Translating Cuba

“History is lived forward, but to understand it we must look back.” Kierkegaard

The interaction between the lack of administrative capacity, economic inefficiency, hopelessness, widespread corruption and the massive exodus, have made the current crisis in Cuba the deepest of its history. The combination of these factors, sufficient to break any human group that aspires to exist as a nation is an alert for all those involved or concerned about the present and the future of our country.

Having exhausted all possibilities to exist without change, the Cuban government is taking steps towards a reform package that, although timid, inadequate and contradictory, as a way to break the inertia could evolve in the direction of democratization, the only way of saving the Cuban nation from its demise.

Looking at the new scenario, a retrospective analysis sheds light on an event that is repeated in our history, I refer to the cycle consisting of: 1 – the coming to power; 2 – the intention not to abandon it; 3 – the violent response from those in opposition; and 4 – after a few human and material losses, the return to the starting point, with the peculiarity that the result has been a march toward the past, to the point that in terms of civil liberties we find ourselves in the same position we were in 1878.

The decline of a country that held one of the first places in living standards in Latin America, and reached consensus on one of the world’s most advanced constitutions of its time, has to come from root causes. For this analysis, fortunately, we have a wealth of studies and practical observations made by illustrious figures of our politics and our culture. I will mention briefly some observations of eight of them.

1 – Father Felix Varela (1778-1853), who evolved from autonomy to become a precursor to independence and the proper treatment of slaves to develop a project to abolish the abominable institution of slavery. Once he was immersed in such civic purposes he realized there was a prerequisite for achieving these objectives and therefore chose education as a path to liberation.

Varela was not only named the chair of Constitution of San Carlos Seminary, as an institution of freedom and the rights of man, but conceived it as a means to teach civic virtues. That is, rights and virtues together. To this end he introduced ethics in scientific, social and political studies. His work, Letters to Elpidio, was directed to young people because he felt that if there was anyone willing to listen and willing to think with his own head, it was the youth. Father Varela stressed the vital idea of exercising power, strength and fortitude, as a means of reaffirming a value, a moral ideal, which strengthens men’s and women’s ability to look high and far. Thus, he said, it is necessary, first, to start thinking; he put forth in it all his efforts, such that José de la Luz y Caballero defined him as our real civilizer.

2 – José de la Luz y Caballero (1800-1862), who after Father Varela and José Antonio Saco assumed leadership of the Department of Philosophy at San Carlos Seminary, conscious of the efforts of some Cubans to free themselves from Spain, arrived at the conclusion that, before revolution and independence, was education. He understood politics as a process and spoke out against the immediacy that characterizes us. Men rather than academics, he said, are what this time needs and he dedicated himself to this belief. In 1848 he founded El Salvador de La Habana, a school where he spent the last years of life. From all that he had accumulated of value from his maternal uncle José Agustín Caballero, from his relationship with the Father Felix Varela and the most distinguished men of his time, he amalgamated with the latest developments in the pedagogy of the times, enriched with wisdom, and adapted to the conditions in Cuba and gave it to his students, among them Mendive, the teacher of José Martí.

3 – José Julián Martí Pérez (1853-1895), took up the unfinished process of forming the Cuban nation to become a modern republic. To that end, he conducted a critical study of the errors of the previous struggle for independence, where regionalism, warlordism and selfishness, among many evils, put paid to the purposes of the war. From his analysis he developed a set of principles characterized by their participative and democratic character, the inclusion of all elements in the analysis, the union of diverse factors, and their role in the politics of the time. From this he planned the foundation of the Republic, which in his ideology was the form and endpoint of destiny, as opposed to war and the party, which he conceived as mediating links to arrive at the Republic, but in which the germs of democracy had to be present.

Marti insisted that the Party would not work for any particular class but for the totality, using democratic methods, and counting on the brotherhood and common action of Cubans on the Island and living abroad. Despite his efforts over the years, the evils that put paid to the Great War loomed again. In his Diary of the Campaign, fourteen days before his death, Marti noted: “Maceo has another idea of governance, a junta of generals in command, their representatives, and a General-Secretariat; the country, then, and all the officials of it, which creates and animates the army, as the secretariat of the army.”

4 – Enrique José Varona (1849-1933), who dedicated 50 years of his life to politics, believed that nothing would be good or perfect, as long as men are not good and perfect. And he said, “The laws have the same value as the men who apply them,” a postulate that points back to ethics and education as a starting point. In My advice, written in 1930, Varona complained that the Republic had entered into crisis, because many people believed they could ignore public affairs. This selfishness had a very high cost. Such a high cost that we could lose everything. Varona, convinced of the need to live in a different way, realized learning would need to occur in a different way, and disappointed by the results, he devoted himself to pedagogy to educate citizens.

5 – Cosme de la Torriente and Peraza (1872-1956), convinced of the futility of violence to found a people and establish nations, directed his steps towards reconciliation and dialogue as an ethical and cultural foundation for political action. Cosme told the leaders of the Student Directorate, in 1931: What I understand as I have always understood, given the international situation of Cuba and the complexity of our problems, much better than a revolution, always of doubtful success, is to reach an intelligence or a settlement that allows a commitment or agreement to restore moral peace in the Republic, and the destroyed legal order.

His life is a model of the paradigm of rejecting the use of violence to solve conflicts. Making effective use of diplomacy played a definite role in the recovery of the sovereignty of Cuba over the Isle of Pines, and in 1934, from Havana, he led the negotiations that culminated in the abrogation of the Platt Amendment. In the fifties of last century, convinced of the harm that would result if Cuba would embark once again on the path of violence, he led the Civic Dialogue, aimed at resuming the path of constitutionality and avoiding the choice between a military dictatorship and revolutionary violence.

6 – Gustavo Pittaluga (1878-1956), Italian physician, based in Spain who immigrated to Cuba in 1937, although not Cuban-born, studied and knew our country much better than most born here. In his book Dialogue of Destiny, suggested that Cuba is a people who wanted to create a nation. That is capable of creating one. But that has not yet created one, because the specific sign of a nation is to be aware of its destiny. And Cuba is not. And he added: “No ideal is realized in full. But without the vision of that ideal there is no path, no compass, no seminal work for the future.” For him violence was the harbinger of the fate of Cuba. In his opinion the settlement of disputes could only be achieved through politics and understanding, or it would be imposed by this harbinger, by violence, which was confirmed by the military coup of 1952, putting the two policy strands of violence — the traditional and revolutionary — face to face.

7 – Fernando Ortiz Fernández (1881-1969), one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century Cuban, digging into our roots reached the following conclusion: We do not believe there have been more far-reaching human factors for the essence of being Cuban, these continuous, radical and contrasting geographical, economic and social transmigrations of the people; this perennial transitoriness of post-purposes and that life is always an uprooting of the inhabited earth, always in conflict with the sustained society. Men, economies, cultures and aspirations, everything here feels foreign, provisional, changing, “birds of passage” over the country, working against it.

In Cuba’s political crisis: its causes and remedies (1919), he pointed out, that among our sociological limitations are: Lack of historic preparation of the Cuban people for the exercise of political rights; ignorance of the leaders that prevents them from appreciating the true value of public men; a cultural deficit among the ruling classes, which prevents them from curbing their selfishness and reconciling with the highest interests of the nation; disintegration of social elements in the various races and nationalities with interests not based on a supreme national ideal; the psychological weaknesses of the Cuban character, impulsivity, a psychological characteristic that often leads to strong performances, but quick, hasty and unpremeditated violence.

8 – Jorge Mañach Robato (1898-1961), in his essays, debates and public appearances, described the negative characteristics of the Cuban people: “Our character is nervous and restless by physiological temperament: frivolous, immediate and improvident.

Regarding the ongoing disagreements among Cubans, he said: “Everyone has a little aspiration, his little ideal, his little program, but lacks the aspiration, the ideal, the program for all, that supreme fraternity of spirit that is characteristic of more cultured civilizations. And, he added, the inhibitory individualism in our race makes each one his own Quixote with his own adventure. Generous cooperative efforts are invariably undermined.

The selfless leaders do not emerge. In the cloisters, in the intellectual class, in the academies, in the groups, the grudge spreads like weeds in the wheat fields where we would hope for the bread of the spirit. Everything is a take from you to give to me. Culture is a shipwreck, and a dour effort of every man for himself. People are vaguely anxious for a better State, but they don’t fight to make it happen.

The critical observations of these thinkers help us to understand the repetitive cycle that over and over has led us to the use of violence instead of political solutions and allows us to establish the similarity of three periods in the political history of Cuba in the 20th century: 1902 to 1933, 1933 to 1952, and 1952 to the present.

In the first period, the generals of the War of Independence, with the exception of Dr. Alfredo Zayas, almost all became the leaders who occupied the presidency between 1902 and 1933. The following pattern repeated itself: They come into power, realize or fail in intentions to stay a little longer in the presidential chair, respond violently to those who demand the rotation, ask for foreign intervention, and then order is restored and there are new elections. So it was with the unsuccessful or successful attempts at re-election from Estrada Palma to Gerardo Machado.

In the second period, curiously, almost all public office holders from 1933 to 1952 came from civic and military institutions that used violence during the Revolution of the ’30s, which ended with the overthrow of Gerardo Machado, Grau San Martin, Eleuterio Pedraza , Carlos Mendieta, Miguel Mariano Gómez, Federico Laredo Bru, Fulgencio Batista, Carlos Prio, Eduardo Chibas, Antonio Guiteras, Carlos Hevia, Sergio Carbó and many others.

In the third period, after 12 years with leaders elected at the polls, Fulgencio Batista led a coup in 1952, suspended the constitution, dissolved Congress and instituted a provisional government. Causing, in line with our lack of democratic culture, the assault on the Moncada Barracks, the military uprisings like Matanzas and Cienfuegos, the landing of the yacht Granma and the assault on the presidential palace. Displays of supremacy that used violence in the face of the efforts reconciliation of the Society of Friends of the Republic, the Civic Dialogue and the efforts of the Bishops.

That is, in the three periods mentioned, the elected presidents were preceded by situations of violence, and the resulting leaders succumbed, again, before the violence, taking directions contrary to social progress.

The Revolutionary government, emerging from the military victory of 1959, with initial democratic and popular steps initiated a process of concentration of ownership in the hands of state and power in the hands of the Head of the Revolution. It was a process that began in Sierra Maestra in May 1958, where it was agreed to implement a policy of one-man control, centered on the figure of Fidel, who was appointed Executive Secretary General of the M-26-7 (the 26th of July Movement) and Commander-in-Chief of all Revolutionary forces, including the urban militias.

This process continued after the taking of power, with Fidel adding more positions as Commander-in-Chief, the Prime Minister and First Secretary of Communist Party of Cuba. In parallel. the network of associations — for youth, women, workers, peasants, professionals, employers, etc. — were dissolved or subordinated to the State’s goals. University autonomy, which had been guaranteed in article 53 of the Constitution of 1940, disappeared de facto in the university reform in 1962. The written press, radio and television, the vast network of existing cinemas, production of books and cultural institutions came under Communist Party control. All of this was a process that led to the totalitarian system and the profound structural crisis that we now find ourselves in, whose explanation is closely related to the critical remarks of the thinkers cited:

The idiosyncrasy of the Cuban, whose root is in Europeans who came with the intention to return enriched and Africans who were brought against their will; neither with a stated intention to settle in the way of others who came to North America. To this must be added a nervous and restless nature, immediate and improvident, which often leads to severe actions, hasty, unpremeditated and violent, but short-lived.

The lack of a democratic culture and an almost nonexistent experience of citizenship, which is manifested in the conduct of rulers and ruled. One of its expressions is the rejection of politics by most of the population, which allows it to remain in the hands of minorities who can adopt, in an autocratic way, decisions that affect everyone and facilitates their ongoing exclusion.

The absence of a common awareness of destiny, which explains the inconclusive character of the Cuban nation, as each has their small aspirations, their small ideal, their small program, but as Manach stated, there is a lack of an aspiration and ideal that encompasses everyone.

From the above, unless we want to add new episodes of that fateful march backwards, we see that it imposes on us the urgent need for change, starting with ourselves, because as history is made by men, for all those who aspire to be subjects of change, there is no future in our society. This conclusion leads us to the thesis Marti formed, from the few existing spaces, the seeds of democracy for Cuba’s future must be sown, which again begins with individuals, and for this to occur the rejection of the use of violence is of paramount importance.

Published in number 18 of the digital magazine Convivencia, Nov-Dec 2010, here.

January 13 2011

The General-cum-President of Cuba has publicly announced that we are going to return to drinking coffee mixed with peas. For the uninitiated, this brew is a disagreeable invention. The only thing that can be said in its favor is that it stimulates the imagination to make us believe we are drinking coffee.

Those who work in the area of the aromatic should be happy because the announcement might mean, for them, a period of “fat cows” in which their revenues might swell from the possibility of multiplying the unit volume of this product that can be introduced into the underground market because, as has happened in the past, who will control the amount of toasted peas that are mixed with the coffee?

The proportion of the composition will be progressively adulterated, until the quantity of coffee grounds is minimal. We already have vast experience in this regard and now, with the national and global economic crisis and the increase in corruption already well established in our country, the conditions for this to succeed are perfect.

I am struck by the lack of vision of the Cuban governing class to prevent the proliferation of these kind of evils and how, instead, they seem to promote them. On the other hand, I would like to hear a specialist in biochemistry explain to me how these concoctions support our liver, pancreas, gallbladder, etc. because I know that peas are for soup, not hot drinks.

In any event, I recommend that you not imitate the Cuban government in improvising or inventing with your family members, or by yourself, when you lack some ingredient or infusion in your pantry. The taste is not good and the potion may not be healthy. I am putting in my two cents worth of “peas” to combat such nonsense and to expose my opinions publicly so that no one might think that Cubans “don’t give a pea” as a sign of protest.

January 3 2011

The days pass and the Island’s official media offers no news about the latest developments with respect to one of the Five Heroes, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo. The picture is unusual, so much silence about the cause of the Five.

Neither the Roundtable TV show, nor the newspaper Granma have commented on the contradictory statements of Gerardo, a man who, according to the government, sacrificed the best years of his youth to save his people. Even the mission of Cuban doctors in Venezuela is not as great a sacrifice.

That is, it’s not a sacrifice if you compare it to the reward of being able to buy a house and the supplies necessary to furnish it. Something almost impossible to do from within the island. There are more than a few Cubans who would like to go on a mission to the richest and most prosperous empire on the planet.

The sacrifice is to remain in prison carrying the sins of others, who enjoy complete freedom. However the Five assumed this risk and so they are also bearing the consequences. Despite the silence on the Island, I don’t think events have taken them by surprise. The government knew well what its senior “Wasp*” would say.

The contradiction between Gerardo’s declarations and the position of the Cuban government with regards to the downing of the two Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996, which cost the lives of four people, seems more of a last ditch effort to reduce the sentence of the head spy, sentenced to two life sentences plus fifteen years for conspiring to commit murder.

The sentence was upheld by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. According to Granma in its 20 August 2010 edition, this “supposed evidence was not proven.” There is no doubt that they knew what the new allegations of the defense would be. They knew that the pilots were shot down in international waters and that Gerardo didn’t know the intentions of the government of the Island with respect to that.

It doesn’t appear, however, that there has been a divorce between the spy and his bosses. They spent months waiting for the response of the American government with respect to Gerardo’s habeas corpus petition. There are extraordinary recourses established in American law for closed cases like that of Hernandez Nordelo.

Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, president of the national Assembly, knew this, as he was assigned the government task of crowing the case of the Five in every international theater where he stepped foot. This is the same person who calls the American government immoral, but who himself represents one that has no scruples when it comes to assassinating its opponents.

The silence about the declarations of Gerardo come as no surprise, rather it is complicity. The people of Cuba, however, remain oblivious to the facts, despite being the ones who pay the costs of the propaganda campaign, which includes international conferences and 111 committees for the release of the Five, created all over the world.

*Translator’s note: The spy network the “Give Heroes” belonged to is called the “Wasp Network.”

January 30 2011

At seven in the morning the bus stop — after an hour with no buses — is crowded. A vehicle heading toward Old Havana passes by without stopping, leaving behind a trail of angry shouts and gestures. Some of the shouters decide to make their way on foot, other resign themselves to spending their last ten pesos to take a shared taxi. Many of the frustrated passengers will be late to work again today.

It’s not an isolated scene, in every municipality in the capital long lines for public transport are part of the urban landscape, such that people can no longer imagine the city without these mobs around the signs that promise the P1 or the P4, the microbus to the airport, or the route that goes to the Vedado, will stop there.

The difficulties of travel grip the country. Our ancient metropolis is condemned to immobility in a long and narrow country where trains were introduced even earlier than in Spain. The paralysis of movement has a strongly negative effect on the nation, the losses to the productive and economic life of the country are incalculable. The fact that people cannot move freely throughout the island affects professional development, family relationships, and even relationships between couples.

Fifty miles becomes an abyss, difficult to cross, when the only way to get from one side to the other is a means of transport that operates on no fixed timetable and that lacks the state of repair necessary to function reliably. It separates parents and children who live in different provinces, delays workers heading for factories, and keeps offices that serve customers from opening on time because their staff has not arrived. The collapse of transportation marks the daily lives of all of us, imprinting its haphazard, slow, and often exasperating pace on all our activities.

The days when they planned an urban metro system to resolve many of these difficulties are long gone. Its construction was to have been subsidized by the Soviet Union, but became one more chapter of unfulfilled dreams when European socialism collapsed. On a central avenue leading out from the Council of State they started to erect the headquarters of the metropolitan transportation office, but only got as far as the foundation. When the difficult years of the Special Period arrived a fruit and vegetable market was located there.

We said goodbye, then, to illusions of modernity, while our streets were taken over by huge trucks that pulled containers for people. With their two humps we baptized them “camels.” Instead of moving forward we went backwards to the basics of urban mobility, turning what were essentially semi-trailers into makeshift buses.

So we continued until the country began its shaky recovery from the economic collapse, and a multi-million dollar agreement with China brought hundreds of shiny new buses to the island. The reception was tremendous, with Raul Castro himself dedicating several paragraphs in his speeches to announcing that the old “camels” would no longer circulate in the capitol, as the weight of their enormous bodies had crushed the streets, and their bulk had knocked down balconies and provoked innumerable accidents.

It seemed that Havana would eventually sign up for the twenty-first century. As moving around the city no longer consumed so many of the hours in our days, we could once again visit friends we hadn’t seen for years. The initial launch of the new Yutong brand buses set loose a frenzy of movement.

But public transportation couldn’t overcome its most important contradiction: not only is it not profitable, but for it to exist at all it must be subsidized by the government. With a symbolic fare of 20 cents in national currency (less than a penny U.S.), passengers don’t pay enough even to repair the windshields.

At the same time, in a country where “what belongs to everyone belongs to no one,” vandalism and predation began to take their toll, as evidenced by growing deterioration of the buses. In less than two years the gleaming new buses started to show a rip here, a patch there, with fewer vehicles available for service. The stops, once again full of expectant passengers, became scenes of misery for those with no choice but to resort to public transport, waiting for buses that didn’t come or passed up the stops, already bursting with passengers.

Private taxis began to make a killing carrying the thousands of people desperate to reach their destinations; the old Chevrolets and purring Cadillacs of the last century proving more efficient and flexible when it comes time to plot routes. But the problem with boarding one of these gas-smelling relics is that it costs a whole day’s salary.

The triumphalism that surrounded the arrival of the Chinese buses has faded in the media, as frustration with the immobility and deterioration grows among the public. Our mobility problems will not be solved with a couple more boatloads of new buses. These difficulties have deeper roots and solutions will depend on revamping a centralized economy that has condemned us to transport solutions from the Middle Ages. The image of a horse cart in use as a public bus is a common one in Cuba. Meanwhile the idea of having an urban metro system seems as remote as those long ago days when we beat Spain in having the first railroad.

“Torch night” – to celebrate Jose Marti’s Birthday at the University of Havana

“Torch night” – to celebrate Jose Marti’s birthday at the University of Havana

Open Publishing – Free Publishing – More Yoani Sanchez

Censorship, among other things, is a moral scourge, one of the tools totalitarianism uses with devastating impact on the self-esteem of those targeted. Its practice not only should be abolished, but banned throughout the world. Thus, dictatorships are erected and sustain themselves, carving on the societies where they are in place what some call their different faces, costumes, reflections, and masks.

Totalitarian and authoritarian systems of government are the potters of this disease, and the strongmen or Caesars — ancient or modern — who introduce such arbitrary lawlessness are its sculptors. But it is to the mutant face of the censor that I am speaking of: self-censorship. It is, definitely, the same face, but with a different mask: the denigrating and simulating of the most ignominious self-muting of the metamorphosis.

In Cuba after 1959 is found the ideal substrate to enthrone it, and its crown of mud washes down over the face of democracy to the shame of the world’s democrats and Cuban society, which wants to join the free nations of the world and incorporate, adopt and internalize democratic values of justice and equality.

We don’t understand when Cuba’s leaders talk of fighting censorship and ask that be begin to eradicate self-censorship from the social fabric. This signal-suggestions infers a criticism, and this phenomenon is so deeply rooted, and logically embedded, complex, that I think the best way to combat it is to dismantle the conditions that originally gave rise to is and recognize and defend the inalienable rights of individuals in order to sow trust in society. And that would be just the beginning of a liberating process that needs time for “mental processing,” assimilation and incorporation of new patterns and paradigmatic references.

The invitation to “not censor ourselves” when they haven’t created the conditions for that to happen, seem like demagoguery to me. We all know that the authorities have almost total control over society, so any attempted to “really” combat this aberration that they established must be based on the recognition of the rights that are at the base of the entire process of personal and social liberation.

To criticize a people about exercising freedom of expression which has been penalized for decades and which has brought many of our compatriots long prison sentences until yesterday, is neither just nor realistic. Is it credible?

They accuse us, when they have totalitarian control, of the injustices they themselves have committed “because we allow them” or make us responsible when we are tied gagged and with a rope around our necks taken on foot to be lynched, and yet reproach us “because we let ourselves be taken.”

In fact, after fifty-two years in power, the authorities leave no doubt that they are the lion and people are the monkey in chains. So where does this story come from?

January 17 2011

This past Friday, January 7, 2001, I had the opportunity to enjoy together with my husband an outstanding soirée. We went to the home of the ambassador of the Queen of the Netherlands, where the official presentation of the well deserved Prince Claus award was made to Yoani Sánchez. Her participating family members and friends were extremely proud of the importance of this international recognition and of the fact that it had been granted to the pioneer and most outstanding vanguard of Cuban bloggers.

In a simple but emotional ceremony, the host read some words in which he explained to those present that Prince Claus was the late husband of Princess Beatriz, the Dutch queen; and the elements that are considered to award this prize annually to different persons on the world stage. In his reading he also added the fact that her right to travel had been violated, along with that of Guillermo Fariñas (Sakharov Prize 2010 and present at this ceremony), something that unfortunately continues to be a daily practice in Cuban reality.

Yoani’s statement started by thanking the Dutch ambassador, the members of the Prince Claus Foundation, those present, including the readers, commentators and translators of her blog — something that defines her in its simplicity. She also shared with us her plans for the immediate future and invited everyone to accompany her to be part of the same, distinguishing the importance of maintaining the differences that “feed our plurality and avoid the recognized error of unanimity.”

* The photo which accompanies the present work was by courtesy of Reinaldo Escobar, Yoani’s husband.

January 10 2011

During the first two weeks of January, the Cuban press omitted news of interest to the island population. They forgot, for example, the declaration of the spy Gerardo Hernández, imprisoned in the United States since 2001, who, in a desperate appeal denied our government the affirmation that the small planes shot down by Castro’s orders fell in international waters.

To the intent to save this spy, an exodus got together towards the United States of Pedro Álvarez, ex-president of the Alimport enterprise and of the Cuban Chamber of Commerce, who was, besides, Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade and was in charge of all the food and medicine purchases in the United States in 2001, arrangements that even the island populace doesn´t know thanks to the omission of the press, so partisan and governmental that it leaves us in limbo.

In January 2011 the old news policy continues of legitimizing the regime measuring the manipulation of successes, the praises of the health care system, the passion for convenient figures, and masking figures of the past as if they stopped the vanities of time.

The news game of January includes another chapter against Luís Posada Carriles, the violence in Southern Sudan and other international disgraces, almost all of which occurred in “enemy territory”, including the European Economic Community, which just denied them visa-less transit to the Union to citizens of Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey, which worried Cuban censors, to whom it seemed find that our government maintains the Exit Visa and insists upon an Invitation Card to pariahs of the island.

The official press released the latest dismissals and naming of ministers ordered by General Castro; praised the anti-democratic opinions of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his counterpart in Nicaragua, Cuba’s playmates. They also reported on the British cruise ships that will stop in Havana in 2011, which promotes tourism and hard currency income. Forgotten, however, was the award ceremony for the Prince Claus Prize given to Yoani Sanchez, held on Friday the 7th at the residence of the Ambassador from Holland in our capital, because the military government refused an exit permit for the famous blogger for the eighth time.

Offsetting the omissions several articles praised past figures who came down from their statues and applauded the leaders who rebuild socialism. Julio Antonio Mella, died in Mexico in January 1929, and Jose Marti Perez, born on January 28, 1853 and died in combat in May 1895, are the gladiators of the past who should guide us to victory.

In the tribute to Mella, the inert god of the steps, they praised his work as founder of the Federation of University Students and the Communist Party of Cuba, from which was ousted for opposing the policy guidelines of the Soviet Union, so he went to Mexico, where he was accepted into the political body of the Marxists, where he shared the bed of the Italian model Tina Modotti, a lover of other communists. These things are said by contemporaries of the hero, not by Granma and Juventud Rebelde, who claim that Mella was not shot by Modotti’s husband, but by hired assassins of President Gerardo Machado, our first tyrant.

Although Jose Marti is the most trumpeted ethical and spiritual national icon, the scribes of our press take down his bronze busts and put him out to pasture in the meetings of bureaucrats and generals who rule the island as a military camp. Maybe that’s why, among so many omissions and tributes, ordinary people perceive Marti, Mella and other oversized figures as symbols of the past.

January 20 2011