Translating Cuba

Angel Santiesteban Included in the Defending Freedoms Project

24 February 2015 — In December 2012, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, together with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and Amnesty International, U.S., created the Defending Freedoms Project, with the objective of supporting human rights and religious freedom worldwide, with a particular focus on prisoners of conscience.

Specifically, the members of Congress who “adopt” prisoners of conscience, in solidarity with those brave men and women throughout the world, pledge to plead publicly for their freedom.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats and the journalist José Antonio Torres, both Cuban political prisoners, have recently been included on the list.

This new recognition of Ángel Santiesteban-Prats is added to what he recently received on behalf of the German Eurodeputy, Dr. Christian Ehlerquien, who assumed the political sponsorship of the imprisoned Cuban writer.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Lettuces of Lead / 14ymedio, Rosa Lopez

Urban organic garden in Miramar, Havana (flickr)

14ymedio, Rosa Lopez, Havana, 1 March 2015 – The raised bed exhibits its curly lettuces a few meters from the rough concrete building. There is an hour to go before the urban organic garden near Hidalgo Street in the Plaza township begins its sale, but already customers are thronging to get fresh vegetables and lower prices. None of them knows that the products they will buy here are neither organic nor very safe for their health.

Urban agriculture is a phenomenon that dawned in the nineties with the rigors of the Special Period. In the words of a humorist, “We Havanans turned ourselves into peasants and planted leeks even on balconies.” The economic crisis and the inefficiency of state farms required taking advantage of empty lots in order to cultivate greens and vegetables.

The initiative helped all these years to alleviate shortages and has many defenders who emphasize their community character, so different from the mechanization of modern agriculture. Nevertheless, together with the undeniable merits are hidden serious problems that point to the contamination of the crops with wastes characteristic of urban areas. continue reading

Hidden, serious problems point to the contamination of the crops with wastes characteristic of urban areas

Nationwide, about 40,000 people work in urban agriculture projects on some 83,000 acres (130 square miles) that are divided into 145,000 parcels, 385,000 patios*, 6,400 intensive gardens and 4,000 urban organic gardens. These last under the leadership of the Ministry of Agriculture, although with some autonomy for crop management.

With these lands planted in populated areas, it has been the goal to reduce food insecurity, offer greater access to fresh produce and to expand green spaces in urban zones.

Havana has 97 high yield urban organic gardens. One of the best known is located in the Alamar neighborhood and is currently managed by a cooperative of 180 members. The capital also has 318 intensive gardens, with crops sown directly in the ground, in addition to 38 crops that are semi-protected and in enriched soil.

The soil enrichment uses a technique known as vermicomposting, which consists of transforming solid wastes by the action of earthworms and micro-organisms. The problem is that many of the urban wastes that serve as a basis for the process are gotten from residential trash and carry a big load of heavy metals that with time accumulate in greens and vegetables.

The compost comes from household trash containing cadmium and lead above the maximum permissible levels

A study carried out in 2012 by several researchers from the Institute of Soils and that included samples from urban organic gardens in Havana and Guantanamo brought to light that “the compost obtained from the urban solid wastes originating in household trash extracted from landfills without prior sorting, and the subsoils prepared from them, contain heavy metals, especially cadmium and lead, above the maximum permissible levels.”

The lack of an effective system of trash sorting and processing works against us, because much of the waste used for compost in the urban organic gardens has had previous contact with materials like cans, paints, and batteries, thrown indiscriminately into landfills all over the country.

Furthermore, the process to achieve compost often is not carried out properly, so that the pathogens contained in the wastes are not destroyed. Although part of the material used in this process comes from the garden itself, trash from nearby settlements, market wastes and agro-industrial refuse are also added.

Family gardens account for close to 90% of the greens consumed by the population, so ingestion of high doses of heavy metals could be affecting a great number of Cubans.

Irrigation adds a high content of chlorine and other water purifiers

Irrigation of the urban organic gardens aggravates the problem because the water comes from the population’s supply network and affects the amount of water available for human consumption, besides also being unsuitable for crops because of the high content of chlorine and other purifying products.

The proximity of streets and avenues to the crops worsens the pollution because heavy metals also arrive through the ground and the air. Add to that the use of pesticides and fungicides for control of pests in the urban organic gardens. An un-confessed but widespread practice.

Most alarming is that the Ministry of Agriculture keeps silent about this matter and does not promote research into the presence of chemical agents harmful to health in produce that consumers imagine fresh and organic. Complicity or apathy? No one knows, but there are many reasons to distrust that bunch of lettuce with its attractive green leaves.

*Translator’s note: “Patios” in this context refers to home gardens producing food primarily for family consumption.

Translated by MLK

Naty Revuelta, Some Notes for an Incomplete Biography / 14ymedio, Regina Coyula

14ymedio, Regina Coyula, 2 March 2015 — Beautiful, intelligent, affluent – as Félix de Cossío portrayed her, dressed for a party – Natalia Revuelta Clews was collaborating with the Orthodox Party when, on 10 March 1952, hearing of Batista’s coup d’etat on the way to her job as an executive at Esso Standard Oil, she ordered two sets of copies of the keys to her home in Vedado: one for Milla Ochoa, leader of the Orthodox Party, and the other for another Orthodox Party member, Fidel Castro. Giving them the keys was offering them a safe place in case of danger. Fidel and Naty didn’t know each other personally, but that action would mark the rest of her life.

A university degree, fluency in three languages, and a strong culture would have allowed her to engage in any activity; but she was relegated to the mid-level bureaucracy, always under the burden of her adulterous relationship with Fidel – a petty-bourgeois prejudice of the Marxist Revolution. She went on trying to be useful.

I met her through my husband, with whom she shared half a century of friendship, and we were friends despite the huge differences we had on matters of politics. Our conversations were peppered with disagreements, but we never allowed such differences to tarnish our good relationship.

Many knew her as “the mother of Fidel’s daughter” and it’s easy to assume that she enjoyed the privileges of a kept woman. Quite the contrary continue reading

, the personal and social cost was enormous. Among other things, Naty pawned her jewels to finance in part the Moncada Assault and, at the triumph of the Revolution, she gave her home (now a diplomatic residence) and moved to a smaller house.

The society to which she belonged never forgave her; and her daughters had to suffer the breakup of the family they knew. She felt responsible for the estrangement of her daughters, and never said anything that reflected badly on them; on the contrary, she was happy with the achievements of both and especially proud of her granddaughter.

It was in my house where she came to vent her humiliation of having been excluded from the celebrations for the release of the Moncada barracks attackers. They also refused her a place in the 26^th of July events, despite her having been the third woman to become a “moncadista.” All this happened after her daughter Alina fled the country.

Naty gave me the complete originals of the correspondence between her and Fidel Castro during the almost two years he was in prison on the Isle of Pines

Life often offers substitutes. Naty was a required presence at book launches, concerts or exhibitions; she was always invited to the activities at the diplomatic sees of Spain, Netherlands or the United States; she was a supporter of the National Library or of the Fragua Martiana (Marti’s Forge).

In her later years she was assiduous in a history group at the Dulce Maria Loynaz Cultural Center and dedicated many hours to reading and selecting what came to her by email to forward the articles and news that were of interest to her friends. This effort came to overwhelm her, but she considered it a duty to share this information, which they later thanked her for.

Naty’s confidence in me became clear ten years ago when she gave me the complete originals of the correspondence between her and Fidel Castro during the almost two years he was in prison on the Isle of Pines and later when he was in Mexico, to organize chronologically and transcribe into digital format.

It was weeks of work to unravel with a magnifying glass the rushed and cramped handwriting of the letters from the Presidio Modelo; however Naty’s letters were very easy because they were typed. Letters that the whole world had heard of but very few had seen and that Naty, aware of the value of this collection of paper, had never given to the Council of State’s Office of Historical Affairs, nor did she want them published in her lifetime. Now, major publishers will begin the bidding with her daughter Alina, fruit of that relationship and inheritor of the correspondence.

Behind all the media attention she has always sparked, Naty was a woman who paid for her decisions and who was loyal, not to Fidel Castro as many think, since over the years she learned to separate the public man from the private, but with the idea of social justice associated with the triumph of the 1959 Revolution.

Like any human being, she had her defects and virtues. Everyone will have their own Naty Revuelta, a character worthy of literature.

Natalia Revuelta, Mother of Castro’s Daughter Alina Fernandez, Dies in Havana / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Havana, 2 March 2015 — Natalia Revuelta Clews, Fidel Castro’s ex-lover and the mother of his daughter, Alina Fernandez Revuelta, died last Saturday in Havana, according to the website Café Fuerte. Naty, as she was popularly known, was 89-years-old and died of emphysema.

Naty Revuelta’s remains were cremated at the request of her daughter, who was in Havana at the time of her death. Last August, Alina Fernández Revuelta returned to Cuba after 21 years in exile in Miami, when her mother suffered a stoke from which she was recovering favorably. Since then, her trips to Havana were frequent.

Naty Revuelta became a great political activist during the dictatorship of Batista. She met Fidel Castro in 1952 and three years later began a romantic relationship from which her daughter was born in 1956. Revuelta never withdrew her support for Castro and the Communist Party.

Family Code: Socialism’s Straight Jacket / Cubanet, Miriam Celaya

Mom with young "Pioneer" — Mom with young “Pioneer”

The newspaper Granma insists that “it’s a code for the rights of women”. But in 1919, as many women proportionally graduated from the University of Havana as graduated from universities in the U.S. And with the Revolution, Cuban women are forced to raise their children under the mores of socialism, with the slogan “We will become like Che.”

Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 28 February 2015 — In an extensive full-page article published on February 14th, the newspaper Granma (“Un Código de Amor para la Familia“), is full of praise for the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Family Code, which – in the words of Dr. Olga Mesa Castillo, president of the Cuban Civil Rights Society and of the Family of the National Syndicate of Attorneys, and faculty professor of and consultant to the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana — “is a code about the love and the rights of women.”

Paradoxically, not even the most politically correct academic discourse of a second-hand law officer can hide certain flaws that reveal the passive role of Cuban women since, with the arrival of F. Castro to power, their autonomy was appropriated and, along with it, their ability to freely associate to defend their gender interests, issues relating to the family, the right to choose their children’s education, etc. In fact, it can be argued that the Revolution of 1959 put to rest even the last vestiges of the Cuban feminist movement continue reading

That explains why, when Dr. Mesa refers to “those who conceived and were involved in [the code’s] drafting,” she mentioned ten people’s names and only one of them was a woman, which means that the Family Code, which “enabled Cuban women to fly” was – just like the Revolution itself and all of its laws — essentially conceived and drafted by men, though by then 16 long years had elapsed under a system of supposed gender equality.

Nevertheless, we must be aware that this law, de jure, benefited the interests of minor children born in or outside marriage, it favored the allowing of divorce, and constituted a guarantee for families based on informal (or consensual) marriages, and for the right of children born from those unions. Another question would be to determine how effective the law has been in practice, if it has been applied extensively, and how the subject of civil law would be justified at a preset ideology, when sanctioning the obligation to establish a family and raise children “according to socialist standards.”

Cleaning up history

So, beyond the official vice of collecting calendar anniversaries for whatever reason, the issue moves us to question and to calling to mind, not just because of the usual compliments to justice and female equity, achieved thanks to the Revolution, or because of the monumental tackiness of adopting the law on Valentine’s day, but for the perversity of intentionally misrepresenting the role of women in Cuban history, omitting the unquestionable legal gains made by the women’s movement during the Republican period.

An in-depth historical analysis of the role of women since the Cuban wars for independence in the nineteenth-century would be extensive, but it is essential to recall the Republican period because it was then that the foundations of legal conquests were seated, from a women’s movement that — while not claiming the participation of women in politics, as was happening in developed countries, such as the US — at least was struggling for a larger share, employment opportunities, and social protection connected with maternity and family.

Thus, as early as 1914, discussions began about the relevance to legislating divorce. In 1916, a legal bill was presented guaranteeing married women self-management of their assets – managed by their husbands, fathers or guardians until then – which was approved in May, 1918. That same year the divorce bill was passed.

As for educational and cultural strides, by 1919 Cuban women had reached the same level of literacy as men and in the decade of the ‘20s proportionately as many women graduated from the Cuban University as did from American universities. [1]

Between 1923 and 1940, Cuban feminist groups influenced the political forces in support of legislation for women’s rights and founded several associations and media publications to defend women’s interests. There were also women’s associations that promoted class actions, such as the Women’s Labor Union, an organization that placed the issue of working class women ahead of women’s suffrage rights. [2]

At the same time, there was an increase in women’s activism aimed at influencing legislative decisions, partnerships were established with various influential political and economic groups – entirely controlled by men — there were street demonstrations, ideas about women’s rights were published in newspapers and the radio, obstetric clinics were built, night schools for women were organized, women’s health programs were developed and contacts with feminist groups abroad were established. [3]

It is true that women just took part in legislative debates, but the demonstrations organized by activists and the first feminist groups of the time were instrumental in modifying civil and property rights that changed the rules of property management — a distinctly masculine role until then — and along with them, of women within the family, thus taking a significant step forward for women’s rights compared to other countries in the region over the same period.

New laws favored citizenship status of women, establishing their autonomy and rights, which proved a decisive factor for the development of women’s movements in the following years.

In 1923, with the participation of 31 associations, the first women’s national congress was held; the second one in 1925, saw the participation of 71 associations.
In 1933, a strong feminine campaign claimed the right to vote (which had been proposed by Ana Betancourt since the previous century), which was formally acknowledged in the

Interim Constitution of 1934

In 1939, the Third National Congress of Women was held, whose final resolutions demanded “a constitutional guarantee for women’s equal rights,” a demand which was discussed in the Constituent Assembly and finally recognized in Article 97 of the 1940 Constitution: “Universal, equal, and secret suffrage is established for all Cuban citizens as their right, duty, and function.” [4]

Thus, in spite of the traditionalist nature of the feminist movement in Cuba, of the shortage of legal mechanisms and limitations of our ancestral culture and idiosyncrasies, Cuban women could vote and be legally elected to public office even before many suffragists in more developed countries.

To summarize, important legal strides were attained during the Republic, as important as the right to vote, full capacity to make decisions about property, the paid maternity law (though that did not include domestic or agricultural workers), recognition of the rights of “illegitimate” children and a gradual increase in protection of the rights of women workers. In fact, those gains during the Republican era were influential in a notable increase in the incorporation of women into paid jobs, especially in urban areas, a process that was becoming stronger in the years before the arrival of the Castro regime.

Two readings of the same Code

Now the official press and its cohorts of useful shysters, in the style of Dr. Olga Mesa, aim to score for “the Revolution” of 1959 what were legal conquests of Cubans many decades before. While it is true that those female fighters of the Republic did not free themselves of patriarchal subjection – cultural patrimony that even today has not been totally overcome — or participate actively in national politics, they launched a new feminine social model and created favorable conditions to advance to higher levels of emancipation, compared to many countries in the world.

In the years following 1959, the ideology that hijacked the power quickly appropriated all spheres of socio-economic and political life of the nation, including domestic areas. Thus, the full potential and aspirations of feminine equality became subordinate to the service of regime.

The rich tradition of the struggle of Cuban women was finally limited to “a present” on Valentine’s Day of this outdated and anachronistic law called “Family Code,” mechanically repeated in every marriage ceremony… as long as the ceremony takes place between Cubans.

I was able to evidence this these last few days, when I had the opportunity to attend the wedding in Cuba of a young Cuban woman, residing abroad for more than a decade, and her Spanish boyfriend. So, here is where “the Family Code” which — microphone in hand — was read by the celebrant before the spouses and guests, had been mutilated in its essence: the legal imposition of “educating children on the principles of socialist morality.” Since this was the case of spouses who do not reside in Cuba, they were released from such a legal aberration.

As an additional detail, there was no Cuban flag or Cuban coat or arms presiding over the ceremony. Perhaps what happens in these cases is that the services are paid for in foreign currency, and we already know that socialism takes a step back in the face of capital. Or perhaps it is just that, in family matters, capitalism really is “clueless.”

[1] K. LYNN STONER. De la casa a la calle, p. 184
[2] CASTELLANOS, DIMAS CECILIO. Desentrañando claves (inédito), Havana, 2011
[3] CASTELLANOS, DIMAS CECILIO. Desentrañando claves (inédito), Havana, 2011
[4] PICHARDO, HORTENSIA. Documentos para la historia de Cuba. Volume IV, Part 2, p.349

Translated by Norma Whiting

Radio Marti: The Voice of Cuban Dissidents / Ivan Garcia

Iván García, 24 February 2015 — One summer during a stay in Camaguey — a province 340 miles east of Havana — the owner of a house where I was staying listened from early morning to Radio Marti, a network created in 1985 under the administration of Ronald Reagan with the goal of providing Cubans with information uncensored or manipulated by the Castro government.

The woman told me that since 1985 she has been listening to radio soap operas, news and a morning program geared to a rural audience. When I travelled to other provinces, nearly all the people with whom I spoke said they got their information from or followed big league baseball on Radio Marti, which is probably heard more in the countryside than continue reading

in the capital.

There is a logical explanation: the regime jams the station’s broadcasts less here. In Varadero, located on the Hicacos Peninsula and along the northern coast of Cuba, Radio Marti’s programming can be clearly heard.

Given the new geo-political dynamic between Cuba and the United States — two Cold War adversaries — various voices within the U.S. Congress are questioning the effectiveness and impact of the “Martis,” as they refer to an entity that includes a radio station, a television channel and a website.

Among the conditions for normalizing relations with the United States, Raul Castro asked that the media conglomerate be dismantled. Since the first broadcast in 1985 the government in Havana has used electronic jamming to block its radio and television signals. And readers cannot access the Marti Noticias website from Cuba.

Using the radio as a vehicle for informing citizens in totalitarian countries, where news, films and books are controlled by a dictatorship, is nothing new. During the Soviet era, the United States created Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, broadcasters which disseminated information the Kremlin was trying to suppress.

The so-called “asymmetrical war,” which according to the regime is an attempt by the United States to destabilize Cuba, is something of an exaggeration.

With Fidel Castro’s arrival in power in January 1959, revolutionary propaganda became a powerful instrument of social control. One year earlier, in February 1958, Radio Rebelde (Rebel Radio) had already begun broadcasting from the Sierra Maestre, which contributed to the dissemination of the insurgents’ message.

A few months after becoming president, Fidel Castro completely did away with a free press, nationalizing newspapers and magazines, and establishing Prensa Latina and Radio Havana Cuba — media outlets that would later have the task of selling the world on the alleged benefits of the Cuban system, alternating between true and false propaganda.

Official radio networks in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Spain often make use of these tools to their advantage too, but the storyline is different. In spite of being government entities, Voice of America, BBC, Radio France International and Radio Exterior de España air dissenting opinions.

I speak from personal experience. I have been a regular contributor to Radio Marti since 1996. I have been a guest on its radio shows and have had articles published in which I criticized both Cuban dissidents and the government of the United States without any form of censorship.

If Radio Marti were shut down, dissidents and independent journalists would not have a feedback channel to reach those living in Cuba. If the government allowed dissident voices to be heard in the media, the station nestled in Florida would lose its reason for being.

Before returning home after attending a workshop on investigative journalism in San Diego in November 2014, I spent a few days in Miami. There I met producers, directors and journalists who work for the Martis.

I have had frank conversations with Karen Caballero, a presenter on TV Marti. I have debated with Alvaro Alba, Ofelia Oviedo, Hector Carrillo, Amado Gil, Jose Luis Ramos, Rolando Cartaya, Margarita Rojo, Omar Montenegro, Luis Felipe Rojas and Juan Juan Almeida about the future of network.

I had a very productive meeting with Carlos Garcia Perez, director of both Radio Marti and Television Marti, and with officials Humberto Castello and Natalia Crujeiras. I argued that this broadcaster’s radio programs are crucial in providing a platform for the opposition and an outlet for articles by Cuba’s independent journalists.

It is a shame that jamming by the regime prevents TV Marti from being seen on the island. Ideally, it should have a wider audience. We all know the power of images.

In my opinion any reorganization that the Martis might go through should be for the better. Giving a broader platform to independent journalists and alternative bloggers is something that should be considered.

Programs on leisure and recreation could be improved. International news programs could be made more attractive, especially in regards to Venezuela, a country of great interest to some sectors within Cuba.

Thousands of housewives are regular listeners of soap operas. The variety of programming could be increased to offer more shows for women. Sports shows always gets high ratings so it should be given more air time.

Independent journalists in Cuba surely have entertaining stories. This is the 21st century. Never before have humans had access to so many sources of information as today. To reach them means having to be innovative.

The government of Raul Castro prohibits the free flow of news and information. It fears Radio Marti. That’s why it is censored.

Travel Notebook VIII

Photo: Cuba Day, a Radio Marti news show that airs Monday through Friday from 3 to 4 PM. Produced by Ofelia Oviedo, it is directed by Tomás Cardoso, Omar Lopez Montenegro and journalist Cary Roque. Freelance journalist Iván García is often invited to report from Havana. In his last appearance on Friday, February 6, he talked about what Cubans can expect from talks between Cuba and the United States (TQ).

Musings of a Blind Man (3) / Angel Santiesteban

At this point in the historic events that have taken place in recent days between Cuba and the United States, it is not worthwhile to have regrets, but rather to understand the reasons for these events, and try to find a positive view of them.

I dare say that President Obama has passed the ball to the Cuban rulers. Now they have in their court what they have been long been clamoring for. We shall see what they are capable of doing with it. Most likely, the Castro brothers will not know what to do with the new possibility that can only lead to the path of liberty and democracy. This is something that they are unwilling to concede, albeit knowing of the great chance that the Republicans will assume power in the next U.S. elections and will revoke continue reading

a good part or all that Obama has given them – which as a policy matter is never possible.

Barack Obama knows that he can play with these possibilities for another year and, in a certain way, it is his personal vengeance against the opposition party. Although in his speech he mentioned relations with China and Vietnam, the question is whether the U.S. is willing to tolerate human rights violations in a country so historically and geographically close. I do not accord to Cuba the same status as those other two communist countries. I am of the view that Cuba will demonstrate to the world its inability to allow individual freedoms, even though the Castro brothers will be unable to return to power – the older one due to physical limitations, the younger because of the very legislation that he himself approved.

Of course, we are all more than certain that the president who will be installed will be no more than a puppet whose strings will be in the hands of the Castro family if, by then, one of their own offspring is not put in power so that the cycle of history can repeat itself.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

December, 2014. Jaimanitas Border Patrol Prison Unit, Havana.

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

With Raul Castro, Are the Poor Poorer? / Ivan Garcia

Iván García, 26 February 2015 — José lives with his wife and five kids, crammed into a nine by twelve foot space with a wooden platform, in a shack in Santos Suárez, a slum south of Havana.

The tenement is a precarious spot where the electric cables hang from the roof, water runs down the narrow central passage from the plumbing leaks, and a disgusting smell of sewage hangs in your nose for hours.

That shack forms part of a group of ramshackle settlements where more than 90 thousand Havanans live, according to Joel, a housing official in the 10 de Octubre municipality.

There are worse places. On the outskirts of the capital, shantytowns are spreading like the invasive marabou weed. There are more than 50 of them. Houses made of sections of aluminium and cardboard, without any sanitation continue reading

, where the occupants get their electricity supply by “informal” means.

But, going back to Santos Suárez. José says he is forty, but his sickly pale skin and his face puffed up from excessive drink, not enough to eat and poor quality of life make him look like an old man.

José is in that part of the population which doesn’t receive remittances and can’t get convertible pesos. He works at anything. Looking after flowerbeds, carrying debris, or ice cubes. On a good day, he makes 70 pesos, about $3. “All of it goes on food. And the rest on alcohol”, he says.

His family’s typical diet consists of two spoons of white rice, and a large spoon of stew once a week, a boiled egg and a quarter chicken or chopped beef mixed with soya which is distributed once a month via his ration book. “I just have a coffee for breakfast. My bread from the ration book I give to my kids.”

Ten years ago, he was imprisoned for stealing light bulbs and armchairs from houses in his area. “I stole from pure necessity. I sold the light bulbs or daylight colour tubes for 30 pesos. The iron chairs went for 10 CUC. I once got 25 chavitos (CUC) for a wooden chair. I was able to buy a cot for my daughter with that money”, José remembers, sitting in the doorway of a pharmacy in Serrano Street.

When you ask him about Raúl Castro’s economic reforms, or what he hopes for from the new diplomatic change of direction between Cuba and the United States, he puts on a poker face.

“What changes? With Raúl we poor people are even poorer. Here anyone who hasn’t any connections with the system or a family in Miami is in a difficult situation. I don’t even want to talk about the old people. There are a lot of things wrong about Fidel, but when he was in charge, the social services and what you could get through your ration book allowed you to live better. Not now. Every day Cubans like me get less from the government. Many people are happy to be on better terms with the Americans, but what can Obama do? He isn’t the president of Cuba,” he points out, while he takes a long swig of the worst possible alcohol out of a plastic bottle.

The streets of Havana swarm with hundreds of people like José asking for change, pulling out scraps from rubbish bins, or sleeping on cardboard boxes in uninhabitable buildings.

In the entrance of a building in Carmen Street, on the corner of 10th of October, about 10 people are there selling second-hand books, old shoes and junk. Nelson, a gay man about 60 years old, suffers from chronic diabetes. He sells old magazines. As far as he is concerned, the revolution can be summed up in a word: “shit”.

“It’s all just speeches. They said it was a revolution of humble people and for humble people, but it was a lie. Poor people were always badly off, but now we are more fucked than ever. What Raúl has brought us has been capitalism, of the worst kind. Fidel didn’t tolerate many things, including the homosexuals, but we lived a little better. The poor will always be poor, in a dictatorship or in a democracy”, asserts Nelson.

Like in the film Goodbye Lenin, directed by Wolfgang Becker, where the East Germans feel nostalgic about the Communist era, in Cuba, those whose lives are stuck in a tale of poverty, feel longing for the decade from 1970 to 1980, when the state gave you every nine days a pound of beef per person, through your ration book, a can of condensed milk cost 20 centavos and the shelves in the stores were full of Russian jams.

For Havanans like Nelson and José, you can’t eat democracy.

Photo: The conditions Yumila Lora Castillo, who is 8 years old and has a malignant tumor, is living in. Marelis Castillo, her mother, told Jorge Bello Domínguez, from the Cuban Community Communicators Network (who took the photo), that they haven’t even authorised the diet of meat and milk that people with cancer in Cuba are entitled to. A mother of two other children, Marelis lives in this inhuman situation in El Gabriel, in the municipality of Güira de Melena, Artemisa province, some 85 kilometers southwest of Havana.

Translated by GH

Cuban Civil Society Open Forum Holds Third Meeting / 14ymedio

Meeting of Cuban Civil Society Open Forum. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Havana, 25 February 2015 – The Cuban Civil Society Open Forum held its third meeting this Wednesday with 25 people attending, among them activists, opponents and members of civic groups. The first point on the agenda was the approval of a document titled “Ethical Path for Cuban Civil Society,” which lays out the basic principles that should be supported. Also under discussion were internal organizational issues relative to the inclusion and representation of the participants.

A motion of solidarity with Venezuela (see below) was passed during the day and important agreements were made with regards to the attendance of Cuban civil society at the Summit of the Americas in Panama, to be held this coming April 10-11. Finally, those present were invited to make proposals about the elements and improvements that should be included in the next Elections Act, announced last Monday in an official note after the Tenth Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

On this occasion there were new faces continue reading

around the table, while other activists weren’t present as they were participating events abroad or for other reasons. As has already been seen, a characteristic of the Open Forum is that discussion are of a frank character, marked by precise arguments and a thorough knowledge of the national reality.

Among those attending (see below), the idea prevailed that Open Forum is emerging as a good opportunity for civil society to find new points of consensus, but without the intention of becoming a political coalition. The horizontality in which everyone keeps their own individual personality is one of the most notable strengths of this organization, which resists being considered a group to which people belong, because it prefers to define itself as a place where people participate.

The participants confirmed that the Open Forum is “without hierarchies, or party discipline, but moved by a common denominator, love of Cuba and the stubborn will to seek solutions to the problems of the country.”

Motion of Solidarity with Venezuela

The independent Cuban Civil Society Open Forum meeting in Havana on 25 February 2015, has a approved a motion of solidarity with Venezuelan civil society and opposition victims of the repression unleashed by the government of that nation.

We emphasize our support for the former member of the National Assembly María Corina Machado; opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who has already served a year in prison; and Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma, elected by the popular will, recently imprisoned.

Attendees

José Díaz Silva (UNPACU)
José Daniel Ferrer García (UNPACU)
José Conrado Rodríguez (Diócesis de Cienfuegos)
José A. Fornaris (Asociación por la Libertad de Prensa)
Guillermo Fariñas Hernández (FANTU)
Fernando Palacio Nogar (Partido Solidaridad Liberal Cubano)
Félix Navarro Rodríguez (Partido por la Democracia Pedro Luis Boitel)
Ernesto García Pérez(Unión Social Comunitaria Cubana)
Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz (CCDHRN)
Eliécer Lázaro Ávila Cicilia (Somos +)
Eduardo Díaz Fleitas (UNPACU)
Dagoberto Valdés Hernández (Director de Convivencia)
Belkis Cantillo (CXD) Ciudadanas por la Democracia)
Karina Gálvez Chiu (Proyecto Convivencia)
Laritza Diversent Cámbara (Cubalex)
Lázaro Báez (Movimiento ONR)
Librado Linares García (Movimiento Cubano Reflexión)
Mario Félix Lleonart (Instituto Patmos)
Miriam Celaya González (Periodista Independiente)
Pedro Campos Santos (Boletín SPD)
Reinaldo Escobar Casas (periodista)
René Gómez Manzano (Corriente Agramontista de Abogados Independientes)
Saúl Raúl Quiala Velázquez (PSC-Fundación Sucesores)
Yoaxis Macheco Suárez (Instituto Patmos)
Yusmila Reyna Ferrera (Periodista independiente)

Seven Steps to Kill Orlando Zapata Tamayo / Luis Felipe Rojas

Orlando Zapata Tamayo

Luis Felipe Rojas — I published this post a few days after that needless death. Now I again denounce the death and express the same ideas about it. It’s my homage to my brother, Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

I am still experiencing the pain caused by that avoidable death, and I feel impotent because I didn’t attend the funeral honoring him due to political impediments, but that hasn’t stopped me from saying that in any case, what I present here seem to be the seven final steps that advanced the repressive machinery used to kill Zapata.

1. Setting up that para-judicial theater that imposed a sentence of 63 years on him for contempt.

2. The continuous beatings accompanied by obscene words and insults about his race and the region where he lived (shitty negro, shitty peasant). continue reading

3. Putting him in prisons that were located far away from his mother’s home (Prison Kilo Cinco y Medio in Pinar del Rio, Prison Kilo 8 in Camaguey).

4. The beatings in November 2009 in the Holguin jail when they knocked him down smashing his leg with a steel bar, on his knee cap, and that his mother saw again when she opened the coffin in her house in Banes and also discovered that there were other marks of the beating with clubs that he surely received months before.

5. The forced removal to Camaguey and the robbery of his belongings on December 3 when they confiscated the only food he was eating in prison. This was the fact that made in declare a hunger strike.

6. Taking away water for the 18 days in the middle of the strike even when he had said that he was declaring a hunger strike but would drink small amounts of water.

7. The maneuver of taking him to a hospital for prisoners in Camaguey, west of Havana, and putting him in a room that was not set up for treating prisoners in a grave condition.

I lack the power of analysis in this case, but please don’t keep saying that the government didn’t have a hand in his death. The execution order was given from the office of General Raul Castro Ruz.

Translated by Regina Anavy

23 February 2015

OLPL in “A New U.S.-Cuba Policy: Did Cuba Win?”

Fifty-plus years of US diplomatic stalemate and economic sanctions have failed to bring freedom to the Cuban people because they were not designed to bring freedom to the Cuban people, but to penalize a regime that started by sequestering Cuban sovereignty by violent and anti-democratic procedures (reestablishment of death penalty, radical hatred speech, citizen apartheid), by the illegalization of civil society and all forms of property (both private and public, including the press), and by tyrannizing every institutional power into a despotic State, plus the militarization of the nation to the point of demanding a nuclear attack against the United States from Cuban territory.

The 50-plus years to come of US diplomatic relations and capitalist engagement with Cuba can neither guarantee the advance of fundamental freedoms in my country, nor our liberation from the successive Castro generations, because a market economy is not a redemptive formula and it has already been implemented by authoritarian systems as a tool for tyrannical control of all basic rights. And this is a wicked word that President Obama, Pope Francis and General Castro have secretly agreed to postpone: the rights of the Cuban people. continue reading

As the pro-democracy leader Oswaldo Payá stated many times until he was extrajudicially executed in Cuba on July 22^nd 2012: Why not the recognition of all our rights now? What is good for Americans since the 18^th century is still not good enough for Cubans in the 21^st century?

Is this about US interference, as in the hegemonic past times when the capitol of DC was the capital of the continent? Or this is only about insulting the intellectual capacity of my people, wise enough to escape in a pedestrian’s plebiscite in search for a real “normalization” of their lives far from an abnormal socialism?

Democracies seem guilty of their duty to foster democracy worldwide, but Castroism has been more than proud to Castrify democratic countries (Venezuela is the most tragic example today), as the recently liberated 5 Cuban spies in US have declared when ordered as National Heroes back on the Island: we are ready to commit our crimes again if we are ordered to do so. Sic semper tyrannis.

Why not the effective solidarity and the pressure of the international community, so that the legal claims that have already mobilized tens of thousands of Cubans be respected by our non-elected authorities? Why not take advantage of these US-Cuba negotiations to seat in the same table the historical gerontocracy with the alternative civil leaders, after we have risked so much to conquer freedom of speech and to raise awareness on human rights violations and the anthropological damage in Cuba?

In moral terms, the unpopularity of US policies given the popularity of the Cuban Revolution worldwide should be less important than the unpopularity of the retrograde regime within the Island, if a true transition is to take place in Cuba today. Unless, of course, advancing American interests in the Western Hemisphere now means advancing American interests in Western Union.

Did Cuba win?

Cuba cannot win because perpetuation in power is always a failure and the best approach to endure a fossil past, despite the faith in the future expressed by Nancy Pelosi, as the US executive branch enforces resolution after resolution, involving exclusively those congressmen and NGOs and think-tanks and press magnates and corporations’ tycoons that hurry to shake Raul Castro’s hand without asking him a single uncomfortable question, thus legitimizing he who abolished the Cuban Congress and Cuban Chamber of Commerce and Cuban think-tanks and Cuban NGOs, as well as the exercise of free press. By the way, convenient Cuban dissidents are also called into play, not for the rule of law, but for the rule of loyalty.

The rationale seems to be that, as it is impossible to hold the Cuban government accountable, the appeasement of the dictatorship into a dictatorcracy is now the lesser evil, mentioning “Cuban civil society” only for political correctness in presidential speeches, while in fact excluding us from the new status quo.

I am not sure about “what everybody needs to know about Cuba” (as in Julia Sweig’s book) but I am certain of what nobody dares to know about Cuba. Milan Kundera, maybe the best of Cuban novelists who is a Czech who writes in French and lives in Switzerland (a perfect mixture for freedom), knew that “the old dead make way for the young dead” for “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”.

Therefore, even if this is a small step for democracy, it’s also a giant leap against independency. And decency. The Cuban policy of the US is the ironic victory of The End of History: from our War against Spain to the anti-Imperialist Revolution, the growing “Common Marketization” of international relations is what really counts.

That’s why for the first time in the history of our hemiplegic hemisphere it’s paradoxically in a Communist country where the cry of “Yankees, come home” echoes. In fact, you are more than welcome to try to fool our terminal tyrant with US dollars. But having dwelt in the entrails of said terminal tyranny during never-ending decades, my only remaining resistance is a sour skepticism to soothe our soul.

(Original in English)

An Ethical Path for Civil Society / Cubanet, Miriam Celaya

Meeting of Cuban Civil Society Open Forum (Photo: Luz Escobar)

Cubanet, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 25 February 2015 — This Wednesday, February 25^th, 2015, a new meeting of the members Espacio Abierto [Cuban Civil Society Open Forum] of the independent civil society took place with a broad representation of members of various pro-democracy projects throughout the Island, as well as independent journalists. A total of 25 participants took part in the symposium, where, in addition, views on issues of interest to the Cuban reality were exchanged.

On this occasion, among the most important points of the discussion adopted by full consensus was the document “An ethical roadway for Cuban civil society” which — as its name suggests — provides a guide for the basic principles governing the conclave, and a Motion of Solidarity with civil society and the Venezuelan opposition at a time when the repression tends to flare up with a statement that emphasizes leaders like Leopoldo López, who recently served a year in prison; Maria Corina Machado, a former deputy who was attacked continue reading

and removed from office by the Chavista authoritarianism; and the Mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, elected at the polls by popular will, violently arrested in recent days by the repressive forces of the government of that nation.

Whereas the document adopted at the conclave should be made known to the public, especially Cubans from all shores, its contents are reproduced here in their entirety:

An Ethical Path for Cuban Civil Society

As part of the independent Cuban civil society, we believe that every moral choice is a strictly non-transferable decision, absent from all imposition. We also recognize that, because of its relational character, citizens seek to socialize and get incorporated into communities that have received an established humus solidified with values and virtues known as community ethos, whether family, group, national or international. By agreeing to an ethical path, we reject a dogmatic moral, prohibitive in itself, of frivolity and debauchery. We opt for dialogical ethics against an authoritarian moral, ethics that intrinsically link freedom and responsibility. We propose to educate ourselves to assume, in our principles and in our attitudes, the following ethical path, rooted in the best of our Cuban heritage:

We acknowledge that a human being is the central character of his own story. Thus, the person must be the beginning, the middle and the end of any institution or historical process. Human beings are not the means, nor can they be an object in the hands of others, therefore they should not be manipulated for scientific, social, political or economic experiments.We believe that all human beings are equal before the law and diverse in their abilities and personal choices.
We must encourage consistency between what we believe, what we say and what we do. Any personal, civic and political engagement must be inextricably supported by ethical behavior without which all individual or community action loses value and meaning.
Cuba, that is, the nation known as the community of all its citizens on the Island and in the Diaspora, its wellbeing, its freedom, its progress and common good, is the inspiration and the end of all civic and political action, banishing spurious interests.We consider that the meaning and purpose of our ethical commitment to Cuba is to build a peaceful, fruitful and prosperous coexistence in our country, rather than a simple coexistence with those who are different or adversarial.
We opt for peaceful methods and for seeking nonviolent solutions to both national and international conflicts and our interpersonal relationships. We opt for the absolute respect for human life and declare ourselves against all violence and the death penalty.
The discrepancy of opinions and political debate should leave no room for personal or group attacks, insults or denigrating exclusions, or defamation.
We believe that property, knowledge, and power are to serve and that without agile and honest institutions there is no possible governance. We believe that without civil sovereignty there is no progress, articulation, or primacy of the governance of civil society as a valid participant. Corruption, lies and excessive material interest are the main enemies of civility in the world today, so, as part of the independent Cuban civil society, we reject these evils and opt for transparency, favor truth and the primacy of spiritual values.
We seek a modicum of ethics agreed to through a consensus building process. We differentiate the processes of dialogue and negotiation. Therefore, we believe that an ethical minimum must surface from a dialogue leading to consensus agreements, while specific covenants should surface from negotiations, which must be observed and followed by the parties.
A civic ethic of minimums agreed to by consensus is an achievement of pluralist humanity. Its basis is the full and utmost dignity of the human person, achieved through acknowledgment, education and defense of all rights for everyone, proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights resolved by the U.N. in 1948, which we fully embrace as our inspiration and ethics program.
We adhere to the three fundamental values summarized by the best aspirations of humanity: freedom, equality, fraternity and their corresponding rights. First generation rights extol the value of freedom, they are civil and political rights. Second generation rights commend the value of equality, they are economic, social and cultural rights. Third generation rights endorse the value of universal brotherhood as ecological rights for a healthy environmental balance and the right to a peaceful world.
Consequently, we wish to opt for inclusion and democratic participation; moral authority, not authoritarianism; proposals, not prescriptions; what ideas are expressed, rather than who speaks them; programs and not just leaders. Unity in diversity, not uniformity. Rational convictions, not fanaticism. The decriminalization of differences, not intolerance. Decentralization and subsidiarity should replace centralism and totalitarianism. Ethics must take precedence over technique and science. Commitment must win over indifference. We opt for the ethics of politics and economics, of national coexistence and of international relations.
This ethical commitment should translate into attitudes and proactive actions to heal the anthropological damage and overcome civic and political illiteracy with the systematic labor of citizen empowerment. Since we reject any moral imposition, we believe that education is the only valid way. So we direct our efforts towards an education liberating of ourselves and of all alienation, in order to be able to contribute to the ethical and civic education of all Cuban people, inspired by Human Rights and their corresponding Civic Duties.
Civic and political activists or intellectuals should not be society’s moralizers. Being chosen to represent does not confer moral authority, but political commitment, subject to scrutiny and public willpower. We believe in representation as a service to society. This representation must be the product of popular choice, limited by time and succession. Civic ethics is forged by each person, and it is the community’s responsibility to establish, educate, promote and safeguard the humus of the ethics of the nation open to the world, based on the great values of truth and freedom, justice and love.

By adopting this ethical pathway, we want to identify its roots in the ethics of our founding fathers. The teaching of the Apostle José Martí reminds us that: “For love we see, with love we see, it is love that sees.” We believe in civic friendship and in the reconciliation where that righteousness should flow, which Maestro José de la Luz y Caballero called the “sun of the moral world.” Finally, we share Father Félix Varela’s philosophy that taught us that “There is no Motherland without virtue or virtue without piety”.

162^nd anniversary of the death of Father Félix Varela

Translated by Norma Whiting

Birds of Ill Omen / 14ymedio, Eliecer Avila

14ymedio, Eliecer Avila, 28 February 2015 — A topic that is raised for discussion these days is the obsolete argument that some official voices never stop repeating at every opportunity they have to strain relations between Cuba and the United States or rather between Cuba and the Outside World. I am referring to the supposed “need” of implementing “appropriate measures designed to avoid the penetration that the enemy hopes to make into Cuban society.”

Just a few days ago, in the context of the first National Workshop on Computing and Cyber-Security held in Havana, with the physical or virtual presence of thousands of computer engineers, really absurd speeches continue reading

were heard that, far from inviting the use of emerging opportunities to propel development, called for “being on guard” in the face of new “maneuvers” by the enemy to “penetrate” Cuban society.

I would like for some of these birds of ill omen really to explain, with what does the United States want to penetrate us? Or at least, with what negative thing? Maybe a virus? For that there are anti-viruses. With information about our own reality? We, the people, are screaming for that on our own.

Our youth (…) already think about the world and conceive their aspirations in the same way as do the youth of New York

With capitalist propaganda? Our youth do not need it, they already think about the world and conceive their aspirations in the same way as do the youth of New York, sometimes even a little more capitalistic than those. With TV series, soap operas, shows? That is what the Cuban family watches every night, just a week behind. With vice and prostitution? Please, those are fields of enormous potential for replacing imports.

The more I think about it, I do not really find the harmful impact about which these things of which gentlemen speak. Could it be rather that they are preparing the terrain in order to justify the excessive and paranoid control that is planned for the future Cuban web surfer?

I believe that the old scheme of being able to try to survive at all costs, defending its privilege of being the only one that can “penetrate” the minds, every day, 24 hours a day, of all Cubans and many others out there. . .

The reality is that we do not need the Cuban government to “protect” us from any external influence. We are millions of Cuba adults responsible enough to make own decisions in the physical world as well as in the virtual one, who want for our country the same access to the Internet that is widespread on the planet. With all its risks and infinite possibilities.

Do not defend us anymore; no one has asked you to.

Translated by MLK

Blindness Leads the Way / Rebeca Monzo

Rebeca Monzo, 8 February 2015 — After reading an article from the January 31, 2015 issue of the newspaper Granma about Cuba and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) entitled “Cooperation Leads the Way,” a ton of questions came to mind about the subject at hand.

It has been forty years since a UNDP office was established in our country with the objective to collaborate with the island’s government on the promotion of social development and public well-being.

From my meager understanding, the only party to have benefited from this has been the government itself, especially in terms of the favorable publicity it has received. They make up a negligible part continue reading

of the population but the Cubans who work for this and other UN organizations are paid in CUC (Cuban convertible peso), which surpass by leaps and bounds the highest salaries of the most qualified professionals in our society, who are paid in CUP (Cuban pesos).

According to the aforementioned article, Granma “chatted” with Mrs. Jessica Faieta, Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as the Assistant Secretary-General of the UN, who discussed the improvement of the quality of life of our citizens. She recognized the efforts of the Cuban government in regards to food security and the strengthening of the agricultural and non-agricultural cooperatives, pointing out, in addition, that the Cuban healthcare system has been strengthened.

With all due respect, it strikes me that this official had only a limited view of the situation, as is the case with everyone who visits us. Guests are taken only to those organizations that have been prepared in advance by the government and which serve as “display windows” for foreigners.

Perhaps if she had to depend on the ration book for a while or to seek medical help at one of our clinics — those used by the average citizen — it is quite possible she might think differently. I do not understand how UNDP, based in our country for four decades, has not been given the task of investigating on their own — in closer contact with the population — to verify the “wonderful statistics” provided by the government, which does not at all reflect our reality.

One need only take a stroll through Central Havana, Old Havana (provided one ventures beyond the historic center), Cerro, Tenth of October Arroyo Naranjo, San Miguel del Padron and even Vedadao and other neighborhhoods to see the poor sanitation conditions and overcrowding in which the Cuban people must live. and the lack of specialists in our health centers, for being these missions abroad, being replaced mostly by students, many of them foreigners. There is also the issue of a shortage of specialists in our health system due to the large number of them serving abroad in medical missions. They are being replaced mainly by medical students, many of them foreigners.

In terms of our society’s standard of living, it should be pointed out that the disappearance of the middle class — the very mark of a country’s wealth — has led to the emergence of an impoverished class (with equality for all) with salaries that do not cover even the most basic necessities. The contrast is made even more striking by the emergence of a leadership class with an affluent lifestyle which only accentuates the differences.

However, Mrs. Faieta and I are in full agreement when it comes to the positive steps taken towards normalization of diplomatic relations between the governments of the United States of America and Cuba. Once there is a successful outcome — one hopes sooner rather than later — it will be to the benefit of all Cubans. I believe that it is time to end once and for all the blindness that until now has led the way.

New Electoral Law: New Wine in Old Wineskins? / Miriam Celaya

Meeting of the National Assembly (NeoClubPress)

After the Tenth Assembly of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) the news about the next “enactment of a new electoral law; and the subsequent holding of general elections” has begun to circulate in the official media. Such an important announcement in a country where, for more than 60 years ago no general election has taken place, is mentioned almost tangentially, just nine words in an informational note on the above Assembly, whose “focal point” had to do with issues related to the preparations for the celebration of the April 2016 Sixth Congress of the single party.

So this is how the casual style of the announcement turns out so very misleading, downplaying a code continue reading

whose nature would be essential in any minimally democratic society.

It is unknown what motivates this renewal of the law in a country whose government, until recently, boasted of having the most fair, transparent and participatory electoral process in the world, able to summon an overwhelming majority of voters to the polls. The case provokes many questions, some very basic: Why change a law that is supposedly a paradigm of democracy even for the most civilized nations on the planet? Why does the proposal arise from the central committee and not from the higher authorities of the People’s Power, as might be expected? What reason is there for the urgency in enacting a new Electoral Law?

Once again, we only have speculation in the face of official secrecy and conspiracy. In fact, this time they have not announced the completion of an extensive process of “popular consultation”, though it was conducted – at least in a formal manner — for several months in 2013, before the creation of the new Work Code currently in effect. The time span between the April 2015 “partial elections” and the enactment of the new Electoral Law was not clearly established either, though judging from the official information that was disclosed we can assume it will be brief.

In this society, alien to all politics and stripped of every right to elect its leaders, the news has not caused the least impression

In principle, the announcement has accomplished the government’s purpose: to not awaken dangerous expectations among Cubans, especially after the wave of enthusiasm that seized many with the December 17^th announcement about the restoration of relations between Cuba and the U.S.

In that vein, subsequent statements by the General-President during the last meeting of CELAC cooled the wildest fires, and, at the same time, they have widened the gap between the Government and citizens. No doubt that the olive green tower has proven that the hope for effective changes for Cubans focuses more in the future steps of the “enemy” government than in the “actualization of the model” endorsed by mediocre Raulista reforms. The Revolution has become a succession of failures, and today the old Sierra Maestra combatants and their side troops sense that the smallest of openings could end in a loss of control.

For now, it seems impossible to imagine what “new” democratic clauses the same dictatorship that has dominated life and property for 56 years might have in store for us

It is fair to say that the fears of those in power are well founded. Wouldn’t it be right to expect that the multiparty system requirements or, at least, a strong controversy about the one-party system would emerge from an extensive debate by Cuban society? Are we not in a favorable scenario for claiming genuine democratic participation and transparent general elections to replace the electoral farce practiced for the past 40 years? Obviously, the elderly leaders will not want to take too many risks.

For now, it seems impossible to imagine what “new” democratic clauses the same dictatorship that has dominated life and property for 56 years has in store for us. In any case, the sacred scriptures say that you cannot pour new wine into old wineskins.

Everything indicates that the new electoral law will yet another plot of the power and its claque, just a hasty move to bolster up the makeup that minimally covers the dictatorial nature of the regime, and to silence the scruples and demands of the nations gathered at the Americas Summit this fast approaching April. Presumably, the olive green cohort – who might do away with uniforms and decorations and dress impeccably in civil garb for the occasion — will brag about the partial election results and offer the new electoral code as irrefutable proof of his willingness to change and his democratic calling. If it weren’t so twisted, such a pathetic pantomime would be laughable.

However, we could be facing a dangerous move here that would entail a high cost for the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people. Civic orphan-hood and generalized apathy are the best cards the Havana regime is counting on. It is urgent that public opinion be alerted about a possible ploy that – in the style of “eternal socialism” style — would only want to artificially postpone the end of the most persistent and pernicious dictatorship of the many that have blossomed in this Hemisphere.

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