caribbean,’” she added.

A woman raises a flag to celebrate the end of Fidel Castro (14ymedio).

Since early morning the county police have been present and closed downtown’s Eighth Street in Little Havana, the quintessential meeting place for Cuban immigrants in south Florida, estimated at about two million people.

“It is a family celebration. You find the same thing among the old and the young. No one has wanted to stay home. It is something that we owe to our parents, our grandparents, to all who suffered the worst of the Castro tyranny,” comments Elquiades Suarez, 40 years of age.

In the afternoon Willy Chirino and other famed local artists visited the restaurant Versailles.

Cuban-American members of congress also met to give a joint statement.

“We are not going to expect big changes,” said the recently re-elected Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in a joint press conference with Republicans Mario Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Carlos Curbelo.

Ros-Lehtinen also threw a bucket of cold water on those who expect rapid changes on the Island with the death of Castro: “Do not expect Fidel’s death to open a door to a new chapter of liberty. It is not so easy.”

“What we need is freedom for the Cuban people, freedom of expression and everything that is written in the Helms-Burton law.”

Diaz-Balart for his part said that Fidel Castro’s legacy is “of tragedy, of repression, of corruption, of drug trafficking and terrorism.”

Fidel Castro’s public enemy number one, the militant anti-Castroist Luis Posada Carriles, described the death of the Cuban ex-ruler as “unjust” and lamented that it came “so late.”

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Political Arrests Increase / 14ymedio, Pedro Armando Junco

Reporter Sol Garcia Basulto was arrested on the night of November 3 when she was preparing to travel to Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Pedro Armando Junco, Havana, 23 November 2016 — I learned via the internet that 14ymedio’s Camaguey correspondent, Sol Garcia Basulto, was illegally and arbitrarily arrested on the night of November 3 when she was travelling to Havana to get a visa for her passport.

As she herself relates, she had won a trip abroad for a journalism course. She would not qualify for enrollment in a Cuban university journalism school because her political ‘wood’ is not suitable for the construction of that ‘national informational edifice.’ Her case is not isolated. There are many young students of this profession whose careers are interrupted for the least ideological slip-up or who, when they manage to graduate, have doors to jobs closed on them. They are innumerable, the names of the recent graduates who have crossed the Strait or who are marginalized within the country and take on any self-employment that is often as distant from their abilities and aspirations as they ever imagined. continue reading

Sol’s case is in keeping with a repressive wave that is playing out across the Island against opponents and independent journalists in order to put a stop to that avalanche of popular dissatisfaction that is growing among the citizenry because that handful determined to complain is the only representation of the people’s discontent. The system is not content with excluding them from the official media – the only media accessible to the population – but intends to eliminate them because of new technologies that one way or another allow what’s happening within Cuba to be known.

The most significant thing about Garcia Basulto’s detention, if the objective was to prevent her trip abroad, is that they could have visited her at her home and withdrawn her passport; taken her off the bus at the Camaguey terminal before it took off; or even summoned her to the police station. However, they waited for the bus to leave the city, and then they stopped it in the middle of the road, boarded it and handcuffed her like a common criminal. This is one more kind of mistreatment that so many of the Cuban population suffers.

I know Solecito – as I call her – and I know that she is a young woman of character. She raises her daughter alone because the father is a prisoner. I am not unfamiliar with that journalistic aspiration that has not been able to develop, as I said before, because of its dissident tenets. I have seen her often and read her work in the independent magazine Cuba’s Time which, by the way, is not at all “counter-revolutionary” except when its collaborators touch a sore spot of some public official – I even think that the State could take the articles that are written there as a reference to discover the administrative deficiencies of many revolutionaries who bleed public assets for their own benefit, as is well known.

I am at once saddened and indignant that the changes of openness promised to the people are the object of a double standard – to use this phrase that they like so much – and that now that the president general assures that there are no political prisoners, they stop and humiliate those who don’t submit to the system. It is possible that there are no political prisoners in Cuba; but political arrests increase daily.

The bad time that they gave to Solecito will not change her way of thinking but will increase her condemnation of those who oppress her. Maybe a friendly and convincing attitude together with facilitating her trip would have made her change her view and respond empathetically when the time came to practice non-professional journalism. But instead, the sad and regrettable event has brought to international light a new name that will have to be taken into account from now on.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

The Informal Market Compensates for the Lack of Medicines / 14ymedio, Zunilda Mata

Shortages in state pharmacies fuels illegal trade in medicines in Cuba (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Havana, 7 November 2016 – “There is no headache that can resist this Bayer aspirin,” says Vicky, a seller of imported medicines who offers vitamins, sedatives, flu remedies and ointments. The shortages in state pharmacies fuel illegal trade in medicines in Cuba, many of them brought from abroad.

Vicky has been “in this arena” for three years, according to what she tells 14ymedio at her house in Old Havana, which she has repaired and furnished thanks to the medicine business. She says she has regular customers whom she keeps supplied with “antacid pills, multi-vitamins and flu remedies.”

Customs regulations in force since 2014 permit the import of up to ten kilos of medications duty-free into the country. It is only required that they come in “luggage separate and independent from other articles” and that they keep “their original packaging.” continue reading

“Do you know how much Alka-Seltzer fits in ten kilos?” Vicky jokes about the commercial brand of effervescent antacid that is recovering its popularity among Cubans after decades of absence. “There are many needs, and this is a business that never loses,” she explains.

“I have several contacts who travel to Miami and Panama to supply me,” says Carlos Manuel, another medication seller, more focused on the Island’s central market. “Many are accustomed to US brands, so I try not to change my suppliers,” he adds.

“In the countryside people have a tough time getting many of these things,” says the seller, who explains that some customers do not pay him with money but with agricultural products. Carlos Manuel, in fact, already has “agreed to a pig at the end of the year” in exchange for “a nebulizer and a digital blood pressure monitor” ordered by a sixtyish farmer.

Cuba produces some 531 medications, of which 322 go to the pharmaceutical network and the rest to hospital centers, according to data from the Ministry of Public Health. The state subsidizes the sale in dispensaries and regulates the quantities that each consumer can buy, even for non-prescription medicines.

The pharmaceutical industry is going through a difficult period with the lack of liquidity that the country is experiencing. Managers of the state company BioCubafarma explained to the official media last October that the medication deficit is due to decreased availability of raw materials, a result of defaults by foreign suppliers.

“Those that sell fastest are acetaminophen and ibuprofen plus vitamin E, triple antibiotic creams and Scott’s Emulsion,” says Carlos Manuel about his alternative offerings. “There is much demand for medications by older people,” he says.

With a very low birth rate, high life expectancy and increasing emigration by the young, Cuba is on track to become the ninth oldest nation in the world in 2050 and the oldest in Latin America. Currently the elderly exceed 20% of the country’s 11.1 million residents.

“There are more requests for circulation problems, knees guards, canes, bedsore creams and disposable adult diapers.” However, the seller says that still “the medications for chronic illnesses have to be gotten here through the black market, because out there it is very difficult to buy without a medical prescription.”

In that latter category are third generation antibiotics and many of the drugs for heart disease. But also the aerosol Salbutamol for asthmatics and doses of Enalapril for arterial hypertension are scarce in the state networks and are more complicated to acquire abroad.

The imports are products with flashy labels, bottles that often promise a number of pills “free” and with variations for all tastes. “I have the same medicine in pill form but also in gum and syrup,” adds Vicky.

A bottle of 30 children’s animal-shaped, soft vitamins costs in his “private dispensary” some five convertible pesos, a fourth of the average monthly salary. A nasal decongestion spray costs twice as much, the same as a cream for combating nail fungus.

Vicky sells vitamins, sedatives, flu remedies and ointments in her “private pharmacy” (14ymedio).

“Among my clients some spend up to 30 CUC per month on medicines, above all those who have young children or the physically impaired in their care,” the woman says.

The medicines distributed in the pharmacy network throughout the country mostly come in unattractive boxes, in the traditional blister packs or white plastic packages; there is no variety even if by chance there is a medicine for each illness. “It is not the same; although they may be good medicines they look outdated, old,” reflects Vicky.

“Everything that I have is quality, without adulteration,” the saleswoman promises a customer who has come to her house in search of a bottle of Omega 3 and other products. “It does not matter if you don’t have pain or corns, it is always better to invest in health,” she takes the opportunity do some advertising.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

“It’s Hard for the Government to Tolerate the Professionalism of Independent Journalists”

Ignacio Gonzalez, journalist and editor of Free Hot Press agency (screenshot)

14ymedio, Joanna Columbie, Havana, 21 October 2016 – Ignacio Gonzalez is frequently seen in the streets of Havana with microphone in hand recording citizens’ reactions to a flood, a historic baseball game or the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the governments of Cuba and the United States. Independent journalist and editor of the Hot Free Press (ECPL) agency, the young man aspires to continue excelling professionally and thinks that non-government media are experiencing a time of growth.

Recently Gonzalez spent 48 hours under arrest at a police station as a consequence of his work as a reporter, an arrest that is among the repressive acts carried out against independent journalism in recent months.

Columbie: How was Hot Free Press born?

Gonzalez: It comes from the idea that people are again gaining confidence in the independent press, which had lost a little due to government propaganda that says that it involves unqualified and mercenary journalists. We interview not only the regime’s opponents but also doctors, engineers, can collectors, mechanics, carpenters… people like that. continue reading

Columbie: You suffered an arrest recently. What happened?

Gonzalez: I was doing a report together with another colleague on a study of central Havana, and an operation began with a patrol car, five police officers and two agents from State Security. They took us to the fourth police unit and interrogated me in one of the offices. They made me undress and squat forwards and backwards in order to see if I had hidden any USB drives. I felt denigrated.

Then I was transferred to a police station on Zanja Street and later to the 10th of October, located on Acosta Avenue. I was detained for 48 hours, which had never happened to me, because they had always detained me between three and four hours.

Columbie. Were you accused of some crime or are you now subject to some investigative process?

Gonzalez. They told me that they had a file on me and that I am a counter-revolutionary. Although they assured me that my detention was not because of political problems, but because I was committing an illicit economic activity, since I had an agency where it was known that I paid workers and that I had no license to practice this activity nor was I accredited in the country. They also threatened me that my equipment could be seized. I did not sign nor will I sign any paper. There is no accusation as such, what I have is threats.

Columbie: Do you feel you are a “counter-revolutionary?”

Gonzalez: I told them that they were the counter-revolutionaries because they refuse progress and all kinds of democracy to our country. If they are going to put me in prison, they are going to have to do so also with thousands of Cubans who bravely and spontaneously make statements for our reports. Nor am I a mercenary. I work and get a salary for my work with my press outlet.

What they want with their threats is that I stop being an independent journalist and dedicate myself to taking photos for birthdays and quinceañeras [girls’ 15th birthday celebrations – a major coming-of-age milestone].

Columbie: How do you define yourself?

Gonzalez: I am neither an opponent nor a dissident; I am a person who practices journalism in favor of the truth. If the government does something positive, I do an interview or a report about that topic, but if it does something negative, I also bring it to light. If an opponent commits an act of corruption, I bring it to light, and if he is making a move in favor of the people, I do as well. That’s how journalism should be: impartial.

Columbie: Why do you believe that the repression against you has become more intense now?

Gonzalez: The increasing growth of independent journalism is upsetting them. We unofficial reporters have had the opportunity to attend courses, improve ourselves, and the government doesn’t tolerate it. This improvement, this professionalism that journalists are acquiring, even the audio-visual media which shows the whole world the news as it is, it is hard for them to tolerate. They are trying to accuse us of illegalities. It is a zero-tolerance policy towards the independent press.

In the case of Hot Free Press we are making reports almost of the same quality as Cuban television, but with the difference that we are not censored. We are reaching people; we have managed to make people feel a little more confident with the independent press, to give their statements. We have even found among members of the public that they say that if it’s not for national television, they say whatever they want. They are more disposed to make statements to independent outlets because they know that the national press belongs to the government and simply does not work.

Columbie: Are other non-governmental press agencies going through the same situation?

Gonzalez: I have not seen the same attitude with the rest of the new supposedly independent programs, like Bola 8 or Mi Havana TV. These just have a lot of nonsense. Supposedly they are being financed by the self-employed, but I work in this industry, and I know that the self-employed cannot pay for a production like these programs are showing. There are diverse locations and entry to places to which the independent press does not have access.

Columbie: How would you define the practice of the press in Cuba outside of the official sphere?

Gonzalez: Being an independent journalist here is like being a war correspondent.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Zero Victims in Cuba, at What Price? / Cubanet, Luis Cino Alvarez

Baracoa after Matthew (Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP)

Cubanet.org, Luis Cino Alvarez, Havana, 13 October 2016 – Several reporters from international press agencies, in particular the AFP, have recently highlighted the fact that in Cuba, in contrast with neighboring countries like Haiti, Hurricane Matthew caused no loss of life in spite of its extensive property damage.

The journalists credit the preventive work, mainly evacuation, that the Civil Defense carries out as soon as a storm approaches Cuban shores. And they are right: the Civil Defense is one of the few Cuban state institutions that really functions effectively.

But the admiring journalists overlook the fact that the Civil Defense works with an advantage: that which is conceded by social control and the “command and control” methods of a totalitarian regime. When evacuation is ordered, the people have no choice but to carry their rags and three or four pieces of junk, get on the trucks and buses and evacuate. If they refuse, they are evacuated by force or taken prisoner. continue reading

In a country where the citizen is free, the master of his actions, there is always some stubborn person who refuses to take refuge or prefers to stay to take care of his belongings, his animals, etc. Or he simply stays home because he wants to. But not in Cuba. If he doesn’t go one way or another, they take him. To a shelter or a jail cell if he acts the fool.

And Cubans, resignedly, let themselves be driven to the shelters, no matter the overcrowding, filth, and head and pubic lice: the roof there will not fall on top of them, as probably would happen in their miserable and dilapidated dwellings, and they are guaranteed food, even if it is bread with canned Venezuelan sardines, which the army keeps in its warehouses for emergencies. And as if there were not enough, Kcho will come, with an artist brigade that includes clowns and reggaeton players, to bring them a little entertainment…

If not for these forced evacuations there would have been deaths and injuries in Cuba as in the other countries. Or more: let’s remember that most dwellings in Cuba are in a deplorable state. Especially in the poor eastern region, which usually is one of the most affected by hurricanes. (Fortunately it has been years since a cyclone passed through Havana where with so much ruined housing and buildings – much of which remains upright only through miraculous static – the catastrophe would be unimaginable.)

Without detracting from the merits of the Civil Defense leaders: most of the generals of the armed forces, the older ones, in spite of playing so much with tanks and AK-47s, have not forgotten their rural origins, their highland times, when before the arrival of a cyclone, they would put their cattle and chickens in a safe place. We now are their animals, on their bosses’ farm, the size of an archipelago.

Too bad they are not more effective in the recovery effort. Or in guaranteeing, after the evacuation ends and the people return to the ruins that their houses have become, the most basic things: food and water. And not to mention the materials for repairing the dwellings, though the state says that it will bear 50% of the costs.

General Raul Castro at once assured the people of devastated Baracoa – the AFP should have referred to how happy they are with the Chief’s visit – that “the Revolution will never leave us” but warned them that reconstruction will take time.

They already know, without haste but without pause*. So they can join the long line of victims from prior hurricanes…

About the Author: Luis Cino Alvarez (b. Havana, 1956).

*Translator’s note: A catchphrase from a Raul Castro speech to the Communist Party Congress of 2016, often repeated in official discourse, and even more often mocked. Excerpt from speech: “The course is already plotted. We will continue at a steady pace, without haste, but without pause, bearing in mind that the pace will depend on the consensus that we can build within our society and the organizational capacity we reach to make the necessary changes without precipitation, much less improvisations that only lead us to failure.”

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Ethics Commission Rejects Appeal by Journalist Expelled from Radio Holguin / 14ymedio, Mario Penton

Journalist Jose Ramirez Pantoja shows the medal that was conferred on him by UPEC before he was fired (courtesy photo)

Mario J. Penton, 14ymedio, Miami, 30 September 2016 — The National Ethics Commission of the Cuban Journalists Union (UPEC) this Thursday ratified the expulsion of journalist Jose Ramirez Pantoja from Radio Holguin. The ousted professional now will be able to appeal to the UPEC Congress, which could encourage the debate currently taking place about the role of censorship and the protection of the Communist Party over the press.

The move comes after a long series of appeals since Ramirez Pantoja was expelled from his job last July 11. The journalist was penalized with removal from office for five years at the end of which he could return to work, provided he “has an attitude that comports with UPEC’s ethics code.” continue reading

14ymedio spoke by phone to Ramirez Pantoja who declined comment but did not deny the ruling.

“He is being pressured a lot by the authorities. They have told him that when he spoke with the independent press he complicated his case and in this trial they did the opposite of what they had announced: they treated him like dirt and affirmed an unjust sentence,” says a Holguin source close to the journalist.

“It was no use for Arnaldo Marabal [official journalist for the daily Giron in Matanzas] to try to ‘clean him up’ writing an interview in which he assures that Joseito is and always will be a revolutionary. They wanted him to pay the price in order to scare the others and so that no one dares to speak without permission,” adds the same source.

The Holguin journalist was dismissed from his job after publishing on his personal blog some controversial comments by the vice-president of the newspaper Granma, Karina Marron, about the current economic crisis in Cuba.

At the beginning of September, the recently elected president of the National Ethics Commission for UPEC, Luis Sexto Sanchez, visited Holguin in order to interview Ramirez Pantoja. After the interview and even though different people assured him that the situation would calm down and he would be able to return to his job, he received the ratification of the decision at both a provincial and national level.

Before the incident with Marron, Ramirez Pantoja even had been recognized with the highest distinction that UPEC awards, the Felix Elmusa. On that occasion, the same authorities who today condemn him to ostracism awarded him for fighting “from an ethical premise,” in order to make “the truth about Cuba” known to the world and “for educating, informing and revealing that Cuba is now free.”

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Chile Returns To Its Old Populist Ways / 14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner

protestas-AFP-Chile-realizandose-Twittermariseka_CYMIMA20160828_0002_16 — Protests in Chile against the AFP have been underway for several days throughout the country (Twitter/@mariseka)

14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Santiago de Chile, 28 August 2016 – I have arrived in the country in the middle of a cacophony, fortunately peaceful and civilized. It is Sunday, and tens of thousands of people are protesting against the AFPs.

They complain about the “Pension Fund Administrators,” a retirement system founded on individual capital accounts, more or less like the 401(k) and the American IRA. One contributes a part of his salary to an account that belongs to him, and thus, after a certain age, he can dispose of his resources or leave them to his heirs when he dies. The money is his. It does not come from the benevolence of other workers. continue reading

The AFPs are private financial companies that invest the money that the workers entrust to them in reasonably safe instruments, so that the risks are minimal. They charge about 1.5% to manage these resources. There are a few so that competition exists in price and services.

Since the economist Jose Pinera created the AFPs at the beginning of the 1980’s, the average annual return has been 8.4%. The government merely establishes strict rules and carefully monitors the financial entities. So far, in 35 years, there has been no collapse or scandal.

Today the mass of savings generated by the AFPs is approximately 167 billion dollars. That is very convenient for the stability of the country. A third of these funds comes from workers’ direct deposits. Two-thirds, the rest, are interest generated by these deposits. Without doubt, it has been a great business for the prospective retirees.

Until the creation of the AFPs, the distributed funds model prevailed in Chile, as in almost the whole world. The worker’s investment went to a general fund that was used to pay the pensions of retirees or finance the fixed expenses of the growing public workforce. In many countries, often, the money of elderly retired people ends up in the pockets of devious politicians and officials or is dedicated to other purposes.

As happens in Europe and the United States, the relationship between the number of workers and retirees is more problematic with each passing year. Fewer people are born, especially in developed or developing countries, and they live many more years.

Hence the retirement systems based on the distribution model are in crisis or heading towards it. They tank just as “Ponzi Schemes” always end badly; named for Charles Ponzi, a creative scammer who paid good dividends to investors … as long as there were new investors to meet the commitments.

When the capitalization system began, there were seven workers in Chile for every retiree. Today there are fewer than five. By mid-21^st Century there will be two. The individual capitalization system, rather than a maniacal predilection of liberals dictated by ideological convictions, is the only possible model of retirement in the medium term. It is much safer for a worker to have control of his savings than to leave that sensitive task to intergenerational solidarity or the decisions of politicians.

What has happened in Chile? Why are they complaining? Half of Chilean workers, especially women, do not regularly save, or they have not done so in a long time, and since they have not saved enough, the pensions they receive, consequently, are small, and they are not enough for them to survive. That is why they protest and want the state to assume responsibility for their old age and give them a “dignified” pension, without stopping to think that the supposed right that they are angrily soliciting consists of an obligation for others: those who work must give them part of their wealth.

At the same time, students passionately demand free university studies, while many Chileans demand the “decent” living promised by politicians in the electoral fracas, to which are added modern and effective medical services, also “free,” proper to a middle class country like Chile currently is. It is not well understood why, by the same reasoning, they do not seek free food, water, clothes, electricity, and telephones, all items of absolute necessity.

It is a shame. A few years ago it appeared that Chile, after a 20^th Century of populism from the right and left, with a population dominated by an incompetent and greedy government that had bogged down in underdevelopment and poverty, finally had discovered the correct road of individual responsibility, the market, the opening up and the empowerment of civil society as a great entrepreneurial player and the only wealth creator.

There was enthusiastic talk of the “Chilean model” as the Latin American road to reaching the First World. With 23,500 dollars per capita GDP (measured in purchasing power), Chile has put itself at the head of Latin America and boasts a low crime rate, honest administration and respect for institutions. It would not take long to reach that development threshold that economists set at about 28 to 30 thousand dollars per capita GDP.

It may never happen. A recent survey shows the growing irresponsibility of many Chileans convinced that society is obliged to transfer to them the resources that they demand from the state, which means from other Chileans.

It is a pity. A substantial part of the population has returned to populist ways typified by claiming rights and evading responsibilities. If Chile again sinks into the populist quagmire, we Latin Americans all will lose a lot. Prosperity and, who knows, even liberty. We will be left without a model, aimless, and in some sense, without a destination.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Paternalism Kills Creativity / 14ymedio, Eliecer Avila

A worker sweeps in front of a propagandistic ad in Havana (EFE). The ad reads: Liberty Cannot Be Blockaded/Here There Is No Fear

14ymedio, Eliecer Avila, Havana, 27 August 2016 – When I was small, I suffered from asthma for several years. I remember that my grandmother would not let me leave the house if it was slightly cloudy; I also had to wear shoes and thick socks although all the other children of the neighborhood ran barefoot through the gutters filled with puddles where one could experience the pleasure of feeling the mud between one’s toes.

Overcoats, blankets and mosquito nets did not manage to improve my health. However, a sports instructor did manage the miracle of not only an improvement but the definitive cure of this illness that tormented almost my entire childhood. continue reading

Contrary to the opinion of my relatives, the then-student of Physical Culture who for us would always be Loriet, taught a group of us adolescents in the seventh grade that “the body and spirit can be shaped by a force that is greater than all illnesses or limitations, a transformative and colossal force call willpower.” At first these words sounded strange and distant to us. Only years later did we understand their significance.

I began training in taekwondo, drowning every time I ran 20 meters or did 10 pushups. Unable to breathe, I looked towards everyone around me to approach the nearest person, I suppose in search of some support in order to feel more secure. On one occasion, someone protested to the teacher, saying: “Don’t you see that this boy is purple?” However, Loriet displayed not the least pity or concern, at least not visibly. He just told me instead: “None of them can help you, only you can manage it yourself, the problem is yours and you have the option of overcoming it, but you have to work hard, learn to breathe and recover without yielding and continue advancing. I promise you that this will not last forever.” And so it was!

After two years, my health took a radical turn. I could endure whole afternoons of practice and fighting, I added weight training with the teacher Mario (the strong) and even participated in some city competitions in both disciplines. For the coming “green” medical checkup, as they call it in the Compulsory Military Service, no one remembered any longer my nights of intensive therapy, eating a breakfast, lunch and dinner of aerosol hydrocortisone. I passed each test, and they gave my condition “Fit 1,” thus totally ready for the rigors of military training, which by luck was commuted for me mostly because of the “mission” of teaching physics and mathematics in senior high school, given the province’s lack of teachers and my notable educational results.

Later I continued occasionally practicing taekwondo, even in university. I did not win many fights in competition, but I always felt proud of having overcome my own natural vulnerability.

I give you a little of my own history in order to talk about something much more important that concerns not only me but all Cubans born on the Island after ’59. I am referring to the false paternalism that the government still continues assuming with the pretext of protecting us when in reality it deprives us of the possibility of exploiting our strengths as individuals and, as a whole, as a nation.

For four generations, we have carried an umbrella against foreign propaganda, an overcoat to avoid ideological deviations, anti-communism socks, safety goggles for different information, and a powerful aerosol that kills any germ of personal creativity or inspiration for entrepreneurism.

Even today, when the times have changed, the world has changed, people have changed, still there appears on television a young journalist warning us of the “grave dangers” that “so-called inter-connected societies” bring, like the “loss of privacy” or “the alienation caused by the game Pokemon Go,” when the vast majority of Cubans cannot even access a landline.

Nothing is more advisable for managing any tool than to use it in a natural and everyday manner. The lack of practice by our citizens with respect to basic elements that characterize modern societies is visible in the behavior that we adopt on finding ourselves exposed to an environment where the minimum personal effort is required to find solutions or answers for ourselves. Simply, we are not accustomed to solving our problems without depending on someone or something.

During my last airplane boarding at the Jose Marti Airport in Havana, I carefully observed the conduct of several people, especially those who had to be between 50 and 60 years of age. Cubans that I bet had some university degree were incapable of interpreting posters, signs or signals of any type in the airport, or on or inside the airplane. Facing the simple issue of finding a departure gate or a seat identified by a number, the first reaction was not to try to understand the symbols or signs, but they opted to ask constantly about the slightest detail, brandishing the easiest argument for their insecurity: “It is that I am not accustomed to these things.”

Something very different drew my attention when I left Cuba the first time and lived for four months among Europeans. There people spent several minutes before a map at a train station or configured a mobile app that offered the needed information, but rarely did they yield to the temptation of asking or complaining without first making an effort. That attitude of absent-minded ease is very widespread and, unlike Cubans, there exists a respect or almost a cult of self-management, the capability, initiative and talent of getting along with ease in any circumstance. Because there and in other parts of the world (coincidentally the most developed) it is autonomy and not dependence that has been instituted as a value in society.

It is not unusual to see three French teens comfortably disembark in Latin America with a map and backpacks, in stark contrast with a Cuban engineer who lands in Paris who, if someone doesn’t pick him up he might die of cold without daring to tackle the subway system by himself.

I could cite thousands of daily examples of how our dependent personality manifests itself, but the essential reflection that I want to share is that it is not a change of system that is going to bring a change of attitude in Cuba’s citizens and, therefore, a better and more prosperous society, but the reverse: without a change in the people, in their expectations, values, behaviors, they will never be able to overcome the system and its effects. Because the system does not consist only of a government and a system of laws, but it consists of the whole of the beliefs, myths, schemes and behaviors that we daily assume, accepting and resigning ourselves to suffer as from a chronic illness, one that can be overcome with a minimum of risk and individual effort from each of us.

A totalitarian and repressive political system can suffocate a society like asthma can suffocate our lungs. If we shed the overcoats, thick socks and mosquito nets on which we depend and go out to run, to discover and confront our obstacles, surely we will discover how incredible and marvelous it is to be able to breathe deeply all that oxygen that was always there, waiting for us.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

Viñales Pool Owners Rebel Against the Bureaucracy / 14ymedio, Zunilda Mata

14ymedio, Zunilda Mata, Vinales, 23 August 2016 – The tables are ready, the glasses shine on the tablecloths and the bar displays a wide variety of beverages. Nevertheless, the restaurant is closed. Some months ago, the ample dining room of Casa Nenita, in Viñales, was full of tourists, but the construction of a pool resulted in the cancellation of the owner’s license for renting rooms and selling food.

The drama that Emilia Diaz Serrat (Nenita) is living through is repeated all over the beautiful valley of Viñales among those dwelling owners who decided to build a pool. The local authorities have required that these entrepreneurs demolish what was built or convert into enormous flower beds the works intended for a refreshing dip.

A muffled fight, which newcomers barely notice, strains the paradisiacal valley crossed by wooded hills, caves and fields of tobacco. More than five years ago and before the touristic flowering of the region, self-employed workers devoted to renting rooms took a further step to diversify their services and began building their own pools. continue reading

However, at the beginning of this year and by surprise, the Municipal Administration Council decreed the closure of all of them and cancelled the rental licenses of those who resisted obeying. The local authorities even used satellite images to detect those striking blue circles or rectangles in the backyards of houses.

Roque, 38, is a private taxi driver who makes the trip between Havana and Viñales every day. Born in the beautiful Pinareño town, he knows each story of the place like the back of his hand. “What they have done here has no name,” he comments while driving his car through the unpaved streets on the periphery of the tourist epicenter.

“They say that the problem is the water, but in recent months it has rained a lot here, and the Jazmines Hotel pool (state-owned) is always full,” complains the man. So are those of La Ermita lodging and the popular campground Dos Hermanas, which belong to the state. Like a good many local residents, Roque believes that the measure is “an extremism” by the authorities against “those who produce more money in the area.”

The Viñales hosts pay the Tax Administration Office (ONAT) about 35 CUC every month as a license fee for each room that they rent. To that is added 10% of their income and payments for social security.

At first there were plastic pools bought in stores like those of Plaza Carlos III in Havana for a price of between 600 and 1,800 CUC. Hardly a water reservoir where customers could cool off from the torrid summer and fulfill their dreams of an idyllic vacation on a Caribbean Island.

The accommodations with a pool had an advantage in a town with 911 dwellings that are licensed for renting and in which more than 80% of tourists who arrive in the Pinar del Rio province spend the night. Offering a swim in the garden was a plus for attracting clients.

Little by little, the temporary became permanent. Glamorous designs replaced the plastic of the first, almost infantile pools. Beautiful ones, with islands of coconut palms set up in the center, an irresistible blue depth and sophisticated pumping system, began to appear everywhere. The investments in some cases exceeded 8,000 CUC.

In Cuban stores they barely sell the bleach compounds, disinfectants or products necessary for cleaning pools, but a thriving informal framework provides everything needed for their maintenance. In most cases the products are imported personally and receive authorization for entry in Customs, or they are diverted from the state sector.

The Viñales self-employed had to overcome all those obstacles, and at no meeting of the group of Dwelling Landlords or in the Delegate “Accountability Assemblies” were they warned to discontinue their renovations, a detail that they now reveal in order to try to stop the official assault.

Some sought solutions in order not to depend on water supplied through the pipes that arrive from the street. “When they told us that the problem could be the water, I hired a state brigade to dig a well, but not even that way could we stop this curse from above,” says M., owner of one of the houses whose license was withdrawn and who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

The onslaught came from all sides. Thirty-two rental licenses were withdrawn and only the homeowners who obeyed the sudden order to demolish or fill in their pools with dirt kept their permits. Those who raised their voices to complain about what is happening have received the treatment for “counter-revolutionaries” and a greater surveillance of their movements, they protest.

“We have hired a lawyer, the head of a provincial firm, in order to advise us, but so far it has not helped at all,” complains M. “We have gone many times to the People’s Municipal Power and the Municipal Party, but we have not gotten coherent answers.” He clarifies, however, that they do not want to turn this “into a political issue, because otherwise they will never arrive at a solution.”

Dozens of these owners even spent a night in a park in order to have a meeting with the president of the Provincial Assembly of the People’s Power, but the meeting never took place. They were surrounded throughout the wee hours by agents of the Special Brigade, two police patrols and a bus from the Technical Department of Investigations (DTI) as if they were a gang of dangerous criminals.

“Here the state invests little and demands a lot,” explains an employee of the Olive Tree restaurant, located on the main street of Viñales. “We have raised this place up, the entrepreneurs, because twenty years ago this place was half dead and today it is one of the country’s most important tourist destinations.”

In September 2014, Resolution 54 from the Institute of Physical Planning made clear that it would not award new licenses for the construction of pools, but the majority of the 28 that are in dispute today in Viñales were built before that date. In January of this year, the Official Gazette introduced new fees for the use of pools in the private rental sector.

A letter sent to Raul Castro in June by a group from the area of rental property owners affected by the prohibition is still unanswered. “We decided to make this report to you so that you may know that the doors to development in this country are closing,” say the claimants in the missive. Some of them talked hopefully this weekend of a prompt correction of the measure, but their predictions are more like hopes than certainties.

Viñales Vally landscape (MJ Porter) — Viñales Vally landscape: tobacco growing in the foreground, “mogotes” in the background. (MJ Porter)

They do not understand a decision that they think was made in a “precipitous manner” and “without taking into account the consequences that this would bring for tourist development” in the area. In the text that they delivered to the Council of State’s Office for Attention to the People, they characterize the measure as “unjust, disproportionate and out of step with the times in which we live.”

“I’m not going to empty the pool,” Nenita emphatically says under the inclement August sun, and meanwhile on her whole property not even the buzz of a fly was heard. The residence has been empty for weeks although in the streets of the tourist center visitors are stacked up in search of a room and on the TripAdvisor booking site her house is the best rated in the area.

Six other hosts also are prepared to “continue fighting” to keep their pools, in which, right now, no tourist bathes and which are only beautiful mirrors of water reflecting the mogotes, Viñales’ striking landforms that played an important part in its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Translated by Mary Lou Keel

The Revolution is Exactly That / 14ymedio, Carlos Alberto Montaner

14ymedio, Carlos A. Montaner, Miami, 6 August 2016 – They are hungry in Venezuela. It is the revolution. It does not matter that it potentially may be the richest country in the world. The same thing happened in 1921 in the newly debuted USSR. A million Russians died of hunger. Lenin rejoiced. “The revolution and I are like that, madam.” They kept the peasants from trading, and the Red Army confiscated food, including the seeds.

It happened in China. There were 20 million deaths. In that country grieving also is multitudinous. It happened in Cambodia and North Korea, where some desperate subjects resorted to cannibalism. It always happens. In Cuba sixty thousand people lost their sight or mobility in their lower limbs because of peripheral neuritis cause by malnutrition after the end of the Soviet subsidy. continue reading

Castro protested against the US “blockade.” The Minister of Health, who warned about what was happening, was removed from his post. The Revolution is also about keeping your mouth shut. It was not the embargo. It was the Revolution. It is always the Revolution. They gave the Nobel Prize in economics to the Bengali Amartya Sen for demonstrating that famines invariably are caused by state interference. Any of the victims of Communism could have explained to the Swedes with equal clarity and without need of getting a doctorate from Cambridge.

Why do the Communists do it? Are they sadists? Are they stupid people who commit the same errors time and again? Nothing of the sort. They are revolutionaries bent on creating a new world based on the prescriptions of Karl Marx.

Didn’t Karl Marx assert that the ruling oligarchy and state model were the consequence of the regime of capitalist property? Didn’t he claim that if a Communist vanguard were to take over the means of production in the name of the proletariat that there would emerge a new society ruled by new men endowed with a new morality?

It is a matter of priorities. Communist revolutionaries are not interested in people living better or farms and factories producing more. Those are the petty bourgeois stupidities typical of liberal democracies which include the Social Democrat traitors, the Christian Democrats and other minor species insistent on the babble of social pseudo-justice.

The two essential jobs of the Communist revolutionaries are, first, to demolish the power structure of the “old regime” and to substitute their own people for it; second, to take over the productive apparatus, ruin businesses that they cannot manage and nationalize the rest in order to deprive the old capitalist oligarchs of resources.

It is in these activities that Communist revolutionaries demonstrate if they have succeeded or failed. That is the benchmark. Lenin and Stalin succeeded, at least for several decades. Mao and the Castros succeeded. Chavez succeeded … for now.

What does it matter to Maduro that there are skeletal children who faint from hunger in school or that the sick die for lack of medicine? His definition of success has nothing to do with the feeding or health of Venezuelans, but with that fevered and delirious little world they call, pompously, the “consolidation of the revolutionary process.”

That explains the leniency in the face of immense theft of public treasure or the complicity with drug traffickers. Welcome. Marx also delivered the perfect alibi: They are in the first phase of capital accumulation. In this period of regime change, like someone who sheds a skin, anything goes.

And there will be time to re-establish honesty and to trust that the centrally planned five-year plans will bring something like prosperity. For now it’s about enriching the key revolutionaries: The Cabello brothers and their nephews, the docile generals, the Bolibourgeois, which is to say the revolutionaries in service to the cause. They have to have full pockets in order to be useful.

Do you understand now why the Communist revolutionaries repeat time and again the same framework of government? They are not mistaken. The upheaval is part of the construction of the new State.

Do you understand why the Castros advise Maduro to follow the unproductive Cuban model and why he doggedly obeys? What matters to the Chavistas is keeping power and exchanging the government elites for their own.

Do the Colombians understand what the guerrilla chief, Timochenko, means to say when he promises to revolutionize Colombia when he comes to power? Or Pablo Iglesias in Spain when he asserts that he will use in his country the same prescription that was recommended to the Venezuelans? They are consistently destructive.

That is the Revolution. Exactly that. Nothing more and nothing less.

Translation by Mary Lou Keel

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