The Cuban crisis is advancing inexorably towards its climax for reasons that are economic, political and social as well as genetic. With each passing day the situation for most citizens — shortages, price rises, low salaries and pensions, lack of opportunity — becomes even more complicated. The “update of the model,” now codified into law, neither casts sufficient light on the tunnel’s darkness nor provides real solutions to the multiplicity of problems.
Faced with this impending reality, people from a variety of opposition camps have come together to discuss what might be the best way to achieve this necessary transition. Some feel the best way is through dialog with the government in order to achieve a greater degree of openness, which might be expanded over time. Others reject any sort of dialog in favor of direct public pressure. Still others are looking for a middle ground that might satisfy both parties and avoid violence. There might be other approaches as well. To say which is best poses a great risk, one I feel we need not take since doing so would only add fuel to the debate’s fire and complicate the current contradictions.
Perhaps it would be more convenient and intelligent to try to determine a set of demands to present to the authorities which are premised on bringing about real change. If there is a desire to seriously resolve the nation’s issues, there must be a basic shared platform on which all factions can agree in order to begin to take firm and effective steps forward.
Therefore, it is clear that the different factions must be recognized as negotiating partners, something that up till now has not happened due to the intransigence of the authorities, who consider themselves to be the country and the nation’sonly trustees, imbuing it with their ideology. Only when faced with a united opposition — one united in diversity, not in unanimity; one without fractures — will the government feel tempted to have a dialog without worrying about losing what little credibility it has left with certain sectors of the population.
The level of opposition is not reflected in the figures for election turnout or in the numbers of people who show up for mass demonstrations, which are simply by-products of an entrenched double standard, but rather in the silent voice of the majority of outraged citizens as it filters through our cities and towns. Experience over many years has shown that a fragmented opposition garners no attention.
The last approach of the government with highest leadership of the Cuban Catholic church, as the only interlocutor accepted for some very immediate problems demonstrates this. All of the initiatives should be well received and not just criticized, despite their limited reach, because they can serve to enlarge the spectrum of participation, demanding that the spaces be open to all equally. Nobody, by his own decision, should proclaim himself representative of all the citizens of the nation and pretend to be the only voice to listen to, rather it would be more intelligent to make oneself a bridge or a collection point for different views.
To aspire to a truly democratic country, the road to the transition should also be profoundly democratic. If it is not, we risk the danger of repeating the costly errors of the past, and in losing ourselves once again in the entanglement of the autocracy, intolerance and exclusion, something that none of the opposing viewpoints want, much less so, the majority of Cubans both within the country and beyond.
Translated by: Stephen Clark, Alex Vizcarra, Norman Valenzuela, and Carlos Maristany
Today the UNPACU* activist and promoter of the campaign For Another Cuba, Yosbel Ramos Suárez, has been summoned to a police station. He is being interrogated by an official named Tamayo, who is warning him that there will be no concert at Estado de Sats tomorrow, they will not allow it.
The concert scheduled for tomorrow will be the first in a serious of artistic actions to support the campaign For Another Cuba, which is demanding that the government ratify the United Nations Covenants which it signed on 28 February 2008 in New York.
David D. OMNI will be the host and as guests there will be the reggae group Estudiantes sin semilla (Students Without Seeds), the rapper Anderson, and the poets Amaury Pacheco and Luis Eligio Pérez of OMNIZONAFRANCA.
State Security has deployed strong police operations around recent meetings held at Estado de SATS and made dozens of arrests to intimidate and to try to close this space.
Carlos Lage isn’t laughing because it would be cruel to ask a man condemned to death (when the picture was taken he only had months left in his high position). Although he was at the beginning, of course, in those decades when he traveled in camouflage on a military plane.
He was killed in his engineer’s hardhat or behind his desk. He died of being shot on the 8:00 pm newscast, handing out or taking little bags with soap at the end of the month. Culturally and civilly dead, acting blindly and barely accumulating things in secret, as in all public offices in Cuba since 1959 or 1902 or 1492.
He was dead, and what’s worse, without a body, because the body in communism is always a source of hostilities and should be abolished. Dead and further than ever from our “man before the European Community to star in the Transition.”
A European would have known to laugh and inhabit his own body: Lage, no. A European would have understood that a protest in living flesh is also a feast for the senses; Lage, no. Hence, the constitutional Cubanness of our now ousted politician. Hence his weakness and his despotism with the new generations of Cubans who literally we shit (preferably, we ejaculate) over both the suit and the uniform incapable of articulating even a fake smile (it is the rictus of the executioner who kills a Nobel Peace Prize Candidate just the same as a Major General).
I’m sure Lage thought about what his bosses the Castros would say if they saw him less austere, more relaxed in the photo, almost tolerating the right of citizens to scream nude right in front of presidents. In fact, Carlos Lage was frightened. Perhaps he sensed that the super-model there was pulling out an anti-Cuban Revolution poster (and he was right: every spontaneous or campaign poster, anywhere in the world, is against the Cuban Revolution).
It’s sad. Half a century without touching, without warming up (or worse, trying, but hypocritically, given the certainty that the State Security cameras would be recording, every muscle every death rattle).
Sad, shit. It’s dreadful.
Cuba doesn’t have Cubans who serve beyond their prudish wrecks. Cuba does not have bodies. It doesn’t have tits or ass neatly displayed in public, like faith that we have survived the barbarism of the holocaust. Cuba is not in Europe. Cuba just has perverse little heads, desire on the Island is the realm of violence and possession. The freedom to explode the body outside has been supplanted by the punishment of the corpse, by the stigmatization of prison, by the phobia of the neighbor. Our communism is apocryphal (as are all in practice), a word pronounced by no one. Worse still, pronounced by millions of no ones (our real names only emerge in a State Security file, awaiting the moment of annihilation).
Cuban men and woman listening to me (this column is heard, not read), I have had enough. I want to leave. Be other people. To be real, not associable with this cloaked race and its serious distorted faces, whose bald spots are synonyms of tortured lives. I can no longer tolerate being your contemporary (democracy is not saved from indecency). We don’t deserve a future together. Right now we should be committing suicide from family boredom, like the Revolucionosaurus in the European photo. We would have to submit ourselves to a Pajama Plan* until Cuba scorches the remains of the heart with which I am on the verge of hating you, of hurting me, of bartering my body in combat.
Look, better I leave. Forget my live voice, of this imagination so intolerably vital. And, please, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask, erase yourself too, in time.
Until Europe returns laughter to us.
*Translator’s note: Ousted officials in Cuba are said to be on the “pajama plan.”
I’m not referring to the beautiful song by David Kern, that is now an American classic, but to the terrible smoke of the fumigation that irritate the eyes and penetrate the nasal cavities, making it difficult to breathe; becoming in turn, the cause of so many diseases of the breathing passages that afflict many our citizens nowadays.
Every Tuesday they fumigate in my neighborhood. This makes the majority of the neighbors uncomfortable, but almost nobody refuses to let them pass by, still knowing full well that this doesn’t take care of the mosquito problem. I think that this attitude of the majority of people is induced by fear or laziness, because it doesn’t make sense to do this, and complain later, between those same neighbors, and not in front of the responsible authorities.
If this practice solved the epidemic disease, after so much time, it would have already been resolved. But it isn’t like that, every year we confront the same problem, except that it keeps increasing. This fumigation is already becoming the story of The Good Pipe*: endless! It is about filling your house with an unbearable smoke, a product of burning petroleum. It only serves to kill a few cockroaches and to leave the floors saturated with a slippery substance that becomes the cause of not just a few falls and broken bones by older people.
As long they don’t collect the garbage every day, clean the containers on the same schedule, periodically cut the grass in the yards and vacant lots, sweep and wash the streets, fix the potholes where the sewage water accumulates from the innumerable public and private leaks, and above all, eliminate the major causes: state farms located in major streets and avenues which causes these to always be covered with red soil, urban and suburban agriculture, which in itself attracts flies, mosquitoes and rodents, as well as the waste open to the weather, which these inadequate facilities generate. Until this is not eliminated, no progress can be achieved in combating dengue. The number of years they have been spraying without any positive result is overwhelming evidence of this.
Yet, the private fields are clean and so is the merchandise they offer, too. This possibly is due to the fact that it is the private sector where they demand and apply all the norms, penalties and fines. Why not to the State sector, who should be setting the example?
In terms of household fumigation, the process is too negative and annoying, to the point of threatening those who cannot let the bad mannered fumigators — who interrupt whenever they want and make rude demands — into their homes for medical reasons.
*Translator’s note: “The Good Pipe” is what in English is often known as a “shaggy dog story” — a joke that goes on and on and on and on…
Translated in part by: Derek Gonzalez, Jose Mas, and Oscar Sanz
Open letter from the General Surgery Department of the “Calixto Garcia” Hospital to the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party and President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Army General Raul Castro Ruz
To be good is the only way to be happy.
To be cultured is the only way to be free.
But, given human nature, one needs to be prosperous to be good.
José Martí
The “Calixto Garcia” hospital in Havana takes as its mission to provide specialized preventative-curative medical care and rehabilitation without interruption to the population through high-quality medical care and high professional standards [1]. With its 100-year history it has been a permanent school of surgeons in the country, and an important element in our country’s struggle for independence; many of our professors were clandestine combatants [2] and brilliant doctors on international medical missions of great importance.
Surgeons at the hospital, respecting the Hippocratic Oath [3], have historically been characterized as being critical and self-critical, but especially combative in the face of difficulties, bad decisions taken, and the multiple errors that affect our nation, and that little by little are endangering the future, taking health as a pillar of the transformations arising in the Revolutionary period, and our duty to provide a professional and dignified medical care, in accord with the scientific advances of the 21st century.
After countless reports to the head of the service, hospital management, discussions within the core of the Cuban Communist Party, and our long standing inability to participate in discussion at other levels with the leaders of the ministry, where medical personnel present their uncensored opinions [8] and ways to solve the major problems currently plaguing the health sector, which include everything from training to direct care, a group of surgeons felt it their elementary duty [8, 9, 10] and agreed to send this letter to the head of the service, for the sole purpose of informing him of the extremely serious elements in healthcare delivery to the Cuban people, which apparently at this time when it is happening in public health in general, and in our hospital in particular, the lack of immediate plans to resolve them are unknown by the top political leadership of the country, contrasting inversely with the official discourse of our media.
Medical care, and especially surgery in our center is a great disaster, characterized by:
A hospital with a destroyed physical structure, due to its age and innumerable poor quality and short-term repairs.
A lack of important resources for the care of patients, because of inadequate distribution, insufficient management, or excess work because of the reduction of this activity in other hospitals for similar reasons.
Human mental deterioration accompanied by the loss of the minimum attention to the person, who spends long days of free labor for a significant number of hours, and in a country where the “free perks” have been ended, and where working conditions are below those of any poor place in the world.
In our hospital the surgical services have been declining and the number of operating rooms has been reduced from about 30 for all specialties to no more than 10 at present, which although greatly destroyed still provide this vital service to the people. The irregularities in these operating rooms, their constantly broken air conditioning, lack of water, lack of adequate equipment in some of them, means that cancer patients cannot be operated on in time in our institution, others with benign conditions, susceptible to immediate treatment when diagnosed, develop complications because of delays in the resolution of their problems.
And as if that weren’t enough, the urgent conditions also present great difficulties. These, which constitute an important number of cases, are referred from some other place in the city, many times transferred poorly, which puts the lives of these patients in danger and even kills them when theoretically this could have been avoided. Despite the fact this this is the only surgical priority this hospital serves a good part of the time, they must sometimes wait more than 24 hours between their arrival and their emergency surgery, mainly because of the lack of available operating rooms and of sufficient and adequate personnel, but also because of the physical exhaustion of the doctors who raise these issues and raise them again and discuss these problems at every possible level and/or a good part of the time put the responsibility on the orderlies, cleaners, and in addition put the full responsibility for sick patients on their families, the sick patients themselves, and society.
The deficiencies in the health care system are so serious, in our opinion, that we are forced by these issues and others of resources that continue in a temporary or permanent way, to provide care to our people that is not professionally ethical or dignified, as is our sacred duty.
Moreover, the repairs undertaken at our hospital, that have been underway for more than 10 years, have done little to change the unviability of a horizontal hospital in current times; the majority of the repairs are putting make-up on old buildings, performed with terrible quality and, of course, lasting a short time, which increases the frequency of new repairs.
Rooms that have waited 10 years for repairs, today crumble four months after they open, with the first downpour; leaks, collapses of the false ceilings, and a number of important areas declared inhabitable, are a daily fact of life in our work and our patients’ stays.
The suspension of operations because of the weather, water, insufficient rooms, or whatever cause, is no longer unforeseen but rather is commonplace. As the operating rooms are no longer available to solve the problems of the patients, now it is us, the surgeons, who must prioritize one or another patient in an an unfortunate and exhausting search for surgical opportunities for a Cuban whom we only know, sadly, because of his illness.
The only thing we need to add to this depressing picture is the working conditions of the doctors and the personnel in general, starting with wages that are not enough to support a family, degrading working conditions; including lack of a place to rest during long days of surgery or work, the several miles walked between rooms, in the dust, the sun, and many times the rain; the terrible quality and quantify of food; the lack of a decent place to take care of one’s physiological needs; and no showers to cool off in the intense heat or to clean up before contaminating a surgery, almost force us, when they become permanent, to change our mentality.
The fatigue leads to well studied complications [4, 5, 6, 7]; if on top of that we add the ridiculous figure of 2-1/2 gallons of gas a month for those fortunate enough to have cars, not even enough to go to and from work for the first week of the month, among many other mistreatments; it all completes the picture of deteriorations that definitely have a bearing on the medical care that is offered to the people.
Today it is impossible to ask doctors, even with a car, to come to the hospital in the middle of the night to check on their surgical patients, or to come on Sunday, as was common among surgeons historically; and what’s more it’s impossible to ask them to perform a new operation on a patient with complications at 10 PM and you don’t have to be very intelligent to know what happens with a case when a patient has been repeatedly operated on five times by different surgeons.
We believe that this situation generates unquestionably disastrous complications in patients, where studies show that after six hours of work of a surgeon’s complications multiply [4, 5, 6, 7]; and of course, that’s talking about working with appropriate comfort. Also in many cases, death, which we cause when we have a terminal patient with almost no hope; it is not ethically dignified because we can’t do for him what he deserves or should have, at the time it should be done: we have multiple examples from all the surgeons who work in this hospital, and the great number of the population who observe and criticize, that what is said in the media has no connection to our country and our hospitals.
We think that our government has a commitment in all this, because it exists to meet the needs of the people, to solve the problems of the people, of the workers, simply because they are responsible for maintaining the hospitals, for properly training the workers in a high quality and fair educational system, for developing an ethical education consistent with the work they will be doing, or anyone thinks why do doctors, engineers, builders undertake the missions they do in their work: they do it because their work makes things better, for their family and the society they live in, but unfortunately that is only achieved in our country by leaving it, leaving the country that gave us birth [10], which is ours by right, and nobody, absolutely nobody, has the right to take away our identity under any circumstances, and for which we must give even our lives for our nation to remain independent.
The misfortunes narrated here do not come alone, they come about slowly when the investment is maintained for years in the living standards of the people with their ability and dedications, the socialist law well known by everyone: “to everyone according to his work.” When the leaders, with their laws, decrees, special circulars, and their decisions and provisions, are compromising the future, how long will we thank the centenary generation for having fulfilled their duty and obligation of liberating Cuba, while our generation wants to fulfill its duty to develop and give our families, our children, our Cuban brothers, the life they deserve, while the destructive tracks of corruption run riot with a singular debauchery on every side of society where we turn our gaze?
As José Martí said: “given human nature, one needs to be prosperous to be good.” The government is responsible for all this, not only for knowing it, but also for fixing it. So, and before it’s too late, leading to events like those at the Mazorra hospital [where 40+ patients starved and froze to death], we decided in this group of doctors, sacrificing, hard-working, dedicated, ethical, and above all badly treated, to report to you and to those responsible all of our concerns, in our modest opinion serious ones, from this place so undervalued on the social scale, which is the heroic and historical general surgery service of the oldest hospital in our beloved country.
Notes: [1] http://bvs.sld.cu/cgi-bin/wxis/dis1/
[2] http://files.sld.cu/cirured/files/2011/06/de-mis-memorias.pdf
[3] Juramento Hipocrático. www.sld.cu
[4] Editorial. Revista Canadian Medical Association Journal http://www.cmaj.ca/
[5] Journal of the American Medical Association
[6] http://www.elmundo.es/elmundosalud/2011/05/24/noticias/1306246063.html
[7] http://www.elmundo.es/blogs/salud/profesionsanitaria/2011/05/18/un-tacografo-para-los-medicos.html
[8] “Now whomever wants to speak will speak, good or bad, but whoever wants to will speak. Not as happened here, when only those who spoke evil spoke, there will be freedom.” Speech by Fidel Castro. Parque Cespedes, Santiago de Cuba, on January 1, 1959.
[9] “… How can we say ‘this is our homeland’ if the homeland does not have anything? ‘My homeland’, but my homeland does not give me anything, my homeland does not sustain me, in my homeland I’m starving. That’s not a homeland! Will the homeland be for a few, but not a homeland for the people. Homeland does not mean only a place where one can shout, talk and walk without being killed; homeland is a place where you can live, homeland is a place where you can work and earn an honest living, and also earn what is fair pay for your work. Homeland is where the citizen is not exploited, because if they exploit the citizen, if you take away what belongs to him, if you steal what he has, that is not homeland.” Speech by Fidel Castro Ruz, at the Town Square of Camagüey, the January 4, 1959.
[10] “… it is precisely the tragedy of our people not to have a homeland. And the best evidence, the best evidence that we have no homeland is that tens of thousands of children of this land are leaving Cuba for another country to live, but they have no homeland. And not everyone who wants to leave goes, only those who can. And that’s true and you know it.” Speech by Fidel Castro Ruz, at the Town Square of Camagüey, the January 4, 1959.
Downloaded from: “http://fotos.mexico.lainformacion.com/”Granma, Granma, Granma… Fidel Castro Díaz Balart, oldest son of the former Cuban president, was the featured subject of the eighth and last page of the national newspaper Granma, which in turn – for those who do not know it – is the official press and propaganda organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, the only political organization allowed in my country. Rather than an interview, it seems to be a promotional piece. It happens that the descendants of the historical Cuban leaders are extraordinarily gifted and it is only natural that some domestic and foreign media workers pursue them like paparazzi of the high-and-mighty political show business, of the national fiefdom.
The journalistic piece, consisting of only three questions and genetically long answers, dealt with the most importanthobby and recent occupational profile of the first-born: nanotechnology. After he and his father put Cuba, our western hemisphere and the world in danger with the grandiose construction of the Juraguá nuclear plant, whose Soviet technology was outdated and was patented with the Chernobyl disaster, daddy’s boy was named scientific advisor to the Council of State. That whole matter was buried in a convenient oblivion, in the intimidating silence of the threatening upright index finger over the lips of freedom of information.
While for decades Cuban families were deniedcement to repair, remodel or enlarge their living quarters, in Jaraguá buildings were constructed that are nowvacant, like monuments to the rule of the caudillo, the disaster in decision-making, and the lack of well-developed and agreed-upon projects and planning. No one demanded an accounting for the dictator’s folly, and theghost town stands there as a tribute to the government’s irresponsibility and indolence.
In Granma’s text, it wasstated that the project of building the Cuban Center for Advanced Studies is already under way. The project, according to Castro Díaz-Balart himself, was conceived taking into account the opinions “and recommendations of a group of leaders belonging to the Scientific Area, the University of Havana, and the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment”. Who will direct it? It seems to me that the old childhood “camps” of the heir, with the passage of time and the adulation lavished by the royal sycophants, turned into an insatiable voracity for a “principality” in which he can playact being his own father, until “a physical absence” and the consent of the royal power take him to the position to which perhaps he feels entitled.
In this country, which has been leeched of the resources it had andput intodebt to the point of systemic osteoporosis, they afford themselves the luxury ofdeveloping constructive projects for Castro Jr. with a rigor that — according to them — competes with that of any developed country.
The descendants have taken to “establishing a rivalry” — among family, among siblings? — of being at center stage, and they appear in the media, without distinction and for different reasons, always justifiable. Of Fidel’s children, Fidelito is the most notable scientist in Cuba; Alex, the best photographer; and Antonio, the best physician. Of Raúl’s children, Mariela, the best psychologist; Alejandro, the most prominent high officer; and the grandson, the best personal security guard.
And if there is no milk for children over seven years old? For that they blame the United States and its embargo, to continue tofree them from blame for their ineptness before their officials and cadres. After all, they don’t have any problems that cannot be solved by being identified by their surname, rank or position, with a telephone call or by showing an ID, which are the permanent credentials allowing them to enjoy incalculable privileges.
No one knows any more if this shamelessness is an ode inviting the masses to greater apathy or if it is a constant call to emigrate. What everyone does intuit is that with that brood of well-off and — by “their own merits” — well-placed heirs, Cuba’s problems will never be solved.
There was a time when Cuba devoted a great deal of attention to the first secretary of the Young Communists Union (UJC). Styled after the Soviet Komsomol, this organization provided cadres to the Party and even to the Council of State and Minsters. The UJC was a direct springboard to power, a pool of reliable and ideologically correct people. In the seventies and eighties, some of their leaders enjoyed great popularity and constant mentions in the national media. One of the most charismatic was Roberto Robaina, who in the early nineties invented the triumphalist slogan, “31 and Ever Onward,” a reference to the age of the Revolution and its years to come.
However, as a general rule, the UJC leaders who over excelled ended up being ousted. The most emblematic case was that of Luis Orlando Dominguez who was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of corruption and conspiracy. Also dismissed and punished under similar accusations were several of his successors. The most recent of those “fallen from grace” was Otto Rivero; when he served as the first secretary of this organization he was praised by Fidel Castro himself, who counted him among the “Revolutionary elite” at the Eighth Congress of the UJC. A few months later Rivero was removed from his post and became involved in a scandal of diversion and mismanagement of funds.
Learning the lesson not to shine, Liudmila Avalo arrived at the summit of the Young Communists Union in 2009, barely noticed. A few days ago she was replaced by another woman and leaves us not a single phrase or idea to remember her by. She passed without shame or glory, wrapped in a gray docility… bearing so little relation to the rebelliousness of her age. But at least — she must be thinking, with relief — by not standing out she avoided prison, and the scorn and ostracism suffered by several of her predecessors.
Cuba is falling apart. It’s been moving for a long time without advancing, like an old photo denied color. The architectural stock that was “built” after 1959 is insufficient and with generally ugly designs. However, the Cuban government sends builders to many parts of the globe to help in the construction and reconstruction process — is it trying to compete with the United States? — in different countries.
A long time ago in an architecture class of the program called University for All on Cuban television, I heard a professor say that80 percent of the buildings in Cuba had been built between 1902 and 1959. Eighty percent of Cuba was built in 57 years! What is the average built in the last 53? I was surprised at that comment and, above all, that it was made publicly. By the way, I have not seen more of that person in the national media, but I do not doubt that in this age in which there is an appearance of transparency and a certain tolerance, he may resurface.
The sloppy trail of 53 years of totalitarianism unfortunately makes up the sociopolitical and economic morphology of the archipelago and is reflected in almost every aspect of Cuban society. If we add our idiosyncrasies and the influence of the leader that was too long in charge of Cuba,the result is an explosive pattern overflowing our territory.
Too much time passed without building housing in our country as the needs of the population demanded, and the maintenance required by the existing housing was not provided. This society affected by the campaigns that have to be undertaken without questioning, as in a military camp, filled the republic with prefab boxes in five-floor residential buildings without elevators, which looked like they had been built with machetes. What numbers of architects and engineers have graduated from Cuban universities to spend their active work life reproducing typical projects?
Only the IMS* modules, of Yugoslavian construction — much taller and, therefore, with elevators — improved this city’s esthetics and the comfort of some families, but they are insufficient.
I don’t doubt that the pompousness and opportunism of our leaders, wanting to “fix the world”, will make them set their sights on the moon and, seeing the craters of the natural satellite, will send in solidarity a contingent of builders to fill the potholes. After all, they ruined the country a long time ago and sprucing up the celestial body will be a new project – a pretext that will gain them more time on the throne of incompetence, while Cuba full of cracks goes to pieces…
*Translator’s note: IMS Building Technology is a proprietary name for a building system developed in Yugoslavia using a precast prestressed concrete frame structure with concrete shear walls. The system is low-cost, allows accelerated construction, and withstands earthquakes and hurricanes.
Customs Regulations. What Every Traveler Should Know.
The new customs regulations, which took effect on September 3, will require the Cuban people to pay a progressive tax of 10 CUC– or 240 pesos at the current exchange rate– for each kilogram of “miscellaneous items,” including food, and between 100% and 200% of the value of any household electrical appliance or other hardware received from overseas.
We should be accustomed by now to such measures, which are considered trivialities by those who issue them, but are felt as tremendous hardships by those who must suffer because of them. This time the new regulations appear a little more than a month after Raúl Castro’s public announcement that he would not raise salaries. This follows the massive rise in the official price of consumer goods, the approval by the trade unions of the dismissal of hundreds of thousands of workers, the exorbitant increase in the price of electricity just as liquid gas service was cut off, the elimination of “gratuities” for workers, the decision to retain workers in the medical sector who want to travel overseas, and a long list of other issues.
All these decisions have something in common. They are completely at odds with the interests and well-being of the people. Issued by officials who lack absolutely nothing, these measures would appear to have been come from the very offices of the CIA itself. If their purpose is to foment discontent, complicate our lives and arouse hostility and resentment towards those who issue and/or allow them to take effect, then they have been completely successful.
Now, the elderly woman who receives a package will have to pay an extortionist’s fee to retrieve it from customs. This means she will have to pay more than twice what it cost her son to buy and send it. There will be no way to persuade either of them, and by extension the Cuban people, that this is not a blatant shake-down cooked up by customs authorities, or that the government has even the most minimal concern for their well-being. After this apparent armed robbery– there is no other way to describe it– every word or pronouncement will feel like salt and vinegar being poured into a wound.
Aimed at a people who are suffering from inconceivable shortages, these measures are suspiciously in sync with the interests of the corrupt leadership of the Cuban customs service. It is a secret to no one that, when the screw is tightened, the pathway to robbery, blackmail, bribery and extortion becomes easier, enriching these officials who, with rare and honorable exceptions, will be millionaires within a few years. History provides thousands of such examples.
The stated rationale–- that similar measures have been effective in preventing smugglers from supplying the black market–- falls apart in light of factual evidence. Smugglers will undoubtedly continue their operations because they already have contacts with corrupt officials within the customs service, which issues guidelines to make sure it gets its slice of the pie. To presume that this will dry up supplies to the black market is like grabbing the wrong end of the stick. To achieve this would require setting reasonable prices in government-run hard-currency stores and eliminating their expensive yet shoddy products and poor quality goods. To deal with those who break the law, there are already existing legal means and the National Office of Tax Administration (ONAT). Its team of inspectors, along with inspectors from other agencies, should confront the situation by making the sinners pay up rather than dealing with it in a generalized way, as is the case now.
It is measures such as these that indicate that we are completely unimportant to them. It is one more coup de grace aimed at the back of the neck of the people, their sole victim. This causes no harm to Obama, nor to the extremist oddballs in Miami. Nor does it have any relationship to the American embargo, nor to anything else that is not in tune with the purposeful desires of customs authorities, who are in open collusion with the country’s leadership, which allows this to go on, making out lives more difficult every day. There is no stone left to unturned. This is simply a premeditated attack and a deliberate blow by the diseased hand of the Cuban government.
Yesterday I decided to go to Neptune Street between Aramburu and Hospital Streets to see about and receive impressions of the site where from 7:35 in the morning on Friday until today, Tuesday, September 25, the repressive organs have established themselves in front of the headquarters of the Ladies in White.
At some point in the afternoon when it came time for me to decide between leaving or staying home I made the second choice. I imagined myself in the situation of a person who avoids plunging into very cold or very hot water, and you just put one foot forward or imagine you can but the body and soul hang back, avoiding the danger.
The news came by word of mouth: the street and house were under siege, it was impossible to reach them. They had ordered the employees and students from the University of Havana to go there to repudiate* them. The Federated University Students (FEU) “extras” and a platform with singers were making noise, while State Security agents were stationed at the door to prevent the Ladies from leaving to go to Church. The extras in Cuba have become somewhat macabre, I always perceive them in slow motion, the government uses them to repudiate while the mob, brought in for the occasion, beats the opponents.
No one imagines that immensely apathetic people who participate in an act of repudiation, under orders sent from the top of the pyramid of power in Cuba, have the least interest in either in changing their destinies or in defending this government from the threat of a group of women who protest in defense of the rights of all Cubans not to go to jail for dissent or for denouncing the regime, and who fight for the release of those who are now prisoners under conditions difficult to imagine, and even to believe on hearing their testimonies.
I remember the legend of the martyrdom of St. John of Patmos at the Latin Gate, and the poem. Surely as part of my quest to continue to protect my shell.
Finally a feeling of frustration invades me. I can’t write about anything else. At night the number of Ladies in White imprisoned was confirmed to be more than 60.
Meanwhile at my daughter’s school they are preparing the children for the Young Pioneers scarf. A picture of the Castro brothers on one of the walls of the classroom and portraits of the five State Security agents (the “Cuban Five”) — colleagues of the abusers besieging the house of the late Laura Pollán — appear in the childish imagination as heroes of the fatherland.
Those are not my values nor the values I want my daughter to learn. I would be difficult with her five years to maintain two meanings for the same symbols; because none of these people are completely real to the child’s perception, fairies are more real. It’s me who’s looking for the morals and hope of all these childhood fables, where being brave and telling the truth don’t leave you completely alone against the forces of evil.
*Translator’s note: The nature of these “repudiation rallies” is clear from the photos in this post. The regime often claims they are “spontaneous uprisings of outraged neighbors” but in fact people are routinely bussed in and the actions are planned in advance. In at least one case, confronting the regime with knowledge of a planned “spontaneous rally” and demanding its cancellation was successful, at least in cancelling that particular action.
Spraying for mosquitoes that cause dengue fever. Source: en.mercopress.comFor the second week in a row all institutes devoted to medical education and health technology in Havana have suspended classes.
Students were taken from their classrooms in order to screen people in Havana who are suffering from fevers, and to supervise the control of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in different municipalities. The suspension of classes is in order to strengthen every area of health in the prevention and early detection of new cases of Dengue.
Students are required to spend all the hours of the morning on each of the routes established for the investigation, and this must be completed before they appear for the territorial clinic debriefing and for further analysis from the physicians directing hygiene and epidemiology .
Some of the students participating in this activity do so under threat; those not attending this activity can be expelled from their respective careers. The refusal of many of these students is due to the fact that a number of homes remain closed or in the worst case prefer to close their doors because they do not trust the epidemiological work.
Public Health directors have recently reported continued detection of new cases and the work of investigation and mosquito control will have to be reinforced by the Youth Labor Army (EJT) and young people of Compulsive Military Service age.
The Roundtable (TV Show) now runs only an hour. / Oh, Miracle! Raul’s reforms are working! / Cartoon from Garrincha, from Cubaencuentro.
On September 19, the Cuba Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) announced, in the voice of its deputy Roberto Gonzalez, that this coming December it will present a report on the results of the transformations that have been introduced in the Island’s healthcare system in search of “more competition” on the part of the staff working in the sector and greater “efficiency” in the service. Such transformations would be inscribed among the changes of the General-President. According to the deputy minister, under consideration are the modifications discussed and approved at the VI Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) aimed at “perfecting” the healthcare system while ensuring “quality, savings, resource efficiency and the elimination of unnecessary expenses,” elements that are priorities for the “renewal of socialism” in Cuba.
Also lately there has been circulating on the web a letter-complaint addressed to R. Castro by a group of doctors of General Surgery at the capital’s Calixto Garcia Hospital, which, although not confirmed as to its authenticity, we know that what is raised in the text is scrupulously true and reflects the need for much deeper and more radical changes than those contemplated in the government guidelines.
Meanwhile, ordinary Cubans do not perceive the benefits of such supposed changes: many family doctors offices are not open during their scheduled hours, often they are mobilized by the health director of the area to work on dengue screening (an undeclared epidemic that continues to advance at a rapid pace); in the polyclinics medical equipment is scarce, insufficient, generally obsolete and with frequent imperfections that prevent its effective use; the physical building and hygiene conditions of the installations are defective and sometimes deplorable; and the salaries paid to health personnel are embarrassingly miserable.
So far, the General’s only visible reform has been to shorten the Roundtable TV show by half an hour, although this hasn’t improved the information any. However, we must be grateful that this TV show dedicated the broadcast of Friday, September 21, to an active sector of the dissidence and independent civil society (such as the blogger Yoani Sanchez, the Ladies in White and others). True, the “information” offered was manipulated, taken out of context and falsified. True also that the material prepared by the government’s yeomen was horribly edited, as could be appreciated by the scarce viewers (me included, because someone alerted me to what they were putting on the small screen); but we must be grateful for the dissemination, something unthinkable a few years ago. There is no bad propaganda, friends, only propaganda. The moral is that, beyond their evil intentions, they cannot ignore the existence of these forces that oppose the system and which, with their help, continue to slowly but inexorably spread in Cuba.
Laura Pollán being assaulted by a government organized mob. Source: http://paraclito.net
For years Neptune Street in Central Havana, in the capital of the country, has been turned into a stage for the orchestrated Acts of Repudiation against the “Laura Pollán Toledo Ladies in White Movement.”
The present month will not stray far from its dismal history, according to what its own members describe, along with some Human Rights activists close to this women’s movement, created after the well-known Black Spring of 2003.
The street has once again been taken, its usual traffic diverted, and access permitted only to those performing in the repudiation rally organized against these peaceful women. The screams and the help of audio equipment are part of this terrible stage set directed by the Cuban political police.
Insults and obscene words are heard on the lips of the actors who, in many cases, are forced to form a part of the theatrical work, under threats of losing their jobs or their studies, just to cite an example.
Despite these constant acts of unscrupulous people, the Laura Pollán Toledo Ladies in White Movement will not cede under any conditions. Its brave and heroic women stand at the windows and doors and don’t remain silent against the official chorus.
Last September of 2011 was a terrible month for this movement which was attacked in the worst way, with those participating in the act of repudiation physically dragging and attacking the women they found there, united in their desire to pray for the release of all the political prisoners. One of the women assaulted was Laura Pollán Toledo, the leader of this movement, who became mysteriously ill shortly after being scratched by one of the euphoric attackers. A month later in unknown conditions this woman, committed not only to the freedom of her husband but to the freedom of a nation, died.
Today Berta Soler occupies the place left by Laura and in tribute to her has renamed the movement that she created years earlier and which she led all that time.
September month of horrors, led by people who don’t hesitate to block the women who worship the Virgin of Mercy, patroness of captives. Venerated by everyone within and outside our nation.
A single question comes to my mind at these times. How many violent Septembers do we have still to live? I ask God to return Neptune street to normality, for the hatred between Cubans to disappear, and more than this, for the next September to not see an act of repudiation meeting in front of the abode of a woman like Laura, an example of dignity and decorum, but rather than at a future gathering the hands of all will carry gladioli and remembrance and homage to each one of these brave Cuban women.
I’ve always deplored extremism and fanaticism, from wherever it comes and whoever practices it, because I consider that its roots are found in the primitivism and darkness, both totally alien to reason.
These days, especially in some of the world’s Arab countries, and in others where the same nationals are located the extremist followers of Allah and the Prophet Mohammed, faced with the screening of a short film of no more than fifteen minutes in which, according to them, the figure of the prophet is denigrated, have committed murder, acts of vandalism with fires, destruction of property and mass demonstrations completely out of control, against the United States and the West. It appears that the alleged offense has been well utilized by those who don’t want to lose an opportunity to declare holy wars, promote intolerance, practice terrorism, accuse as infidels those who don’t share their religious beliefs, and ask for their extermination.
Muhammad, being a human being, regardless of mystical attributes ascribed to him, shared the same physical needs of all human beings. In addition, I am sure that he accepted or even practiced, for belonging to the Muslim world, some of the customs belonging to it: discrimination against women, polygamy, inhumane punishments such as physical mutilation, stoning, beheading and others. All this is still practiced in many of these countries.
Others, more advanced, educated, difficulties, misunderstandings and tenacity, have managed to reduce and even eradicate the practice. Shocking, because it shows the human side of the prophet, it should not be cause for so much aggression. When, years ago, Jesus Christ was treated as a human being in the film The Last Temptation of Christ, although the Catholic Church protested, nobody thought to commit murder and acts of vandalism against its creators or their home countries.
These primitive manifestations, rather than uplifting the human being, denigrate and cannot be allowed in the name of any religion. Intolerance of any kind, must be combated firmly. Yielding to it led us to Nazism in the twentieth century and all its consequences. Do not make the same mistake. Everyone can have religious beliefs of any kind they desire and practice them, but there is no right to prevent freedom of expression of every human being, let alone to want to impose respect for one’s beliefs by force, by international threats and blackmail. To firmly oppose these irrational acts, in words and actions, as civilized beings, supports the religion they profess.
Translated by: Espirituana
*Translator’s note: IMS Building Technology is a proprietary name for a building system developed in Yugoslavia using a precast prestressed concrete frame structure with concrete shear walls. The system is low-cost, allows accelerated construction, and withstands earthquakes and hurricanes.
