The mystery has been solved, the enigma of the fiber optic cable between Cuba and Venezuela has been cleared up because of an indiscretion. The Venezuelan Minister of Science and Technology affirmed a few days ago that it “is absolutely operational,” and what it is used for will depends on the government of Raul Castro. Just when we thought that the tendon lying in the depths of the sea had been eaten by sharks and turned into a home for coral, comes a sign that it is working. For now, it is just about words because there is no evidence that kilobytes are running through the cable, circulating data. No office has opened offering a domestic connection to anyone who wants to contract for it, and the prices of an hour’s navigation from a hotel continue to be prohibitive and abusive. In workplaces and schools the monthly quotas to peek into cyberspace continue scarce and supervised, while the official press makes no allusion to an immediate three thousand times increase in our bandwidth. The cable is, but it doesn’t exist; it exists, but not for us.
Between La Guaira, Venezuela, and Santiago de Cuba runs an umbilical cord that should turn us into a 21st Century country, remove our technological and communications handicaps. When it arrived at our shores in early 2011, not even the most pessimistic calculated that a year later we would remain in the same poverty of connectivity. There is not a single valid argument to delay any longer the mass influx of Cubans on the Web, other than the eternal fear of our authorities before the free flow of information. Every day that they delay our initiation as Internauts, they compromise the professional and social capital of this nation, they condemn us to the caboose of modernity. On the other hand, so much control only opens the door to a million and one illegal ways for people to get content from digital sites, blogs and on-line newspapers. Like the satellite dishes that are a reality which neither police operations nor threats from the newspaper Granma can eradicate, something similar will occur with access to the great WorldWideWeb. Pirate accounts, resold in the black market by State institution network administrators themselves, are already a preview of this cyber underground.
Amid so many calls for information transparency, it is paradoxical that one of the most pressing issues in our national life continues to be steeped in secrecy. Also too painful for the official journalists is that an official of a foreign government is the only person who has alluded to the actual state of such an expensive link. But even more sad is that the Internet is the new battlefield of the Cuban government and the fiber optic cable is the weapon — selective and hidden — in its media war.
To be happy in Cuba is a life style. It means to renounce many things but nothing comparable to renouncing true solidarity.
It’s always possible to shut yourself in like a turtle or a snail or a selfish and irresponsible human being. You can be happy if you fall in love, if you have a nice little house, some money, a paradise lost in the weeds. Possessions that kill our hunger to be alive. I am not annoyed with the tranquility, I just know there is something more beyond love.
The world of the human soul is so great that you can be happy or unhappy, regardless of the limitations your freedom constantly suffers… if you can learn a style of permanent renunciation, perhaps of evasion, even of survival, and forget about others. If you stop being responsible for yourself, for the future of your children, for your friends, for the desperately poor and villainous that the dictatorship of the State engenders in man, you will be happy in Cuba. If you renounce your freedom out of fear. If you accept the threat and withdraw, take cover, you will come to swell the sea of the anonymous people. In how many ways do the man and the woman lose their innate desire to be free?
I will emerge from the uterus one more time… I will be born into real life.
A drunk, off duty, enforcement agent, white, justified the racist Cuban police archetype that turns a black or mestizo into a presumed delinquent with an old refrain learned from his mother: “Not all blacks are thieves, but all thieves are black.”
The guy is not a bad person. He is a good father, a high caliber criminologist, and he does not consider himself racist. But it was what he learned in his childhood. Racial prejudices abound within Cuban families. Then they are carried into to real life.
The Havana agent’s attitude becomes that of the National Revolutionary Police on operation and raid days: of every 10 citizens that they stop on public thoroughfares, 8 are black. It is a mentality problem.
A couple of years ago, a friend who worked in a foreign firm told me that he was considering buying skin whitening creams. I did not believe him. “According to a market study, the cream would have great acceptance among Cubans,” he told me.
As I never saw them for sale in the foreign currency stores, I thought I had heard a joke of bad taste. In the book Afrocubans, the historian and anthropologist Maria Ileana Faguagua says that in 2009 a Spanish firm studied that possibility.
Several consulted persons, who are dedicated to the treatment of hair for women of the black race, said that those creams would sell like hotcakes. “One can think what one likes. But I have spent 20 years straightening ’kinks,’ and I’m telling you that many black and mixed women would give anything to lighten their skin and become white,” said a white Havana hairdresser.
Certainly, black pride on the island is not at its best moment. What has happened to black people has not been slight. It is always good to review history.
And it is that since 1886, when slavery was officially abolished in Cuba, blacks were left at a clear disadvantage with respect to whites. They had no property. No money. No lineage. And much less social recognition.
Years later in the Republic, their decisive support in the fight for independence was barely taken into account. In spite of that support, they only got work as stevedores, cane cutters or construction workers.
Many black families did not tranquilly accept their fate to live at the bottom. And some managed to climb the steep and difficult social ladder.
But they were few. Then, as is known, Fidel Castro came to power. And he decided to resolve racial differences by means of decrees and encampments where blacks and whites were mixed and would become “comrades.”
At first it was not bad. But racial prejudices in Cuba were very subtle. They were — and are — very deeply rooted in the minds of the majority. And that cannot be legislated. If you really try to demolish barriers, you need a systematic educational effort, in the long run, and to include blacks and mulattoes in the power structure.
That was already most difficult. One thing was that the personal bodyguards or soldiers sent to the Angolan civil war were the color of petroleum, and another, that they formed part of the status quo.
Although after 1959 blacks gained spaces, and shared carnivals, ball games, scholarships to study at the high schools in the countryside and university studies with whites, later no matter how much talent they had, they remained shackled within the mediocre professional group that retires without having been able to climb socially or politically.
From time to time a black man lands himself a high ranking government or party job. A matter of image. But blacks continue on the lowest social rung.
Of course, they are mostly in jail and on sports fields. With the exception of chess or swimming: according to old racist concepts, blacks are a failure in those disciplines.
Similarly, the dark skinned are good for playing musical instruments beyond the drums. Or singing boleros, Cuban folk songs, salsa, rap and reggaeton.
Now if they aspire to join the company of Alicia Alonso, they are looked at with suspicion. Almost with sadness, an old teacher told me: “I have nothing against blacks, but their anatomy causes them many problems in classical ballet.” She overlooked the triumphs of Carlos Acosta, a black Cuban ballet dancer in the London Ballet.
If in music and sports black usually have the one, also they have known how to get a slice of prostitution. Looking for something different or because of the myth that they are good in bed, many Europeans travel to Cuba to satiate themselves sexually with those of dark skin. Cheap pleasure.
But while the prostitutes are offered in clubs and night zones of Havana for 20 dollars,some black men keep seeing their future in the distance, above all in Europe.
The worst of the worst in Cuba today is to be a black, dissident woman. Ask community activist Sonia Garro. Graduated in nursing with brilliant grades, she suffered the racism in her own flesh from some creole mandarins.
One afternoon, proud of being the first professional in a family whose members had been dedicated to the worst paying jobs, with her best dress and pair of shoes, she went to the Astral theater to get her diploma. When it came time for the group photo, a provincial director asked her to move away: “Those of your color don’t turn out well in photos.”
Years later, Sonia told me that her anger was such that she left without getting her diploma. In a short time, she became a dissident.
Some days before the arrival of the Pope on the island, last March, forces of the political riot police entered her house as if they were terrorists. Using rubber bullets and excessive violence they charged Sonia and her husband, Ramon Alejandro Munoz, also an opponent. They awaited proceedings in harsh prisons. She was in a women’s jail, he in a punishment cell in the Combinado del Este because he refused to put on the prisoner’s uniform.
Blacks in Cuba cultivate their destiny with the few opportunities they have to triumph. Their failures are triple their successes. A high percentage live badly and eat worse. Their patience is exhausted. And they have decided to leave behind being culprits of their race. Like Sonia Garro.
Ivan Garcia
Photo: President of Citizens for Racial Integration, Juan Antonio Madrazo (on foot in the center, with pink shirt) with relatives, friends and members of the Mystery Company of Voodoo, during a celebration of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, last March. They are all proud of belonging to the black race. The woman on foot on the left, with the pink dress and blue handkerchief, is Teresa Luna, Madrazo’s mother, who has received threats from State Security, according to what Leonardo Calvo has denounced.
Translator’s note: A passport having no practical use in Cuba if you cannot qualify for the coveted White Card — the exit permit all Cubans need to be able to travel outside their country — El Sexto decided to use his passport as a canvas. And then created this video.
Havana, Cuba – During the week that just ended new voices visited the island. Bringing an environment of exchange among Latin countries.
With my note I don’t want to reveal their names, for their safely, much less the sex of those who infected us with their characteristic smiles. Hoja Blanca is a magazine that came to the island and according to its readers, is no longer among us.
For those of us who have lived during five decades of isolation and censorship, to find the printed edition of Hoja Blanca, as well as in the digital, is to acquire a powerful tool. In its pages each one of us can find a bastion or a place where we can share our more diverse opinions.
Volumes of the magazine pass from hand to hand among the young people in Havana, leaving us stunned at the freshness of the language and the idea of publishing without sponsorship. One of the most jaw-dropping things for Cubans is the fact that the Hoja Blanca Foundation has taken the path of promoting new social projects that sow diversity and inspire the formation of vulnerable social groups in distant communities.
Havana was arrayed in luxury for seven days with workshops hosted on publishing, working in groups, marketing and other activities I don’t want to enumerate.
There are already people committed to the distribution of the digital edition of Hoja Blanca, people disposed to participate in a magazine that awakens new hopes in different social groups.
Today I am putting a final period on my little note but before doing so I want to tell you that I have my blog, my website, my Facebook profile, and my Twitter account, but from this moment I also want to publish and share with every one of you my writings from this Caribbean island, taking advantage of the opportunity to publish in Hoja Blanca to be able to publish without requiring sponsorship.
In response to the Editorial in the May 2012 issue of the Cuban Catholic church’s journal Lay Space, group of journalists from the newspaper Granma created, as a joke, this apocryphal editorial, supposedly in response to the official text from the lay Catholics. This is only a joke, that former colleagues sent me, but I transcribe it here for the enjoyment, also, of those who read me.
Recently the journal Lay Space published an editorial to defend Cardinal Jaime Ortega against certain attacks launched by elements opposed to the Revolution, from both inside and outside Cuba. In their arguments the editorial writers highlight some positions that shouldn’t pass unnoticed by those of us who defend the irreversibility of the socialist system in our Nation.
Using euphemisms such as “national harmony”, “orderly and gradual transformation of the national order,” “serene, positive gradual, inclusive, orderly and peaceful changes managing to articulate a renewed socio-political model for Cuba,” the editors of Lay Space are trying to mask what clearly translates to the dismantling of socialism in Cuba. It they really had a commitment to the truth, then it would be better if they clearly stated that they want to dissolve the work of the Revolution.
The Catholic Church, its hierarchy or its secular intellectuals are wrong if they think they can replace the Communist Party in the search for and implementation of solutions to the problems of Cuba. Those who have shown patience and a willingness to dialogue are not exactly the bishops with their Cardinal in the lead, but the leaders of the Revolution. We are a Marxist-Leninist party and we will not give up the class struggle, the hatred of the working class for its exploiters. What kind of reconciliation are talking about? Is it intended that the Revolution return confiscated property to the abusers of our working people so that they can then invite these former exploiters to come here and invest their dollars? Or perhaps we are going to forgive Posada Carriles and the rest of the terrorist mafia who cost this nation so many valuable lives?
Do the editors of Lay Space believe that keeping a prudent distance from the mercenaries in the service of Washington is going to keep us from seeing that their agenda is also dictated from the exterior as evidenced in the calls for reconciliation recently issued by the former Spanish colonists in the motion presented to the congress of that country? Do they believe that invoking words like debate, dialog or respect will manage to make a dent in our Revolutionary intransigence, in the legacy taught to us by Antonio Maceo who did not accept the capitulation at the Mangos de Baragua? Do they think, perhaps, that we have forgotten the cryptic utterances they have already put in writing in the Pastoral Letter of 1993, “Love Hopes All Things”? Do they think we don’t remember the support they gave the defeated bourgeois and the counterrevolution in the first years of our Revolution?
Our people have religious freedom and the State maintains magnificent relations with various denominations without favoring any one in particular. It is up to the Communist Party to determine the policies and the changes that need to be implemented, as agreed at our Sixth Congress and in the First Communist Party Conference with the democratic participation of all our people. Let no one mistake us, we do not want to return to the era of confrontation with the Church but we will not allow interference of any kind, especially that which is aimed our renouncing our path toward a more full and just Socialism.
Surviving the utopia, I aspire that these texts and opinions will contribute in some way to achieving a more plural and inclusive Cuba, one based on words and not on bullets; on its citizens and not on olive-green uniforms.
I have created this new virtual space, as if it weren’t already too crazy to have my other blog, Generation Y, a blog maintained since 2007 that has turned my life upside down. I see people everywhere who have shut down their websites, put the “closed” sign on the diary that accompanied them for years, and yet I undertake the adventure of sailing in two shops, opening this new window to my reality and adding another distress to the already difficult problem of connecting to the Internet from Cuba. But I’m not complaining, it delights me to post my opinions, my certainties and uncertainties on this great web of kilobytes. I love hitting the nail on the head, or putting my foot in it, under the sharp eyes of the readers.
This blog will be a disappointment to those who seek in its pages the cold eye of an analyst, the statistics pulled out by a student, or the entomologist’s lens observing life from above… as if it were an anthill. Rather, here I will post chronicles of my reality, reflections that come to me while roaming about a country that in one moment seems stuck in time and then suddenly gives fits and starts, backward and forward.
You already know the risks, your decision is whether or not to board this boat… there are no lifeguards.
Translator’s note: As of today Yoani has opened a new blog, Cuba Libre, in Madrid’s El Pais, Spain’s largest circulation newspaper.
She carries a name that evokes encampments, and I am just a Sanchez, dragging the “ez” ending that once meant to be “the son of” some Sancho. Yes, like that chubby guy on the donkey who accompanied and satirized Quixote, although I weigh many pounds less and have never galloped, not even on a pony. She grew up in some beautiful comfortable place, while I spent my childhood in a noisy and violent tenement. She is a sexologist and psychologist, and I taste the pleasures of love and negotiate life’s obstacles although I never graduated from any course in the subject. She is the daughter of the man who inherited the presidency of my country through blood, that same country where my father years ago lost his profession as a train engineer. She is tethered to every word he says, and I broke out of the prison of opinion long ago, freeing myself with the word.
She is afraid of the embrace, of a Cuba where we can both walk freely, attend a concert or public debate without problems, leave the country and reenter it without asking permission. I understand her. She carries on her shoulders an ancestry that perhaps many times she would have liked to shake off, deny, erase from her life. I am just the upstart, the intruder, without pedigree, without a worthy family tree to show off. My parents didn’t fight in the Sierra Maestra, the slogans that were forged inside her house were regularly rejected in mine, the speeches delivered by her exalted uncle fell on the skeptical ears of my clan. She is entitled to the microphones, appears on national television to be interviewed and praised, while my face is only seen surrounded by adjectives such as “enemy,” “cyber terrorist,” without offering me — of course — the right to respond.
She has been making her tour of the United States and the Cuban news has not labeled her a mercenary for it. She has said, “I would vote for Obama,” and — surprise! — the national press does not accuse her of being “pro Yankee.” She is a prisoner of her lineage and I barely have a past to look at, right now I just wake up thinking about tomorrow. She and I, although it scares her and she denies it, are part of this country… very different daughters of this land, the fruits beloved and not beloved of the process. She will have to recognize that I exist, I am, that this Sanchez demands her right to criticize the follies of its windmills.
THE SWEET NAME OF THE DEAD MARÍA
For MT and MJ Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
In the nineties, there were the great gay birds and they respected her mystical magical aura, as if she were a diva on Cuban television, a marionette of Marie Antoinette. They even went to her mansion in El Vedado to daydream together in that aviary in ruins at the edge of the Revolution, imperial eagle and all. They went without reading her or they scanned her lightly (gracing the text with a snobbish glance), dazzled without cause, homeless dilettantes, with their applause of illiterates who are the worst ostracism for an author. They went, also, to steal a luxury rag worn by her, to scratch some anecdote playing off her cachet, to get an autograph marketable in dollars, geriatric fetishism with the rheumatic remains of the Republic. Me, no, I wanted to but never went to the non-existent house of Dulce Maria Loynaz.
In fact, I had confused this mansion. As a boy, my father showed me a farmhouse very near to the sea, and I don’t know why, in reading her I assumed that she still lived locked up there (to complete the phantasmagoria, it was in effect the decrepit mansion from her novel Garden). As a teenager, my mother Maria liked the Nameless Poems of the elderly Dulce Maria: enjoyed her soft religiosity, her rash fear of God, her desolation as a childless mother under the proletarian Cuban skies. As an adult I’ve never returned to her verses, I’m only interested in what Cubans say in prose now.
When I studied Biochemistry at the University of Havana, Dulce Maria Loynez del Castillo, at the height of her powers, was passed over for a Cervantes Prize between the crown of Spain and the post-Marxist hand of Lisandro Otero. Her little poems, previously branded decadent and bourgeois, a ridiculous throwback** according to the Communist critique (including its Catholic counterpart in the Survivor in Chief of the group Origins***), reissued or brought to light for the first time in the country. They shot the worst documentaries, but with two or three close-ups where her tears crystalized the face of eternity, her equable desperation, her fortitude before the horror of a flesh now lacking hormones, her unspeakable sadness on being the final witness of a family from another world, another Cuba. Letters appeared shamelessly, as is the custom postmortem. And also some pertinent relatives. Plus the Historian, or perhaps the Hoarder, of the City. And in passing a moving autobiography came to light, and came to nothing, by the greatness of the faith with which she addressed her own debacle, and by the loyalty with which she knew how to be silent about the dirty laundry of those close to her (eccentricities, homosexualities, elitism, adultery, exiles and other et ceteras with ideological problems).
The big house at 19th and E is now a bastion smoothed down by the plane of governmental culture, including my readings and publications there, when OLPL was a writer palatable to the Talibans of the Ministry of Culture and the Cuban Book Institute. Had it not been remodeled/seized, today it would be a tenement vandalized by a mob of pánfilos who would auction even its bricks to the illustrious in exile (it is known, however, that some sacred manuscripts fled, together with certain statuary beyond any inventory). In any event, what does it matter, after all, Dulce Maria will never again be there. Her death has the gift of being an unmythic death. Her glory will pass through mummifying the memory of some little bones that were born and died with the century. What’s written (for her and for me), is written, now and until the geopolitical end of our Island.
My mother Mary snores sweetly in her emphysema. She also writes, guajira decimas that are pure platitude (and that is why I feel so much pity and so much compassion; I know I will never forget them). My Maria today, Friday, April 27, has survived by writing fifteen years to our other Maria. The two sleepers, one like the other. Toothless mouths, puckered lips like lilies, Cubanitas plunged in that nightmarish anguish of old age, where we, their children, will not come because we have been kidnapped by the unjust human season of our nation. The perplexed eyelids, the silver hair (obligatory metaphor), the emaciated body seeking its measure in a box, with or without the national tricolor shroud (that heroic rag).
And it is night out there again, with its noises of smokestacks, alarms, barking. Morning in the 21st century with its stones and stars. With its Almendares River a meek sewer. With its gay birds of no omen at this point in a histology-less history. The inconceivable Cuban night. Sisters turned into cadavers, unnamed now, undated: motherless, womanless, deathless.
Without Marias.
Translator’s notes: Changes in this text relative to the original were made in consultation with the author.
*Dulce Maria Loynaz lived from 1902-1997; Orlando is referring to the period since her death.
**The original word in spanish is torremarfilismo which has been defined as follows: “Variously called torremarfilismo, cosmopolitismo, or decadentismo, the movement of modernismo has been criticized as an aberrant faction of escapist writers who would not accept their immediate environment nor reflect it in their poetry.” ***Published from 1944 to 1956, Orígenes was an influential Cuban cultural magazine.
The "Guidelines" go on sale in Havana at a token price (even for Cubans). Photo: EFE/Alejandro Ernesto
By Antonio Rodiles
Introduction
The Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party just concluded, leaving a trail of questions to be clarified. Most of the televised debates turned into semantic discussions, while a few dealt with practical mechanisms to achieve stated objectives. Listening to the speeches, which at some moments were limited exclusively to mentioning desires, I had the impression that they referred to the construction of some kind of Frankenstein, full of patches, fixes and half-measures, and not to a socio-economic system of in the 21st century. The Congress definitely fell far short of the expectations generated by the government itself.
It was surprising to observe that issues of vital importance, such as the international context, the flow of information and knowledge, Cuba’s inclusion in the global economy, internet use in our country, the role of Cubans from the diaspora in the future of the country, were completely ignored. The issue of the legal framework, which must support any economic transformation, was another of the notable absentees. The phrase “property rights” was never mentioned, nor was the immediate need to make transparent the “process of privatization” which is implicit in the economic plan.
For years in our country a process of privatization has been occurring which falls principally on specific corporate groups. These groups operate under a market system and sell their products and services in hard currency. While they lack ownership titles, they enjoy broad autonomy. However, Cuban citizens lack necessary information about these corporations and their economic dynamics. It is very important to note that in creating these corporate groups, both national and joint ventures, political loyalties have played an essential role, along with ties of family and friendship.
I think, as a first step, we have to put all these issues on the table in order to understand and discuss in great depth this moment in which we are living as a nation. Any transformation process must be undertaken with the greatest transparency and social consensus.
In this article I address the issues of property rights, privatization and the legal framework that must support transformations in the short, medium and long term. I compare the existing Constitution with the Economic and Social Policy Guidelines for the Party and the Revolution (“Guidelines”), dated April 2011 and publicly released in May of that year, in advance of the Sixth Party Congress. The 41-page Guidelines contain 313 numbered points addressing health, education, sports, culture, agriculture, industry, tourism, transport, housing and other issues.
At the end of this paper, I also look at the experiences of Vietnam, China and the former Soviet Union, and finally I offer some comments and conclusions.
Property Rights, the Constitution and the Guidelines
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights[1], to which Cuba is a signatory, speaks of property rights as a basic human right. The statement reads:
Article 17.1: Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
We must not forget that when we speak of property rights this implies:
1) Control of the use of the property.
2) The right to any benefit from the property, including rent.
3) The right to transfer or sell the property.
4) The right to exclude others from the use of the property.
In the case of the Cuban Constitution property rights are mentioned, but with clearly defined limitations subordinate to the socialist character.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in the 1990s, the exact meaning of the term “socialism” was no longer clear. Traditionally, socialism is understood as: a system with a centralized and planned economy in which the State has ownership of the means of production and the common goods. In socialism “private” property has a meaning distinct from that accepted in liberal democracies, because the “owners” cannot exercise all the prerogatives mentioned above.
Due to all the changes that have taken place in our country in the last two decades, and the evident contradictions between the traditional definition of socialism and the current situation, we must ask ourselves: What does the current Cuban government mean by “socialism”? It is important to remember that it is this core concept of the Constitution in force since 2002.
The Constitution of the Republic of Cuba [2] states:
ARTICLE 14. In the Republic of Cuba rules the socialist system of economy based on the people’s socialist ownership of the fundamental means of production and on the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.
In Cuba also rules the principle of socialist distribution of “from each according to his capacity, to each according to his work.” The law establishes the provisions which guarantee the effective fulfillment of this principle.
ARTICLE 15. Socialist state property, which is the property of the entire people, comprises:
a) the lands that do not belong to small farmers or to cooperatives formed by them, the subsoil, mines, mineral, plant and animal resources in the Republic’s maritime economic area, forests, waters and means of communications;
b) the sugar mills, factories, chief means of transportation and all those enterprises, banks and facilities that have been nationalized and expropriated from the imperialist, landholders and bourgeoisie, as well as the factories, enterprises and economic facilities and scientific, social, cultural and sports centers built, fostered or purchased by the state and those to be built, fostered or purchased by the state in the future.
Property ownership may not be transferred to natural persons or legal entities, save for exceptional cases in which the partial or total transfer of an economic objective is carried out for the development of the country and does not affect the political, social and economic foundations of the state, prior to approval by the Council of Ministers or its Executive Committee.
The transfer of other property rights to state enterprises and other entities authorized to fulfill this objective will be prescribed by law.
ARTICLE 24. The state recognizes the right of citizens to inherit legal title to a place of residence and to other personal goods and chattels.
The land and other goods linked to production in the small farmers’ property may be inherited by and only be awarded to those heirs who work the land, save exceptions and as prescribed by law.
The law prescribes the cases, conditions and ways under which the goods of cooperative ownership may by inheritance.
ARTICLE 25. The expropriation of property for reasons of public benefit or social interest and with due compensation is authorized. The law establishes the method for the expropriation and the bases on which the need for and usefulness of this action is to be determined, as well as the form of compensation, taking into account the interest and the economic and social needs of the person whose property has been expropriated.
In the Guidelines [3], the issue of private enterprise and properties is addressed as follows:
General Guidelines section
The socialist planning system will continue to be the main national management tool of the national economy. Its methodology and organization and control must be modified. Economic planning will influence on the market and take into account its characteristics.
The management model recognizes and encourages socialist State-owned companies – the main national economic modality – as well as the foreign investment forms described in the law (e.g., joint ventures and international association contracts), cooperatives, small farming, usufruct, franchisement, self-employment and other economic forms that may altogether contribute to increased efficiency.
In the forms of non-State management, the concentration of property in the hands of any natural or legal person shall not be allowed.
Section on Cooperatives
25. Grade 1 cooperatives shall be established as a socialist form of joint ownership in various sectors. A cooperative is a business organization that owns its estate and represents a distinct legal person. Its members are individuals who contribute assets or labor and its purpose is to supply useful goods and services to society and its costs are covered with its own income.
26. The legal instrument that regulates the cooperatives must make sure that this organization, as form of social property, is not sold or otherwise assigned in ownership to any other cooperative or any non-State organization or any natural person.
27. A cooperative maintains contractual relations with other cooperatives, companies, State-funded entities and other non-State organizations. After satisfying its commitment with the State, the cooperative may pursue sales operations free from intermediaries and in accordance with the business activity it is authorized to perform.
28. Subject to compliance with the appropriate laws and after observance of its tax and contribution obligations, each cooperative determines the income payable to its employees and the distribution of its profits.
29. Grade 2 cooperatives shall be formed and the partners of which shall be Grade 1 cooperatives. A Grade 2 Cooperative shall represent a separate legal person that owns assets. The purpose of this cooperative is to pursue supplementary related activities or conduct operations that add value to the goods and services of its partners (such as production, service and marketing operations) or carry out joint sales and purchases for greater efficiency.
In the points above it is necessary to clarify certain aspects such as:
a) Under what criteria would the formation of new company be permitted and who would be in charge of the selection and decision process?
b) There is a strong contradiction between maintaining central planning and permitting the development of the market. What will be the practical mechanisms to implement central planning without dismantling market dynamics? Do such mechanisms exist?
c) Will a system of consultation be created, citizen directed, to review contracts with domestic and foreign business groups?
d) Is it contemplated to include investments from Cubans living outside the island among the possible investments?
e) Will the issue of confiscations from Cubans who were not corrupt and who were not large landowners — who obtained their possessions and property as their fruit of their own or their family’s labor — be addressed?
f) How will the criteria forbidding the accumulation of property be applied? Are joint venture or national corporate national groups such as Cimex, Habaguanex, Cubatabaco, Gaviota, Cupet, among others, contemplated within the restrictions regarding the accumulation of property and capital?
The constitution defines the economic dynamic in the following terms:
Article 16: The state organizes, directs and controls the economic life of the nation according to a plan that guarantees the programmed development of the country, with the purpose of strengthening the socialist system, of increasingly satisfying the material and cultural needs of society and of citizens, of promoting the flourishing of human beings and their integrity, and of serving the progress and security of the country.
The workers of all branches of the economy and of the other spheres of social life have an active and conscious participation in the elaboration and execution of the production and development plans.
Article 17: The state directly administers the goods that make up the socialist property of the entire people’s, or may create and organize enterprises and entities to administer them, whose structure, powers, functions and the system of their relations are prescribed by law.
These enterprises and entities only answer for their debts through their financial resources, within the limits prescribed by law. The state does not answer for debts incurred by the enterprises, entities and other legal bodies, and neither do these answer for those incurred by the state.
Meanwhile in the Guidelines we read:
5. Planning shall include State-owned companies, the Government funded entities, the international economic associations, and also regulate other applicable forms of non-State management. Planning shall be more objective at all levels. The new planning methods will modify economic control methods. Territorial planning shall take into consideration these transformations.
8. The increase in the powers vested upon entity managers shall be associated with their higher responsibility for efficiency, effectiveness and for their control of labor utilization, financial and material resources, coupled with the requirement on the executives to account for their decisions, actions and omissions that lead to economic damages.
Section on the Business Sector
14. The internal finances of companies shall not be intervened by any unrelated entity. This intervention shall only occur in compliance with legally established procedures.
16. Each enterprise shall control and manage its working capital and capital expenditures within the limits allowed by the plan.
17. The State-run companies and cooperatives that steadily post losses and insufficient working capital in their balance sheets or are unable to meet their obligations with their assets, or whose financial audits render negative results, shall be subject to liquidation or converted to any other form of non-State organization in compliance with the regulations on this matter.
19. Subject to observance of their commitments with the State and compliance with the existing requirements, the companies may use their after-tax profits to create funds for development, investments and incentive payments to their workers.
21. Each company and cooperative shall pay to the Municipal Administration Council with jurisdiction over its business operations, a territorial tax, that will be set centrally according to the specific characteristics of each municipality, as a contribution to local development.
Section on Cooperatives
25. Grade 1 cooperatives shall be established as a socialist form of joint ownership in various sectors. A cooperative is a business organization that owns its estate and represents a distinct legal person. Its members are individuals who contribute assets or labor and its purpose is to supply useful goods and services to society and its costs are covered with its own income.
26. The legal instrument that regulates the cooperatives must make sure that this organization, as form of social property, is not sold or otherwise assigned in ownership to any other cooperative or any non-State organization or any natural person.
27. A cooperative maintains contractual relations with other cooperatives, companies, State-funded entities and other non-State organizations. After satisfying its commitment with the State, the cooperative may pursue sales operations free from intermediaries and in accordance with the business activity it is authorized to perform.
28. Subject to compliance with the appropriate laws and after observance of its tax and contribution obligations, each cooperative determines the income payable to its employees and the distribution of its profits.
29. Grade 2 cooperatives shall be formed and the partners of which shall be Grade 1 cooperatives. A Grade 2 Cooperative shall represent a separate legal person that owns assets. The purpose of this cooperative is to pursue supplementary related activities or conduct operations that add value to the goods and services of its partners (such as production, service and marketing operations) or carry out joint sales and purchases for greater efficiency.
Territories
35. The Provincial and Municipal Administration Councils will discharge State duties and will not intervene directly in the management of any business.
36. The state functions exercised by provincial and municipal sectorial offices will be defined in relation to the functions discharged by the Central Government Bodies, and the applicable scopes of competence, links, operating rules and working methodologies of each authority will de identified.
37. The implementation of local projects by Municipal Administration Councils, in particular for food production, is a work strategy for municipal food self-reliance. Mini-industries and service centers must be promoted on the principle of financial sustainability as a key feature that must be harmoniously consistent with both the municipal goals and the objectives of the national economic plan. Upon their completion, the local projects will be managed by organizations based in the municipality.
Within the articles and the policy guidelines quoted above are apparent contradictions. For one thing, it becomes apparent that there is a need to end the process of centralization and nationalization that has produced high indicators of inefficiency in the Cuban economy. But in parallel, due to the desire of the nation’s leadership to maintain economic control, affirm that there could be a new form of central planning adapted to the new context. That is, the Guidelines speak of the need to take the market into account, but at the same time reject it. This ambiguity will create discretion in applying the law, becoming one more stimulus for corruption.
Any modern economy must have a basis in clear and transparent rules, which encourage the entrepreneurial spirit in society, and not on arbitrariness. This thesis, which is very simple, is the basis of any modern functioning society. It is essential that an atmosphere of trust and confidence exists for both domestic and foreign investments. As well explained by the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, there is a strong correlation between the clear establishment and enforcement of property rights, the rule of law, and efficiency in the functioning of free markets [4].
Unfortunately, in our country only select business groups, many of them associated with the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Ministry of the Interior (MININT), enjoy the benefits of operating under a market economy, creating monopolies that control the entire Cuban market.
In contrast, the ordinary Cuban is allowed to open only small cafes, tiny businesses almost medieval and artisan in nature, stalls selling all sorts of trinkets, to which the regime applies exorbitant taxes and a series of limitations that don’t permit any growth. In these stunted freedoms, professional services – a sector vital to any modern economy – remain excluded.
Experiences of Vietnam, China and the former Soviet Union
As a point of comparison it is very important to analyze the processes occurring in these countries with similar experiences, as they can offer us invaluable lessons.
Although the core of the changes in these countries was the liberalization of the economy coupled with the emergence of new forms of property, it is clear that the processes of privatization have been problematic. Nepotism, bribery, the lack of job guarantees for workers, violations of environmental rules, among other ills, have been common factors in the transformation processes of these countries.
At the starting point for the economic changes in these nations, collective and state property took priority. In the case of Vietnam, after reunification in 1976, the government gave itself the task of eliminating all forms of private property, an approach it corrected after facing a profound crisis. One of the first steps in the later economic reforms was to break the state monopoly on property. This occurred in 1986 when restaurants and shops were allowed to open. As early as 1995, in the admission document to the World Trade Organization, we can read:
“State-owned, collective, private individual, private capitalist, state capitalist and foreign investment property are all equal before the law. All businesses operating legally in the territory of Vietnams and/or under its laws are recognized and protected under its laws, including protection against nationalizations.” [5]
In the case of China, the privatizations began in 1979 when the collective communes were replaced by family farms.[6] Local businesses also appeared, managed by the component governments themselves. Within the latter there were different categories:
1) Private but registered as collectives, popularly called “using the red cap.”
2) Those which were authorized but had to pay a bonus to the authorities at the end of each year.
3) Those over which the authorities exercised fierce control.
The use of soft credits on the part of state-owned enterprises has been one of the common problems of the Asian giant. It’s been said that in socialism with Chinese “characteristics,” the “characteristics” have worked but not the socialism.
The case of the former Soviet Union and its controversial process of privatization also offers us an instructive example.[6] As it began the transformations toward a free market, one of the primary problems was the almost complete absence of a definition of property rights. As a consequence, there were no clear rules on the use of property and businesses, resulting in high levels of corruption. In other cases, disputes between various actors trying to make use of the same property resulted in no one’s being able to take advantage of it, and left the involved companies directionless.
At the moment of privatizations there were various protagonists involved in the process:
1) Workers
2) Managers
3) Ministries
4) Local Governments
5) Central Government
However the managers and bureaucrats within the ministries exercised a strong influence through the strategic management of the companies and were able to count on networks of connections that allowed them to take control over production and marketing.
As the process of decentralization advanced the ministries could no longer dictate the policies the companies must follow. The planned economy, the fulfillment of the plans and the assignment of resources collapsed, while the sale of products in the free market was gaining ground. The managers gained autonomy and control over what they produced, and at what prices and to whom to sell their products, the latter based principally on their personal relationships.
On the other hand, the ministries tried to maintain control over imports and exports through the issuing of licenses. This new economic design was in the hands of the Party nomenklatura, military elites, and the new oligarchs who competed for power with the old elites.
The State tried to maintain control of the most profitable sectors, only accepting privatization when it believed it would exercise control over the companies. Local governments gained power in the management of their pieces of land, exercising control over vital public services such as water and electricity, among others, which they used to exert a strong influence over firms and they began to demand their share, reaping huge benefits from the process of privatization.
One of the strategies, taking advantage of the lack of transparency, was the creation of parallel firms or cooperatives, even within a single firm. Such private firms or cooperatives bought the production at low or controlled prices and sold it according to supply and demand. This allowed the managers to garner personal earnings, and in turn to provide wage increases for the workers.
All these maneuvers were possible because of the laxity of the laws and because the local authorities colluded with the central government. The managers received funds from other businesses or commercial banks with which they could buy their own companies at low prices. In this modality, known as “spontaneous privatization,” consistent elements included bribery, the use of political and economic alliances, the use of public funds and the returning the benefits to many Party cadres.
In some cases this process was hampered by conflicts of interest between different actors. Conflicts between local governments and managers were common, because the former saw the possibility of managing these businesses from the State and taking their own profits.
Another very popular form of privatization was through the use of bonds, as conceived by the American economist Milton Friedman. This method was more common in the case of small enterprises [7] and was also known as mass privatization. The method consisted in issuing check to the population for the value of the companies; it was a quick process and achieved a more equitable distribution. However, the problem with this method was that it was impractical for the future management of the companies, because the property was dispersed and very difficult to govern. With this method it was initially possible not to divide the companies among small groups, but in some cases certain tricks to hold onto the companies were used later. Among these was to bankrupt the companies, so as to be able to buy the stock at very low prices.
Other methods of privatization were:
1) Open sales
2) Restitution
3) Settlement
All these methods had their own advantages and disadvantages corresponding to the conditions that characterized each country. But the key lesson is that whatever method is applied it must take into account a knowledge of the specific conditions of each place and there must be a basic consensus for its application. A complex process should never become a piñata that ends with the discredit of the political system and institutions.
Comments and Conclusions
As can be seen, many of the proposals contained in the Guidelines are similar to the dynamics discussed above. Some of them operate unofficially, that is they are quasi-legal, while others operate “illegally.” Thus, we have more than a few problems of corruption which have touched the senior management of companies.
As Cuban citizens, we do not have mechanisms that allow us to use our own resources, or to manage the finances of firms or companies. Despite the recently created position of Controller General of the Republic, citizens do not have access to the reports and audits of this government agency.
Specific cases remain murky and demonstrate to us the urgency of undertaking real changes that guarantee the transparent use of our resources. Notable examples include: General Acevedo, who was in charge of Civil aviation and who was charged with selling businesses cargo space on commercial airlines and pocketing the money; former Minister of the Food Industry, Alejandro Roca Iglesias, sentenced to 15 years for corruption; the Chilean businessman Max Marambio, sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison for corruption associated with his Rio Zaza company; Pedro Alvarez, former head of the state food company Alimport who, on being investigated for corruption, sought refuge in the United States; Manuel Garcia of the cigar company Habanos, jailed for large-scale graft; and the wholesale arrest of the directors of the Moa nickel plant, among many others.
I think it is opportune and necessary to point out the mistake we make when we speak of subsidies on the part of the Cuban State. While there is no clear definition of the concept of property, the Cuban State must equitably share all of its resources. It would be an invitation to many — starting with president Raul Castro who, on multiple occasions, has referred to the State as an abstract entity, generator and provider of goods and wealth, followed by vice president Ramiro Valdes, who speaks of the Daddy State as one might speak of Santa Claus, and continue through several lower level functionaries who repeat manufactured phrases – to understand the first socialist Constitution in our country, which established the whole people as the ultimate owner of all goods and property.
If the Cuban State, with Raul Castro at the head, wants to be done with the so-called egalitarianism, it should take the first step to establish property rights in the Constitution, otherwise we will continue with a system that supports the collective use of wealth but which, in the end, allows its use and enjoyment by only a few.
I would like to pose some questions to which — as a citizen of this country with all the rights granted to me under the Constitution – I do not have answers and which show the ambiguity of socialist property.
Who knows the real budgets of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) and their groups of companies?
What citizen can review the investments and earning of the Office of the Historian of the City or of the Cuban Export-Import Corporation (CIMEX)?
Where can one review the finances of the telecommunications company ETECSA?
Where are the data about the income received by Immigration from the exorbitant and unjust costs imposed on citizens?
Does anyone know the location of all gold and silver objects bought from citizens – at terribly low prices – or what the proceeds from their sale are invested in?
How much will we invest in golf courses and now will their profits be managed?
These questions and many others are in clear and urgent need of answers. Legal mechanisms also need to be created that allow us as citizens to establish legal responsibilities, from the President of the Republic to the simple public official, when there is a mishandling of our assets and resources.
In a society where there are no clearly defined property rights, the necessary transparency to manage the society’s wealth and resources is lacking. If we want to end the egalitarianism and undertake a process of privatization in any one of its variants as a necessary measure to emerge from the crisis and stimulate our economy, this must be accomplished with total transparency and within the appropriate legal framework and with the participation and consensus of Cubans.
It is also necessary to be able to examine and review, retroactively, all existing contracts, otherwise corruption will continue to grow to unimaginable levels.
The Constitution must be changed, along with the corresponding laws consistent with the real interests of the nation and the global context in which we live. The constitutional structure and respect for property rights, as well as the legal framework to support and encourage the establishment of private enterprise are necessary and indispensable elements to emerge from the profound crisis that assails us. Any transformation that takes as a priority interests other than the immediate improvement of the overall situation of the nation, will be completely insufficient and only postpone the changes which, in one form or another, must occur.
References:
1) Universal Declaration of Human Rights – English version from un.org
2) Constitución de la República de Cuba – English version from http://www.cubaverdad.net/cuban_constitution_english.htm
3) Lineamientos de la política económica y social del partido y la revolución – English version from www.cubaminrex.cu: THE GUIDELINES OF THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY OF THE PARTY AND THE REVOLUTION, April 18, 2011
4) De Soto, Hernando. El otro sendero.
5) WTO, Vietnam.
6) G. Rodiles, Antonio. Una rápida Mirada a las transformaciones en China.
7) Aslum, Anders. Building Capitalism. Cambridge, University Press.
April 5 2012, 2:00 p.m., Havana: Fourth appearance before the judge of the Civil Chamber of the 10th of October Court, Havana. Counsel for the Builders Group Company of Havana (GECAL) does not appear despite having been notified.
Subject: Request for Execution of Judgment No. 17, final since June 2011, in the lawsuit filed by the Cuban citizen Dora L. Mesa Crespo against the Provincial Microbrigades Company of Havana, now called the GECAL Group.
Three people in black robes, a man and two women, are sitting on the bench. Beneath them, to one side, the young courtroom secretary valiantly tries, by furiously striking the typewriter keys, to write quickly. The device, an old Olivetti, squeaks, gasps, and refuses to obey, making so much noise that it is hard to hear what is being said in the small space. Meanwhile, the Judge sitting in the center asks:
“Let’s clarify this situation. What’s lacking? Have they done anything?”
“Madam President, all that has happened is that the people who occupied the place have left. The other measures called for by the judgment, essentially the demolition, have not been done,” says Dr. Garcia, the legal representative of Mrs. Mesa Crespo.
The President, after hearing the arguments of the lawyer finds:
“. . . therefore the court takes appropriate action to enforce compliance with that decision (Case No. 17/2011) and refers the matter to the Prosecutor, with instructions to cite the defendant Director of GECAL for the crime of disobedience.”
“Anything else?” the judge asks.
“Yes, your honor. So the Court will notify us when it will proceed with the execution of the sentence? It is now up to the Court. We will wait for it.”
“Yes. We have to summon that person in order to see, and not to require . . .”
The plaintiff speaks with her lawyer.
“Your honor, my client wants to tell you something.”
“Yes, tell me.”
“Your honor, I have absolute faith that the law will be enforced, because the attitude of the defendants affects not just my home. GECAL is in breach of the Constitution of the Republic. It is not respecting the judgment of a court. I think that’s much more serious than violating my rights as an owner . . .”
Constitution of the Republic of Cuba
Title XIII
Courts and Prosecution
Article 123. Judgments and other decisions of the courts, issued within the limits of their jurisdiction,must be strictly obeyed by state agencies, business and social entities, and citizens; those directly affected by them, as well as those who do not have a direct interest in their implementation, must comply with them.
Article 127. The Attorney General of the Republic is the State body which has, as its main objectives, the control and preservation of legality, on the basis of strict monitoring of compliance with the Constitution, laws and other legal requirements, by state agencies, business and social entities, and citizens . . .
*Translator’s note: Havana Construction Business Group
What is an academic? What is an intellectual? These are some of the questions that have haunted me for years, even before I graduated in Hispanic Philology. Immersed in adolescent insolence, I thought at some point that to be one or the other it was necessary to assume certain poses, gestures, even modes of dress, or to smoke. With time I understood that erudition need not be accompanied by a pointed goatee, a haughty look, some glasses halfway down your nose, nor one of those tilted berets our students like so much. I knew people who brought, along with their knowledge, audacity, wisdom and spontaneity, an immense wealth of culture and a commendable humility. Many of them didn’t even manage a college degree, nor did they publish a single book. I also noticed that, frequently, the Cuban intellectual world does not structure itself on the basis of wisdom, but on opportunism and ideological fidelity. Examples abound of “honorary degrees” awarded as prizes to militants, instead of honoring them for their professional skills. Also abundant, lamentably, are those expelled or relegated to research for reasons based strictly on politics and not on science.
But beyond appearances, as a mark of a wise fraternity or as demonstrations of loyalty to the government professed by so many of our illustrious, there is a characteristic that recurs alarmingly in our national intelligentsia: it is their inability to sustain a debate with people from within the Island who do not belong to the institutions sanctified and created by the powers-that-be; their ineptitude when it comes time to accept the challenge of a discussion with those who think differently. An old Cuban academic traveled from Havana to San Francisco and tolerated from the public there that any American could pose questions he never would have entertained nor even listened to in his own country. He took a plane to participate in the 2012 Latin American Studies Association conference and seemed disposed to sit on a panel where there are liberal perspectives, as well and democratic and anti-totalitarian ones, which he would never allow a place here. What’s more, his presentation uttered outside our borders is, clearly, several degrees more daring and critical than what he would say to his students, his readers or his colleagues in Cuba. However, once he returns to the island territory, if he is called to an exchange of ideas from civil society, the opposition, or the alternative scene, he acts like he didn’t hear the invitation or insults his counterpart. He denigrates them, has a fit, calls on Daddy State to defend him; all this and more rather than accept the exchange of arguments and positions that is so urgently needed in our country. In short, he hides.
Thus, the time has already passed of looking in dictionaries and manuals for a definition of what is a wise man. I am not going to describe here all the points that help me get a very personal idea of the culture of each person, but I will tell you what characteristic heads my very subjective list. It is a person’s art for polemics and controversy, his disposition to listen to even the most antagonistic theses or the most conflicting opinions. I admire those who are capable of debating with their ideological opponents without falling into arrogance, verbal violence or personal offense. It doesn’t bother me if some dress in what they believe is the garb of an intellectual, nor that they say they agree ideologically one hundred percent with the government which, coincidentally, pays their salary. What irritates and disappoints me is that, being supposedly at the vanguard of the words and thought of this nation, they refuse to use their words and ideas in debate, evading their scientific commitment to seek the truth taking into account all the variables.
