English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
But Cubans are tired, Cubans want changes. More than ten years ago, more than 25,000 Cubans proposed a project of legal reform called the Varela Project, to hold a plebiscite and ask the people whether or not they want free elections. The Cuban constitution establishes that if more tan 10,000 people support a legal proposal, then under the constitution the government if obligated to respond.” Rosa Maria Payá
3 February 2014
Contrary to what you might think, people in Cuba actually miss having censorship. This attitude isn’t one of irony, but rather a strategy for freedom.
Is it worth-while to focus on the last images and letters coming from the inside of the last living utopia on Earth? Is Cuba by now a contemporary country or just another old-fashioned delusion in the middle of Nowhere-America? A Cold-War Northtalgia maybe? Can we expect a young Rewwwolution.cu within that Ancien Régime still known as The Revolution? I would like to provoke more questions than answers.
We live in a country held hostage by despotism and the single-party government in power—the Communist Party. We live in a country where, since the very beginning of the Revolution, the press has been the private property of the military elite. For the average citizen, there’s not much that can be done against such a backdrop, but an initial step that would surprise even the authorities would be to demand public censorship in Cuba in order to make it visible in the midst of our society’s secrecy. The second step would be to instate a public official in the position of Official Censor. continue reading
My experience of being a censored writer in Cuba is phantasmagoric; censorship leaves no footprint and the next generation won’t believe my experiences. No editor has ever directly told me to censor any of my lines, nor given me any explanation or written record of why I was expelled from the Cuban literary field. No one signed an order for my books to be removed from publishers’ catalogues. In reality, I was condemned to be an autistic rather than an artistic writer. That’s why we should call for the restoration of Castroist censorship, at least while we’re not yet able to completely dismantle the island’s lingering system of repression.
Let me be clear: The island doesn’t have a specific Department of Censorship. The state press—the only legal press—has never published any serious criticism of the Revolution, and there’s no one else we can complain to about this intellectual silencing, either. There aren’t even any bureaucratic regulations in place to define what can and cannot be published. It’s precisely this fogginess that allows for maximum impunity, since everyone begins to censor everyone else, starting with the self-censorship that every author personally humiliates himself with in order to avoid institutional humiliation.
For there to be freedom of expression under totalitarianism, perhaps we have to start by introducing democracy’s mechanisms of censorship. Thereafter, we would have to fight for the right to minimize the spaces occupied by censorship, which currently encroach upon Cuba’s whole atmosphere, preventing us from breathing.
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
3 February 2014
HAVANA, Cuba Just months after Graham Bell patented the telephone, an invention of the Italian Antonio Meucci, Havana hosted the first telephone conversation in Spanish, an event that took place in October 1877.
137 years after the event that would favor the island with the use of a device that definitively contributed to global development, and 132 years after the inauguration of the first telephone service in Havana, the monopoly of the totalitarian system of more half a century over communications and control of the telephonic infrastructure – besides being insufficient — has taken the Island to a brutal technological underdevelopment in this area.
On the other hand, cellular phone service, which has been implemented globally with all the features offered by the development of new information and communication technologies, remains a primitive and embryonic service on the Island, and despite that, extremely costly for most people.
Such a technological gap is not due entirely to the objective lack of capital on the part of the owner/State for investing in the necessary infrastructure to develop communications, but also to a policy bent on keeping Cubans outside sources of information and rights which in today’s world technology enhances. continue reading
Privilege of the Dictatorship
Despite this, there are those who think they see signs of change in official policy. I recently got a phone call from a radio station in a Latin American country.
The friendly colleague wanted to know my views on “the new provision of the Cuban state telephone ETECSA allowing payment from abroad for Cubans’ home phones”. Apparently, he considered this a very significant measure.
I offered some brief opinions, without much fanfare. The tendency to magnify the “reforms” or “flexibilities” of the Cuban government by some foreign journalists always amazes me, as if any of them really meant a remarkable achievement, an attempt to improve the living conditions of the population or major progress towards human rights.
The dictatorship’s privileges are: half a century of strict control over Cubans and the country, turning any crevice into an illusion of an opening. I would like to know if most of this reporter’s fellow countrymen have the ability or inability to pay their own phone bills, or if they require an authorization from their government so that they can be paid from abroad.
From my personal perception, every little step that the government takes towards what it has nicknamed “updating the model” — although no one knows exactly what model it is referring to — evidences, first, the accumulation of limits and boundaries that weigh over the Cuban people, asphyxiating their liberties and, second, their inability to afford their full practice.
In principle, any opening, however small, undermines the wall of totalitarianism to some extent, so it is positive, in that sense. However, pondering matters at their true value avoids the temptation to overvalue the facts and their scope.
Profiting from misery
Previously, Cuban wireless Telephone service (CUBACEL) introduced the option for recharging Cuban accounts from abroad — with regular “promotions” that double the phone’s call balance from a 20 CUC recharge — and we Cubans have benefited since then from the solid generosity of friends or relatives who have increased our ability to communicate in the midst of the Castro plateau, so that the current measure of allowing payment of land-line phones is an extension of the former, rather than a novelty.
Recently, an article published in the official organ Tribuna de La Habana stated, with a lot of fanfare, the coming implementation of internet and e-mail service through cellular phones, which is “mainly due to the inflow of fresh foreign funds into the country”, and also as the result of recharges from abroad.
Furthermore, they will make “adjustments in costs for voice, international messaging and local voice service…” We will have to pay attention to this announcement that will possibly imply an improvement on the technological possibility of Cubans, beyond whatever controls will be associated with it.
But it is actually the deep economic crisis and the urgent need for foreign exchange earnings which forced the government, first to “liberate” communications services previously available only to foreigners – such as cellular phone service contracts, up to then available only in “convertible” currency — and later to introduce these allowances with the misnomer of “reforms” that are only explained from the viewpoint of the expense they represent to the pockets of Cubans for sustaining a service that has no relation to the income or the purchasing power of the people.
Which is to say that the regime has literally scrounged profits out of Cubans’ misery, disguising as flexibility what is really shameful, and — even worse – it has found a certain audience to give it a round of applause. Cosas veredes, Sancho…* Apparently, in the midst of such shambles, not everyone realizes that the true secret of Raúl’s economic strategy is begging.
*”Something is surprising.” Though attributed to Cervante’s Quijote, ”cosas veredes, amigo Sancho, que farán fablar las piedras” (you see such things, Sancho, that will make stones speak) the phrase never appeared in the famous novel. Most likely, a minstrel voiced it in Cantar del Mio Cid quoting Alphonse VI “Cosas tenedes, Cid, que farán fablar las piedras”. (you come up with such things… etc.)
Miriam Celaya, Cubanet, 28 January 2014
Translated by Norma Whiting
Habana, Cuba.- The girl rests beside me, as naked as a country without rights. She turns tricks on weekends to keep alive her mother, who became infected with HIV when she herself was a prostitute over a decade ago.
“My mother had to do it to raise me, when things got tough during the nineties. Now it is my turn.”
She may be called Adriana, Yusimi, Anisley… Prostitution has thousands of faces; many are feminine but many others are masculine or transsexual. I ask her if she knows anything about a regional meeting of heads of state that is to be held here at the end of January. She looks at me in disbelief and answers:
“I saw something about in on Telesur, but I don’t see any benefit in their meeting. Other countries may fare better, but here we are going downhill, every day its worse…”
Soon, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) will meet for the fourth time; this time in an impoverished Havana. Raul Castro and his court of generals will try to combine the art of “Political Prostitution” and “tick techniques*” on the backs of the economic integration groups. Now that the European Economic Community “seems to be feeling squeamish” toward the repeal of its Common Position on Cuba, CELAC emerges for the Castro leadership as the ideal house pet.
The Chinese, for their part, come to play the role of the developed countries at the Port of Mariel. They won’t be alone, but they want to ensure a convenient springboard for foreign trade in the area from the Caribbean area to Latin America.
I explained all this to the girl, who looked at me puzzled. After listening intently (I think), she turns over and asks me to scratch her back. When I think she’s not going to say anything, she confides, continue reading
“This government knows that as the only one it can continue to sell the country. What it’s doing is creating a paradise where the yumas — the foreigners — can earn a ton of money and the Cuban people continue to be fucked.”
“All those presidents,” she continues, “come to see how they’re going to share out the cake those here are offering, and the result will be more money for the government and more poverty for us.”
Then the girl stretches out her body, and sighs with the nonchalance of someone who knows she has nothing to lose except, perhaps, the next minute.
She looks at me and smiles:
“Most men don’t even talk to me. You at least try to make me feel comfortable. We hookers can’t afford the luxury of being noble, just like we can’t stop earning money. Me, from the neck up, I don’t let anyone in… What I sell starts here,” and she places both hands on her clavicles.
Cubanet, 22 January 2014 | Camilo Ernesto Olivera Peidro
*Translator’s note (Thank you to Ernesto Suarez)
“Tick techniques” means pretending to solve the problem while perpetuating it to profit from it. It comes from an old Cuban joke: There was an old country doctor whose son was also a doctor. The father had not taken a vacation in a very long time, and the son convinced him one day to take a holiday in Havana. Off went the old doctor, and the younger one took care of his patients. Within a few days, the old one receives a telegram from his son: “All is well in the town. Cured Mr. Garcia’s earache. It was a tick.” Mr. Garcia was the richest man in town. The old doctor flies into a rage and fires back a telegram: “You stupid idiot. That tick put you through medical school!”
Translated by: Antonio Otero Saínz
22 January 2014
Now Eduardo is back. In the wake of the Second CELAC Summit, an omnibus with police and paramedics made a sweep of the beggars who were camping out in Vedado or Old Havana.
“I was in a shelter known as La Colonia, in Boyeros municipality (20 kilometers west of the center of the capital). The treatment was harsh. It looked like a jail. But at least they guaranteed lunch and food,” said the vagabond, who usually bets on an image of San Lázaro to ask for money at the entrance of a complex of exclusive shops in the Habana Libre hotel.
After being warned by the police, a group of alcoholics and beggars who usually sell used clothing and old books on the corner of Carmen and 10th of October in the slum of La Vibora, stayed away for a week.
“They told us we made the city look ugly. A police official said we should get lost until the end of the Summit. The important visits, like that of the Pope or meetings of presidents, together with the cold, are a pain in the neck for us, because we have to go to places outside the city. We live like gypsies. Almost all of us sleep in cartons in some doorway. In the neighborhood of la Calzada and 10th of October, we find a few pesos by doing metal plating, cutting stone, and some neighbors give us food,” remarked Ariel, a hopeless alcoholic. continue reading
Barely did the CELAC Summit end, when the beggars and dumpster divers returned to their work.
These events are also usually trouble for those who live on the margins on the law. Like Ramiro, a part-time transvestite, who prostitutes himself on the central avenues after work.
“During those days you walk around wound up. The police get very nervous. A client told me that they were mobilizing, since they expected groups of human rights marchers or public demonstrations. Once it was over, I returned to the struggle,” says Ramiro.
Hookers in the suburbs in the style of Gisela, pretty and with an easy laugh, also make sacrifices. “I’ve been arrested twice for prostitution. I have to be careful. When they celebrate meetings like this, I “nail myself in” (stay at home). Later I go back to the routine.
Numerous dissidents, among them the intellectual Manuel Cuesta Morúa and the attorney Veizant Boloy, should now be returning to their homes, after several days of detention in police dungeons, to prevent them from holding a parallel forum.
Other members of the opposition, independent journalists, alternative bloggers and human rights activists were prevented by State Security from leaving their homes, and their cell phones were cut off.
The Second CELAC Summit, celebrated in Havana from January 25 to 29, didn’t bring too many benefits to the people of Havana. Among the lucky ones were the residents on San Lázaro Street, from the University staircase up to the Fragua Martiana Museum, in the Cayo Hueso district.
Owing to the presence of a torch parade in honor of the 161st anniversary of the birth of José Martí, a coat of paint was given to the facades of some buildings and homes, and several streets got new asphalt.
Owners of private restaurants and family businesses in zones neighboring PABEXPO, were closed on the days of the event. “I have a cake business, for weddings and parties, that I had to close, because of the exaggerated police presence and prohibitions for the circulation of autos. The clients disappeared,” indicated Alexander, the owner of a sweetshop in Miramar.
The “fat” expected by owners of private restaurants, craft vendors, and private taxi drivers remained far below expectations.
“The truth is that almost no one who took part in the Summit came by here, unless it was one or another first lady, say,” said a seller of paintings on the Plaza de la Catedral.
Paladars of caliber like La Guarida, located in the heart of the marginal neighborhood of San Leopoldo, kept hoping for reservations by the heavyweights. In November 1999, when the Kings of Spain attended the IberoAmerican Summit celebrated in Havana, the Queen Doña Sofía dined in the famous paladar (as private restaurants are called).
Josefina had more luck, with her hair salon in Old Havana. She gave a haircut to the indifferent Secretary General of the United Nations, the South Korean Ban Ki-moon. Though how much he paid for the cut isn’t known.
Iván García
Photo: Old Havana. While the woman trumpets her cone of “peanuts, toasted and hot,” very close to her are a policeman and a man having an exchange of words. Taken from Cubanet.
Translated by Regina Anavy
1 February 2014
I was going to comment, or more to the point gossip, about the recently concluded Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, but I’m fed up with the topic, and I think you are too. We spent more than a week on this old song… that if Argentine president Cristina Fernandez lunches with you-know-who, that if Ban Ki-moon gets his hair cut in the historic district, that Raul Castro makes nice with Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, and there are even toasts to the health of the Mariel mega-project, so it won’t turn into salt and water. And to top it off,when I say CELAC, I immediately think of its relationship to Cuban CERELAC (a baby porridge), and it shocks me just to mention it. Trauma not overcome.
31 January 2014
You can read the article here and you can learn more about Roots of Hope, here.
Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Hackathon is here.
Yoani Sanchez’s welcoming message, in Spanish, is here.
For Zoila, 38-year old nurse, the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that is now going on in Havana adds up to “politically correct” speeches, banquets and photos.
“It’s more of the same. They talk about poverty, integration and social inclusion while in Cuba inequality grows. It is a cheeky that our president Raul Castro speaks about those topics. He should blush, in country where people have salaries of less than 20 dollars a month. The worst part is not earning little money, the food shortages or their high prices, the worst part is that we have no way of changing the state of things,” points out Zoila, at a bus stop in Vedado.
Osniel, 33 years old, bartender at a bar that sells exclusively in foreign currency, while he prepares daiquiris and mojitos, unenthusiastically and from the side watches a flatscreen installed on the premises, which broadcasts news about the roll out of the CELAC Summit.
“Whether they are Latin Americans, from the Americas or from ALBA, these summits are only useful for presidents and foreign ministers, who take advantage of them to talk face to face. For everyone else they are ineffective. There’s a lot of talk about eliminating poverty, respecting human rights, and creating grandiose economic projects. But with the passage of time, it almost all stays on the drawing board,” the barman emphasizes.
On the streets of Havana, it is increasingly difficult to find people who are optimistic or who are not angry. The Diario de las Américas spoke with some twenty citizens about the Summit’s news interest. continue reading
For sixteen it is a real annoyance, and four said that after 55 years, they are used to it. “It is what Castro’s boat* brought,” says Eugenio, 73 years old, retired. The Cubavision channel dedicates 12 hours a day to the Summit. ”There’s no option but to rent films and soap operas. Or change to the sports channel; I don’t like baseball or soccer, but I prefer it over seeing such people giving speeches,” confesses Onelia, 56, housewife.
“The oven is not ready for the cakes. The news that started the year, the astronomical prices of cars for sale, has created too much distress. Then this optimistic discourse from the national press that contrasts with the hard reality that most of us live. In Cuba it seems that there are two planets. One artificial, highlighted by the government media, and the real one where disenchantment and uncertainty about the future worry many,” says Rogelio, 47, bank employee.
While the television harps on news about the Summit, Junior and a group of friends, after each ingests two Parkinsonil pills, buy a bottle of Mulata rum for 5 cuc, a week’s salary for a professional. They drink it all, to see if they can “change their bodies.”
“That ’molar’ (speech) does not interest me. The horde of old men in charge of Cuba does not notice that they are boring. Since I was born, in 1994, the same ’size’ (spiel), that if the Yankees, that if the ’blockade’ (embargo). But we continue the same or worse, above all the young. Without a future and ’stuffing tremendous cable’ (going through hardship). We escape taking pills with rum,” says Junior, hairless in the style of Brazilian soccer player Neymar.
Without intending it, Bruno Rodriguez was the one who knew best how to define the air of apparent political placidity that lives in the Summit. In a press conference, the Cuban foreign minister emphasized that he had never seen in an international forum an air of such harmony and consensus as he observed in Havana.
For the common Cuban, it all seems rehearsed. If there were discrepancies, they aired them discreetly. “It is shameful that the attendees of the Summit in their pronouncements have tried not to displease a host who is a dictator,” says a taxi driver.
Certainly, one has to chalk up a political goal for General Raul Castro. Not even his brother Fidel could agree with or attenuate the critics of his regime at international events held during the time that he was head of the country.
Whatever their ideological tendencies, the regional politicians seem like disciplined children. All facing the gallery. That strategy of extending the red carpet for the olive-green autocracy leaves the Cuban dissidence increasingly alone and isolated.
As of the moment of this writing, no one had met with opposition figures. Not even Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the OEA. The ridiculous level of commitment by Latin American democrats to a handful of women and men who claim political space and freedom of expression left the road clear for State Security forces to harass the opposition, independent journalists and human rights activists.
Jorge Olivera, 52-years-old, reporter, writer, and ex-prisoner of the Group of 75, on the night of January 23 two counterintelligence agents warned him not to participate in any dissident events during the Summit.
“They were emphatic. They told me they were not going to permit parallel meetings during the Summit. The cynicism of the Latin America politicians attending the event is worrying. No one has made a gesture or wanted to meet with us. They have a double standard. They speak and demand democracy, including in the CELAC charter, and they look away when it comes to the Cuban dissidence,” says Olivera.
A parallel forum sponsored by the Argentine organization CADAL (Center for the Opening and Development of Latin America) and dissidents on the island probably cannot be held due to the strong repression. They did not even permit the director of CADAL to enter the capital.
Manuel Cuesta Morua, co-sponsor of the forum, was detained in a Miramar police unit. The mobile phones of numerous opponents were cut off and others were not permitted to leave their homes or provinces. Dozens of arrests of activists were reported all over the island.
In Cuba, depending on who looks, the glass is half full or half empty. And there is not only one reality, but many and very different.
But it would be presumptuous to say that the harangues of the regime or the debates in the Summit are a news priority for the common people. Rather it is the opposite.
Ivan Garcia
Photo: Before and during the CELAC summit, the main avenues and streets of Havana were taken by police officers like this one, of the special brigade, who are distinguished by the black uniform and always walk with a dog. The photo, by Lazaro Yuri Valle Roca, was taken very close to Havana’s Central Park.
*Translator’s note: Fidel Castro and his associates started the Revolution by sailing on a small yacht from Mexico to Cuba. The yacht was purchased from an American who had named it “Granma,” which subsequently became the name of one of Cuba’s provinces and the country’s daily newspaper.
Translated by mlk
29 January 2014
The 33 presidents and dignitaries who visited Havana were left in awe. None knew how, albeit very precariously, with the buildings in ruins and on the edge of catastrophe, Cuba managed to sustain itself. Perhaps with the exception of Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro, who has second sight and an ongoing dialogue with birds, who keep him fully informed.
None was unaware that the two-hundred-year-old sugar industry had been liquidated and scrapped by the fierce incapacity of the leadership. Everyone knew that the tobacco and rum trademarks were sold to European multinationals long ago. It was clear that the fishing fleet hadn’t existed since the nineties. However, the Island, managing to scrape by, imported 80% of everything society needed, including food, medicine and a substantial part of the energy.
How did they do it? Where’s the catch? Where did the money come from?
I heard it for the first time from a European diplomat who had lived in Cuba. Later it was popularized. The model created by the Castros is the State as Pimp. Pimping is a criminal behavior that consists of obtaining benefits from another person who is forced to work through coercion or the promise of protection. Generally it applies to prostitution, but not only. It is also known colloquially as “chulería.”
It’s an awkward name, but in sync with the reality the circulates in whispers between Cubans on the Island. The government has specialized in extorting its own citizens or allies, to whom it offers services of espionage and social control, its only two specialties or “comparative advantages,” as economic jargon would have it. Fifty-five years after the establishment of the dictatorship, almost all the significant sources of income that sustain the country come from murky businesses conducted abroad.
The Venezuelan subsidy: Calculated at 13 billion dollars a year by Professor Carmelo Mesa-Lago, dean of Cuban economists in this area. This includes more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day, of which half is re-exported and sold in Spain. Another 30,000 apparently go to Petro Caribe, giving rise to a double corruption of political support and illicit enrichment.
The public source of this information is the expert Pedro Mantellini, one of the great authorities on the issue of Venezuelan oil. He explained it to Maria Elvira Salazar on her program in Miami on CNN Latino. Caracas buys international influence based on oil, but shares with its Cuban accomplices the management of these gifts. Cuba, after all, is the metropolis.
Trafficking in doctors and healthcare personnel: This brings in 7.5 billion annually. The specialist Maria Werlau, director of the Cuba Archive project, has described the activity in the Miami Herald. The Cuban government leases out its healthcare professionals and charges for them. It confiscates 95% of the salaries of those under its “protection.” Angola pays up to 60,000 dollars a year for each physician.
Not even the aid to Haiti escapes this scheme of “solidarity at a price.” The services provided in this devastated country earned Havana a good price from international organizations.
Brazil, which pays for many services, is the final major partner of Cuba in this murky activity of international healthcare pimping. President Dilma Rousseff doesn’t want to benefit her poor so much as her Cuban friends. Raul, in addition, has a great mastery of the craft. It’s a practice well-known to Cuban slaves since the 19th century.
As long as slavery lasted (until 1886) the masters rented out their slaves when they didn’t need them. The most profitable part of the business of “renting blacks” was the poor girls who were delivered to the bordellos. Their masters charged for the services they provided. They were entrepreneur-pimps. Now, simply, we have a state-pimp.
Other rentals, other businesses: But the exploitation doesn’t end here. The Cuban government rents other professionals to private companies. The ancient Greeks referred to slaves as “tools that speak.” I don’t think Raul knows the classics, but he understands perfectly the ultimate meaning of the expression.
There are Latin American or Portuguese speaking universities who contract with the Cuban government for the services of good mathematics or physics professors at bargain prices. There are nightclubs and cabarets who contract with musicians, or theaters who hire Cuban dancers, including Alicia Alonso’s magnificent ballet.
There are European and Latin American companies that exploit computer technicians from the Island. The Castro regime knows that a well-educated Cuban is completely wasted inside Cuba, given the insane economic system of the Island, but he or she is a potential source of riches once placed abroad. Objectively, this government is a gigantic and implacable labor subcontracting company that violates all the norms of the International Labor Organization (ILO). This is its livelihood.
Remittances from exiles: Emilio Morales, the great expert on the subject who escaped from Cuba relatively recently, places this source of income (in 2012) at something more than 5 billion dollars. Half, roughly, is remitted in cash and the rest in merchandise. It is growing at an annual rate of 13%. Every time a rafter escapes, the regime, paying lip service, moans over the flight, but knows that in a little while the dollars will flow to a needy family left on the Island. In Cuba, although it was with crumbs, the regime had to feed him. Once in exile, he’s a free and constant source of income.
This is where the money comes from to pay for the imports. How long can Raul Castro sustain an almost totally unproductive society through activities that approach or directly involve a crime? Who knows. Pimps usually have a long life. There are many people who are served by them, and who through their intermediation access various forms of pleasure, including the enjoyment of power.
Carlos Alberto Montaner is one of the most read journalists in the Hispanic world. Poder magazine calculates that six million people read his columns and articles weekly. This post has been translated from DiariodeCuba.com, with permission from the author.
1 February 2014
The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) reported that this Wednesday, 29 January, late in the morning, they met with Costa Rican diplomats, one of whom was a part of that country’s official delegation to the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
The meeting took place at the Costa Rican Embassy in Cuba and representing Costa Rica were Señora Ingrid Picado Monge, Ceremonial Head of State, and his Excellency Señor Don Hubert Mendez Acosta, Costa Rican Ambassador. For CCDHRN, attendees were Kirenia Yalit Nuñez, Information Officer, and CCDHRN Spokesman, Elizardo Sánchez.
The Costa Rican diplomats took notes and assured they would report to the President of the Delegation of their country to the CELAC Summit.
CCDHRN members prepared a report about the unfavorable situation in Cuba with regards to civil and political rights, as a context in which the Summit is taking place, and we expressed our hope that the Cuban government will accept, in a climate of inter-American cooperation, the need to adopt and respect international standards, particularly in the areas of civil, political, economic and cultural rights.
At the time of the meeting at the Costa Rican site, at least 16 peaceful Cuban dissidents remained jailed because of the CELAC Summit, and at least 8 were under house arrest.
The Cuban Commission on Human Rights supports the request made to the Cuban authorities by Mr. Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN, about the need for the government of Cuba to ratify the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Social and Cultural Rights, which they signed six years ago. It is hoped that the government, in addition to ratifying the agreements, guarantees unrestricted and unreserved compliance with them.
The CCDHRN asked for meetings with several delegations attending the CELAC Summit, through their respective embassies in Cuba. Only the Republic of Costa Rica responded positively.
CubaNet | 29 January 2014
The new container terminal in the Mariel Special Development Zone. REUTERS/Desmond Boylan
Not a thousand ports like Mariel and its development zone will be able to enliven the Cuban economy. A government which for more than half a century uses a great part of its finances to prepare for a war that never arrived, and which instead of taking advantage of that unique opportunity when it existed — the Soviet Union and the rest of the socialist bloc that maintained us without caring what we invested in — squandered those billions on the work of Fidel Castro, the worst administrator in the history of any national economy, sowing guerrillas in America, carrying out civil wars, instituting misfortune and thousands of death, instead of investing in agricultural and industrial development.
No prosperous economy will be able to exist as long there is not full freedom and demilitarization of all sectors at all levels. No prosperous economy will be able to exist while the people do not have basic rights and there is no respect for individual thought. A prosperous economy will not be able to exist while the opposition is disrespected.
The health of a country, and any human yearning, is in listening to the diversity of opinions, in the discussion of the parties for the improvement of the same end.
In 1980 the Mariel port was for everyone the symbol of liberty. Large portions of the best and worst of our society departed through Mariel, essentially the result achieved in 20 years of imposed socialism.
Today it is meant to form part of a development zone for the national economy in particular and of Latin America in general, but that depends only on Raul Castro inserting himself into the concert of nations of the 21st century, where there is no room for dictatorships but political and economic processes that truly help guide serious progress in all senses, beginning — of course — with respect for Human Rights, and for that, he must sign the UN Accords.
Hopefully the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, will insist on that urgent point for the people of Cuba and for the world. No one will get more from that gesture than the dictatorship itself and the purse of the Castro family, which for many years has prepared for its future as high-class millionaires. As long as these advances in rights do not occur, there will be no future prosperity.
Angel Santiesteban-Prats
Lawton Prison Settlement. January 2014.
Translated by mlk.
1 February 2014
The Second CELAC Summit ended in Havana this January 29th with more pain for Cuban protestors and the population than glories for the anti-democratic authorities, despite the praise received by the hosts of the for the most part satisfied and grateful visitors from Latin America and the Caribbean.
A few leaders from the hemisphere saved the dignity of democracy and in their speeches valued the human rights of all and for all. But the highest note hit in this regard was that of the Secretary General of the United Nations, his excellency Mr. Ban Ki-moon, during a press conference, in which he pointed out some details of his conversations with the patriarchs of the island. In these, he said, he referred to the ratification of the United Nations Covenants on civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights by the Cuban government, who already signed them in 2008, and invited them to advance the theme of human rights in general.
The estimable presidents, prime ministers and Heads of Delegations at the meeting forgot, apparently, that on 11 September 2001, in Lima, Peru, the representatives of their governments in those moments, signed the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which in its Article 3 states:
“There are essential elements of representative democracy, among others, with respect to human rights and fundamental freedoms; the access to power and its exercise and its exercise within the rule of law; the celebration of regular, free, fair elections, based on universal and secrete suffrage as an expression of the sovereignty of the people; the plural regime of political parties and organizations; and the separation and independence of the public powers.”
It is not a coincidence that the Cuban regime is the only one among the 33 that make up CELAC that doesn’t recognize the political opposition in Cuba; discriminated against those who disagree with its authoritarian practices; arbitrarily detains peaceful opponents; violates the rights of assembly and peaceful association, among many others and maintains a real totalitarian power over society. The members of CELAC call this permissibility “unity in diversity” to save the consequent ignominy.
Another intelligent and interesting figure used in the statements and in the founding texts of CELAC, to justify the status quo of some undemocratic regime participants is that of “non-interference,” which on occasion converts, somehow “respectful of the sovereignty of others” into complicity with totalitarian states. Thus, in the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, in point 3 it points out:
“The commitment of the States of the region in strict compliance with their obligation not to intervene, directly or indirectly, in the internal affairs any other state and observe the principles of national sovereignty, equal rights and self-determination of peoples. “
Some sectors of Cuban civil society wanted to conduct a meeting where citizens of different political viewpoints would analyze the founding documents of CELAC. This has not been possible, to date, because of the action of the political police. If the authorities of the island, as would be logical, issued the Declaration of Havana in full, so that it could become known by Cuban citizens, then we, the opponents, would have one more document to discuss and on which to rule democratically. Let no one doubt it.
1 February 2014
HAVANA, Cuba – In the last several hours the Castro propaganda campaign has come to a climax on the occasion of the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which will be held in Havana between today and tomorrow. Of course this focus is justified if we consider the swaddling this event implies for the totalitarian regime in Havana.
Meanwhile, the independent press informs us about the intense reservation exercised by the Castro government against all of society. Even beggars and pimps have been affected by the delirium of the conclave. Many of them are warned that, during the great event, they should abstain from exercising their ancient craft.
On a slightly more serious note, it should be remembered that several documents have been agreed to within the CELAC framework. In one of them, dating from just a year ago, it reiterates that this Community is based on, among other things, “the protection and promotion of all human rights, the rule of law at the national and international level and democracy.” Can anyone believe these beautiful words are compatible with the regime imposed in Cuba by the Castro brothers?
Of course not. But the totalitarians usually get by with ease. We have the experience of the clauses about freedoms and pluralism adopted years ago by the Ibero-American Summit in Viña del Mar. With to what was agreed to there, the Havana authorities commented: The documents signed by Cuba we interpret according to our own conception of democracy. And problem solved!
The fact of the matter lies in that the governments of our cultural environment, who for the most part respect Human Rights internally, don’t allow among their members a regime that systematically violates them like that of Havana, but they even selected it to preside and host its meetings, as is happening now with the CELAC Summit in Havana. Its fig leaf is the supposed “uniqueness of Cuba.”
In the interim, Cuban authorities do a disservice to those democratic states. We hope the world press and the internal press of those countries report on the fierce repression unleashed in the Great Antille; in this case, the respective governments confront certain difficulties. Serves them right! For having tried to patronize the only totalitarian regime in the West.
At the same time, in the context of the Summit, Castro spokespeople have recalled the words spoken by General-President Raul Castro in South Africa: “Dialog and cooperation are the way to solve differences and the civilized coexistence of those who think differently.” Events show that this is proclaimed (and applied) in relations between states, not between the totalitarian regime and its subjects.
Meanwhile, Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno, told the newspaper Granma a supposed new important aspect of the Havana Summit: “We believe that another contribution is the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace. This is a proposal that we hope will be adopted during the 2nd Summit by its 33 member countries.”
That’s the way it is! And I thought that CELAC had already solved this in the Declaration of Santiago, agreed on in Chile a year ago! Its Point 14 establishes: “We commit that the climate of peace that prevails in Latin America and the Caribbean be strengthened throughout our region and consolidated in a Zone of Peace, and which differences among nations are resolved in a peaceful way through dialog and negotiation or other forms of solution, and fully consistent with International Law.”
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, at a press conference, affirmed that in Cuban there is no need to hold a summit of the peoples, as is generally held in other latitudes on similar occasions. For him this is because, according to what he said, the delegations meeting in Havana represent the governments as well as the masses.
The minister didn’t say what principles of Bolshevik alchemy apply now to make this happen. Surprisingly, such a thing doesn’t happen when these meetings are held in other sites, where, in the opinion of the radical left, it is necessary that in parallel to the official meetings, there is a Summit of the peoples.
Cubanet, 28 January 2014, René Gómez Manzano
