English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Imagine. That this coup d’etat on the first of January 1959 would be considered a Revolution by half the planet. Or planet and a half. Imagine. And that the whole country would be militarized and export war for more than 55 years of world history. Imagine. That what could not be conquered by death, would finally be conquered by the ballot box and capital. Imagine. That in 2014 we Cubans would still be talking about some Fidel or whatever his name was. Imagine.
28 December 2013
Havana, Cuba, December 24, www.cubanet.org — As a good predictor of the future, this man forecast that Christmas would not be necessary in a socialist country. He knew since then that there would be no victuals and much less family for the days of celebration.
It is noteworthy that in the Population and Household Census carried out in September 2012, from which definitive results were recently offered, the National Office of Statistics and Information has not included in its questions how many of us Cubans are distant from our families.
Without any doubt any of the 11,167,325 inhabitants of the Caribbean archipelago suffers that pain. So it is difficult in more than three million Cuban homes in the country, to be able to evoke these Christmas days happily, if those we love are not present since we opened our eyes to the world. continue reading
Even the dictators themselves Raul and Fidel, generals and colonels, representatives of all the new social class — human beings after all — are not exempt from that suffering.
Sonia and Pedro Yanez, my neighbors from across the street, are those who suffer more. Two years ago their oldest son went in a boat and what remains for them is the same idea of leaving.
Much more these mothers from Santa Fe, who lost their sons in a sea infested with sharks.
Even I myself, with my only three sons scattered across the world, because they cannot live in Fidel’s Cuba.
Those of us older than 70 suffer most from the collapse of the Cuban Christmas. We remember the Christmas Eve dinner, always with family, the marvelous dawning of the Day of Kings, where we discovered in a corner of the room the toys that the invisible mythological kings left us with so much affection, the year’s end, when grandmother threw into the street a pail of old water so that good luck might enter the house.
They were times when we could dream, in which hope had still not been lost, which hope disappeared when the Commander arrived and ordered it to stop, hope that has revived again in spite of repression and draconian laws.
That’s why, this December 24, I am going to toast my sons, my father who walked alone through the streets of Miami before dying, my mother, who did not want to tell me that communist tyranny had killed Christmas so that the divine fantasy might disappear from the mind of civilized Man, my dissident friends, whom I remember with love, my last sweetheart, polititical prisoner for more than 20 years who some day will return.
23 December 2013/Cubanet
Translated by mlk
Enslaved prisoners
December 25th: The inmates of Cuban prisons have worked in the condition of slaves which they find themselves.
The Blockade: The Longest Genocide in History
For them there is no Christmas or New Year. All they will have is to exercise their muscles to fulfill the tough work which the regime obliges them to do.
At a recent meeting, a chief of prisons, publicly stated that he preferred working with prisoners versus civilians, because the latter left when they finished their 8-hour working day, while the prisoners could go many days with no rights, not even to protest, infinitesimal pay, and cheap food. Compare that to what the Cuban officials say in Geneva, that Cuban prisoners are respected with regards to salaries and hours, when from dawn to dusk the sweat runs down their poorly paid and badly fed backs. continue reading
After several days with a menu of rice, soup and eggs alternating with hash, they offer them for Christmas dinner, rice, peas and eggs. They don’t protest because the blackmail is constant. If they don’t go along they’re sent to closed prisons, lose their passes and the annual two months credit, and even the possibility of getting out on parole when they’ve served half their sentence.
The only thing that remains is ability to work, bite your tongue, and every time you have the opportunity to take revenge, do your work badly.
After every sunrise they look at the horizon, and all they see is permanent darkness.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Lawton Prison settlement. December 2013
Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy
27 December 2013
With a cloudy sky and rough seas which were dangerous for small craft, last Wednesday the 18th the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba approved, as if by chance, the import of new and used cars into the country.
Dear God, they arranged the same media distraction when, in 1997, just before the visit of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to Havana, without any explanation, the revolutionary government, pen in hand, decreed, or re-decided, that 25th December should be a public holiday.
Since then, without fear, our grandparents dust and polish their traditions and, in spite of adversities, disguise the island with odours because, some more and many less, on Christmas Eve they brighten up their homes with some pork, chicken, rice, beans, and food, preferably yuccas, seasoned with a delicious mojo sauce based on bitter orange and lots of garlic. You can come across the same thing in the Christmas specials in restaurants. continue reading
A complete national calorie binge, uniting sad people, proud people, happy ones, peaceful ones, Catholics, non-Catholics, agnostics, protestants, devotees of the saints, masons, atheists, all of them, to celebrate the festivities and await the coming of a child who was born over 2,000 years ago.
They made use of all sorts of reasons to erase Christmas: The death of Ernesto Guevara, the sugar harvest period, revolutionary priorities, in the end, everything you all know perfectly well; but it was a Christmas message which paradoxically fell from the sky on December 24, 1968, which aroused the fury of the ex-commander-in-chief and after some mad cursing put an end to the celebration.
It turned out to be the Man, I am of course referring to the one dressed in olive green, seated to the right of a short wave radio tuned to VOA. Suddenly he heard the voice of astronaut Bill Anders approaching the moon’s dawn, and, instead of an announcement of war, read the opening verses of Genesis, expressing his admiration for the wonders of the cosmos and the greatness of its creator.
Fidel Castro went mad, he felt diminished, nevertheless he carried on listening, awaiting the sound of cannon fire, and received a bolt of lightning in the vein.
The transmission from the sky ended with: “And on behalf of the crew of Apollo 8 we will end by saying Goodnight, Good luck, Happy Christmas and may God bless you all on the good earth.”
His pride overwhelms him. He gets up, scowling, waves his arm in an arc and – like a Spanish dancer – stamps his heels as if the ground were Tablado de Corazones [Ed. note: quote from a poem by José Martí, El alma trémula y sola]. After a moment, they heard “………(a swear word), that’s the end of Christmas.”
That wasn’t all he suspended, from then on all religious events were victim to a bout of amnesia imposed by the triumphant young government of 1959. After about 30 years of exaggerated prohibition, it is making a comeback like a new opportunity. Our family-eclectic-religious cultural heritage and our traditions which were wounded by the Spanish conquest, cannot be erased by decree, they endure, this is the proof. HAPPY CHRISTMAS
Translated by GH
24 December 2013
HAVANA, Cuba, December, www.cubanet.org-It was raining heavily in Havana. It was the first day of December and Miriam Leiva had come to Cuba carrying the ashes of her husband and the memories of their almost 40 years together. Oscar Espinosa Chepe had died after a long illness that they shared together like so many things in their lives: work, civic activism and love.
Surrounded by the books and periodicals that he treasured, he was now in the metal urn in the small apartment from which he’d left last March to seek medical treatment in Spain. For those who knew this couple it’s hard to imagine one without the other.
Cubanet– Did he want his ashes returned?
Miriam Leivan– When we arrived at the La Fuenfria Hospital, he was very ill. He told me, “When the time comes, I want you to cremate me and take me to Cienfuegos.” The doctor came by several times the same day and on one of the visits he told her, forcefully and with tremendous clarity, “Doctor, I want to return to Cuba.” She and I looked at each other, because given the condition he was in this was impossible. And he said again, “It’s hard to say… When it happens, I want to return to Cuba. Because I have always wanted to be in Cuba.” And then she told him, “Don’t worry, your wife already has everything arranged.”
We went there in March and he died at the end of September. September 23. continue reading
Cubanet– Why didn’t you go earlier to improve his health?
Miriam Leiva – They wouldn’t allow him to go abroad and return. That is, we had to leave Cuba permanently. When he got out of prison in November 2004 he could have gone abraod and lived there permanently and gotten medical treatment, and he told me no, not without being able to return to Cuba, he wasn’t going anywhere.
Cubanet– What other limitations were imposed on his life on parole.
Miriam Leiva – When he was released in 2004, he comes to the house. Then they tell him he can’t return to his activities, he can’t write, he can’t speak. I alerted the foreign press that Oscar was here and they all came, everyone who wanted to, tons of correspondents accredited in Havana, and he immediately began writing and speaking.
In a year and a half they called him before the Playa Municipal Court and told him he could not continue the activities he was engaged in, that he was being monitored by the neighborhood “factors” (the Party, the Young Communist League, and the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution) who would report on his behavior.
On the basis of that they gave him a document with some 11 prohibition, among that that he couldn’t leave Havana without permission, he couldn’t engage in exchanges, could not work. All this was in the document, something like 10 or 11 prohibitions. And he continued to do exactly the same things because there is a reality which he expressed in his opinions in a constructive manner and for the betterment of our country, and as he and I have always told them: prove that we are lying. Prove that we are saying something that is incorrect. They can’t prove it; we carry on.
Cubanet– And this year his health worsened?
Miriam Leiva – Last year in June he started to have a leg problem, with a lot of pain and then the problem in his liver started to get worse and he felt badly and lost weight. He was admitted to intensive care in Fajardo Hospital, which where he was always seen, and there they say that the biliary system was clogged, which seemed to have been going on for some time, and it was deteriorating.
The immediate solution was to put a prosthesis in the bile duct endoscopically, or minimally invasive. But this prosthesis lasted 2 or 3 months and had to be changed because it became contaminated by an infection in the bile processes, so they had to change it. He was admitted in December because it was going very badly and they told him they didn’t have an opening for him and he would have to wait until the beginning of January, it wasn’t the beginning it was the middle. But fine, they had an opening and the doctor he saw that time told me the problem wasn’t just an obstructed vile duct, but due to the deterioration of the bile system many of the branches of the ducts were badly damaged and that there was nothing they could do here. Perhaps abroad they would have other treatments but in Cuba there weren’t any more resources, no other possibilities.
Cubanet– And that time did they guarantee he could return?
Miriam Leiva – That was when we started to try to convince him to get treatment abroad because now, yes, if he remained in Cuba he would be dead sooner or later. And it was hard to convince him. Then he said, if they let me return I will go, and that mobilized me. I got in contact with different governments to see what the immediate possibilities were because somewhere else perhaps there was something they could do.
And the government of Spain — where they a lot of expertise in liver disease — said yes, they could offer medical care, but all the other costs would be up to us. And I didn’t ask how much the fare would be, but I said, yes, we will start the paperwork to get permission to leave and return. Here, we asked if he accepted a passport, could he return. Finally it was clear that he could return.
Cubanet– Tell us about Madrid…
Miriam Leiva – I was very afraid he wouldn’t make it to Madrid alive; but luckily he arrived. Very weak, but he got there. I got a travel helper and in the airport he went everywhere in a wheelchair. He didn’t have the strength to walk. We got there on Tuesday and on Wednesday in the morning we were at Hospital Puerta de Hierro. He went to the emergency room. They did everything, all the checks he needed to be admitted and when there was a room available, they took him there.
After some tests they changed the prosthesis. There they discovered that in addition to a diseased liver and the bile problems he had hepatitis B that hadn’t been diagnosed, and a bacterium called Clostridium. He was put in isolation because of the hepatitis. He was there for days while the hepatitis was treated and he was improved. They started a special treatment for the clostridium and he was better. But he was still feeling very very weak. He was hoping for a liver transplant, but given his age, over 70, they couldn’t do it. Besides he was very run down.
Cubanet– In Madrid there were the two professors…
Miriam Leiva – He gave a lecture at the Hispano-Cuban Foundation, which was his last recorded lecture. He had a very high fever that day. Afterwards, when Professor Carmelo-Mesa-Laga was there, he invited us to the hotel where he was staying. By email we told him it would be a huge effort for Oscar. Then Carmelo and his wife came to see us, we had already moved to a smaller and cheaper hostel. It wasn’t bad, I can’t fault the price.
Carmelo invited us to go to his lecture at the Casa de America and another meeting at the Elcano Institute, a very prestigious Spanish institution in the area of Foreign Policy. It was nice because when Carmelo finished speaking in Casa de America, and other people were already asking questions, Oscar didn’t know that he was going to speak at Carmelo’s conference and asked a question. And before answering Carmelo said, “Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who is here.” It was very nice, he said some very nice words about Oscar and they applauded a great deak and that was a nice thing.
Miriam tells the story
Cubanet– Did his health worse in prison, in the Black Spring of 2003?
Miriam Leiva– After the search that begin in hour home at 4:30 in the afternoon and lasted until 3:00 in the morning they took Oscar to Villa Marista. A few days went by before they let me visit, maybe a week, I thought I would get a visit a week. It was a 15-minute visit with the officials in the little room and you couldn’t talk about anything other than family problems. He had already lost a lot of weight. He was sallow, a typical color when the liver is in crisis. Why? Because ot the intense interrogations in Villa Marista.
The Cuban government doesn’t torture in a way that is visible physically, but their psychological torture is suffocating and very intense. And this was what they did to Oscar. Then they simply put him in a cell with three common prisoners, and he could barely walk because it was very small, they had nothing there, no toothpaste, when he wanted something he had to bang on the metal for the jailer to come and open the bars and say “What do you want?”
The interrogators were there whenever it occurred to them, whenever they wanted, and especially when they thought he might be sleeping. So he wasn’t able tog et any rest. Oscar told me about the conversation, basically in his case, for example” how did he think, and why as he involved in this, why, it wasn’t worth it, that ultimately what was he talking about when he talked about reforms, he would give an example, “If even Vietnam and China are making changes and reforms, why can’t Cuba do it?”
The interrogator finally answered on the day of the trial, “Boy, because we’re not Chinese nor Vietnamese.” He continued to say the same things that he said here at home. The intensity of this system of interrogation and the bad food, the conditions, everything, what crowding there… he deteriorated a lot.
Because of our demands they took him to the Military Hospital. There they didn’t do any tests or anything, they told me that because he had been sent to prison he was going to prison. They sent him to the prison in Guantanamo. A journey very difficult for everyone, very hard, because they put them handcuffed in a bus, and they couldn’t talk to each other and they were left in all the prisons along the way until Guantanamo which was the last.
Cubanet– From Guantanamo he was taken….
Miriam Leiva – In Guantanamo he became very ill. I went there. Then they finally put him in the hospital of that city. It began to rain and the hospital only served emergencies, and they sent him to El Cobre Hospital, in Santiago de Cuba, that served the Boniato prison. There They wanted to do all the medical tests they thought necessary there and he said no. They told him if would have the tests they were going to take him to Boniatico, the isolation cells in Boniato. There were others of the 75 Black Spring prisoners in isolation cells there. Then I learned that he’d been sent to Boniatico.
Cubanet – What happened in Boniatico ?
Miriam Leiva – They dragged him off again to Santiago, with a doctor, from our family, and the prison director told me there weren’t any doctors, that I couldn’t talk to the doctors. I said, “Look, the only thing I have to do in my life is take care of Oscar Espinosa Chepe, and to I can stay here in the prison where I won’t bother you, but I will be there.”
Then an official from the Ministry of the Interior appeared and called him aside. This man never spoke the whole time, he simply sat there and when something in the conversation interested him he called an official from outside and told him what he had to do. Three doctors appeared, the head doctor and two others. We explained the whole situation, the doctor explained about Oscar. They went to see Oscar who was obviously very sick and they took him back to the prison part of the El Cobre hospital. They didn’t give him newspapers or anything, they put him in total isolation. They didn’t tell him we were there, that we came three times a day; his mother in the morning, his sister at noon and I at night. They completely isolated him.
Cubanet -From Boniatico to Habana…
Miriam Leiva — One day I learned that the afternoon before Oscar had been taken very ill about 3:00 in the afternoon and at the 11:00 PM they put him a plane for Havana and he was in the C.J. Finlay Military Hospital. This was in August 2003. I asked for a medical report. They said, “Yes, we will give it to you,” and they were going to do that when I met with a doctor in September, what they gave me was a piece of paper that didn’t say anything substantial. It was a tiny little medical history with less than I knew, much less. They didn’t tell my how Oscar was at that time, nor why he was there. You know they don’t give you medical information because they don’t want to. In March of the following year they gave me some information after a great deal of insistence on my part and also under pressure from the international community.
The psychological torture of Oscar Espinosa Chepe was intense, permanent, very malicious, everything. When the inmates were in the hospital they had one visit a week. Oscar had one visit a month and we never knew when it would be. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know, but he was the prisoner and he didn’t know. You know when Oscar found out? When they opened the cell. In this place the cells are rooms, it’s an old house with some little rooms. And he was with common prisoners, he knew Coco Fariñas was there for a time but he didn’t hear him, never saw him.
The prisoners had a right to television, but they never let Oscar see television. When he came from Santiago they took away everything, absolutely everything. They left him in Villa Marist and I I had to go to Villa Marista to find him. They even took his bible. The letters, photos, everything, everything, they took away everything.
On the first visit I showed up with a Bible and said, “Can’t Oscar have this here,” and so he had the Bible. He couldn’t have anything having to do with his life, with economics, with Cuba, with anything. They wanted to erase that man’s mind. They wouldn’t even give him the Granma newspaper. The only time they showed him television, they opened the curtain they had put across the bars of the cell and showed him the television from there — it was when the former foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque said on TV that Oscar was lying about his illness.
Cubanet – Miriam, you were experiencing the punishment imposed by the regime on Oscar; but you continued writing…
Miriam Leiva – Yes, of course, I was writing more than ever. I didn’t stop. Then I was coordinating with the wives of the 75 Black Spring prisoners and we started a strong movement for their release.
Cubanet– Were you afraid at any point?
Miriam Leiva – Look, I’m going to tell you one thing: fear is felt for a moment sometimes, in certain situations. What happens is that you overcome the fear and it doesn’t overcome you. When it gets too much it gets on your nerves and you have to go or overcome it at home. And, well, all human beings are afraid… I think I’ve been very afraid at certain times, but it’s seconds and it passes and I continue on. You understand? The problem is overcoming the fear.
Do you know where I got my greatest strength? I can’t turn away from an injustice, they want to impose on me, they want to blackmail me, they want me to say things that aren’t true. And in addition, they are injuring a person who has done nothing wrong.
Cubanet – And now, what are the personal plans of Miriam Leiva?
Miriam Leiva – I will continue writing and expressing my opinion. My fundamental commitment was to bring Oscar’s ashes. It too two months to resolve the death certificate and to undergo my own medical check up, but I didn’t want to prolong it because I wanted to bring the ashes as soon as possible.
26 December 2013, Cubanet
It is no secret that Fidel Castro always rejected the Cuban Republic (1902-1958). This rejection, stemming perhaps from the knowledge that its laws and institutions would never allow him to realize his hegemonic political ambitions, is evident from two early incidents. In his student days there was the strange “abduction, rescue and return” of the bell of Demajagua, the symbol of the call-to-arms of Yarra.* As an adult there was the assault on the Moncada Barracks. In both actions Fidel Castro was looking for political advantage by positioning himself against the “evils” of the Republic. To conveniently gain “patriotic cover,” he first invoked the name of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the Father of the Country, and later José Martí, known in Cuba as the Apostle. The tactic of using both national and international figures would become a hallmark of all his future actions.
The dismantling of the Republic began early in January 1959 with the decision to move the nation’s capital from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, a decision that was impossible to carry out given its economic and political impracticality.
It continued with the refusal to re-establish the Constitution of 1940, which had been a commitment and objective of the struggle against Batista. It was replaced with the Fundamental Law, which made all his actions legal while ignoring existing laws. continue reading
Subsequently, there was the replacement of the designated president, who demanded he share power, with a compliant president, who allowed him to exercise complete power. Agencies and institutions such as ministries, the national army and the national police were also deactivated, replaced with others which served his interests.
Existing political parties and organizations were banned. The entire institutional framework of the nation — the Congress, Senate, House of Representatives, governors’ and mayors’ offices — ceased being democratic, becoming instead an autocratic pyramid scheme.
Not even public buildings escaped this overhaul. Many such as the Capitolio, the Presidential Palace, the Court of Audit and the Supreme Court no longer fulfilled the functions for which they were designed and built. In most cases they were reassigned and underutilized, given functions of little importance, with the clear objective of discrediting them as symbols of the Republic.
In making a clean sweep of everything that had anything to do with the Republic, monuments were dismantled while avenues, streets, parks, schools, hospitals and other facilities — even companies, factories and businesses — were renamed.
For anyone with no experience of these things, it might seem all seem like a great folly or an exaggeration, but it is the sad reality of a country under the control of a man filled with contempt for anything that does not carry his personal imprint.
After each “dismantling,” anything transformed or created anew became part of his legacy, marked by a commemorative plaque with the date of its inauguration and a commemoration each year. This dismantling affected the arts and sciences, industry, technical procedures in livestock and agriculture, as well as education — including even the design of students’ uniforms — as well as medical and hospital practices, not to mention chemistry and physics.
Such exaltation of ego, though easy to witness daily in our official media outlets, has no precedent in the nation’s history — not even in its darkest periods — and is the direct result of a total absence of civil and political controls for over fifty-four years.
Re-evaluating the Republic
Fortunately, some honest historians, serious researchers and talented writers working largely overseas have for some time now been objectively re-evaluating this subject in order to preserve the memory of the Republic, which constitutes an important part of the national memory. Unfortunately, this has not been the case within Cuba, where the period is considered taboo, unless you look at it through the monochromatic governmental lens, and where the impartiality necessary to evaluate its main events and key players is absent.
This re-evaluation has filled in a lot of “black holes” and “dead zones,” and overturned some “fake pedestals” created for political reasons. These include the largely successful first four-year term of Tomas Estrada Palma, the first president of Cuba, and his later mistaken decision to seek re-election which, over the objections of most Cubans and the American government itself, led to the second U.S. occupation of Cuba.**
What follows are the administrations of José Miguel Gómez, Mario Garcia Menocal, Alfredo de Zayas and their governments of light and shadow, a period — in spite of it all — of social and economic development. We then have the first Machado administration, with its ambitious Public Works Project filling the national landscape with highways, roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and other important constructions, followed by the later phase in which he tried to hold onto power in defiance of the popular will.
Years of instability — a period when presidents lasted weeks, days or even hours due to conflicts between national and foreign interests — ended with Federico Laredo Brú, the historic Constitution of 1940 and the restoration of democratic order. Fulgencio Batista’s first term was won in a free election, followed by those of Ramón Grau and Carlos Prío. It was all undone with a senseless military coup in March 1952, which brought down the young democracy.*** There was a return to violence, which could not be contained in time because of the irresponsibility and weakness of existing political forces. While rejecting it in principle, they felt forced to accept it, thus cutting off any hope for a possible political solution in spite of the fact that the country was in the midst of a period of accelerated economic development.
Then the period of insurrection — marked by sabotage, attacks and civil war — consolidated and laid the foundation for the totalitarian system and denial of democracy under which we still suffer.
The possibility of re-engaging today as Cubans depends on putting aside ideology and politics, and turning away from pointless confrontations that have only brought us pain and misery. It means taking up the search for our lost republican roots, looking back to the key moments when it all happened to make sure the same errors are not repeated.
First came March 10, 1952, the moment the constitutional order was brought down. Then on January 1, 1959 the Republic ceased to be. We must re-evaluate this crucial time in our history without attempting to reproduce that Republic, which would be utterly impossible anyway. Too much time has gone by and the current situation is very different from that of the past, as are we Cubans. We should carefully re-assemble it so that it is in tune with the current era while ensuring that it is truly democratic, modern and “with all and for the good of all,” as the Apostle would have wanted.
Fernando Dámaso | Havana | 25 December 2013
*Translator’s note: Demajagua and the call-to-arms of Yarra represent the site and beginning of Cuba’s 1868 war of independence against Spain.
**Estrada Palma has been criticized by Castro and his supporters for agreeing to allow the United States to establish a naval base at Guantanamo and for appealing to the American governement to intervene in Cuba in 1906.
*** Former president Fulgencio Batista seized power for a second time, cancelling scheduled presidential elections.
25 December 2013
HAVANA, Cuba, December 24, www.cubanet.org – After all Christmas festivities, including Christmas Eve, New Year’s and Three Kings Day were, with the greatest silliness, ended by decree, the image of workers in the tourist industry decked out as Santa Claus, sweating away in hats, beards and boots (with no air conditioning to save electricity at their workplace), could not be more ridiculous.
To make this domestic comedy even more extreme, they strut around in their exotic hats bought with their own money, hoping to present an image of well-being that is belied by the poorly stocked shelves, and above all by a family atmosphere fragmented by the machinery of a revolutionary horde that never believed in God.
The elderly Otilia, who according to her own words is poorer than a rat, lived decently before 1959, with decency and the ability to enjoy real Christmas celebration in Cuba, gives short shrift to the unusual scene where there are little trees, Santa Clauses playing the saxophone, or garlands whose bulbs flash on and off depressingly, trying to look happy.
continue reading
“In addition,” she said, “they replaced the traditional Christmas carols by Pello el Afrocán; midnight mass for a witches’ coven; the turkey and roast pork by a beans and rice sandwich; the wine by Bocoy rum; and the birth of the baby Jesus by the images of a disheveled troop of bearded ones passing by on television that day.”
“How can you talk about Christmas when people have barely anything to eat, dreams of abandoning the country, live off those who no longer live here, and don’t believe even in pretending to be what they are not? What celebrations can there be with the low salaries, disunity and violence, and yet they pay for those for the anniversary of the Revolution that provoked all this evil?”
A worker at the Carlos III department store says she only remembers Christmas festivities in which it was forbidden to light the tree in their house and instead of a celebration the New Year brought another anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution. If they violated these precepts her father could have lost his job.
Young workers at Harris Brothers, La Dominica, El Rapido at 15th and L, la Fuente and other establishments where workers do not walk on snow or slide on sleds because the budget does not allow it, say they don’t know anything about it and do it all by imitation, or because the union demands they pretend. What a way to celebrate Christmas.
Party and pachanga, demands the Revolution, and the more it seems that the traditions are cultivated in capitalism the better. Here we’ll go with many guidelines and supposed reforms to perfect the country’s socialism. The issue is staying in power.
No one is surprised, then, if during the days of Christmas Eve and Christmas the soldiers substitute crucifixes for weapons, and those who still pretend to be communists exchange the Che beret for a Santa Claus hat. As the poet said: Let the rumbón continue!
Victor Manuel Dominguez, Vicmadomingues55@gmail.com
Cubanet / 23 December 2013
*Translator’s note: The initial excuse for “postponing Christmas” was that it interfered with the sugar cane harvest.
Print Screen/Tmblr
Here I am with my friend and brother Joan Antoni Guerrero Vall, a blogger in Barcelona for the cause of freedom in Cuba. A thousand hugs, a thousand “miamis’ once again.
14 December 2013
Video capture
I’m sure that it must have been embarrassing for U.S. president Barack Obama to have greeted the Cuban dictator, but I can’t but admit that it was a brave act: the delicate cross of the white gloves in the face of the adversary. The alternative would have left much to desire and been childish; in addition, the message then delivered in the words of President Obama, when he said that some leaders pay tribute to Mandela and reject the dissidence in their own countries, was the finishing touch, and a brutal one, to the delicate sequence of his greeting.
The event appears to me like a move in the diplomatic chess game, and history will remember the gesture positively. I recall a person who had an anthology about “the white gloved slap,” and certainly this will be added to his collection. And it reaffirms that there is contact between the two governments to solve some of the particular conflicts, such as the imprisonment of Alan Gross. continue reading
These are times of dialog; watching what is happening in Iran, Syria, and recently in Ukraine is imposing another logical order on these times. Hopefully the Cuban leader is included in President Obama’s invitation. It is a unique opportunity for a phone call, and then actions that determine a democratic will, like the ending of aggressions against the Ladies in White, the arrests and beatings of members of UNPACU (Cuban Democratic Union), and the free determination of programming without assaults for the activities of Estado de Sats. It should be followed by the release of Sonia Garro and her husband Ramón Muñoz, and the hundreds of opponents that await in Raul’s jails. The dictator Raul Castro can accomplish everything with single gesture of picking up his phone.
It is a unique moment that we can be sure he will not take advantage of, because the stubbornness of his brother, and now him, has not been in vain: a society has lost its values and the love of belonging to this country. However, the person who shone at that meeting was the man from the American side. There is no need to ask for a vote of confidence for him, his actions precede him.
Although circumstances sometimes inspire us to be extremists, we must pause, think with cool heads, and not let ourselves be carried away by emotions. More than a handshake, it was the iron fist in a velvet glove.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison Settlement of Lawton, December 2013
23 December 2013
Recently I was consulted about a case in an action which seems to form part of the working style of those who are, one way or another, employed in the law. I am referring specifically to the office of the Port of Cuba.
A young man decided to leave the country illegally, he was repairing a boat on the north coast of Camagüey when he was surprised by the authorities of the said organisation and went through the administrative process with a fine of 3000.00 Cuban pesos (CUP). continue reading
The kid immediately admitted his intention, affirmed to the functionaries his intention to put in good order the boat which they found on the ground in order to set out to sea once his work was done. Nevertheless they applied Art.1 Point g of the Decree 194, which establishes, and I quote,”to enter or leave or navigate through territorial waters, without the corresponding dispatch note or authorisation from the port office or disobeying a person duly accredited.”
As you can appreciate, what he was accused of did not occur in any of the actions described and checked, to apply correctly the regulation covering such conduct they should have referred to Art. 1 Point b, which basically refers to, “to repair vessels without due authorisation from the port office,” an offence which only carries a fine of up to 1500.00 CUP, on the basis of which I am now representing this citizen, on the basis of the considerations I have mentioned.
Following these comments, all we need to do now is consider on what does the office base its action, if roughly speaking they are aware of the injustice which results from interpreting the regulation in the way they have clearly set out.
Translated by GH
13 December 2013
The 10th of December 2013 was the most striking example of how alone the Cuban opposition is. But I do not mean that external solitude, but the internal one, the separation that exists within the dissidence itself. We are our own worst enemies, and I recognize it with infinite pain.
As we walk separated we make the work of the dictatorship’s henchmen, to beat and isolate us, easier. The day we decide to put aside personal aims and, instead, focus on the roads together, channeling our energy in unity, then our cry for freedom will be more international in scope.
Shamefully we must recognize that personal ambition, the need to be recognized as individuals, and even the posture of those who are behind the economic aid sent by different routes to the opposition, through which they try to trip up one side, are guilty of the structural earthquake in the revolutionary block that seeks a democratic opening and impedes a broader reach for the cause of freedom. continue reading
There is a case of a prisoner before he entered prison whom Amnesty International recognized by phone who was part of the list of political prisoners whom they monitor in different countries; someone inside Cuba felt ignored and torpedoed this recognition and managed to get his name off the list. This is the extreme zeal shown by the opposition.
Another case is that of someone imprisoned for political activities who was linked to a dissidence group who was cut off by adverse opinions of another group in charge of legal matters which was representing him legally and before international Human Rights groups; he was thrown overboard. They felt he was no longer their problem. And in the midst of the crossfire, without any of the parties even asking him what he thought about it all. The truth is that they forgot their words of solidarity and promises to stand by his side in bad times to come for this prisoner.
These leaders and groups of the dissidence itself are saving State Security a lot of work as they busy themselves torpedoing the initiatives that didn’t come from them. Differences of opinions cause them to become alienated when, on the contrary, it’s healthy to think differently about how to achieve the same ends.
While these differences occur, we don’t need the repressors to do the work of rejection, to weaken the forces and ideas, as if all we all not all working toward the same ideal. We ourselves are doing that work. Hopefully we will manage to repress our impulses for personal recognition and understand that the truth and the way to achieve freedom is shared among all; and understand that it is more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve it separately.
When we are capable of working through these human miseries that hinder unity and clearly alienate and make the road to democracy rougher, then we will be capable of forcing the government to sit down to talk, and the world will see is and accept us as the political force we long to be. The nation’s founding fathers, with José Martí in mind, demand this concession. When we achieve this, we will then feel ourselves to be better human beings and better Cubans.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Lawton prison settlement. December 2013
HAVANA, Cuba , December, www.cubanet.org – Monetary and exchange rate unification was addressed by Raúl Castro in his speech at the closing session of the National Assembly and by Vice President Marino Murillo Jorge, on December 21, according to the Cuban media. The interest of calming the population can be seen in the president’s assertion that there will be no affects on those who legally earn income in hard currency and in Cuban pesos, nor on the cash in hand of the population, or on deposits in the national banking system. continue reading
He also added that “it will not be a magic solution to our problems, but it will contribute decisively to improving the workings of the economy and the building of a prosperous and sustainable socialism, less egalitarian and more fair, which will ultimately benefit all Cubans.” It will begin with legal entities (agencies and state enterprises and cooperatives) and will continue with natural persons, but currently plans for its implementation are still be developed.
Meanwhile, Murilla said that in the coming two years the more technical and complex tasks of updating the economic model will be undertaken. He confirmed that the CUP (Cuban pesos) will be the only currency in the country and that in no case would there by any impact on people’s purchasing power, as the financial capacity of the CUC (convertible peso) will be respected.
He reiterated that the measure will not by itself resolve all problems, but that it should be undertaken within the “guidelines” (the adopted measures for updating the economic model), to continue promoting the development of the state socialist enterprise, unleashing the productive forces and creating an export mentality.
Undoubtedly, the tasks are immense, as it is almost impossible to achieve efficiency in a socialist enterprise. First there must be an effort to overcome all the characteristic deficiencies of the Cuban system, such as reliability in accounting and respect for contracts, eliminated in the 1960s as “capitalist malformations.” The value of work must be recovered, through conscious and creative participation of the workers, which is not resolved by the Labor Code adopted at the National Assembly session on 21 December.
Increases in production and productivity will be required in order to be able to adequately reward employees whose salaries don’t cover their basic needs and who feel no incentive to work hard and, therefore, to consider work as a social honor. The diversion of state resources as compensation for the poverty level wages or to increase one’s economic level — enrichment Cuban-style — must be eliminated; in short, the corruption generated by the system must be eradicated.
Unleashing productive forces is an imperative, but how? The straitjacket of central planning and socialist enterprises, the rejection of market forces, the restrictions on farmers and the self-employes, and other problems, prevent it. To day, the measures implemented under the adopted “guidelines” to update the system have not resulted in increases in the food supply, which in many components has declined. Manufacturing production is also falling and the private activities permitted do not complement the straitened macroeconomics of the country.
We can see that in developed countries and in those that have overcome poverty, small and medium enterprises (PYMES) carry important weight in the national economy. The vicious circle of scarcity of products for the national and international market, and the situation of nothing to export and the importing of what could be produced in Cuba, continues. An export mentality could be created, but will it happen? Will there be solutions in the “more technical and complex tasks” as predicted by the vice-president?
Miriam Leiva
25 December 2013, Cubanet
The road to exit the crisis is clear; what is lacking is the political will to travel it. Among the partial reforms the government of Raul Castro announced was the enforcement of a timeframe for measures to eliminate the dual currency, implemented following the loss of Soviet subsidies. A look back at the topic helps to identify some of the causes and limitations of the announced timeframe.
In the period between the two great wars of independence that took place in the second half of the Cuban 19th century, the Island became the first country to exceed a million tons of sugar, of which more than 90% was exported to the United States. That permitted the neighboring country to impose on Spain the reciprocal trade agreement known as the McKinley Bill, through which was established the free entry of Cuban sugar into that nation.
At the same time there was a high concentration of land ownership, especially in American companies. In that condition of economic dependence, at the end of Spanish domination, the occupation government introduced the dollar as the basic monetary standard, which was imposed until the disappearance of the other currencies (French, Spanish, Mexican), which explains the presence of the dollar in the first years of the Republic born in 1902. continue reading
In that context, with the nationalist purpose of diminishing the dependence with respect to the American dollar, the government of General Mario Garcia Menocal dictated in 1914 the Law of Economic Defense, which gave birth to the national currency. That law established a gold standard as the monetary unit with the same weight and purity as the dollar. So, from a nationalist decision emerged the first version of dual currency in Cuba, which lasted until the ’50’s of the last century.
In a different way, in 1991, the disappearance of the Soviet Union provoked the loss of the enormous subsidies based on ideological relations, which overlapped decades of inefficiency of the Cuban model. That fact, united with the depression in sugar prices, drove the country to a profound structural crisis baptized with the euphemism Special Period in Times of Peace. In answer to the crisis, the Cuban government, instead of undertaking a profound reform aimed at achieving a proper and efficient economy, defined a strategy aimed at saving the model and maintaining power. With that goal it introduced several contingency measures.
In 1993 the Basic Units of Cooperative Production were created, by which a beneficial interest in idle state land was given to workers; farmers markets and self employment were authorized; tourism and foreign investment were introduced; family remittances from abroad were admitted; possession of the dollar was decriminalized, and, in 1994, its free circulation was authorized, giving rise to the current dual currency.
As one might appreciate, the dual currency introduced in 1914 was motivated by reasons diametrically opposed to what happened in 1994. The first created the introduction of a national currency parallel to the dollar, the second legalized the dollar as a parallel to the national currency.
The road and political will
The causes that led to the dollarization in 1994 have their roots in the first revolutionary measures, whose declared goal was the disappearance of all commercial relations and, with them, the disappearance of money. In 1960, all domestic and foreign banking entities that existed in Cuba were nationalized, in 1961 they were centralized in the hands of the State, while the direction of those activities was placed in the hands of the revolutionaries from the armed struggle.
The same thing happened with figures whose conception of the economy differed from those of the leader of the revolution, as happened with the economist Felipe Pazos Roque, founder and first president of the National Bank of Cuba since its foundation in 1948, who in spite of abandoning that responsibility because of his position against the Coup of 1952 and being named again as head of that institution in 1959 was replaced some months later by commander Ernesto Guevara.
The course of the process was more or less the following: the dollar was introduced in 1994; the convertible peso (CUC), a second national currency as an alternative to the dollar and the same value as the dollar, was created; in 2004 the circulation of the dollar was eliminated; then a tax of 10% was imposed on the dollar, and the CUC was re-valued relative to the dollar by 8%; in March of 2011 the original one-to-one value was resumed but the 10% tax remained. In summary, the duality was maintained thanks to which Cuba is the only country in the world with two national currencies, neither of which is really convertible.
The dollarization and the dual currency, besides magnifying social differentiation, increased the loss of value that the Cuban peso already had, one of whose manifestations was the expressed inflation in prices on the black market, the drop of wages and the discouragement of production.
Cuban currency, a representation of money, lost or reduced its functions as a means of value, an instrument for acquisition of goods, a means of accumulation of wealth, an instrument of liberation from debt and a means of payment. That’s why monetary unification, even if it constitutes an essential step for the current or for any other Government, will not resolve the current structural crisis, due to the fact that Cuban currency is not backed by the Gross National Product, that is to say, by the sum of goods and services that permit it to resume its functions and to be compared with foreign currencies.
The way out is in prioritizing productive efficiency, for which domestic and foreign investment is required, which would provide the country with capital, technology and markets, which in turn demands a new Law of Investments and the elevation of current salaries, which do not manage to cover more than one-third of basic necessities. But as one can only distribute what is produced, the Government faces a complex contradiction: without increases in salaries, Cubans are not ready to produce, and without production, it is impossible to raise salaries, which will make monetary unification by itself futile.
In short, a comprehensive project that includes the decentralization of the economy, permits the formation of a middle class, removes the obstacles that stop production and restores citizens’ rights and liberties is missing. The road is clear, what is lacking is the political will to travel it.
Translated by mlk.
Taken from: Diario de Cuba
17 December 2013
The Cuban Speech from Jon Rubin on Vimeo.
The Cuban Speech from Jon Rubin on Vimeo.
21 December 2013
What is our lesson after 55 years of the Castro regime, more than there were before Batista in Cuba (“Castroism” predates Castro), and there are still more to come, as long as the Castro brothers don’t die (there will be no Castroism after Castro), and the violence of freedom finally begins? Is there a lesson? What a perverse historical pedagogy! But yes. And if there isn’t any, then there should have been.
Like the good teachers in the public elementary schools, I would like to reduce everything to a couple of elemental points, although they will seem farfetched juxtaposed on the blackboard. I promise to be brief. Also, the chalk disappears quite easily before a damp rag leaving no trace in the classroom’s memory.
1. From the beginning, the Revolution was a fallacy in our national imagination. It wasn’t betrayed by Fidel Castro, far from it. In fact the Revolution was the foundational cause of our independence and it was this we were playing at during the Republican period, aborting any instant of understanding. We believed in the violent transformation of society. We tried our contemporaries so as not to criminally succumb before them.
Castro was carefully incubated by Cubans, until he accumulated sufficient critical evil to become what he is: an evil unbeatable without applying sufficient evil. With luck, or as revenge, Castroism should mean, then, the end of that string of Cuban Revolutions.
We have to stop thinking and acting revolutionarily, because all of the initial allies of the Revolution, betrayed, imprisoned, exiled or murdered, also committed the sin of complicit naiveté: they purposely ignored that no Revolution ever in the key of death has brought anything but that, more death.
2. Organized communism has committed genocide in Cuba. It sold the nation to foreign powers, under a popular and nationalist disguise. It made a pact with a charismatic gangster, a permanent dictator, watching while he and his clan lived. It cauterized all civic life: meaning it disintegrated the nation, fostering an exile that irreversibly diasporized Cuba.
It abolished the idea of the individual, and it did this from Marxism not as a concept but as a historical juncture (we now know that a capitalist communism is viable).
It debased the god in man that lived in Cuba, leaving us as a people despotically exposed before the State. Left without any hope of change in the future. Thus it has lost is right to form any part of a more inclusive future, after the debacle that will follow the fall of the Castros.
Although few Cubans have the courage to mention it (an exception is Oswaldo Payá Sardiña’s Transition Project), as long as organized communism on the island is not illegal, there will be no national reconstruction that isn’t controlled or hijacked by organized communists.
Like every good elementary public schoolteacher, I earn no salary for my chalk lesson on the blackboard. I’ve fulfilled my promise to be more than brief. I don’t lie to the students. Now they can erase me. Or leave the classroom.
25 December 2013
