Human Rights Defender Kidnapped In His Home / Veizant Boloy

An act of repudiation in front of the house of Andrés Pérez Suárez, courtesy of the author.

Havana, Cuba, 11 October 2103, Veizant Boloy / www.cubanet.org.- Today, Friday, 11 October at 6:45 AM, Andres Perez Suarez, president of the opposition  group Commission for Assistance to Political Prisoners and Their Families (CAPPF, was arbitrarily arrested.  The arrest was carried out by the Department of State Security agent known as Camilo, supported by the police of patrol car no. 131.

“Now, Andres, things are complicated for you!” Camilo shouted, as he tried to enter the house by force, according to information received in a phone call by Regla Rios Casado, a Lady in White and Andres’ wife.

“He climbed over the fence, which is more than six feet high, and climbed on the roof looking for a way to get into the house,” said Rios Casado. “He told us he had a search warrant but what he showed was a an arrest order and they took him away.”

Also near Pérez Suárez’s house they arrested Mario Moraga Ramos and Roberto Ávalos Padrón, both CAPPF activists. In this operation the participating State Security agents were Leodan, Frank, and Captain Alejandro. According to agent Camilo, who hours later returned to threaten Rios Casado, Perez Suarex was taken to the police station at Infanta and Manglar in the capital municipality of Cerro.

From September to now, the government’s represssive forces have deployed operation and arrested Perez Suarez nd his wife to keep them from going to the Ladies in White march at Santa Rita Church, where they go every Sunday.

“Every time, after enduring harassment and beatings, we are abandoned to our fate,” commented Rios Casado. “The last time agent Camilo arrested me they took me without my shoes and without any money to a complicated place* called La Lechuga, in Melena del Sur. On that occasion a man and a woman, both police officers, dragged me out of the patrol car by my feet,” she concluded.

Regla Rios Casado and her family have suffered more than three acts of repudiation from last month to today.

Opponents have, on several occasions, denounced this practice through legal means. Based on the exercise of complaint and petition, provided for in Article 63 of the Constitution of the Republic, and Article 26 of the rules themselves that recognize that “every person who suffers injury or damages unjustly caused by the officials and agents of the State exercising the functions of their job, have the right to demand and obtain corresponding reparations or indemnification in the manner established by law.”

The Attorney General of the Republic neither responds to complaints nor protects against them. Even though it is required to do so within 60 days of the violation.

More arrests today

We also learned that agent Camilo visited the Route 12 settlement of San Miguel del Padrón. Arrested there today were Yoeldy Boza Garrido, 24, and his father, Juan Bautista Boza, migrants to the capital from the province of Guantanamo. They live in appalling conditions, in a shack. Presumably, the reason for the detention was Yoeldy’s statements to Cubanet, in a video that shows the precariousness of their environment.

Veizant Boloy  — veizant@gmail.com

*Translator’s note: It is now a common practice to arrest opponents, drive them to far off places, and simply abandon them there. This is part of the strategy of repression the opponents call “catch and release.”

From Cubanet, 11 October 2013

The Pathology of Ethics / Lilianne Ruiz

Heartbreaking, repulsive, are adjectives that describe the act of repudiation of Monday outside the headquarters of the Ladies in White on Neptune Street between Aramburu and Hospital. Many who were mobilized there to shout insults and threats were young university students, members of the Federation of University Students (FEU) and the Young Communist Union (UJC), as they themselves declared as they chanted their their slogans.

An event to verbally assault a women’s Movement fighting for the release of the political prisoners, didn’t seem an obviously wrong act to them. Their sense of what is humanly correct or incorrect was annulled by ideology or by an instinct for self-preservation.

This morning I spoke with a former political prisoner who had been jailed for 15 years, and a good part of those 15 years he spent in Kilo 8 Prison on a maximum severity regimen, which meant greater cruelty and impunity on the part of the guards.

I wonder if there is another place on earth like Cuba, where the confusion, the perversion of the ethical meaning of life is greater. Because I want to think that those people who were there on Monday, in front of the Ladies in White headquarters, supporting a regime very dangerous to the human condition: Do they really know what they are doing?

18 October 2013

Words into the Wind / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

By Jeovany Jimenez Vega, M.D.

When I spoke during the discussion of the Draft Law to amend the Labor Code a couple of weeks ago, I said that our industry (public health) generates 50% of the GDP of this country; that it represents an income of between 8 and 10 billion hard-cash dollars every year; that this is a lot of money, which should be enough to significantly increase the salary of the sector that produces it; that those who remain here deserve as much as those who go on work medical missions abroad; that I will never understand why a prestigious professor of medicine, after decades of dedication, earns one-third the salary of an office manager trained for fifteen days.

It’s not just that our salary is ridiculous, but that it is particularly absurd in this country of merciless prices. We have patients who easily earn three to ten times our salary, and not from self-employment, but also from the few state jobs that link salary to performance; or simply through “struggling” — that is, stealing with both hands. It is high time to put an end to this humiliating situation, because if there exists today in Cuba a sector that is able to increase substantially the wages of its workers — here we’re not talking about the ridiculous two pesos per hour for nighttime work — it’s public health. I said all this, a couple of weeks ago, when I was able to speak.

My specific proposal? A basic monthly salary for a recent graduate of 800 Cuban pesos (roughly $33 US), increasing by 150 pesos every two years up to, for example, 1,500 pesos eight or ten years after graduation; 100 pesos per each medical shift at multi-specialty and primary care clinics, and between 150 and 200 pesos in hospice facilities depending on the workload assumed by each specialty, never less than 5 pesos an hour for night duty, 200 pesos for biohazard risk, 200 for administrative positions and teachers — it could be higher for provincial or ministerial positions; 250 for certified masters and 500 per specialty completed. And finally, it would be fair to give longevity pay after fifteen years of work at 100 pesos every five years (100 after the first 15 years, 200 after 20, 300 after 25 and so on) and finally a retirement that does not force those who served their people for decades to live on a little less than a beggar would get.

Of course, this is my humble opinion, launched into the ether from the perspective of the sufferer, not remotely like that of an experienced economist. But something convinces me that an industry generating so much money could handle it comfortably. They’ve already made a timid gesture with sports, so why not with the sector that generates similar wealth, which provides reasonable assurances that it will continue, and which is showcased to the world as a success story?

Those who make these decisions should take into account that these are professionals who know that, if they approved a monthly salary like this (I’m talking about 150 U.S. Dollars), it would still be less than they could earn abroad for a few hours of work under circumstances qualitatively very different, despite which — I venture to guarantee — in most cases they would not want to abandon their country. I remains to be seen if the words spoken in meetings all across this country will fall on deaf ears, if it will do any good to throw this bottle into the sea, to throw these crazy words into the wind.

Translated by Tomás A

17 October 2013

Prison Diary LIX: Communicating the Truth: New Discovery of the Cuban Government Press / Angel Santiesteban

Photo: Enmanuel Castells (Source: revista OtroLunes)

At the close of the Congress of the Journalists Union of Cuba (UPEC), participants highlighted, among the priorities, the need for a journalism consistent with the twenty-first century, with respect to fresh, genuine, direct and illuminating information, which is nothing more than the essence of the work of journalism, its ethics and trade, since its inception; and suddenly it seems to come to the fore as if it has just been discovered: that the correspondent’s only duty is to communicate the truth.

Dictators, as we all know, the first thing they do is control information. The Communist Party, from its Department of Ideology and the Council of State, directly owns all the publications, from which they present themselves, manipulating the information in accordance with their interests. They are the owners of the television and newspapers of the country, where they convert Cuban “journalism” into the simple voice of the state, without contradicting the political line drawn by the Government.

After more than fifty years of following this uninterrupted practice, it would be very difficult to educate the free press, on the basis of social duty, which should be the only route.

It’s a shame that journalists still continue their deception, as they do in addressing the issue of the four Cuban spies convicted in the United States, which they still call “The Five”, and they do not refer to the work of the “Wasp Network”.

But, without going into details, as it is not the purpose of this post, I want to deal with the news, and how the pitiful and incomprehensible is that after so much money spent on the campaign to free them, they lied to the people who by their own sweat pay for all the travel of family members, the lawyers and the media paraphernalia.

A few months before going to prison, I learned from a book about most notorious spies throughout history, including the Cubans imprisoned in 2001, and the Cuban security spy, Ana Belen Montes, who worked at the Pentagon, which of course is never addressed in the national media but the world knows it. The author let me know the time and courage which he dedicated to the investigations and inquiries. After completion, he presented it to several Cuban publishers, who after showing interest, I am told, also noting that Cuban spies were included, then refused to publish it.

It’s obvious that censorship in Cuba is like a sickness, that could only be cured with a political change, to sterilize the evil that has lasted more than half a century. I imagine, when that time comes, the faces of Cubans on learning what has been hidden from them, overshadowing their existence with ignorance.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

18 October 2013

New Pastoral Letter from Catholic Bishops of Cuba / Roberto Jesus Quinones

GUANTANAMO, Cuba, 14 October 2013, www.cubanet.org – The latest Pastoral Letter of the Catholic Bishops of Cuba, “Hope does not disappoint,” has been distributed to the faithful. Contrary to what happened twenty years ago, when the document “Love Hopes All things” was unveiled, so far this letter has led to no reaction from the government or the official press.

Several people attribute this to the fact that conditions have changed significantly. The new document is being made public at a time when relations between the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the government are good, and when the  institution can serve the government as an intermediary in resolving conflicts. The truth is that, without flourishes, the bishops have prepared a thorough and accurate analysis of our reality.

For reasons of space, we could not attempt an examination of all aspects addressed in this new Pastoral Letter. Those interested would find it useful to read it in full. However, by way of advancement, I would refer you to several of its highlights.

For example, in the second section, entitled “The visits of the two Popes mark our history with signs of hope,” the bishops discussed the significance the visits to the Isle of Blessed John Paul II and Benedict XVI have had on the Catholic Church and the Cuban people. Meanwhile, in the third section, “The divine and human word of the Church encourages our hope,” it discusses the role of the Catholic Church in Cuba today.

In the fourth section, “The common destiny of material goods and freedom are a source of hope,” it states that among the different options for the common good, the Church chooses one that defends and promotes the responsible freedom of man. Also in this section it argues that human beings can not seek their own good while forgetting or neglecting or oppressing their brother. And that the structure and organization of societies and governments, both yesterday and today, can generate groups of power that do not always represent everyone and which are not interested in those who are outside their circle of belonging.

Literally, the bishops warn in the fourth section: “No one can claim freedom for themselves and deny it to others, or seek his own good and be indifferent to that of others. The freedom that God conceives for man is a freedom responsible for the lives and the destiny of those around us.”

The fifth section, “The changes encourage the hope of our people,” makes reference to the Pastoral Letter “Love Hopes for Everything,” and how some of its petitions have been met, but not others.

For its part, the eighth section, “The hopes of a better future also include a new political order,” is perhaps the most daring of the entire document. It says that Cuba is called on to be a pluralistic society, the sum of many realities, the nation of all Cubans, with their differences and aspiration, and there must be the right to diversity of the thinking, creativity, and the search for truth.

In the ninth section, “Dialogue among Cubans opens a path of hope,” the bishops insist that this is the only way to achieve and sustain the social transformations taking place in Cuba. While the tenth section, “Cuba in the concert of nations: reasons for hope,” mentions the changes in Latin America and in the world, and commits to the inclusion of Cuba in these contexts, but also reiterates the need to consider the relations of our country with the United States.

In the eleventh section, “The family and youth, hope of the Nation and the Church,” the bishops examine the matter deeply and honestly, based on the assertion that twenty years after the publication of “Love Hopes for Everything,” family life in Cuba is very poor, with severe consequences that affect the lives of individuals and society.

In sum, it is a document that not only responds adequately to the expectations created by the bishops of the Cuban Catholic Church, with their previous pastoral letter of 1993, it also traces the historical role that corresponds to this institution in the complex circumstances of the present and the near future.

Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces

From Cubanet, 14 October 2013

Price Prohibitive Dairy Products / Alberto Mendez Castello

abasto-leche-bodegas-cuba-300x202PUERTO PADRE, Cuba, October, www.cubanet.org – “Milk production is in serious trouble here,” said the first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Communist Party in Las Tunas, Ariel Santana Santiesteban, in a meeting last month with farmers in this town.

The cows do not produce as much milk as need, because of poor management, it was reported at the meeting. Their basic food is insufficient. The dairy cattle don’t have enough forage to allow them to maintain production when the pastures are bare from lack of rains, reported the politicians and administrators meeting with the dairy farmers.

imagesMore than a logical concern for the dairy herd, the concern of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) over the low milk production recalls simple reasons of mathematical logic. When milk production is low, the town can’t supply the quote established for children up to age seven and sick people, and powdered milk has to be substituted for fresh. Producing a ton of milk powder uses twelve thousand liters of fresh milk which, at a little more than two pesos a liter, is a payment to the dairy farmers of some twenty-three thousand Cuban pesos.

The Las Tunas Dairy Products Company produces powdered milk, which in addition to being supplied to the ration stores, is sold in five hundred gram bags at 2.90 CUC (convertible pesos), in the State-owned hard currency stores. A kilogram of nationally produced powdered milk sold in those stores, is the equivalent of 5.80 CUC, and a ton at 5,800 CUC, is 145,000 in Cuban pesos.

leche_cubaDespite milk powder costing more than six times what the State pays the dairy farmer for the raw material, anyone who wants to drink a glass of milk without asking for trouble should go to the State-owned hard currency stores.

The dairy farmer is forced to sell his milk to the State. Commerce in milk, cheese or any other dairy product is prohibited between individuals and punishable by law. The same is true for coffee. And beef? Don’t even talk about it: His Majesty, the State monopoly market, is owner and lord.

For many people, inside and outside of cuba, it’s as if good old “Daddy Socialist State” was paying for everything: public health, education, milk for children and sick people, etc.  When, in reality, we are the ones who pay.

At the National Farmers Meeting, held this last September, the vice-president of the Council of Ministers, Marino Murillo Jorge, said, “… we are fewer than 11 million people, of whom 5 million work, and of these, approximately 960,000 work in agriculture, of which about 300,000 are not directly linked to production.”

Can anyone tell me who pays for the automobiles, the gasoline, the offices and the salaries of these gentlemen who produce nothing?

Alberto Mendez Castello

From Cubanet, 16 October 2013

Cuba: The Other Embargo / Ivan Garcia

Cuban_and_American_Flag-560x330Although you can fly coach from Miami to Havana in less than forty-five minutes, the customs duties and price of an airline ticket are enough to give you a heart attack.

For Cuban residents living in Florida, it is probably cheaper to travel to Europe than to visit their relatives. The Castro regime has a secret weapon against the embargo that the United States imposed on the island in 1962.

The answer has been to milk Cuban exiles scattered across half the world, particularly those living on the other shore. Without fanfare, the Castro regime has created a formidable industry out of the sweat and sacrifice of emigres.

At the end of the 1970s, the inefficient Cuban economy squandered billions of rubles, fuel and material resources from the former USSR. A good part of this flow of money was set aside for Fidel Castro’s favorite project: destabilizing governments on the American continent and Africa through subversion.

His hidden agenda was to create an alliance of third-world countries that would stand up to “Yankee imperialism.”  This strategy cost a lot of money.

In the beginning, hard currency was obtained through raids on banks and sequestration of million-dollar companies on the part of pro-Castro groups in America. And it was kept in accounts managed by the Cuban government.

Another form of getting Gringo dollars was turning to the world market to sell part of the petroleum that the USSR had sent to Cuba.  But it wasn’t enough. Subversion is pricey.

It was then that leaders in Havana gave a sidelong glance to the north.  In southern Florida lay an opulent treasure. Hard-working Cubans had triumphed thanks to democracy, economic freedom and personal creativity.

A new strategy was devised.  The dollars of those formerly classified as “worms” by the regime now were needed to open accounts in hard-currency personally managed by the sole commander. Evoking “family reunification” in 1978 they established flights so that the Cuban community in the United States could visit their poor relatives on the island.

Castro didn’t care much about family.  It was a matter of business. Years before, writing a card to a parent or sibling residing in the “empire” was almost a crime and more than a few lost their jobs. At the time, it was also a crime to be Catholic, to listen to the Beatles or to wear jeans.

The ideological pirouette of the regime in cozying up to Cubans living in Florida was not a strategy born out of good will or remorse. Not at all. It was delicate handiwork to establish a channel for dollars to flow into the island.

Fidel Castro always had a peculiar philosophy. He considered the United States embargo illegal. Therefore, any way to make a mockery of it was a good option.

When Cuban emigres visited their country in the early 1980s, dollars were exchanged in the airport at one-to-one for pesos. A visitor had to spend money to stay at least three nights in a hotel, even though his family could put him up. A network of exclusive stores was created using dollars and tourist attractions which sold clothes, personal hygiene products and household appliances for the price of gold.

As an alternative, the government simultaneously opened up commercial outlets which exchanged gold and silver jewelry, fine china and paintings by renowned artists for stereo equipment, color televisions and Russian automobiles. When Soviet communism said “adiós,” the Caribbean autocrats strengthened their policies of bridge-building to attract remittances from Cuban exiles.

By 1993 Cubans were allowed to hold dollars legally. At the same time the dual-currency system began operating. There was the CUC or convertible peso, which had considerable buying power, and the Cuban peso, which was significantly devalued.

In the meantime a huge industry was set up in the midst of Florida’s exile community. Agents of the Castro government swarmed through Miami and Tampa picking up cheap merchandise, video games, electronics, computers and cell phone rechargers to sell on the island.

Extortionate-rate commissions were charged. Certainly, Cuban immigrants enjoyed a unique privilege: when they arrived on United States’ soil, they were automatically granted legal residency.

But at the same time they are the only immigrants in the world who have to pay outlandish fees to send money and packages home, to make long-distance phone calls and to reunite with their families.

A Cuban pays on average at least $1,000 to hug his relatives at the Havana airport. The Cuban Interest Section in Washington–the Cuban government’s quasi-embassy in DC–charges $375 for a passport. To renew it six years later costs another $375.

An airline ticket from Florida goes for a little over $440. When the plane lands in Cuba, the visitor had better be ready to open his wallet. The Cuban Customs Service has a long list of duties on a wide variety of items — from $10 for a fan to $400 for a computer.

And he has to pay $5 for every pound of luggage over the proscribed limit. In general this fee is collected by the airlines, not at the airport. Cuban exiles are among the few peoples of the world who have to have a passport to visit their own country. And in the event they are vocal opponents of the regime, they lose their right to even enter the country.

Much has been said about the US embargo. Every year UN delegates vote overwhelmingly to abolish it.

Most of the population as well as a majority of dissidents are also overwhelmingly in favor of lifting the economic and trade embargo. They believe the Castro brothers use it as a pretext for maintaining the political status quo.

The embargo, however, is riddled with holes. When the authorities or their relatives so desire, they can obtain a Hummer, a bottle of Jack Daniels or the latest generation of antibiotics from a third country or even from the United States itself. In Cuban hard-currency stores you can buy anything from a Coca Cola to an HP printer.

But our compatriots in exile must deal with an “embargo” that is not discussed either at the United Nations or by the world’s press. They often must pay too much for any service or any aid they send to their relatives in Cuba. The only crime they committed was that one day they decided to leave the Communist madhouse.

Iván García

 Photo: Cuban and American flags for sale. From www.cipamericas.org

15 October 2013

Angola Volunteer Scammed / Frank Correa

22aem_cuba_angola_feria_libro-300x250HAVANA, Cuba, October, www.cubanet.org – Recently returned from the Republic of Angola where she served as a volunteer, an official still can’t hide her astonishment while telling her story. I’ll call her Mireya because she asked me not to reveal her real name.

She is fifty years old. Thirty-two years ago she gave herself to the Socialist Revolution. She really internalized the “New Man” advocated by Che; at twenty-three she held dual membership in the Communist Youth and the Party. She was serious, deep, devoted to her work and above all to the Party.

She transferred from a job as a quality inspector at the municipal flour company in Guantanamo, to the National Bread Administration in Havana. During the inspections, the administrators and inspectors feared her. Over the years she had learned how to find when a problem was being hidden and always uncovered violations and crimes in fulfilling the technology directives.

The drivers also feared her, they said she “looked like a general.” And even the Board of Directors respected her. Besides being an excellent professional, she was the secretary of her Party cell.

She was selected to advise the Angolan Food Ministry with regards to bread, as reflected in an agreement signed by both countries in 2002. Mireya was tasked with implementing Cuban technology directives in the far off African country. For three years, she organized the work of seven Angolan provinces and the capital, Luanda.

She was under a contract with the Cuban firm ANTEX, SA, with an employer who was paid six thousand a month for her work, but she was entitled to only six hundred, of which she never got more than one-hundred-sixty. And at the bottom of the contract it said the other part was for “Cuba sí” (for the victims of hurricane Sandy), and forty for food. During her mission her two granddaughters were born and she was crazy to see them, and in order to save money and be able to take it to Cuba, she skipped the evening meal.

But when Mireya arrived at José Marti airport, she says she met with a capitalism worse than Angola’s. The Customs officials demanded that if she wanted to bring in her household goods she had to pay as if she’d bought them there, a huge amount of money they left her stunned. She argued that she’d already paid for them to ANTEX, but the Customs officials responded that this was another payment, a different one. And Mireya, crazy to get home and meet her granddaughters, paid very grumpily.

And at home, with her granddaughters in her arms, she said the shock didn’t end. She learned she had lost her job, the law stipulated she could only be gone two years and a day and she had to start from scratch.

And when she went with the letter to buy the car, they told her there was a delay with the older volunteers, of two years. And she had to deposit the money in the bank and wait her turn. And she couldn’t touch it because she would lose the “right to a car.”

Now Mireya, with no job, no money and no car, authorized me to write her story. Everyone knows that three years in Angola isn’t easy.

Frank Correa

From Cubanet, 16 October 2013

Antonio Rodiles Petitions For Habeas Corpus for Arbitrary Detentions

Today the director of the civic organization State of Sats, Antonio Rodiles, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the Provincial People’s Tribunal of Havana on behalf of two pro-democracy activists who were detained and who remain incommunicado.

The first petition was filed on behalf of José Díaz Silva, who was arrested near his home last Thursday, October 10, when he was arbitrarily detained by an agent from State Security identified only as Gastón. Díaz Silva was transferred to the detention center known as “El Vivac.” So far, no preliminary injunction has been brought against him and he has been denied visits from family members.

The other petition was filed on behalf of Díaz Silva’s wife, Lourdes Esquivel Veiyto, who was detained at 11 AM on Friday after appearing at the Santiago de las Vegas police station to seek information on the whereabouts of her husband. Esquivel Veiyto is a member of the Ladies in White.

Rodiles believes Díaz Silva was detained because the activist had been leading a workshop on the UN’s International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights.

“This is a reaction to the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba, which calls upon the government to ratify the conventions signed in New York on February 28, 2008 at the United Nations,” explains Rodiles in his petition for Díaz Silva’s release.

The couple lives in Santiago de las Vegas in the Boyeros district on the outskirts of the capital. Due to repeated punitive detentions of Díaz Silva and his family, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (CIDH) has issued a precautionary injunction to protect their rights, lives and physical well-being.

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 From Cubanet, 14 October 2013

A Review and the Reviewers / Rebeca Monzo

Photo: professors and students of Public School #10 in the 1950s.

By the end of the 1940s everyone working as a teacher in Cuba was an accredited professional in education. In the 1950s there were many illustrious professors in our country, teachers who were recognized internationally for the work they had published, which was used as textbooks both at home and abroad. They included Valmaña, Baldor and Añorga, to name but a few authors of textbooks used even today by teachers and students throughout Latin America.

After 1959, when private schools were seized by the government, an absurd law was promulgated which “invited” teachers actively working in primary and higher education to retire after only twenty-five years of service, which was the case for many, regardless of a teacher’s age. This and other issues forced many teachers, who also saw themselves disparaged for having been trained under capitalism, to go into exile. Most would retire and very few were able to continue teaching given the adversities they faced. Subsequently, the quality of education began to decline as young people from the countryside had to be trained as teachers hastily, in order to fill the void the government itself had created. These so-called “Makarenkos” were trained according to the methods of a Soviet pedagogue of the same name.

In the 1970s there were still good teachers in many schools who helped mentor the newcomers, but low salaries, the lack of incentives, and the growing evident deterioration of teaching facilities, lead to the gradual increase of high turnover across the teaching sector, especially in elementary and high schools.  And yet, considering the time, the universities relied on a luminary lineup of professors on faculty.

Another factor that incited the decline in the quality of education was that teachers found themselves pressured — so as to not affect their performance evaluations, which were based on rank and not quality — to commit fraud.  This lead to many teachers revealing exam questions in advance to their students and, on many occasions, even whispering the answers in their ears, so as to secure positive evaluations.

Facing the rapid decline of education and the lack of teachers in specific subjects, many parents decided to turn to retired teachers to review and, in some cases, even teach the subjects to their children.  Other parents, in a better economic situation, achieved the same effect with their kids by giving costly gifts to the current teachers on staff.  The quality of education kept falling more and more; and students and families lost respect for teachers.  Then, as the coup de grace, came the so-called “emerging teachers”, trained by quick, low-quality courses, and the replacement of teachers by televisions in the classrooms.  These marked the final blow to the quality of education.

Alongside this decline, the number of people seeking to earn a little more income by privately tutoring and charging for it, to be sure, swelled progressively.  The “reviewers”, they were called.  This was, until the recent appearance of the new licenses, a clandestine service.  Now reviewers exist legally, but the government is already looking for ways to disparage this service, seeking to vilify active teachers who also work as reviewers and, as such, are not authorized to apply for a license.  The media mount the charges against them, accusing them of a lack of ethics and civility, without having the courage to face and divulge the fundamentally economic causes that have provoked this situation — the miserable salaries teachers are paid, which are not enough to satisfy their minimal needs as citizens — and overlooking that, if once again they feel cornered, teachers begin to flee the country, creating a new vacuum in education, each time harder to fill.

A legal solution is necessary to resolve this man-made chaos, without harming teachers or students and, above all, the nation’s future.  Reviewers exist precisely due to the increasingly low quality of education.  This is the responsibility of the entire citizenry in general but, first and foremost, of the Ministry of Education and its highest echelons.

Translated by: Yoyi el Monaguillo

15 October 2013

Havana Havana, Your Fountains Are Broken / Yoani Sanchez

I’m in the same park where thirty years ago my sister and I ran and played. Two girls turning pirouettes similar to ours hide behind some bushes. However, there is something very different in this deja vu: missing is the fountain with its sound of rain falling on marble. With rare exceptions, a very similar panorama repeats itself in every Havana plaza. Scarcity, negligence or urban policy, no one can explain it, but in recent decades this city has lost the moist presence of its fountains.

Guided by my memory, I decided to take a water tour. At the corner of Belascoaín and Carlos III all that is left of that pond where we dunked our hands and sometimes our feet is an empty tank. A few blocks further on, rusted iron marks the site of one of the more ephemeral fountains of my memory. It only lasted a few weeks after its inauguration in an official event, speech and all. Known as “Paulina’s bidet,” near Sport City, now and again downpours turn it into a greenish lake with tadpoles. And don’t even talk about the Fountain of Youth — drab and decrepit — so close to the sea, so far from its former glory.

In a brief investigation of why this city has lost so many sources, I find varied and revealing answers: “The problem is they stole the pump that supplies the water,” an official told me. At another site an annoyed employee assured me, “We had to close it because some people ended up bathing here, because they don’t have showers in their homes.” The nicest was a lady who looked at me with narrowed eyes while reproaching me, “Oh my, what a tremendous memory you have, this fountain hasn’t worked for decades.” In the center of Plaza Vieja stands one of the few that still functions, surrounded by an imposing fence, to keep the neighbors from taking the precious liquid bucket by bucket. My water tour ended, desert-like, at the well-known La India fountain, also without a drop of H2O.

As residents of this city we must do something so that our children can experience the beauty of parks with fountains. I know there are other priorities to be resolved, but how gray is the asphalt, how solitary a little square and how oppressive the heat without this sound of water skipping over the stones.

The post Habana, Habana, la fuente se rompió appeared first on Generación Y – Yoani Sánchez by

16 October 2013

Self-Employment in the Arena / Fernando Damaso

Photo Rebeca

The phony honeymoon between the self-employed and the State could not last long: their interests are totally different. While the former try to develop themselves, the latter does everything it can to prevent it. The trite theme of their having reached their legal limits, with the current attempt by the authorities to eliminate individual stores that offer mainly imported products, as well as other successful businesses, such as 3D movie rooms, has raised the social tension, leading to major confrontations, absent for years in our unchanging environment.

Without understanding that feudal methods, with the mighty lord of the castle and his henchmen on one side and the submissive serfs on the other, are outmoded and are obsolete, the authorities intend, through regulations, limitations and repression, to maintain the state’s commercial domination over obedient citizens and complacent unions that they have enjoyed for more than 54 years, doing and undoing at their whim, without any social restraint.

After taking over a developed and efficient light industry — made up primarily of companies financed with Cuban capital, which were important sources of employment, and which produced virtually everything that was necessary to meet the needs of the population — and making it disappear with absurd economic measures, today the government has to import everything, using the few credits it receives, besides having failed miserably in the production of material goods.

They have tried to alleviate this situation with the establishment several years ago of various state chain stores, where low-quality imported goods are sold at high prices in order to extract from the few citizens the few economic resources they have, mainly the product of remittances sent from abroad, under the pretext of responding to the patriotic necessity of recouping hard currency.

With the appearance of privately-owned stores, some better outfitted than others, with higher quality items, more variety, and at more attractive prices, buyers gravitated to them, abandoning the state stores, which in this competition have everything to lose. Hence the reaction of the authorities and the entire bureaucracy of ossified officials, worried that their privileges would disappear. The conclusion is: the State with all its resources, is unable to compete in a fair fight with individuals. Examples abound in the world and in Cuba. Despite the difficult conditions in which they have to survive, besieged by exorbitant taxes and absurd regulations and limitations, they pull it off: privately owned rooming houses, eateries, shops, 3-D theater rooms, equipment repairs, and other kinds of successful businesses.

In this confrontation, you need to say a prayer for the self-employed, and what they represent as new economic players, and firmly defend them, not allowing them to again be swept from the national scene, as happened on other occasions in the face of citizen apathy and passivity. The current conditions are very different; before acting hastily, Cubans as well as the state should assess the high social and political price they would have to pay for a new mistake.

Translated by Tomás A.

15 October 2013