Tribute to Laura Pollan in Santa Clara on her 66th Birthday / Yesmy Elena Mena, CID

Homenaje a Laura Pollán en Santa ClaraSANTA CLARA, Cuba.- Members of the Cuban Independent and Democratic Party (CID) paid tribute to Laura Inés Pollan Toledo on  the 66th birthday, 13 February, at one of their sites in the city of Santa Clara.

Ada Olimpia Becerra Fuentes, who represents the CID, in the Brisas del Oeste neighborhood in that city, said that 16 opponents met and shared memories of the deceased Laura, with a framed photo and a bouquet of gladioli.

In commemoration of her they sang the National anthem, held a minute of silence in her memory, and read a document referring to the leader of the Ladies in White written by her husband, Héctor Maseda.

14 February 2014

Regulations Go, Regulations Come / Fernando Damaso

Photo: Rebeca

The most recently approved regulations which now govern self-employment (private labor) prohibit the sale of manufactured goods. Henceforth, budding private businesses may sell only hand-made goods. Applying such obsolete rules in the twenty-first century is akin to feudalism and amounts to a return to a pre-industrial era.

Meanwhile, the government purchases shoddy goods at clearance sale prices from China, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico and other countries. It later offers them for sale in its hard currency stores at exorbitant prices which are several times higher than their original wholesale costs. This puts them well out of reach of most Cubans and creates a monopoly in the sale of manufactured goods.

Many years ago, at the beginning of the experiment, its chief inventor said, “This is the revolution of the poor, by the poor and for the poor.” It seems to have quickly lost direction, becoming instead a behemoth which threatens the poor, one which does not allow them to either develop their initiatives or get ahead.

Never before in Cuba’s history as a nation has a government manipulated and abused so many of its citizens. Cubans have endured family separation, persecution for political, religious, sexual and even musical preferences, as well as a decades-long prohibition against travelling abroad, buying or selling a home or car, or staying in resort hotels.

Cubans have had to endure poverty-level wages and pensions. Professionals have been contracted out to other countries as slave labor. Cubans have served as cannon fodder for foreign wars, have suffered the loss of moral values and have been subjected to inflated prices for both basic commodities and non-essential goods. They have had to put up with low-quality social services, denial of home internet access, press censorship, repression of freedom of thought, and so on.

José Martí warned us of this but we did not take heed. He cautioned that socialism poses two dangers: the first stems from misunderstood and incomplete readings of the works of foreign writers; the second from the arrogance and repressed rage of ambitious men, who rise up by standing on the shoulders of others, pretending to be ardent defenders of the helpless (Collected Works, volume 3, page l68, published in Cuba).

14 February 2014

Raul Castro in Search of Money or of Moneyed Men / Juan Juan Almeida

It was only some years ago, when the visible financial crisis infected sectors of the national economy, and Cuban industry verged on the almost invisible boundary that marks the action and the omission that hastens the death of a hopeless patient; General Raul Castro, with that impressive way of showing his pathetic talent, sold us the fraudulent idea that the Armed Forces had been converted into an example for “The Change.”

In papers, because delving into the demonstrated earnings, the island’s military enterprise system worked much more than the lawyer of singer Justin Bieber works these days; of course, being propelled by slave labor (to be more exact, recruits), there was no way of measuring the calculable cost of a product or its labor efficiency.

Absurd, yes, but through repetition, it managed to attract the attention of those who move opinion, and many began to believe in that rigged sequence of decisions that today make up what appears the destiny of Cuba and what some still call “Raul’s reforms.”

That group of measures, or non-structural opinions, which pay no attention to productivity or change the nature of the system at all and are basically aimed at legalizing or facilitating what until yesterday was tolerated, prohibited or complicated; and bring symptoms of anemia to the practically defunct capacity of monetary investments of that labor force that biting a biased and naive scheme, believed the story of “we are all an enterprising population,” and jumped from the state sector to the private, and today, earning more, counts on less.

Evidently, not all state workers took the streets convinced and believing in Tía Tata*; but at this point in the story, “modernizing the economic model” is simply a gross verbal diarrhea that served to disguise a perpetrated crime that should be judged, obviously respecting the due process that every accused must have, because only a defrauded person can be induced to believe that after 20 years working in an office, a person, by magic, without supporting aptitudes, will be transformed into a shoemaker, locksmith, farmer, barber, drummer, trash man or watch maker.

The strategy of General Raul Castro and his penitent entourage has only served to simulate changes and forge flexibility; to increase poverty; to abandon the retired people in an aging population; to invest less state money in services like health and education and above all to try to play down the stay in power of a single and inefficient governing pack of hounds.

It is not accidental, it is all well planned and coldly calculated.  It was at the end of the ’90’s when Raul, after his recurrent hormonal disorder, made fashionable the sentence, “Let’s exchange cannons for beans.”  By then, few could understand that he was not referring to the food, but to the need of, without renouncing the least power, his new strategy consisted of going in search of money or men with money who with their presence in Havana would help demonstrate that security that only solvency offers, or to count on solvent friends.

*Translator’s note: Tía Tata’s Stories was a radio program and later a TV program with puppets.

Translated by mlk.

13 February 2014

Discovering Freedom in a Prison / Angel Santiesteban

On the eve of my first year in prison

Officer Abat accompanied by a captain has visited the settlement with the intention of searching my writings and readings.


Can I borrow a section of the paper Papa? / Take it. / Thank you.
Phrase of the day: “The more I know man, the more I love my dog.” Diogenes
But, what kind of journalism is this? Where’s the dog’s opinion!

They started reading some news chosen by the editor of my blog to keep me updated with national and international events. While they did it, I watched the interest of knowing another reality prohibited for them. They were greatly surprised when they read El Nuevo Herald newspaper and saw the photo of Raul Castro in an article from the 7th of this month by the journalist Pedro Corzo: “The Castro Bourgeoisie.” With early tachycardia, the one who was reading it, hurried to the other officer to show him the offense but, brazenly, he read the extensive text with interest.

From my position, I reveled in watching them read the free press, different from the hardbound articles of the national press. In the end they left leaving all my papers in their place. I’m sure they left if not scared, at least more free. They learned that there are places where everything can be said, from one side and the other, where opinion is respected with worship.

Hopefully soon we will have a Cuba where there is this respect between so many who deny us and no one will be imprisoned for thinking differently.

Ángel Santiesteban Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement, February 2014

Sign the petition so that Amnesty International will declare the Cuban dissident Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience.

12 February 2014

A Comfortable Home (something spoken of in the Constitution) / Regina Coyula

Image: jimdo.com

The journalist José Alejandro Rodríguez on his show on the Havana Channel yesterday referenced several complaints about the quality of newly built or repaired housing, which soon begin to show signs of deterioration. Last week on the show Cuba Says, on the TV news, there was an amazing report on the housing offered to people who remain in shelters, some of the for 40 (!!) years.

And what did I see? A rough and crude property, without plaster, exposed pipes. no slabs on the floor in the kitchen and bath. Some of the “beneficiaries” might even say they were happy, and it’s understandable for anyone who has to live with strangers: no privacy, no space, no sanitation, and no respect for others.

When it’s about supplies, Daddy-State didn’t exert too much effort to resolve the problem of housing, which has become critical, especially in the capital, where the number of people living in shelters, in the last year, reached  number similar to the population of Matanzas.

And not only has the State not resolved the problem of housing, but it weaned its babies transferring the problem to them. Those affected should now solicit loans, become hounds on the trail of construction materials, learn the trade, establish working relationships with people with similar interests, as it should always be, I think; only that those who today live badly should do it for themselves.

They were educated in the idea that good labor, political and social behavior would result in their being awarded housing through having earned credits at their workplace.

The dozen slums inherited from the government before 1959 were quickly eradicated. The same government that took them over is entirely responsible since then for the current number of 160 neighborhoods and settlements lacking facilities. Creating these favelas has nothing to do with the blockade or the imperialist threat; it’s one more demonstration of the inefficiency in administration and production from the same group that insists on convincing us that they can do it now.

14 February 2014

A Good Solution / Juan Juan Almeida

In his first decision of this year, published in the Gaceta Oficial Extraordinaria (Special Official Gazette) dated February 7th, the head of MININT (Ministerio del Interior de la República de Cuba – Cuban Ministry of the Interior) Army General Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, ordered the General Management of the General Revolutionary Police to exchange information, such as the co-ordination of criminal actions and investigations, with the General Management of the department of Bank Financial Operations Investigations, in order to combat money laundering, financing of terrorism and moving illicit capital out of the island.

The challenge is large and high-cost; but the solution is very easy. For starters, build a wall around the boundary of the present location of the Central Committee, leave the guards outside, and convert it into a high-security prison. And whatever else is needed.

Translated by GH

13 February 2014

Barbarism in Cuba Wears a Uniform and Police Badge / Lilianne Ruiz

Iris and Antunez

The men who sawed through the metal bars at Jorge Luis Garcia Perez’s (Antunez) house at 5:30 in the morning last Tuesday were police, After cutting the fence, they broke the latch and drove everyone sleeping in the house out with blows, taking them prisoner. They were following orders from the Ministry of the Interior. This information is already old because a few hours later they were arrested again. But I just connected and the post I wrote at home after taling with Iris on Wednesday night.

On Monday, 10 February, Antunez started a hunger and thirst strike, in protest for the police ransacking he was a victim of last Wednesday. He is demanding the return of everything they took from his house. His wife explained that it wasn’t a question of the material possessions, but of a moral response that tries to limit these arbitrary actions.

There were two other men with them this morning, from the Orlando Zapata Tamayo Civic Resistance Front, who joined the hunger strike. At this time everyone continues the same stance, despite being isolated. The activists’ cell phones were not returned by the police, to increase the sensation of isolation and limit the visibility of the strike.

We have to look with horror on the fact that wearing the uniform or carrying an ID card from the Department of State Security, provides momentary impunity. The seeds of violence are planted in this social war fueled by ideology; this is nothing new. But the end depends on people of good will — if there are any left — both inside and outside of Cuba.

Who dares to propose, from Cuba, that Latin America and the Caribbean is a Zone of Peace.

14 February 2014

The Book Fair You Don’t See / Yoani Sanchez

Behind the shelves there is another International Book Fair. One barely perceived among the partitions and walls of the exhibition areas. The national newspapers will never report on it, but these parallel and hidden events sustain the other one. A network of hardship, endless workdays and poverty-level wages, support the main publishing showcase on the island. For each page printed, there is a long list of irregularities, improvisations and exploitations.

The Cuban Book Institute (ICL) is the principal organizer of this celebration of reading that is held every February. However, the state entity that controls literary production is overwhelmed by the lack of resources and corruption scandals. Its director, Zuleica Romay, asked to step down weeks before the start of the book fair. However, it’s still unknown if she will be granted “liberation” from her responsibilities, or will “follow her duty” to maintain her position.

Many of the people who worked on this twenty-third edition of the Fair played the role of the ants who prevent the collapse of the anthill. The “credits” chalked on the Cuban government’s account are the fruit of personal sacrifices and violations that no union would demand: lunches delayed or missed completely, editorial decisions that can’t be taken because first “you have to consult the comrade from State Security,” workers who bring resources from their own homes to decorate the place, books that travel in the trunk of a private car — or in the basket of a bike — a lack of institutional gasoline and water supply that never makes it to the mouths of the thirsty employees…

Spanish post
15 February 2014

Bridges of Love / Rebeca Monzo

Since my arrival two weeks ago on this other piece of Cuba called Miami, I have barely had a free moment as I try to fill up the void left by the two decades since my last visit with happy reunions and long conversations.

I have had the honor and the pleasure of being the guest on prestigious radio and TV programs as well as being able to put faces to all those very familiar voices I have heard only through radio from a gracious “voluntary insile*” in my apartment in Nuevo Vedado. But above all there has been the pleasure of once again seeing those dearly beloved people who suddenly vanished from our daily landscape.

Reconnecting with a part of our culture, transported by our compatriots to this other shore, has renewed my spirit. It is true that, to my great regret, I have neglected my blog a bit, but “travelling lightly” has made me dependent on foreign technology (everything from a virus to a lack of punctuation marks). This has limited me greatly, for which I ask forgiveness of my readers. I feel very welcome wherever I go and in my “romantic fantasies” I imagine an archipelago knitted together with bridges of tolerance and reconciliation, forever linking our two shores. Bridges of love, something all Cubans need.

*Translator’s note: “Insile” here is a play on words, the opposite of “exile.”

14 February 2014

Please send me a picture of the city I once knew… / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

18a 18b You are invited to personalize my utopictures. Just @sk me which slice of Habana you want me to shoot. At the end most of your wishes will be published back in this collective bluff. Let me know what you miss most, including Habana people, and in revenge I will cut this city in pieces of pics for you. You’re welcome!
18c 18d
Hola, Orlando:
Me too, if it’s possible, I would like a little piece of your Havana for me. It would be the Port of Havana, the bay, the view of Regla, Casa Blanca, maybe from the little ferry, whatever you can.
Gracias,
Fransis.
18e 18f Send me a card from Habana Bay. Just send me a card from Habayna. Untrue colors of twilight. Ruins and glam cathedrals. Tires tied with chains to the borders of this island without frontiers, hopefully to make it float astray. Nowhere isle. Ecological chimneys of Neversmoke. Hermetic Hermes on top. Madera’s marble Jesus staring us in proud abandon since December 1958. Raw architecture. Iron bones of underdevelopment. Public boats to cross from coast to coast in five definite minutes. Fuel smell. Containers. Hills as blue phantoms beyond horizon. I’ve heard it all, I even remember it well. But still send me a card from Habana Bay. You just send me a card from Habayna.
18g18h1

Cuban Baseball: Declining Slowly but Surely / Dimas Castellano

Alfredo Despaigne in the Caribbean Series2014.

Alfredo Despaigne in the Caribbean Series2014.

By Dimas Castellano

As if what happened during the first three days of competition on Margarita Island was an exception and not a manifestation of the stagnation experienced in all spheres of Cuban society, a sports commentator on the television show Morning Journal said that “the team from Villa Clara did not meet expectations.”

In baseball, which is the topic before us, what happened could not be a surprise. The avowed superiority of “free” versus “slave” ball was not confirmed in practice. The challenge launched against professionalism in 1960 did not stand the test of time. But the acceptance of this fact by the Cuban authorities—though without public acknowledgement and coming too late—is still good news, because this decision requires them to banish the ideological slogan and return to the path that they never should have left.

In 1948, at the meeting of the Caribbean Baseball Confederation held in Miami, representatives of the professional leagues of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama and Venezuela formed the Caribbean Series. From the inaugural event in February 1949, when the Almendares team went undefeated to take victory in Havana until the close of participation in 1960 with the victory of Cienfuegos in Panama, Cuban teams won seven out of twelve championships: irrefutable proof of the quality of “slave” ball during those years. continue reading

Sports after 1959, separated from civil society, was monopolized by the state, and subordinated to politics and ideology. At a prohibitive cost for a third-world country, a supremacy was established in Central American, Pan American and worldwide amateur competitions for decades, which was heralded as the victory of free baseball over slave baseball.

Amidst that unfounded euphoria, in January 1967, the leader of the revolution said: “Professional sports has been eradicated, especially in one of the most popular sports: baseball … But the most interesting thing is that no professional athlete, whose business is sports, has played with as much enthusiasm, as much bravery, as much courage, as that demonstrated by our athletes, who are not professional.”

And in October 1975 he declared: “If in other Latin American countries no social revolution exists, if they don’t develop the social revolution, then no matter how many techniques they use, how many coaches they hire, how many things they dream up, they will not be able to achieve the successes that Cuba achieves in sports.”

The decline was slow but sure. The defeats in the World Classics, but above all the one suffered last year at the last stop, against the U.S. team, composed of university students between 19 and 23 years of age, who despite their weak offensive output swept five games from the supposed “amateurs” from the largest of the Antilles.

Now, 54 years after that decision, after the setback suffered and the loss of many talents who left “free” baseball in search of contracts in the Major Leagues, Cuba returned to the Caribbean Series with the winning team from the 52nd National Series, at a time when the rest of the participants exhibit a superior level to our baseball.

Villa Clara, reinforced with several of the most experienced top Cuban players—twelve of whom have been integrated into the Cuban team—faced the champions of the winter leagues from Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. Three days were all it took to show the gap between them and us.

The first day we lost 9-4 to the Hermosillo Orange (Mexico), the second day to the Magellan Navigators (Venezuela) 8-5, and on the third day the Licey Tigers (Dominican Republic) beat us 9-2, to set a record: the worst performance by a Cuban team in the Caribbean Series.

On February 4 we saved face against the Mayagüez Indians (Puerto Rico), but now our inclusion was pure imagination and wishful thinking. As Oscar Sánchez Serra wrote in the newspaper Granma on February 4: “If the Orange win today against Puerto Rico, and if they lose tomorrow against Venezuela, and if the Dominican Republic wins one more time, then on Thursday, first place from the qualifying phase will play against the king of the 52nd National Series.”

We returned to “slave” ball at a distinct disadvantage. Teams like the Magellan Navigators, from an ALBA-member country, just as Cuba is, which can also count many active players in the U.S. Major Leagues, has in its ranks some Cubans who left the island, illustrating the tardiness of Cuba compared with similar countries.

Cuba has conditions and prospects: the permissibility, though still under state control, of some players participating in foreign leagues; the increase of wages to players, though still insufficient; Cubans can again enjoy Major League Baseball games on local television, though still with limitations; new programs have been implemented, such as one I enjoyed a couple of days ago that allowed an interview with the legendary Camilo Pascual. All this indicates that we are on the way, but the results of this first step, and some of the next, will not reach Cuba’s full potential, because it is one thing to decide to change, and another to rebuild what was destroyed.

After the night, however long it seems, follows sunrise. That we still have to listen to the likes of Yulieski Gurriel say that he hopes to get permission from the Cuban authorities to play abroad, or that the Cuban authorities still have not given him permission, indicates the presence of obstacles to be overthrown in order to achieve the freedom that our athletes have lacked, and determines the decline that we are paying for with defeats.

Translated by Tomás A.

From Diario de Cuba

10 February 2014