I am not going to tell anyone the news about Wikileaks, I’m sure my readers know a lot more about it than we do in Cuba; I do want to comment on the repercussions of the Wikileaks revelations in my media. They have even dedicated a Roundtable TV show to it. And it could be that there are still those shocked by what is at stake in the world today and the moral implications of all that’s been uncovered, but save for some angry gestures here and there, this how the world’s intelligence and diplomacy community functions.
I watched the Roundtable go on about what would results from a massive leak of information in Cuba, and what the “disqualifications” would be for a Caribbean version of the wiki portal. The truth is that in the midst of so many documents, it was rather expected that the Cuban government would “get its hands dirty.” The neighbor should not have too much fun with the hailstorm if their own roof is made of glass.
He studied medicine, put on the white coat, entered a hospital to work in a specialty, and blindly believed in the maxims of Hippocrates. At first, imbued with a fascination for cells, muscles and tendons, he barely noticed that his colleagues walked in mended shoes, and that he himself did not earn enough to feed his family. He saw too much in the Artemis hospital: the professional greatness of some and the material disaster of all. One day it was announced with great fanfare that they were going to raise the salaries of all heath care workers. But barely 48 Cuban pesos, the equivalent of 2.00 convertible pesos — or about $1.60 U.S. — were added to his meager monthly salary.
So he and a friend wrote a letter to the minister of his profession, communicating the discontent among physicians at such a ridiculous increase. They managed to collect 300 signatures and delivered it to the Minister of Health, as well as to the Council of State, the seat of power on this Island. The answer came a few weeks later in the form of his expulsion from his specialty. Five months later both letter writers were fired and their university degrees stripped away. Five years have passed since those events, but neither of the two has been able to get work in a clinic as a doctor.
Last week, Jeovany Jiménez Vega — the protagonist and victim of this story — decided to go on a hunger strike in Marti Park in Guanajay, to demand from the Office of the Minister of Public Health, that he and his colleague Dr. Rodolfo Martinez Vigoa, be restored to the practice of medicine. In the same days when the Cuban news featured the air traffic controllers’ strike in Spain and the worker protests in Greece, two men languished very near to us and we heard nothing. Yesterday, fortunately, they resumed eating, because Jeovany has decided to open a blog to tell the world; to opt not for starvation but information. He believes that the letter that was signed by only a few could collect thousands of signatures, if it is made public and presented to all the trained doctors in this country stripped of their rights.
Click here to read the declaration, “Interrupting the Strike.” Here is a brief statement by Jeovany Jiménez Vega. [Both are also appended below.]
The new blog will be ready on Monday and will be announced via Twitter.
December 9, 2010
Statement from Jeovany Jimenez Vega
My name is Jeovany Jiménez Vega, friends call me El Chino. For the last four years I’ve lived in Artemisa, a town some 30 miles to the west of Havana, Cuba. I was born on October 10, 1970 in Guanajay, our town nearest to Havana. I went to high school at the José Martí IPUEC of Artemis between 1985 and 1988. That same year I began to study medicine at “Victoria de Girón” Institute of Basic and Preclinical Sciences in Havana and did my clinical course (the third to fifth years), at “Calixto Garcia” Hospital in the Plaza municipality. I graduated in 1994 when the Special Period was at its height, and started work in Guanajay, along with some of my former classmates. I worked in Guanajay for 12 years.
In 2005 the Public Health sector in my country issued a “wage increase” which, like the majority of my colleagues, I thought showed a lack of respect. Together with a friend I sent a letter to the then Minister of Health, Dr. José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, signed by 300 workers (coincidentally the same number as the courageous, although dying, Spartans who fought at Thermopylae) which set out the common approach.
The story of the brutality that followed you can read in the documents on my site, which tell you what you need to know about the seriousness of the matter and show you how things are in our beautiful Cuba. For the moment, I believe this presentation is sufficient.
But it is also important that you know that I like people plain and sincere, modest but with a lively spirit, amusing and friendly, who smile a lot. I admire people who do not dwell on the size or the nature of the dangers when they embrace a just cause. I am taken by intelligent, creative and sensible people and by the same token detest the cowardly and lazy. If you are of the former stripe, here is my open hand, I am your friend forever.
Declaration of Interruption of the Hunger Strike
Dr. Jeovany Jiménez Vega and I have decided to stop the hunger strike began last Friday, in Marti Park in Guanajay, Havana Province, to demand that the Office of the Ministry of Public Health reinstate into the practice of medicine Dr. Jimenez and his colleague Dr. Rodolfo Martinez Vigoa, disqualified for four years now. On Monday afternoon, a messenger from a high authority who preferred to remain anonymous, and who deserves our credit and respect, asked us to interrupt our endeavor because a new door is opening to our demand. Now we will take the path agreed to with the authorities with the aim of being reinstated to our profession.
On September 6th when their children start the school year, many Cuban parents won’t have to get up early to go to work. In the summer of 2010, they joined the contingent of the unemployed.
This is the case for José Benítez, 48-years-old, an electrician who is scratching his head thinking how he can look for a fistful of pesos to maintain his wife and three children. They don’t have relatives overseas, they don’t receive dollars nor euros. Neither do they have the money to start up a private business.
“My future is uncertain. To get cash, I’ll probably do private wiring jobs. My wife, who was a housewife, got a temporary contract cleaning in a hospital. I don’t want to think about tomorrow. While the more I analyze, the less solutions I find for our economic and material problems. God squeezes, but doesn’t kill”, says Benítez, while he watches a Brazilian soap opera.
Many families like that of the electrician José know that they have to warm their chairs more than they should in front of the television. In an attempt to recover the paltry economy, the Cuban leaders have foreseen sending a million people to the street.
This time, the State will only pay 60% of their salary. To find a fix to the difficult labor situation, it is expected that the government will free up even a little more on private work.
One can already sell mangos, avocados, and plantains if you have a plantation on your patio. By whatever means, people are already doing it. René Fiallo, 60-years-old, lives in an old residence in the Sevillano neighborhood. Although the authorities would prohibit him from selling so many mangos and avocados from his trees, René pokes fun at the means.
“Fruit sales constitutes a fundamental source of money in our family. Now I’ll do it legally”, assures Fiallo, who from now on must pay a 5% share of his income in tax.
It is far from being the solution to the traumatic food situation in Cuba. A little patch. In the case of the leasing of lands, expectations are more reserved. The independent economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe thinks that the regime should open its hand without fear.
For Chepe, leasing the land for 10 years isn’t a good solution. “If they want people to work those lands at full steam, they should grant a lease of no less than 50 years. Like in China. If you know that you will occupy a piece of land for only 10 years, you won’t be motivated to continue investing in it when you make certain profits”, affirms the economist.
The end of this summer’s vacations marks the start of a stage of uncertainty for many families. And despite the increase in private work, the majority don’t have a nickel to invest in a small enterprise.
On top of that, every day the people have to put up with a ferocious media blast about the critical work situation in the United States and the European Union. The capitalist countries aren’t doing well. That’s certain.
But the Cubans wish that their leaders wouldn’t bury their heads in the ground before their problems. That is what’s happening. Fidel Castro has eyes for nothing other than to read news about a supposed nuclear war. And predict catastrophes.
As if it weren’t enough with those who in their homes have so many unemployed Cubans.
To go back to the Havana of 50 years ago, I haven’t used a time machine, rather a telephone directory from 1960 that a collector of magazines and old books sold me for 50 pesos (2 dollars).
The first novelty was to find that the Spanish Embassy was on Oficios, a street less central than its present location on Cárcel and Zulueta. And that the ambassador was Juan Pablo de Lojendio Irure, Marqués de Vellisca (San Sebastián 1906 – Rome 1973), posted in Cuba since 1952.
This Spanish diplomat became famous because on January 22, 1960, just past midnight, he showed up in the television studio where Fidel Castro, in a live appearance, accused him of helping Catholic priests set up clandestine printing presses and of protecting counterrevolutionaries.
Lojendio, an adventuresome Basque, was watching this speech in his residence, and at hearing it, shot out like greased lightning, headed for the Tele Mundo channel. He interrupted the program and got in Castro’s face like nobody had ever publicly done until then. The transmission was cut off. The guards took him out of there and in 24 hours he had to abandon the country.
Of great interest, at least to those of my generation, is to discover the great number of companies — national and foreign — that existed in that era. Many with English language names, like McCann Erickson de Cuba S.A., General Electric Cubana, or Pan American World Airways.
Something that is hardly surprising if one recalls that a year after the bearded ones came to power, Cuba was still the seat of American firms like Coca Cola, Esso, Shell, Goodyear, Dupont, Firestone, Sinclair, Swift, and US Rubber, among others. Or banking entities like The Chase Manhattan Bank, The Bank of Nova Scotia, and The Royal Bank of Canada.
To the younger drivers of “almendrones” (old American cars), you’ll find it difficult to believe that in 1960 — only in the capital — you could find various automobile dealers: Chevrolet, Ford, Chrysler, Buick, Fiat, Volkswagen … and if one wanted to rent a car, you could do it at Hertz Rent A Car, at Infanta and 23.
Cubans who today have to buy — in foreign currency — soaps, deodorants, shampoos, colognes and detergents, in the first years of the revolution, for pesos, you could even buy toiletry products made by the two great national businesses, Crusellas and Sabatés, and by the foreign Revlon, Max Factor, Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein and Avon, among others located in the capital.
Also in Havana were located the five principal breweries of the island: Hatuey, Cristal, Polar, Tropical, and Cabeza de Perro. In Guanabacoa, Miller High Life had an office.
In that directory appear the names, addresses, and phone numbers of 131 cinemas and 3 drive-ins in Havana. On the main cinematographic circuit debuted “Our Man in Havana”, a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Graham Greene, filmed in April of 1959 in locations around Old Havana and starring Alec Guinnes and Maureen O’Hara.
In 1960 not only was Ambassador Lojendio expelled from Cuba. Also having to go were the Bacardí Family, owners of the distillery and rum factory that, in 1862, in Santiago de Cuba, had been founded by the Catalán Don Facundo Bacardí Massó.
The revolutionary government nationalized all of its facilities, but it couldn’t prevent Bacardí from being the best rum in the world. Although today it is produced in Puerto Rico.
Iván García
Photo: Peter Stockpole, Life Magazine, 1959. The actor Alec Guinness during the filming of “Our Man In Havana”, in Sloppy Joe’s, a bar situated on Zulueta and Ánimas. Since its founding in the 1920s, its owner, the Galician José Abeal Otero converted it into one of the preferred tourist and military spots for Americans who, before 1959, traveled to the island. Among its more famous clients was the writer Ernest Hemingway.
“It is always good to be, even in serious cases, as least hypocritical as possible.”
April started off with good news for Havana’s lovers of the seventh art. I refer to the exhibit in the Charles Chaplin cinema of Martí:the Eye of the Canary, a fictionalized feature-length film, passionate and emotional, that successfully explores the inner world and character building that shaped the historical significance of José Martí; a purpose that evokes the theory of the father of Cuban pedagogy, José de la Luz y Caballero, who asserted that the processes that found a people are require as a premise for their accomplishment the preparation of historical subjects and the basic moral foundation, a mission that Luz devoted his life to. He accumulated all that is valuable of the most celebrated men of his time, which he enriched with his wisdom and handed to his students, among them Rafael María de Mendive, the maestro of our José Martí.
The tape — divided into four interconnected sections which are condensed decisive events in the childhood and adolescence of the young Martí: bees, arias, birthdays and bars — is the first of a series that will feature films from Uruguay, Mexico and other countries in the region. It was produced by a professional group at the highest level, led by Fernando Perez as director and screenwriter, with photography by Raul Perez Ureta (National Film Award 2010), art direction and scenery by Erick Grass; the soundtrack by Edesio Alejandro, Rafael Rey on production and the interpretation of the main roles by professionals Broselianda Hernández (Leonor Perez), Rolando Brito (Mariano Martí), Manuel Porto (Don Salustiano) and Julio César Ramírez (Mendive), together with the successful performance of Damian Rodriguez and Daniel Romero (Martí children and youth, respectively), and Eugenio Torroella and Fernando López (Fermín Valdés Domínguez young child).
The critics are dealing with and will have to deal with this film for a long time, for that reason, and because I am not a specialist in the field, I will make just three points that I consider of great interest: the characteristics of its director, the figure Marti and the message it contains.
The Director
Fernando Pérez Valdés, the Cuban filmmaker most emblematic of the decade of the nineties of last century and winner of the 2007 National Film Award 2007, is considered among the best directors in Latin America. Celluloid caught Perez in the networks of images and sounds from the impression received as a child by one of those timeless films, I refer to The Bridge over the River Kwai (1957), directed by David Lean film, which chronicled the construction of a railway bridge by prisoners of war, in which there were cultural differences and similarities of feelings between captives and captors. Driven by this perception, the author of Martí:the Eye of the Canary, entered the ICAIC in 1962, an institution that played a large role in his education: production assistant and management (1971-1976), Noticiero ICAIC (1979-1981 ); and in parallel he studied Hispanic Art and Literature at the University of Havana (1965-1972).
The influence of prominent Cuban and foreign filmmakers in his development cannot be ignored. Among the former, Tomas Gutierrez Alea, who brought rigor in his relentless pursuit; Santiago Alvarez, founding figure of documentary filmmaking was his cinemagraphic “father”; Manuel Octavio Gómez, director of the first educational documentary of ICAIC; Manuel Herrera, co-founder of the Experimental Motion Picture Association of Santa Clara (1959); Sergio Giral, director of the feature film The other Francisco (1975), a film that explores the true face of slavery; and José Massip, director of the documentary History of a Ballet (Yoruba Suite) (1962), First Gold Dove Award at the Short Film Festival Leipzig. Among the latter, it suffices to mention the Polish director Andrzej Wajda, director of classics such as Ashes and Diamonds (1958) and Landscape after Battle (1970), reflecting the passions, tensions and hopes of the generation of Poles who emerged from the ruins of World War II, films that enter into the moral problems that triggered the conflict between individual choice and political action; the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, author of Before the Revolution (1964) and The Conformist (1970), who was notable in the film adaptation of classic literature, concerned with the political and sexual themes and the characters’ inner world; the British-American Alfred Hitchcock, master of suspense, author of The Pleasure Garden (1925), also made several series of short stories with television hits such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1959-1962) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1963-1965), highlighted by the use of psychological elements and visual impact to bring spectators to the climax.
With this knowledge, Fernando began a rich production of documentaries that range from Chronicle of a Victory (1975), co-directed with the late Jesus Diaz, to the best of them, Omara (1983), from where he jumped to what most appealed to him, fictional film — or more specifically realistic fiction — with his finest work, the feature-length Clandestines (1987, a story of love set in the battle in the cities during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista; Hello Hemingway (1990), small personal short stories; the medium length Madagascar (1994), a film that explores the human condition, expressed in symbolic language able to communicate a state of subjectivity for which the words become insufficient and that masterfully closed Cuban cinema of the last century; Life’s Whistle (1998), where, from an imagined future, he tells a history that coincides with our present, to address the pursuit of happiness through inner freedom, truth and social communication; Suite Havana (2003), reflecting the dreams and aspirations that strengthen the will and make you see the future more clearly by turning out contradictory reality into an inexhaustible source of inspiration from love and from inner freedom: a love of one’s neighbor and of a city that despite its state of abandonment and destruction is full of beauty and possibilities; and Madrigal (2006), a mixture of artifice and reality, a philosophical reflection about time that lies in the future, with a script that is a kind theater play within the theater, an action that begins in Havana to end in a city of the future. All of these are vital parts of the Cuban cinema, and winners of many prizes inside and outside our borders.
Fernando was also influenced by Georges Melies — a cinema pioneer, who, after attending an exhibition in 1895 of Antoine Lumière, immediately perceived the possibilities of the new technique and conceived of film to produce illusions — whose concern about political reality led him, in his first feature, The Dreyfus Affair (1899), into the magical world from fantasy to history, to discover that film is a new way of seeing, interpreting and shaping the reality according to the will of the artist. Fernando, for his part, has highlighted the potential of film to promote critical thinking among Cubans, a practical demonstration of complex social problems that concern everyone, especially the intellectuals, and aesthetes of change, critical of our shortcomings and sources of connection between our traditions and universal knowledge.
According to the filmmaker himself, in an interview TV interview on Friday December 9, 2005, he is a filmmaker, but above all a moviegoer who relies more on questions than known answers, who prefers the image to the word to express concepts resulting from his investigations. Filled with love, respect and concern for others, Fernando is living expression of the human, a Habanero for whom the most important are his children, film and Cuba. His creativity emanates from these qualities, experiences, desires, frustrations and dreams, a combination of architecture and poetry that is expressed in a symbolic language through the construction of images and sounds. From these traits, the choice of childhood and adolescence of Martí at the heart of his latest work, does not seem casual. The son of a low-income postman and a homemaker, Fernando received at home what he calls the upbringing of respect, which enriched his concerns and his relationship with the world of cinema, an ethics expressed in the pursuit of one’s own happiness together with that of others, beginning with the family and extended to teachers and students, bosses and subordinates, friends and acquaintances.
The Figure of Martí
José Julián Martí Pérez, the son of a soldier and a housewife, both of limited education, became a prominent politician, historian, writer, speaker, teacher and journalist. A transformation originating from his intelligence, the love of his mother, his father and righteousness of his relationship with the director of the Boys’ School in Havana, Don Rafael Maria de Mendive, who put him in touch with the most valuable of the torrent of political and cultural ideas that had formed inside and outside the colony.
The great work of Martí begins after his political imprisonment for the critical apprehension of the preceding thought, including the mistakes made by the Cubans in the Ten Years’ War, to form a modern republic, based on the full dignity of man; a goal yet to be realized. His thinking, synthesis of love, virtue and civility, is not outdated. Marti established a genetic relationship between party and logic, war, independence and republic. Guided by the maxim that in the hour of victory only the seeds sown in time of war bear fruit, and delineated the functions of the latter so that in it were the seeds of true independence and a republic conceived as equal rights for everyone born in Cuba and free space for the expression of thought, so that each Cuban would be entirely free politically. Definitions topped with that ideal still as distant as it was then: I want the law of our republic to be the granting to Cubans of the full dignity of man.
The dignity of the human being, one of his greatest, if not the greatest, concerns, expressed itself in practical action. He made every effort to achieve a change in the mindset of the military leaders. For this reason he broke from the Gómez-Maceo Plan and wrote the Generalissimo in 1884: “What a shame to have to say these things to a man whom I believe to be sincere and good, and in whom there are the outstanding qualities to become truly great. But one thing is beyond any personal sympathy that you can inspire in me, and even all reason of apparent opportunity: and it is my determination not to contribute in the least, from blind love to an idea that I am living my life to bring to my country a regime of personal despotism that would be more shameful and unfortunate than the political despotism which is now supported, and is more serious and difficult to eradicate, because it would be excused by certain virtues and embellished with the idea embodied in it, and legitimized by the triumph.”
In Maestros Ambulantes he condensed his aspirations into the following words: “Men have to live in the quiet enjoyment, natural and inevitable, of freedom, like they must live in the enjoyment of air and light.” Fernando presents this Martí during his formative time. One who, as recounted in the film, published his first political article in el Diablo Cojuelo, a newspaper edited by his friend Fermín Valdés Domínguez, who, the day after the Havana Volunteers attacked the Theatre Villanueva, wrote the dramatic poem Abdala which, at such a young age, gives a beautiful definition of homeland: he who, when the teacher Mendive was arrested and imprisoned, he frequently visited him in prison; he who, together with Fermín Valdés Domínguez, wrote the letter to his classmate Carlos de Castro y de Castro on October 4, 1869, where he said: “Have you ever dreamed with the glory of apostates? Do you know how in ancient times apostasy was punished? We hope that a disciple of Sr. Rafael María de Mendive will not leave this letter unanswered.” In the judicial process when he was asked, “Was it you or Fermín?” the answer was firm and manly: “I was the one who wrote it!” For which he was sentenced to six years imprisonment with hard labor.
The Message
The efforts in the search of economic efficiency, in addition to the obligatory taking into account of the interests of the producers, will fail it they do not simultaneously proceed to perform an ethical reset of relationships from the family to the public. in this sense, it imposes a joint labor,m where art is called upon to play an important role, a role that begins with the rescue of human dignity, the value inside, vital and irreplaceable possessed by each human being, and which constitutes an indispensable tool to accept ideals, reject or form new ones, a force that allows people to feel free, even in conditions of oppression, as demonstrated by the Apostle in his youth. And Marti, The Eye of the Canary, is a hymn to the dignity, that is, from my point of view, the main message of the film: an appeal to the rescue of dignity, from the emotional as a way to reflect and change. The agreement between the Cuban present and the contents of the tape, seems to respond to the Marti thesis to do at every moment, what is needed in that moment. Thank you, Fernando!
Originally published in Issue 15 (May-June 2010) of the online magazine Convivencia. “Marti, The Eye of the Canary”, by Fernando Perez, will be competing in the Feature Films category in the 32nd New Latin American Film Festival. It was recently awarded the Colón de Plata award for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography at the Latin American Film Festival XXXVI. A good opportunity for blog readers who have not seen it.
For a long time, here on my planet, we have been waiting to see what might happen. We can never plan anything in our lives because we are not certain of being able to achieve anything no matter how much effort we make.
Another December 24th is approaching, although the stores are still empty. The long daily pilgrimage in search of food wears us out. We have to visit at least two or three markets find enough to make a salad. Not to mention meat (mostly pork), every day less and lower quality.
We, the people on this planet, despite all the daily difficulties, cherish throughout the year the idea of having a decent Christmas Eve. That means, having at least one piece of barbecue pork, some black beans, white rice, some dessert and at least one bottle of wine, even homemade. I don’t think that is so much to ask for. However, this can not be achieved in all households, for this simple meal would cost the following:
About four pounds of pork, thirty-five pesos a pound, would be a hundred and forty pesos.
Two pounds of black beans, at fifteen pesos a pound, would make a total of thirty pesos.
Two pounds of rice at three-fifty a pound, would add another seven, green pepper costs twelve pesos a pound and onion ten. A dessert will not be less than ten pesos: guava paste and soy cream cheese, plus the above mentioned bottle of wine would cost about sixty Cuban pesos. The cost of fuel and so on would make the final tally two-hundred-sixty-nine pesos for a simple and paltry dinner.
If the average salary is about three hundred pesos (which it is not, not precisely), on what can a citizen of this planet count on to have a poor Christmas dinner? Furthermore, what money would remain for the end of the month?
But since this country seems to be miraculous, the people use their ingenuity to get the money, either with the help of friends or family overseas, or by some last minute business. We are just holding our breath, God will have the last word.
You can cut the social tension with a knife. You can see it at a glance. Let me tell you. On a bus on the P-3 line, full of passengers, a skinny black man blew up, furious, and got into a heated brawl with a student. Just because he had been stepped on.
In addition to kicks and punches, each swing of the man’s huge machete, totally out of control, caused a fearful roar of the nearly 200 people who crammed the bus. People escaped through the windows to avoid being hurt.
A little later, two drivers of state vehicles came to blows in the street. The trigger was that one of them had abruptly made a dangerous turn and almost caused a collision. Those who were in the cars also took part in the street fight.
On the same night, a few guys, drunk to the gills, started a ‘war’ with stones, cold steel, and loud cursing, for no apparent reason, in a quiet neighborhood in the Diez de Octubre municipality. The residents, terrified, watched the brawl from their windows.
Too much violence for one day. As usual, the police arrived late. As if that were not enough violent incidents in various parts of Havana, reports came of others in different locations on the island. Some ended up in acts of protests against the regime. The most notorious example was in the city of Santa Clara. The spark that started the scuffle was not showing the awaited Barcelona-Real Madrid soccer match in a theater.
In Bayamo, famous because in 1868 many villagers set fire to their houses and properties before giving them up to the Spanish army, a group of drivers created a ruckus over what they considered unfair taxation.
A freelance journalist told me that in October, in the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo alone, the number of cases of excessive violence was about 100, among family members, and in the worst kind of bars, nightclubs and slums.
A sociologist who was consulted explains that increases in social tension and discontent which have recently occurred on the island are caused by unemployment, lack of any future, and high taxes on self-employment. Previously, the government used to open the door to emigration to the U.S. when the social situation became ugly.
In 1963, 1980 and 1994 hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled to Florida to escape a hopeless life. But now the Castros know that they can not open the valve of the pressure cooker that is Cuba, triggering a massive wave of migration.
Senior Pentagon officials have said publicly they would consider this to be an act of war. Therefore, the way to drain the high tensions of the beleaguered Cubans could be serious and profound political and economic reforms.
Meanwhile the sensible locals search for effective answers to the outbreaks of violence, the ordinary people who, for whatever reason, get into brawls.
This is a serious matter. A time bomb with incalculable consequences. Believe me, what’s to come is not exactly good news for the Castro brothers.
Photo: Roly63, Panoramio. Street Brawl in the Havana neighborhood of Cerro
A few months ago, amid a great fanfare of propaganda, the ashes of Emilia Teurbe Tolón were brought back and placed in a monument, built on land to the side of the main chapel in the Colombus cemetery, in the city of Havana. It was Teurbe Tolón who, in New York, towards the end of the first half of the 19th century, made the first Cuban flag, our national symbol since the Constitution of Guáimaro in 1869. Later she continued to work for the independence of Cuba. This tribute is well-deserved; it’s good to acknowledge our history.
The odd thing about this recognition of the flag is that it was restricted to the person who made it, while the man who designed it, ordered it to be made, brought it to Cuba, unfurled it for the first time in Cárdenas, Matanzas (19-May-1850), fought for it, and died for it by the garrote in Havana (1-September-1851), was ignored. I refer to General Narciso López.
Narciso López, of Venezuelan origin, who married in Cuba and lived there and in exile in the USA, has been a divisive figure in the history of Cuba. Both praised and criticised in the time of the Republic, depending on the political swings, during this extended period of more than 50 years he has been: either completely forgotten as a patriot or demonised as a supporter of annexation.
The interesting thing about Narciso López is that, although he lived in a time in which the desire for independence was not supreme, but rather the demand for annexation and reform, he was not an annexationist, and no historian, of the right or the left, has been able to show that he was with any credible evidence.
There is something which should not be forgotten: Narciso López, Venezuelan born, trained as a soldier in the Spanish army, he planned and fought for the independence of Cuba, (he was a pioneer in this, 20 years before Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and the Cubans took to the hills), he raised on Cuban soil, for the first time, the national ensign, and he gave his life for her bravely. He was a man of his time (1798-1851) and he deserves honour and glory, and to take his rightful place in the history of the Cuban nation.
With great effort I’ve managed to read the eleven pages of “The Transformations Required in the Public Health System.” I have the impression that if we took out all the ideological apologies — such as, “the direction of our glorious Party,” or this one, “the immense historic responsibility we have for the future of the fatherland” — the text would only be three pages. Sadly, the ability to synthesize has never been a virtue of those who govern us.
To make matters worse, in the meat of it there’s not much there, other than a shifting and rearranging of equipment and personnel from here to there, the well-known and prioritized “internationalist” work, and a strange insinuation that there is a surplus of doctors — I say it’s strange because it’s true but I didn’t expect them to say it. There is not a word that speaks specifically to a wage increase for workers in the Ministry of Health, much less any guarantees to citizens about the quality of the services. There is even a delirious expression (semantically and grammatically) about medical ethics: “The Medical Ethics Commission should not act as a court, but should think of itself as an ideological commission.” Can anyone imagine the practical significance of such a statement?
More of the same and yet they call it transformations. Sometimes I wonder if really — even with the political will — the government will manage to fix the debacle that has been steadily building in public health.
I am not going to tell anyone the news about Wikileaks, I’m sure my readers know a lot more about it than we do in Cuba; I do want to comment on the repercussions of the Wikileaks revelations in my media. They have even dedicated a Roundtable TV show to it. And it could be that there are still those shocked by what is at stake in the world today and the moral implications of all that’s been uncovered, but save for some angry gestures here and there, this how the world’s intelligence and diplomacy community functions.
