The Filmmaker Cousin and the Journalism Student / Regina Coyula

Cartel de la 10ma. Muestra de Cine Joven

Talking about my cousin the filmmaker may seem excessive, but the Young Filmmaker’s Festival doesn’t have a single bad film. Miguel Coyula’s movie which was not accepted into the competition of the last Latin American Film Festival, is part of the program, so full disclosure is avoided. For those who aren’t aware, it already won the award for best film in the Havana Film Festival in New York, but that didn’t help. The protagonist in general and some scenes in particular made the film a politically incorrect piece. There were even objections to Memorias competing in the 10th Young Filmmaker’s Festival, but Fernando Perez, as president, asserted his own prestige and it was included. Memories of Overdevelopment was unbelievable and emerged as the indisputable winner of this competitive contest.

What follows has nothing to do with my cousin, but with the news in the press. The awards were presented Sunday night, to coincide with the Oscars, a prize which is often abused in the Cuban media for prioritizing the commercial and media-friendly over quality. And so the television newscast missed the Cuban event in the hour it aired on Monday, but not the Oscars, with visual coverage for major awards (parentheses for Portman, I am her fan since Closer).

It wasn’t until three days later that Granma reviewed the closure of the Exhibition. In a small box signed by a journalism student. Unlike the Oscars, the news is confusing, it would seem that the work that one is another (a work that achieved recognition, no prizes). The student has signed an article in which Miguel Coyula also took the podium on two occasions. “Memories” received the following awards:

Best feature film, best original music, the award of the Cuban Association of Film Critics, the SIGNIS of the church, and the Musical Editor’s Award of Cuba.

After reading the brief note I think:

1.- That the journalism student is friend of the producer of the work that he calls out in his note.

2.-That the journalism student didn’t see the work, and wasn’t even at the awards ceremony.

3.- That the journalism student signed a work written by another person.

4.- That the journalism student will be a really bad journalist.

To not get too familiar and cumbersome, here is the link:

Translated by: L. Rodriguez

March 7 2011

The Problem is Cultural / Claudia Cadelo

Leandro Feal

I get up in the morning and get my bath of unreality watching the morning news on TV. In Morning Journal, the first news of the day, they never lose the thread of surrealism. We are treated to a reading of Fidel Castro’s latest “Reflection” titled, “The Shoes That Pinch Me” — I’m quite intrigued, by the way, with how fixated Fidel is on Obama, having for months now dedicated all his “Reflections” to him — where he offers a review of an art contest titled, “Little Friends of the People’s Revolutionary Army.” It’s impossible to describe the feelings one experiences on watching Cuban television at half past seven in the morning.

The other day they aired a short report about the standardization of products for sale in Cuban pesos. A voice-over showed businesses and tried to convince us that the country has been making efforts to improve the quality of products, and that this could be seen in much of what’s for sale in the markets. It lasted a few minutes, serving as an introduction to an interview with a specialist on the subject. The goal of the program was to show the tremendous quality of our own products, which also suffer from the pressure of international standards imposed by the West (sic), and as it ended the specialist said: “In Cuba the standard isn’t met, the problem is cultural.”

I paced back and forth, coffee cup in hand, and couldn’t help spilling a bit on the floor. I’m in the habit of talking back to the TV, a practice I developed as a teenager. I suppose that was how I managed to externalize my dissatisfaction with official establishment journalism: by carrying on my own debate with everything appearing on the screen.

“What do you mean, culture?!” I cried.

It is not the government policy of economic statism, nor our shattered economy, nor the dual currency, that are responsible for the questionable quality of bread and soap, according to this specialist in economics, it is Cuban culture that is responsible for this evil.

CSI: Havana / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

http://www.todotele.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/logo20csi2.jpg

Freedom has disappeared. The crime occurred years ago in Cuba and they still haven’t found the culprit. The investigators discovered, in the days following the event, evidence that led to a suspect, but without a body to prove the crime, they never had a case. But they quickly mobilized the entire police force to look for some clue that would lead them to the place where she had been snatched and gagged, because initially they thought it was a kidnapping and the agents knew that in order to recover the victim alive it’s critical to find her in the first 72 hours.

The people who knew the victim, allege that she was omnipresent and so they noted her absence very quickly. The investigative process has been long and tortuous because many of the potential witnesses associated with her have left to look for her in other countries and so it has been hard for the officials to interrogate them and get their version of the facts.

Even though this alleged crime still, today, is among the “unresolved cases” of the archipelago, many haven’t stopped working on it and the long list of evidence around it lengthens. The maxim, “he who has a mobile phone is suspect,” of many police officers, was discredited by government leaders when they authorized the use of mobile phones for ordinary Cubans.

After several decades of work, some think that the authorities have given up on the case, but the independent criminal investigators, unlike those in the Interior Ministry in the capital — who have been on the case since the beginning — haven’t given up on finding who did it, who victimized all the children in Cuba, and they won’t allow the file to be closed.

The police suspect that it could be a homicide, as no one disappears for so many years without a trace. At this point in the tragedy it’s clear that a new team is needed, with focus and different viewpoints, a chance to review the experts’ notes, the DNA, the fingerprints and odors, to reassess the profile of the kidnapper or the murderer, so that working with forensic scientists they can reconstruct where the victim was last seen, and with the help of H.G.Wells’ time machine, catch the thief before we are deprived of this mother who is essential for the health of the people.

April 4 2011

CSI: Havana

http://www.todotele.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/logo20csi2.jpg

Freedom has disappeared. The crime occurred years ago in Cuba and they still haven’t found the culprit. The investigators discovered, in the days following the event, evidence that led to a suspect, but without a body to prove the crime, they never had a case. But they quickly mobilized the entire police force to look for some clue that would lead them to the place where she had been snatched and gagged, because initially they thought it was a kidnapping and the agents knew that in order to recover the victim alive it’s critical to find her in the first 72 hours.

The people who knew the victim, allege that she was omnipresent and so they noted her absence very quickly. The investigative process has been long and tortuous because many of the potential witnesses associated with her have left to look for her in other countries and so it has been hard for the officials to interrogate them and get their version of the facts.

Even though this alleged crime still, today, is among the “unresolved cases” of the archipelago, many haven’t stopped working on it and the long list of evidence around it lengthens. The maxim, “he who has a mobile phone is suspect,” of many police officers, was discredited by government leaders when they authorized the use of mobile phones for ordinary Cubans.

After several decades of work, some think that the authorities have given up on the case, but the independent criminal investigators, unlike those in the Interior Ministry in the capital — who have been on the case since the beginning — haven’t given up on finding who did it, who victimized all the children in Cuba, and they won’t allow the file to be closed.

The police suspect that it could be a homicide, as no one disappears for so many years without a trace. At this point in the tragedy it’s clear that a new team is needed, with focus and different viewpoints, a chance to review the experts’ notes, the DNA, the fingerprints and odors, to reassess the profile of the kidnapper or the murderer, so that working with forensic scientists they can reconstruct where the victim was last seen, and with the help of H.G.Wells’ time machine, catch the thief before we are deprived of this mother who is essential for the health of the people.

April 4 2011

About Cyber-Wars and Cyber-Warriors / Miriam Celaya

Some suggest that, in Cuba, the sustained and increasing harassment of dissidents and independent civil society groups responds to a government offensive strategy designed to eliminate pockets of resistance to the dictatorship, marked at times by a preponderance of alternative civic sectors and the use of information technologies and communications. For my part, I don’t share this view. Far from being an “offensive”, I think this is a desperate defensive strategy to try to stop the unstoppable.

After watching the four television broadcasts of the pitiful series “Cuba’s Reasons” aired so far, there should not be any doubt that the blogging activity developed in recent years is hitting the regime’s ideological structure. The “cyber-war”, the central theme of the latest chapter in this series (Monday, March 21, 2011, 8:30 pm) was specifically about bloggers, in an unsuccessful attempt to make us subject to American Federal resources which, according to them, reached us through awards won by Yoani Sánchez and, as the result of the tricky official math, amounts to the fabulous amount of half a million dollars. As usual, this time they failed to present any evidence, so they were forced to offer their supreme action: deceit.

On this occasion, the clumsy manipulation began with a macabre introduction: the US government (who else!) is developing a frightening new war: the cyber-war, for which it has trained its agents in Cuba (that’s us, of course), called on to destabilize the revolution and the country, to subvert and destroy the people’s gains, which subliminally suggests the fragility of a “deeply rooted people’s process”, jeopardized by a scant group of “cyber-warriors” in a country with an almost nil level of Internet access.

To reinforce the lie, the written press tiresomely repeats it, asserting that the external enemies “are trying to promote the so-called ‘independent bloggers
“in order to demonize the country before international public opinion, so that they may offer an image of cyberspace as the genuine and only world, from which to speak and act” (Granma, March 22, 2011, p. 4). The truth is that the government has already has made great strides towards that mission of soiling itself before international opinion by keeping the repudiation brigades active against defenseless civilians; imprisoning journalists and others for expressing and defending differing ideas; allowing a political prisoner to die in a hunger strike; killing completely defenseless psychiatric patients through malnutrition, cold, lack of care and several other niceties. I don’t think that blogging activity could surpass that record.

Incidentally, the press omitted one small detail: the blogosphere uses the net because it is the only channel available to citizens since the government has a monopoly on the press; in contrast, we do not have a monopoly on the Internet. This detail is what allows the government to unleash a major campaign against independent bloggers based on a sack of lies absolutely counter to the spirit that has prevailed in the blogosphere –- which defends peaceful changes and civic principles before ideological ones — designed for the ongoing deception of the people. “Bloggers have appealed to uprisings in Cuba during interviews, they encourage violence, support the Cuban Adjustment Act, justify the blockade, deny that the most reactionary exile sector in Miami is an enemy of the Cuban people, state that Luis Posada Carriles’s case is a smokescreen, and even openly express the change of the political system … ” (Ibid, pg. 5)

Particularly poignant in the TV series is the revisiting of the bogus reference to Luis Posada Carriles as one of the alternative blogosphere links in a vulgar attempt to touch a sensitive nerve in people still moved by the memory of the dead from the heinous Barbados crime, an event that the aforementioned character has been systematically accused of by the Cuban authorities. Only a very sick government may so unscrupulously manipulate the sensitivity of the people. Seventy-three people, mostly young Cubans, were killed on that fateful day, and the regime has made use of this tragedy for nearly 35 years. They should show more respect for the memory of those killed and their relatives.

However, despite everything, we should be grateful to the Castro media for the free propaganda. It is very possible that, even with low ratings of the series, some sufficiently apprehensive Cubans –- some of those that we seem to have too many of — who, until now, were unaware of the blogger phenomenon, might begin to explore on their own and arrive at us and at the reality of what we are. Maybe the new breed of cyber-warriors will be composed of some of those young students to whom the anti-cyber TV chapters are directed. For the time being, it is noteworthy that this is the first time they have not presented a new infiltrated agent, which may be due to the transparent character of the alternative blogosphere, where we express publicly what we think in private. We have repeatedly publicly expressed a clear interest for whatever agents they want to assign to us to participate in our courses and meetings, without having to go through the cumbersome process of their infiltration, but they have never responded.

Definitely, the alternative blogosphere has conquered, alone, a place on the Internet. The system is surprised at the freedom call of a handful of Cubans that has managed to remain on the net based on will and modesty, and has enjoyed the understanding and support of thousands of its exiled countrymen, as well as of many other citizens of the free world. Authorities fear, logically, the spread of this terrible virus, the feeling of civic freedom. And since this is our own achievement, beyond governments, assumed financing, and interests outside the pure exercise of freedom of expression that moves us and which we practice without asking anyone’s permission, I am speaking on my own behalf and not as a representative of my colleagues, because independent bloggers have the additional quality of not being affiliated with a common platform or the guidelines of any institution.

This cannot be said about the official “blogger” block — created and controlled by the government to angrily reply with the same old slogans — which stays comfortably protected, without any risk, under the shadow of the longest dictatorship in the Americas. Alternative bloggers are not slaves to any power, and we represent only ourselves as individuals. Paradoxically, that, far from weakening us, makes us morally strong before the colossal repressive government machinery that plagues us.

And, though some readers believe that it’s futile to try to disprove so many lies born of the insecurity of a regime that is past its glory days, I want to challenge the government, from this small venue for a people’s forum, to show its intended strength and its conviction of people’s faith in the revolution by publishing at least part of our posts, or to broadcast the blogger-video “Citizens’ Reasons” in its media. Although, of course, it is clear they will not have enough courage to do so.

Or, on second thought, perhaps it would be enough for the people of this country to have full access to the Internet so they can see for themselves the “lies” that we the “cyber-warriors of the Empire” publish. That way, they would have an opportunity to fight us with true knowledge of cause, without intermediaries. For my part, I would gladly assume the consequences of such a risk.

Translated by Norma Whiting

23 March 2011

Murillo, the Headless Minister / Luis Felipe Rojas

The recent ousting of the economic minister, Marino Murillo, seems to have proven the theory of the expiatory goat, that infinite night full of long knives aimed at all those who reside in power or who walk around anywhere near power.

Murillo was the face used by the Castro tyranny to expose its own version of massive lay-offs scheduled to take place this year. But they needed that: to explore, but if they could get no results from it, then to hell with the experiments. For now, his was the first head that has rolled after president Raul Castro himself publicly made it clear that the decree of “work force availability” (a euphemism for massive layoffs) should not be inflexible.

During the last few days of December 2010 he was congratulated with a week’s stay at the tourist resort of Gualdalavaca, located in the northern coast of Holguin province. This is a place which is forbidden to common and everyday mortals of this country, yet which is always accessible to ministers, generals and their families, and tourists.

But days before, Murillo had spoken before the cameras and microphones on national TV, asking for an adjustment on spending at the domestic level. He was asking people to tighten their belts as much as possible again, because another period of job rationing for 1 million Cubans had begun, and now one had to play the game with aptitude. However, as the saying goes, the drunkard thought one thing while the bartender thought another. Murillo was authorized to stay in a luxurious Gualdalavaca resort for a few days along with twenty relatives. In less than 48 hours, half of Holguin already knew how much had been spent on the hobbies of each of the relatives and friends of this economic Minister who was the successor of Carlos Lage. And of course, it was very shocking to see this man engage in such spending just a few days after telling the country to tighten their belts one more notch.

Since the Cuban press does not publish any reasons explaining why someone was laid off, everyday Cubans living in this area have to confirm for ourselves the information given to us by the hotel companies, which they claim they saw and heard. Before returning to Havana, the amount on the visitors’ check was extremely high, according to those who work there.

Others say that certain communists of high rank and responsibility who work in the hotel complained to the authorities in Havana about the high expenses of Murillo and his clan. However, they just received silence for an answer. The truth is that this reckless spending has only been matched by the actions of little Elian Gonzalez and his gang.

Now, we just have to wait and see what move will be made from his new position next to the General-cum-President, where according to a note, he will be advised on certain issues, including “economics”. This gives me to understand that as a minister he no longer has a head, but as an adviser he will have his two hands deep in the pocket of “Father State” and he will take out as much as he likes. And nothing will happen

Translated by Raul G.

March 31 2011

Carter in Cuba Again / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

The former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter made a short but varied three-day visit to Cuba on Monday, March 28, 2011, in response to an invitation from Cuban President Raul Castro. He was greeted at the airport by Foreign Minister José Martí Bruno Rodriguez and diplomatic officials from Havana and Washington, respectively. That same day, the former president met with the Jewish community and with Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, Archbishop of Havana.

He came to our country with his wife Rosalynn, who was in charge of Cuba at the White House during his presidency (1977-1981), and directors of the Carter Center, which is based in Atlanta, Georgia. It was during his term in office, that diplomatic missions were restored in both cities and travel opportunities opened up for both peoples.

He came this time, after the Havana Provincial Court, on March 5, sentenced the U.S. citizen Alan Gross to 15 years in prison for “acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the state.” The wife of convicted Gross met with Jimmy Carter, who had traveled to North Korea last year and managed to secure the release of an American citizen; Gross’s wife hoped he might intercede to get some kind of parole for her husband for humanitarian reasons. Carter denied he was in Cuba for that purpose, although he acknowledged that he talked about the Gross case and said he wants to help improve relations between his country and Cuba.

This visit, similar in profile and tone to his previous trip in 2002, had among the objectives of the former head of state and Nobel Peace Prize laureate a chance to exchange views with Cuban leaders about the Communist Party Congress to be held April 16-19, and about the proposed economic reforms carried out to save an economy that is so close to bankruptcy it may soon be finished.

Carter, 86, is the top U.S. political figure who has visited Cuba since 1959. The former president met with prominent people from the alternative civil society such as the famous blogger Yoani Sanchez and well-known Claudia Cadelo, as well as recently released former political prisoners and their wives, the Ladies in White, and traditional dissidents such as Elizardo Sanchez and Oswaldo Payá.

Yoani Sanchez — the Cuban blogger who has received so many international awards for her blog “Generation Y” — explained that at the meeting she expressed to Jimmy Carter our need for freedom of expression and free Internet access for Cubans, which we promote and encourage from our blog with its banner supporting that demand.

April 4 2011

Carter in Cuba Again

The former U.S. president, Jimmy Carter made a short but varied three-day visit to Cuba on Monday, March 28, 2011, in response to an invitation from Cuban President Raul Castro. He was greeted at the airport by Foreign Minister José Martí Bruno Rodriguez and diplomatic officials from Havana and Washington, respectively. That same day, the former president met with the Jewish community and with Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, Archbishop of Havana.

He came to our country with his wife Rosalynn, who was in charge of Cuba at the White House during his presidency (1977-1981), and directors of the Carter Center, which is based in Atlanta, Georgia. It was during his term in office, that diplomatic missions were restored in both cities and travel opportunities opened up for both peoples.

He came this time, after the Havana Provincial Court, on March 5, sentenced the U.S. citizen Alan Gross to 15 years in prison for “acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the state.” The wife of convicted Gross met with Jimmy Carter, who had traveled to North Korea last year and managed to secure the release of an American citizen; Gross’s wife hoped he might intercede to get some kind of parole for her husband for humanitarian reasons. Carter denied he was in Cuba for that purpose, although he acknowledged that he talked about the Gross case and said he wants to help improve relations between his country and Cuba.

This visit, similar in profile and tone to his previous trip in 2002, had among the objectives of the former head of state and Nobel Peace Prize laureate a chance to exchange views with Cuban leaders about the Communist Party Congress to be held April 16-19, and about the proposed economic reforms carried out to save an economy that is so close to bankruptcy it may soon be finished.

Carter, 86, is the top U.S. political figure who has visited Cuba since 1959. The former president met with prominent people from the alternative civil society such as the famous blogger Yoani Sanchez and well-known Claudia Cadelo, as well as recently released former political prisoners and their wives, the Ladies in White, and traditional dissidents such as Elizardo Sanchez and Oswaldo Payá.

Yoani Sanchez — the Cuban blogger who has received so many international awards for her blog “Generation Y” — explained that at the meeting she expressed to Jimmy Carter our need for freedom of expression and free Internet access for Cubans, which we promote and encourage from our blog with its banner supporting that demand.

April 4 2011

Oiled Mechanism / Yoani Sánchez

A drop slid down my leg, I maneuvered it into the hollow between my ankle and my shoe and did a thousand pirouettes so my high school classmates wouldn’t notice. For months, my family had had only mineral oil for cooking, thanks to pharmacist relative who was able to sneak it from his work. I remember it heating to a white foam in the pot and the food tinged with the golden color of a photograph, ideal for food magazines. But our bodies could not absorb that kind of fat, made for creating lotions, perfumes or creams. It passed right through our intestines and dripped, dripped, dripped… My panties were stained, but at least we got a break from food that was just boiled, and could try another, slightly roasted.

We were quite fortunate to have that semblance of “butter” that someone stole for us, because in the nineties many others had to distill engine oil for use in their kitchens. Perhaps that’s why we Cubans are traumatized by this product extracted from sunflowers, soybeans or olives. The price of a quart of oil in the market has become our own popular indicator of well-being versus crisis, in the thermometer that takes the temperature of scarcities. With an ever shrinking culinary culture, from Pinar del Rio to Guantanamo, most stoves know only recipes for fried foods. Hence, pork fat, or buttery liquids with high-sounding names such as “The Cook” or “Golden Ace,” prove essential in our daily lives.

When, a few days ago — with no prior warning — the price of vegetable oil in hard currency stores rose by 11.6%, the annoyance was very strong, even more so than when fuel prices rose. Many of us don’t have cars to show us that convertible pesos are continually turned into less and less gasoline, but we all face a plate every day where the prices of staple foods have soared. That this happens with no accompanying public protest, no discontented housewives raising a ruckus beating on their pots and pans, no long articles in the press complaining of the abuse, is harder to swallow than a meal with no fat. I’m more embarrassed by this tacit acceptance of rising prices than I was of the thread of mineral oil snaking down my calf before the mocking eyes of my classmates.

Achievements and Continuity…! / Rebeca Monzo

A sidewalk somewhere in the Nueva Vedado neighborhood

Fantastic! In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration of socialism and for its continuity. Thus says the propaganda, lately, that saturates the programming of the already politically overloaded national television.

But, as if this were not enough, for more than a month those of us who live around the famous Plaza of the Revolution, have been faced with the ongoing power outages, street closures, traffic diversion, loudspeakers in the early hours, volleys, etc., all due to the rehearsals to make the military parade media-perfect.

The only good thing that we draw from this is that the main avenues and side streets around the perimeter of the area of the parade, have been and are being paved, and we only had to wait fifty-two years for that long awaited dream to become reality. Now, you have to walk in the street, dodging all the dangerous traffic, in order not to break your face by walking on the broken sidewalks. Which makes us think, optimistically, that we’ll only have to wait another fifty years for this mess, as we say in good Creole, to be fixed up as well. Maybe this also has something to do with celebrating the achievements and continuation of what they brag about so much.

April 3 2011

Havana Wouldn’t be the Same Without the Peanut Sellers / Iván García

Salty or sweet. Dark or medium roasted. Havana wouldn’t be the same without the peanut sellers. Eating peanuts is a major way to spend more than an hour waiting at one of Havana’s crowded bus stops.

The cucurucho (paper cone) cost one Cuban peso (five cents U.S.) and on any central street, children’s park, and at the exits of hospitals and schools, you can find men and women selling the popular seed.

Almost none pay taxes. René, a state inspector, says that the peanut distributors could be classified as “ambulatory food sellers,” according to the bureaucratic jargon, and so they are included in the authorized self-employment list of activities. “But for the moment we’re not interested in collecting taxes,” he says grimly.

It’s a business with few benefits. “It costs. From a pound of peanuts I make 24 cones and get about 12 Cuban pesos. If you take into account the salt and the sheets of paper I have to buy for the cones, I earn less,” says David, a skinny gentleman who usually sells peanuts on the Havana corner of Acosta and Diez de Octubre streets.

In the farmers markets, a pound (less than half a kilo) of peanuts cost between 8 and 14 Cuban pesos, since the start of the year. There are sellers, like David, who prepare cones full of hot peanuts nicely roasted.

Inocencia, an occasional seller at Fraternity Park, gives cones barely full without salt and burnt. “Grandma, you have the worst peanuts,” the students say. The old woman, unperturbed, answers, “Child, for a peso you can’t expect more.”

Rodolfo, another manisero, said that on a good day he earns between 80 and 100 pesos (3 or 4 dollars). “On average, twelve hours I’m walking from one place to another selling peanuts. This is a business of pennies. And poor people. At times the police harass us. But lately, they don’t bother us. ”

At a time when the private work has expanded, the peanut vendors do not appear explicitly among the 178 offices authorized to work for themselves. Maybe the state recognizes that these people, mostly elderly, live below the poverty line and earn lower profits. Just enough to survive.

“Either way, I don’t trust them. Even the fortuneteller, pet groomers and public toilet attendants are paying taxes. No doubt they’ll decide to include us,” said Suraima, a mother of five children selling peanuts at the P-10 bus stop.

Peanuts have always been a popular food on the island. In times gone by the sellers offered them in cans with burning coals in the bottom, to keep them hot. Now they no longer proclaim, “Peanuts, the peanut seller is leaving…”

The peanut sellers formed part of the Havana landscape. So much so that the prominent musician Moises Simons (Havana 1889-Madrid 1945) in 1928 composed El Manisero, one of the most famous Cuban songs of all time, with more than 160 versions. Among them, those of Trio Matamoros, Rita Montaner, Bola de Nieve and Antonio Machin.

Eating peanuts while waiting for the bus and talking about baseball or watching a soap opera, or on the Malecon or at the movies, has become a Capital routine. After eating them, people throw the cones on the public street. A bad custom. Though the trash can is in sight.

Note: This article was written two weeks ago, when Ivan didn’t imagine that the ex-president Jimmy Carter wold visit Havana and much less that he would meet with dissidents, those who gave him a gift of peanuts. In my blog (http://taniaquintero.blogspot.com) you can find an investigation from two years ago about the Cuban composer Moisés Simons, author or El Manisero (Tania Quintero [Ivan’s mother who manages his blog from her exile in Switzerland]).

March 31 2011

Carter, a Negotiator Who Pleased Everyone in Cuba / Iván García

In real politics what the media reports is important. But even more crucial still is what is not said. Jimmy Carter’s three days in Havana seems to suggest that Barack Obama’s administration asked the ex-president of the United States serve as a mediator with the riffraff for the Jewish contractor Alan Gross, sentenced to 15 years in prison for trying to set up computer systems and parallel communications not authorized by the Cuban regime.

In fact, in addition to his meetings with leaders and officials, the Catholic Church and the Jewish community and a group of dissidents Carter was allowed to visit and talk to the beleaguered Gross, 61.

In the political world, Carter is a well-known old man. Carter is an old world politics. Has intervened in a number of global conflicts and monitored various plebiscites in nations barely beginning to follow democratic rules. In 2002 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It is true that during his tenure (1977-1981), at the height of the Cold War period, he suffered the setback of the hostage crisis in Iran, which cost him his re-election, and that Fidel Castro, despite concessions from the U.S. president to relax the economic embargo and to establish, in Havana and Washington, “interest offices” — in lieu of embassies — which paved the way for short-term dialogue between the two nations, Fidel did not know or did not want to know, how to grasp the opportunities offered by Carter.

Of course, at that time, the one and only comandante felt strong. It was the time when the former USSR injected the local economy with billions of rubles and endowed the Cuban military with the latest in conventional weapons. Castro cavalierly ignored the offer of Jimmy Carter. And he carried on with his war plans in Africa. Fidel Castro is one of those to blame for the fact that the unjust embargo remains in place .

Nobody denies the ethics and honesty of the bombproof Carter. Nor his desires for a better world. One might think that is naive. At some stage he was called ‘Carter the fool’, for putting his wishes of peaceful coexistence to real politics. But in any event, he is someone who deserves respect. On his second visit to Havana, he learned to please everyone. It is not easy.

He agreed with the Cuban government on the issue of the release of five men jailed in the U.S. and ending the embargo. But he maintained his democratic principles, calling for respect for freedom of expression and association.

He met with figures of the two political camps. As in his first visit in May 2002, Carter could not be manipulated by autocrats who govern the destiny of Cuba. What he said is what he thinks. Public statements aside, Carter had a mission. Negotiate the release or possible exchange of Alan Gross.

Outside this topic, little more can be achieved. And Carter knows it. It would be very pretentious to think that the ex-president of the United States can drive serious and thoughtful dialogue between the opposition and the government.

Although he is already 86 years old, he could try. Either way, it went well with all parties. Castro listened to the music they love. Freedom for their imprisoned spies and once and for all an end to the ancient embargo, and letting 5 million gringo tourists come to spend their dollars on the island of olive green.

Nor did Carter’s guests from the opposition feel themselves to be nobodies. They expressed their views in brief exchanges with the former president. And Carter mentioned on state television the right to freedom of speech and association of those who think differently.

As in 2002, the visit of ex-leader had little influence on the future economic and political changes that Cuba is crying out for. It is striking how the Castro government can discuss any topic with people from the United States while it covers its ears and furiously suppresses internal dissent.

One point the democrats on the island make is valid. I suspect that even the day that the U.S. repeal the embargo and normalize relations, the government will always have on hand a good excuse to stop the changes.

Leaving the Castro brothers with no arguments is a difficult task. We, the local opposition, have to roll up our sleeves and demand a face to face dialogue with the regime. The problems of Cuba are an issue that concerns everyone. And only we can make it happen. People like Carter are not going to solve it. It hasn’t come to that.

April 3 2011