Down With the Embargo, Long Live the Embargo / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Graphics by El Sexto

The New York Times is not in favor or against the American embargo of the Cuban government. The New York Times is simply in favor of what in every circumstance is most convenient to the Castro regime.

So it was that the New York Times just published this recycled editorial where they ask for an end to the embargo for the 1959th time, even going beyond American law (they are like frogs in the Fidelista fable, demanding of the White Heron that governs at coups of presidential resolution.

So, in addition, the New York Times in a second act to its distracting editorial, opened its plural debate pages to the one thousand and 959 Cubanologists: and so dissolved all the attention to not speak of what is most important now (and has been for two years), Olympianically omitting the presence in the United States of the witness to a double State murder on the part of the Raul and Fidel regime.

In effect, Angel Carromero is in American territory. However, the last reference on the New York Times to this criminal case of the Castro regime was from last year. The complaint of the Payá-Acevedo family, the complicity of the Spanish judiciary and executive with this announced assassination, the violations and mockery of those uniformed in olive-green on the little Island of the Infamous: none of this is Newyorktimesable. They love only the embargo because they know it works like an engine of little lies. continue reading

And because of this I don’t have one ounce of respect for the great media. They are killing machines in exchange for majestic salaries. I prefer the tiny voices of the nobodies. The almost anonymous biographies of the redeemers and their blogs with zero commentaries in every post.

So they killed Harold Cepero and Oswaldo Payá, martyrs to a perverse country where a perpetual power stones you and manipulates you to death with impunity. The Cuban Interior Ministry killed them both on Sunday, 22 July 2012, like two nobodies who are now barely doubtful statistics for the Ph.D.-holding experts of the New York Times. In this Manhattan edifice, so chilling in its supposed transparency, I say: Fuck you, New York Times.

But, of course, the debate of our exile, historic or recently arrived, follows the rhyme of the New York Times. Some say: lift it… Other say: keep it… and the arguments in both cases were conceived decades ago by the genocidal hierarchs from Havana.

What is laughable about this debate between dinosaurs is that it keeps the commanderesque mummy of Fidel alive and kicking: the dictator makes us dance the motherfuckers’ conga every time his cadaverous cojones come out.

Cubasummatum est.

14 October 2014

Seasonings and Their Uses / 14ymedio, Rebeca Monzo

14ymedio, Rebeca Monzó, Havana | October 14, 2014 — The high cost and the limited selection of basic produce forces us to trek from one farmer’s market to another in search of the most essential ingredients for our kitchens.

These days the prices for vegetables as basic as onions, garlic and peppers, indispensable in the kitchen, are so unbelievable that you would think they were threaded in 18 carat gold. The hard-currency stores have stocked various imported spices of good quality that generally are somewhat more economical.

So here I will list some of them, along with their uses and applications:

Garlic Powder.  Well known by all for its use – however, being a concentrated product, it must be used carefully, with a concomitant reduction in the amount of salt used in the same recipe. Very appropriate for soups, and meat and fish sauces. A little goes a long way. continue reading

Onion Powder. Very recommended for all types of stews, legumes, meatballs and chopped meat. As with garlic powder, care in its application is recommended.

Sesame. This product is found in some farmers markets that accept CUPs (Cuban pesos). This oily seed is especially indicated for making pastas and sweets. For example, when caramelizing a pan to make a mold for pudding or flan (Cuban-style custard).

Celery Powder. Delicious and aromatic seasoning that has a great variety of uses, especially in sauces, vegetables, tomato juice, fish, mollusks, and above all in broths and stocks.

Curry. This is a mixture of spices – with strong therapeutic qualities – that comes from India. Very recommended for meats, fowl, and varied sauces and soups. Especially wonderful for curry chicken.

Cinammon. In stick or powder, this is the most prized eastern spice. Used in sweets, as we all know, but also in fruit salads, beverages such as sangría, ice cream, baked dishes and boiled fish.

Ginger. Widely used in international cuisine. Very appropriate for meat sauces, stews as well as sweets. In its natural form, ginger root, it can be found in high-end farmers markets, such as the one on 19 Street in El Vedado.

Sweet paprika. A marvelous vegetable product used as a seasoning in soups, sofrito*, stews, fish and rice dishes. It imparts an unusual color and flavor, and can substitute for red pepper powder which is often rare and expensive in our markets.

Vanilla bean. Has many uses in sweets, especially in flans and custards, ice cream, fruit cocktails and liqueurs, to which it imparts its delicate flavor. It is also used in cooking as an ingredient in certain sauces – for example, bechamel, in which it makes a good substitute for cinnamon.

Sage. Although this plant is known above all as a culinary herb, it has also had a medicinal use for thousands of years. In medieval times it was thought to promote longevity. Its flavor makes it advisable for soups and sauces for meats and meatballs, as well as for cheese-based dishes. Its leaves can be applied to infection sites as an effective, natural anti-inflammatory. It can be easily propagated by cuttings in gardens and pots. All it needs is watering and full sun.

Nutmeg. Generally available whole or sometimes ground into a powder. Used in all types of sauces for meats, fish, seafood and to give a special touch to bechamel sauce. Used as well in chicken stews and above all in sweets. This is an expensive spice and not always available in our markets.

White pepper. Also available in two forms: peppercorn or ground into a powder. It is the peppercorn that is ideal for use in pickling brine and is also recommended as a seasoning for meats and in stews. It has a mild flavor, subtle and aromatic. Ideal for soups, meats and sauces.

*Translator’s Note: Sofrito is a stir-fry of aromatic vegetables, herbs and spices used as the base for many Cuban dishes.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

17 October 2014

Misguided Opinions / Fernando Damaso

It comes to my attention that in recent months the World Bank has reported that, according to their evaluation, Cuba has one of the best public education systems in the world, with acceptable teacher pay, and the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has said something similar about the public health system.

What’s more, CNN has placed Cuba among the ten countries with the highest level of public hygiene. With the majority of my years having been lived in Cuba, and having suffered and continuing to suffer from one system or another, it seems to me like a bad joke. continue reading

It seems that those who make these assessments use official data from the Cuban authorities to prepare their analysis and come to their conclusions, without taking the trouble to investigate and conform their veracity.

If they took a tour — without official authorization nor government handlers — of our schools, polyclinics and hospitals (and not of the facilities prepared for visitors), they would see that the reality is very different from the statistical data.

They would find deteriorated schools, without adequate conditions to support the teaching process, hot, dark, unhygienic and with many “improvised” teachers, and the polyclinics and hospitals are in a deplorable state, lacking in hygiene, the technical means and equipment to care for patients, lacking in medicines, and in the case of those admitted, with terrible food, as well as medical attention offered primarily by students or recent graduates, as the better prepared are pressed into service in other counties, for which the State receives important economic and political earnings.

Propaganda toward the outside is one thing and the internal reality is another.

Since I know that these assessments do not reflect the truth, I also question that released about other countries, both for and against, because I think they use the same bureaucratic method.

The terrible thing is that this serves, wittingly or otherwise, to provide a misleading picture of two systems that Cubans have to endure daily. It’s like the story of the  torturer asking the tortured not to scream because he was enjoying one of the greatest torture in the world.

13 October 2014

Crisis Among Cuban Dissidents? / Ivan Garcia

Antonio G. Rodiles, Regina Coyula and Ivan Garcia on a panel about independent journalism in Cuba

The egos and grandstanding are projecting an uncertain outlook within the peaceful opposition in Cuba. It’s like a symphony orchestra without a conductor, where musicians play their own tunes.

It’s not for lack of political programs that Cuban activists cede space. They are overflowing with ideas, projects and platforms aimed at democratic change. Some are more consistent than others.

And although all platforms and political parties are entitled to have their doctrines and programs, the reality in Cuba has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of dissident theses.

Born deformed as a matter of genesis. They have no popular support. There are ever fewer reports about them in the Florida media, the Spanish press and the BBC. continue reading

Indeed, to be an opponent on the island is an act of unquestionable value. Hanging in the air of the Republic is a dark law that sanctions with up to twenty years behind bars those who oppose the regime or write without permission.

But the repression, fierce or subtle, the lack of public space, has transformed the dissidents into a group of coffee klatchers, without support in their neighborhoods.

The evidence of their incompetence is that they’re out of sync with the average Cuban. Never before in the 55 years of the Castro brothers’ government, has the percentage the citizenry who disapprove been higher.

Any survey or conversation with people on the street serves to confirm it. But political proselytizing has failed to organize that anger.

Their interests are different although they sound analogous. Carlos, a carpenter, also wants democracy. He feels that the military autocracy has hijacked the future of his family with unfulfilled promises. Be he has no confidence in the discourse and narrative of the Cuban opposition.

In the old taxis in Havana, in the lines for bureaucratic paperwork, or at a baseball stadium, people talk to you without hesitation about a radical change to improve the economy and the precarious quality of life.

Some have read or heard about an opposition paper. But it does not excite them. They see it as distant as a government minister. Although the dissidents are neighbors on their same block, they have done little for his district or municipality.

They are disconnected, like a cosmonaut from the Earth. The particular world of dissent is to generate news, report meetings, make suggestions or report police abuse, but they lack a basic foundation to become legitimate actors for the future that is upon us.

The fate of the Island will be decided in the next five years. Perhaps earlier. The great majority of those in European Union, the United States and Latin America also want a democratic Cuba.

But the opposition’s raw material to manage the future is tenuous. So the strategy of the international community is to agree to a bizarre transition from totalitarianism to authoritarianism with Castro supporters. According to their perception, it is the least bad way.

On issues ranging from the repression to the shamelessness, the opposition has degenerated into a “swallow” dissent who at the first change ask for political asylum, preferably in the United States.

Those who remain are tough, but have adapted to the rules dictated by the regime.

There is an unwritten law of what can be done within the magical realism of autocracy.

The elderly rulers have gone from an anachronistic and authoritarian totalitarian system to another with a veneer of modernity and more flexible laws.

In 2014 you won’t be sent to prison for writing articles critical of the government. The most that will happen is a short detention in a police dungeon, an act of repudiation, or screams on the public street from an enraged assassin.

Depending on the circumstances, the dissidence is allowed to hold discussions, forums and debates in private homes. For two years, just for dissenting, Sonia Garro and her husband Ramón Alejandro Munoz, both black, have been held in jail. Another dozen activists are also prisoners or awaiting sentencing.

But the playing field is much wider today than before 2003. Since February 2013, most opponents and independent journalists are allowed to travel abroad.

A golden opportunity for more effective political lobbying. And they are not taking advantage of it. Everything stays in sterile encounters. Probably the most consistent program is led by Antonio G. Rodiles with his Citizen Demand For Another Cuba.

 (http://www.porotracuba.org/demanda-citizen-by-another-Cuba-2/).

It is reasonable, because it has a grip on reality and not in the political science fiction of other groups with their outlandish appeals. Rodiles uses a primary logic.

If we want Cuba to change, the government must ratify the United Nations’ international covenants signed in 2008. This is the gateway to legalizing a future civil society where, in addition to freedoms and human rights, there is political pluralism.

All opponents should support Rodiles and the Campaign for Another Cuba. But egos and grandstanding prevails. Each dissident leader is surrounded by a cloud of minions who defend their project as if it were an island under siege.

In turn, they attack and discredit contrary proposals. The worst of these brawls is that they don’t generate any credible proposals. Just bluster and platitudes. And behind them are the special services with their strategy of division.

Unfortunately, the Lades in White, an organization whose street marches in 2010 forced the government to release the 75 dissidents imprisoned in the 2003 Black Spring, has been split by intrigues and intemperate personalities.

This scrapping also extends to other dissident groups. More than an internal crisis or one of leadership, the Cuban opposition suffers from paralysis and the inability to join with the citizens.

When I read that some opposition groups claim to have the support of thousands of followers, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. An event that triggers a massive protest needs capable leaders Any event that triggers a massive protest only need capable leaders. And that is what we’re lacking.

Iván García

Photo: Antonio G. Rodiles, Coyula Regina and Ivan Garcia in a panel of independent journalism in Cuba organized by Estado de SATS in Havana on September 4, 2014.

9 October 2014

What Happens If Ebola Comes To Cuba? / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

By Jeovany Jimenez Vega

The Ebola outbreak on the world epidemiological scene will obviously involve a huge challenge for every country that is reached by the current epidemic, already registered as the greatest in history and that in recent days has reached about 9000 confirmed cases — although experts say that figure is an undercount.  The World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported that the epidemic is not being confronted will all the political rigor that the moment demands on the part of the international community and also warned that if the situation is not brought under control in time, by 2015 it predicts an incidence of about a million and a half cases.

It is easy to conclude that arriving at this state of things the danger would only grow exponentially.  We are confronting an extremely contagious illness of non-vectoral transmission, that can be spread person to person through the most subtle contact with any bodily fluid of an infected person — and that may be transmitted sexually to boot, given that the virus is isolated in semen until 90 days after recovery. continue reading

Although a first clinical trial for a vaccination has just been implemented, the reality is that for now the medical treatment protocols are in their infancy in the face of a disease that in previous outbreaks has reached a lethality of between 90% and 100% of cases and in the face of which one can only commit to treatments of its severe complications and to practice the usual measures for life support.

Today is raised before man a threat by one of the bad boys of virology, which demands the implementation of the most extreme biological containment measures, as well as the use of the most specialized and scrupulously trained personnel for its handling.

Such a scene places before us the most elemental question: what if Ebola breaks out in Cuba? This is not negligible, and it stopped being a remote possibility after the departure of a detachment of hundreds of Cuban professionals destined for the African countries flogged by the epidemic. Let’s remember the possibility that it was that route used by cholera to reappear in our country, imported from Haiti after an absence of 120 years, and not to mention the everlasting dengue fever.

The eruption of this most dangerous illness in Cuba could simply take on shades of tragedy.  Beyond how dissipated may become the customs of the inhabitants of the caiman, I am inclined to fear by the experience of one who has seen too often the systematic use of recyclable material, the usual practice in Cuba, even when long ago the world definitively committed to the exclusive use of disposable material: the idea of treatment centers for these patients winding up recycling suits, gloves or other materials because it occurs to some pig-headed guy from the “higher level” that this would “guarantee” safety under such circumstances is terrifying.

In a country where too many times a doctor does not have in his office something as basic as running water and soap in order to wash his hands, it will be understood what the demand for costly minimal material demanded for handling patients with Ebola would involve, and if besides we take into account that the almost generality of our hospital infrastructure is not designed or prepared objectively for the containment of this kind of scourge, now we will be able to raise a prayer to the Virgin to save us from the trance.

On the other hand, let’s not forget how reticent the Cuban authorities have shown themselves to be about publicly reporting on the incidence of epidemics when one considers that this might risk the affluence of tourists or the successful conclusion of some relevant international event — the Cuban dengue fever mega-epidemic of 2006 is still an excellent example in that regard.

With all these antecedents at hand, chills are felt before the possibility here considered and the questions that remain unanswered.  Will the Cuban Public Health System be prepared to control the Ebola outbreak with the required speed?  Will we Cuban professionals have the training, methodology and even the discipline necessary for adequately confronting a contingency of this caliber — and that quite few seem to have faced before?  When the moment arrives, will our government be ready to report the truth bluntly to the people and to the world?  Will this “infallible” government that has exported dozens of medical missions around the world have the humility to recognize its inability to control it and to seek help?

Since the strategy followed until now by WHO at an international level may be debatable — which has accepted being faced with the most serious epidemiological problem since the appearance of AIDS — in regard to the transfer of the foreign sick in order to receive treatment in their respective countries.  Obviously this increases considerably the possibility of transcontinental spread of the virus.

Instead, it would be much more recommended and safe to create adequate conditions in the country where each case is confirmed through a centralized and functional network of field installations correctly equipped and with the full extent of security that is presupposed, where each patient is diagnosed, isolated and treated on site.  For example, it would be worthwhile to consider, in order to implement this kind of possibility, the immediate conversion of uninhabited coastal African islands under the supervision of the experts of WHO and similar organizations such as Doctors Without Borders.

Means analogous to these, and apart from any legal or political assessment, would be more convenient and effective for the containment of this epidemic.  Even the UN — which came to air the topic at the Security Council — could deliver strong resolutions that support and regulate these variants, and it would all be justified by the gravity of a moment that is not made for warm cloths.  It requires taking the strongest measures everywhere the illness is found, if with these measure rapid control of the situation is achieved — including the extreme recourse of military quarantine where it comes to be evidently applicable and necessary.

Admittedly, this proposal may be offered to varied readers, but in operative, practical terms it may constitute the only option that guarantees concrete solutions that stop the advance of this fearful scourge.  It may be now or never: we live at a critical time that demands critical measures. What is not rushed today for lack of political will, governmental indolence or timidity by world institutions, undoubtedly will tomorrow charge a much more dramatic and global human and economic cost.

Translated by mlk.

16 October 2014

 

The Long Tour of Pancho Cespedes / Regina Coyula

I’m going to start gathering my posts from other sites here, because I’m writing very little  these days and have half-abandoned my blog. In addition to this concert, I attended the one by Fito Paez and enjoyed it even more than this one. However, Fito came (to Cuba) two years ago, while Pancho had stopped singing for the public for a while. Here, then, is this chronicle published in 14ymedio.

From 8:00 in the evening on Saturday, the traffic jams at the corner of 1st and 10th in Miramar were a sure sign that a major event was in the works at the Karl Marx theater. Well-known artists such as Carlos Varela and Edesio Alejandro could be spotted in the crowed.

Shortly after 9:00 pm the hall was packed, and an agile, tall and slim Pancho Céspedes made an entrance sporting his new image. Having been away for 24 years from performing for his fans, he was quite nervous. He said so various times, plus it was obvious. However, that nervousness could not ruin the more than two hours of conversation, smiles, tears and – above all else – the songs shared with a public that welcomed him back with affection, sang along with him, and were all the while focused on making him feel comfortable. Pancho had come home. continue reading

This one-time concert was part of the Leo Brouwer Festival of chamber music that is celebrated annually between September 27 and October 12, in honor of the 75 years of life of this exceptional composer, conductor and musician.

According to Céspedes, this event will no longer take place in Cuba. Evidently his organization experienced more than a few stumbles. Only Leo’s will and his office could move him forward in this venture, but later productions – if they occur – will take place outside of Cuba. Pancho Céspedes was not stingy in his praise of Maestro Brouwer, who brought to fruition the singer’s wish to perform again before a major national audience.

Many individuals recorded the concert on phones, tablets and cameras, and there was television coverage, which surely will enable TV audiences to enjoy the concert later on.

The singer did not allude to his decision in 1990 to leave Cuba and, although nothing was mentioned in this regard, in a roundabout way he hinted at the long stretch that he was away from Cuba. Anyone could do a little simple math and figure out that it took six years to reunite with his wife.

Moreover, because artists feed off of sadness, depression and failure, those years of separation incubated his 1998 release, Vida Loca – his most successful work. Continuing our mathematical calculations, we conclude that it took Pancho 24 years to return to a concert venue in Cuba.

Céspedes needn’t have worked so hard to connect with the audience. His eagerness to do so at times caused a loss of elegance in his fluid exchange with the public between musical numbers. It was an unnecessary effort, for this artist oozes charisma and his vocal gifts for interpretation are outstanding, often approximating a murmured complicity.

Always in a public gathering there are those who leave a mobile device turned on, and even more than one telephone conversation could be heard in the hall as though in the caller’s living room. During such troublesome displays of our modern manners, such people even get annoyed if they are called to task about it. This – plus an indiscriminate use of modern, high-frequency LED lighting directed at the crowd (blinding us) – made for a less-than-perfect evening.

There was much emotion expressed by this artist who is a master of the minimalist stage, where the accompanying musicians occupied a discreet second place. Even an enormous stage like the Karl Marx’s was made intimate and cozy – even when a hypnotic spotlight focused solely on the singer, no other accoutrements in sight, was used a few times.

Ela O’Farrill’s Adiós Felicidad took me back to the time when that piece was taken off the air because it focused on selfish sentiments that were deemed incompatible with the building of a socialist society.

It’s hard to say which was the best part of the evening. The recordings were in high gear at the sounds of Señora  or Vida Loca, with the audience singing along word for word, but there were two particularly emotional moments. The first occurred with a most beautiful song (Átame la mirada) about how nostalgia makes us call faraway places by the names of places left behind.

The other was when applause turned into a standing ovation when Pancho announced the arrival of Pablo Milanés in his first public appearance since undergoing a health scare just months before. Pablo, also visibly more slender and dressed all in black, joined Pancho who by then had doffed his coat and untucked his shirt. Their duet of Esas Dulces Mentiras y Amargas Verdades was rewarded by another standing ovation.

Excellent soirée in the company of Pancho Céspedes, who – wise beyond his years – has gone on a long tour from where his life is to la Vida Loca. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

 Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

3 October 2014

Cuban Government: Two Strategies / Juan Juan Almeida

The man looks like himself.  That’s why, I don’t hit it off with hate.  It’s true, I was born and raised surrounded by men who love to speechify and believe themselves owners of the absolute truth, so much that they imposed it by force with total impunity.

Maybe that’s why some days ago was I surprised myself thinking that separating myself from that government group to which I am genetically tied, more than anything, was due to a strange defect or capacity that I have for accepting criticism and enjoying those insults that for some are attacks and for me, charming primitivism. continue reading

I learned.  As also I learned to look at Cuba without passion and to see that the Cuban government makes itself stronger every day relying on division and that’s why it uses two principal strategies:  one — which is a matter solely for Cuba and Cubans — and another for outdoors, directed to planetary opinion and solidarity transforming our small country in sustained headlines of magazines and news headlines.

Internally it divides society, twists co-existence and feeds the ineffective culture of confrontation between generational groups, between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries, desirous of prominence, but fundamentally between rich and poor because — as we already know — socialism loves the poor so much that it multiplies them to make them overrate charity.

Before the world it is something else, evident these days.  The government took advantage of the insufficient response of the international community in the face of the crisis unleashed by the spread of the Ebola virus, and executing a maneuver that besides humanitarian is attractive and magisterial, turned itself into one of the main assistance providers to western Africa sending 165 Cuban health workers and preparing, always publicly because without applause there is no victory, the departure of another group with 296 doctors and nurses.

Ebola went out of control in such a dizzying way that it made the health systems of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone collapse; then Cuba, the greater of the Antilles, the “blockaded” country, delivers with false altruism economic and human resources to the noble work of saving lives.

Impossible not to praise; before such colossal facts what does it matter to Ban Ki-Moon or any other important member of international organizations, that in Palmarito de Cauto they kick another “delinquent.”  Understand the irony, the correct thing is to say dissident.

I am not a red, I am a realist, which although it begins with R is not the same nor is it written the same.  I clarify because I also see that the Cuban opposition continues gaining popularity, above all in virtual spaces, but still it does not capitalize on the discontent of millions of people, of a real population that is disappointed by the system, that does not want to be represented by anyone who victimizes it.  They forget that Cuban society has been saturated with stories of sacrifice and raising pedestals.

Reality seems to walk in the opposite direction desired by many. Cubans want to smile and get to the end of the month without predicaments. That’s why they look with respect and even with a tad of healthy envy at the new entrepreneurs (I don’t like calling them self-employed) and at the artists that prevail at opening doors.  For them, these are the real symbols of individuality, the true vanguard and the most effective creators of popular inspiration because today even sovereignty is a personal concept.

Translated by mlk.

14 October 2014

Back Channel to Cuba / 14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzalez

Presentation of "Back Channel to Cuba" at UNEAC (14Ymedio)
Presentation of “Back Channel to Cuba” at UNEAC (14Ymedio)

The Villena room was too small for the audience, which endured sweltering heat during the two hours of the presentation of the book “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana.”

The free event, at the headquarters of the Cuban Artists and Writers Union (UNEAC), had raised such high expectations in the academic world and in public opinion that almost two hundred people gathered his Monday at 4:00 in the afternoon to meet the authors of a book that has been presented outside of Cuba as “revelatory.”

Researchers Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande had to face being accosted by the press before entering the room where they were awaited by figures as diverse as Ministry of the Interior agent Fernando González – imprisoned in the United States for 15 years – and the Cuban-American businessman Max Lesnick. continue reading

“We have been working on the book for ten years, and it has come out at at the most important moment in the relations between the two countries,” Kornbluh told 14ymedio. He listed some elements to support his claim, such as “Obama, as president, is not seeking re-election, Hillary Clinton has made statements that the embargo should be lifted…”

The occasion was also utilized to present the book of Cuban researchers Elier Ramirez and Esteban Morales, From Confrontation to Attempts at ‘Normalization, United States Policy Toward Cuba. The quotation marks in the title are, in the words of Ramirez, because relations between the two countries “have never been normal.” The meeting’s moderator, Ramon Sanchez Parodi – former head of the Cuba Interests Section in Washington – presented the Cuban book to complement the American one.

Some copies of Ramirez’s and Morales’ book were sold at the event. Not so with that of Kornbluh and LeoGrande. These latter commented to the national press, at the end of the event, that they hope to release a Spanish edition, “so that Cubans can read it.”

The Americans made their presentation without following a script, while Cubans read their statements, which sounded more like an apology for the decisions taken by Cuba throughout the conflict with the USA.

Among the audience was Lynn Roche, head of the Press and Culture Office of the United States Interest Section in Havana

At the invitation of American researchers, among the audience was Lynn Roche, head of the Press and Culture Office of the United States Interest Section in Havana. In statements to this newspaper, Roche described the conference as an opportunity to talk about one part of the recent history of Cuba and the US, and to address certain “practical points.” She has also been interested in “knowing more about the internal debate that is occurring in the United States on the subject of Cuba,” that Back Channel has undoubtedly contributed to.

The presentation of the book, which includes declassified US documents, occurs in a particular context. The Cuban government is reinforcing the anti-embargo campaign, both within and outside the Island, in view of the next United Nations vote that will be held on the question. On the other hand, in Florida the embargo is a hot topic of discussion in local elections. But Kornbluh assured 14ymedio that this latter has “no relation” to their presence in Havana and to the stir caused by their work. In any event, according to him, an important share of South Florida voters are Cubans who desire a “normalization” of ties between both countries.

Bilateral relations between the USA and Cuba cannot avoid the fundamental issue which Back Channel seems to ignore: human rights. What does Peter Kornbluh think about that? “The United States will always be talking about human rights in Cuba,” he says, in an accusatory tone, implying that this will remain a thorny issue between the two governments.

Of Jails In Cuba / Ivan Garcia

A "combatant" as Cuban prison guards are called, watches over prisoners working in their new uniforms.

For Saul prison is like his second home. He celebrated his 63rd birthday behind bars, fabricating cement and gravel blocks for a Cuban state enterprise called Provari, which makes everything from bricks, tiles and mattresses to insecticides and sells them for hard currency.

Saul knows the island’s penitentiary map like few do. Since 19 years of age he has been held in the main prisons: La Cabana, Chafarinas in Guantanamo, Boniato in Santiago de Cuba and the jails built by Fidel Castro like the Combinado del Este in Havana, Aguica in Matanzas and Canaleta in Ciego de Avila.

“In all, since I was a prisoner for the first time in 1970 because of the Vagrancy Law. I have worked cutting cane, in construction, making tourism furniture or insecticides with hardly any physical protection,” comments Saul, who has been a free man since April. continue reading

According to a former prison official, 90 percent of detainees in Cuba work with scarce security and are paid poverty wages.

“I am convinced that the work of prisoners is one of the main productive engines of the country. Exploiting them allows high profits. Until 2006, when I worked in a Havana jail, they were paid 150 or 200 pesos a month for working up to 14 hours (remember that the minimum salary in Cuba is 484 pesos) or they were paid not a cent. Those who were paid also had deducted expenses like food and lodging. The government gives degrading treatment to the majority of common Cuban prisoners,” says the ex-official.

Throughout the green caiman it is calculated that there exist more than 200 prisons. Cuba is the sixth nation on the planet in per capita prisoners. In 2013, the regime recognized that the penal population is around 57 thousand inmates.

The internal dissidence claims that the figure might approach 100 thousand. Cuban jails are rigorous. Physical mistreatment and abuses by the penitentiary guards are standard.

Suicides, mutilations and insanity within the prisons are a secret statistic that the government handles with clamps. Prestigious companies, like the Swedish Ikea, have been accused of complicity in prisoner slave labor in Cuban factories.

In the 1980’s, Ciro was a prisoner for five years for illegal exit. In his pilgrimage through the detention centers, he worked in a transportation parts warehouse for the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) in the Lawton slum, some 30 minutes from downtown Havana.

“MININT is the main beneficiary of cheap prison labor. In Workshop One I worked with hardly any protection on an assembly line for cars with plastic bodies and VW German motors. I also worked in an upholstery shop where fine furniture was given its varnish. Years later, I learned that they were for Ikea. They never paid me a cent,” says Ciro.

Thousands of inmates participate in construction of hospitals, schools, housing, food production and the most dangerous work. “We do what no one wants to do. Clean streets, sewers and cut the invasive marabou weed,” says Evelio, who is completing a two-year sentence scrubbing urban buses.

Military or state enterprises like Provari are at the head of labor exploitation and captive work. In a brochure published in 2001, the firm Provari was said to have 150 production installations on the island.

In the prison Combinado del Este, on the outskirts of Havana, Provari produces insecticides. A report published in the daily Guerrillero in 2013, said that the Provari branch office in Pinar del Rio in 2010 had sales valued at 200,000 dollars.

According to that report, the Pinarena branch production included chlorine and muriatic acid, beach chairs, baby cribs, concrete and clay blocks, paints, paint brushes, plastic tubes and ornamental plants.

In a workshop in the women’s prison in Havana, jeans are made for export by different brands, as well as uniforms for police, armed forces and the prisoners themselves.

Provari also produces the insecticide Lomate, anti-bacterials for lice and ticks, as well as other products destined for sanitary hygiene. And there are plans to build a solar water heater of 170 liters according to official media.

In that 2001 brochure, among other activities of Provari was mentioned carpentry with precious wood, sale of textiles under the brands Oeste and Hercules and upholstery of office furniture by the Ofimax brand.

“The most worrying thing is that they work without special uniforms, adequate for producing chemical substances.  We prisoners do not have options or a legal representative where we can complain and make demands of the government,” comments the former prisoner Saul.

And he adds that almost all the prisoners work voluntarily. “It’s a way to get air, eat better and escape the abuses of the jailers.”

While the autocratic Castro government prepares “tours” for credentialed western diplomats and correspondents in Cuba to model prisons like La Lima in Guanabacoa, a township to the southeast of the capital, thousands of inmates work in precarious conditions and without the required remuneration.

The odd thing is that state enterprises in the style of Provari, with all signs of participating in slave prison labor, expect a foreign partner to expand their businesses.

Ivan Garcia

Photo:  A “combatant,” as jailers in Cuba are called, poses together with several prisoners who with new uniforms were selected for display during the visits that in April 2013, a group of foreign correspondents and journalists for official media made to Cuban prisons previously chosen by the regime.  Taken from Cuba opens the jails to the press.

Translated by mlk.

7 October 2014

Homage to Cuban Architect Mario Coyula / Miguel Coyula

This small video — with English subtitles — is a tribute to Cuban architect Mario Coyula by Eusebio Leal, Havana City Historian. The film was made by Miguel Coyula, the well-known Cuban filmmaker, and Mario’s son.

For the Spanish speakers among you, and others who can enjoy the photos, following is an extract of Mario Coyula’s presentation at the last conference he attended.

“I am prey, our family is prey and all of and Venezuela is prey” / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Venezuelan Lilian Tintori, wife of Leopoldo Lopez, in Prague
Venezuelan Lilian Tintori, wife of Leopoldo Lopez, in Prague

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Prague, 13 October 2014 – We met a year ago in beautiful Prague at Forum 2000, with human rights activists from all over the world. Unlike that October, we are now missing Leopoldo Lopez. The Venezuelan politician and activist has been imprisoned since early this year, accused of various crimes that have all the hallmarks of a political montage.

Amid the celebrations for the quarter century of the Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic, Lilian Tintori speaks with 14ymedio about repression in Venezuela.

Question. Which led to Leopoldo López being imprisoned?

Response. My husband Leopoldo Lopez is in prison for saying what all of Venezuela wanted to hear. The majority of Venezuelans want change. In January he raised his voice and started a peaceful campaign in the streets for constitutional change in Venezuela. By the second month of the protests there were so many people in the streets that they ambushed him and put out an order to arrest him for murder. Something that has nothing to do with Leopoldo, who is a progressive leader who has fought for freedoms, for democracy. He was the mayor of Chacao twice and won international awards for the transparency of his administration. continue reading

I think they are afraid of his leadership. There is no evidence against him. They accuses him of arson and damage to public buildings, but Leopoldo doesn’t believe in violence as a method to bring about change.

Q. The UN just released a resolution demanding that Leopoldo be released immediately. How has that been received by Nicolas Maduro’s government?

R. Foreign Minister Rafael Ramirez told the UN not to meddle in the internal affairs of Venezuela. To many of us that seemed irresponsible, because the UN is the most important organization in the world with regards to the promotion and protection of human rights, covenants to which Venezuela is a signatory. So the Venezuelan government should abide by a decision of the UN. Thus, we are expecting Leopoldo’s release within the next few hours.

The Government should abide by a UN decision. Thus, we are expecting Leopoldo’s release within the next few hours.

Q. Sometimes in the middle of the political connotations of such an event, one loses the human dimension a little. How has your family endured this imprisonment?

R. It’s very difficult and very hard to have a relative imprisoned. Much like the final loss of someone because he can’t be present in our lives. I can only see him when I visit. Right now I’m acting and mom and dad for our children. I am taking my children out alone and every family dynamic falls on my shoulders.

I can only be with Leopold when I visit him in prison and facing up to the military is very distressing. To go through a military search and they record all the conversations when we’re together, it makes me feel persecuted all the time. So I am prey, our family is prey and all of and Venezuela is prey.

Q. It seems at this point that Chavismo is confronting itself and there are attacks within their own ranks.

R. Venezuela is affected by violence, it is hurt, frustrated and unhappy because we do not like it. We reject violence. We reject weapons, the “Colectivos” and these murders are not what we want for our country. Definitely this is the result of years and years of violence in Venezuela, but I think that violent environment is going to end, the Colectivos themselves want a change, Chavistas themselves want a change. They want well-being, freedom to choose their food, to have medicine, to be safe walking the streets. We have a tremendous inflation, insecurity in the streets. They kidnap you, they kill you.

Q. And in those circumstances would not it be easier for you and your family to go into exile?

R. Easy yes, but my commitment is to Venezuelans. When Leopoldo asked me to marry him, he asked me to marry Venezuela and I said yes. He asked me to marry a project for a better Venezuela and this country needs us. This nation needs human rights to be respected throughout the country, not only for Leopoldo Lopez but also for all Venezuelans.

Young Cuban Denounces New Human Rights Violation / Cubanet, Yusmila Reyna Ferrer

cuba-inmigracion-600x400
SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba, 12 October 2014, Yusmila Reyna Ferrer  — The Island’s government has denied the right of Carlos Amel Oliva Torres, youth leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), based in Santiago de Cuba, to travel to the Czech Republic, as invited by organizations based in that European country, on Saturday 11 October.

According to reports from the young activist, when the customs authorities at Havana International Airport checked his documents, after separating from him the rest of the check-in line, and on looking at his passport, informed him that he could not travel, without giving a specific reason.

Carlos Amel says that such a violation demonstrates the intention of Cuban State Security wanted to silence UNPACU’s activist and to censor international exposure to the arguments of the organization in their fight for a pluralistic society within the island.

It is not the first time that the Cuban authorities have violated Amel Carlos Oliva’s basic right to travel. According to the activist, last September 30 he was also intercepted while preparing to go to a similar event in Chile.

With the repeal of the famous “exit permit” in January 2013, Cuban society appeared to take a step forward in achieving new freedoms. However, these facts show that what is enshrined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still subject to consideration by the authorities of the island, who continue to arbitrarily decide who can leave the country and who can not.

Cubans Can Again Apply For Dutch Scholarships / 14ymedio

Cubans are once again eligible for Netherlands Fellowship Programs (NFP) scholarships, after a decade of exclusion. The modification of Dutch regulations allows citizens on the island to request support for courses, workshops, masters degrees and doctorates in the Netherlands.

Among the studies available, the Glasnost Foundation in Cuba promotes courses for bloggers and independent journalists with the purpose of “improving their work and connecting colleagues in other parts of the world,” at the RNTC, an institute dedicated to training for communications and media professionals.

Requests for an NFP scholarship are open until 26 October. Applicants should meet the eligibility criteria, among which are a high level of spoken and written English.

The NFP scholarship programs have been created by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and are administered by Nuffic, the Dutch organization for international cooperation in higher education. Programs are offered in 51 countries and cover all visa and travel costs, as well as room and board, insurance and registration fees.

 

What Isn’t Working? / Fernando Damaso

Photo: Rebeca

Let’s take a look at four different situations.

In the case of the national railway, the authorities in charge claim that its problems are due to outdated equipment and the lack of proper maintenance resulting from a lack of spare parts. The system has not been updated in more than fifty years. As a result the No. 1 train from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, which used to run daily, now only makes the trip every three days. For the last eight years the Havana to Holguin train has not run at all.

Those that are running do so at reduced speed and with a fewer number of train cars. When the air conditioning in one of the French-made train cars breaks down, it remains permanently of service and passengers must resort to opening tiny windows instead. The system also suffers from organizational problems and widespread indiscipline.

For years the sizes of school uniforms sold at the beginning of the school year have not corresponded to students’ actual sizes, which have become much smaller to poor nutrition. Though the problem persists year after year, the ministries of education and industry have still not come up with a solution.

Camping, the only vacation option available to the average Cuban, does not live up to expectations or its costs. Camping facilities are run-down, the food is of poor quality and badly prepared, amenities are minimal and the available services leave much to be desired.

Drinking water is in short supply in the suburb of Villa Panamericana near the town of Cojimar. Planners did not take into account the fact that project’s cisterns relied on gravity and that the supply came directly from the tank itself, so of course it cannot reach the third, fourth or fifth floors of the town’s existing buildings.

One might think that this string of calamities is directly related to those provide these services. That assumes that these people do not know how to do the work or simply do it badly. However, in spite of a constant turnover of directors, administrators and personnel, things are no better. One would then have to assume that it is the system itself that is not working.

Neither classic nor actual socialism has worked in any of the countries in which it has been tried. The evidence is plain to see. In Cuba it has never worked, not in the past and not in the present. I think this will also be the case with “prosperous and efficient socialism.” At least that is how I see things so far.

8 October 2014