Moscow 2013: Cuba, Worse Than Expected / Ivan Garcia

Cubano-gana-oro-Mundial-Moscu_PREIMA20130818_0117_31In spite of the absence of giants from track and field like the Kenyan David Rudisha, the Jamaican Yohan Blake, the Cuban Dayron Robles and the Croat Blanka Vlasic, the Track and Field World Championships which took place August 10 to 18, was not a disaster.

Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell and Veronica Campbell-Brown were banned from competition for having used controlled substances. Although they weren’t world-class athletes, the times and scores were significant.

And when headline names compete like Usain Bolt, Mo Farah, LaShawn Merritt or athletes in the style of Yelena Isinbayeva, Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce or the runners from the depths of Kenya and Ethiopia, there is a guaranteed show.

It’s a pity that the Muscovites weren’t enthused by this distinguished group of giants.  Or they’re not interested in track and field, the tickets were sold at astronomical prices, or they preferred to stay in their dachas during these hot August days.

Of the 14 editions of the Track and Field World Championships, it was the least attended by the public.  The International Federation of Track and Field should take note.  And set aside shady deals lacking in transparency when it’s time to designate a host site.

Super sized athletes like to compete with full stands.  And the notable empty spaces in the gigantic Luzhniki stadium demonstrated that not everything is done with voluminous wallets, juicy commissions and extra-curricular lobbying.

Russia, which hopes to recuperate its lost greatness, bet on launching an offensive on all fronts.  From their platform in the Security Commission of the United Nations, to throwing the house out the window and grabbing first class sports events.  The new type of dictatorship invented by Vladimir Putin, with repression of dissidents and homosexuals through laws or simply busting them with sticks, he initiated a media offensive to wash its totalitarian face.

They will be a host site for the Winter Olympic Games (Sochi, 2014) and the next World Swimming Championships (Kazan, 2015).  And they are discussing a place for the Summer Olympics of 2020.  Only the myopia or corruption that envelops the maximum agencies for global sports, gets around the fact that a country that doesn’t respect democratic play should never be host to world events.

But back to the point. Despite the frigidity of the spectators, on the sports side, Moscow 2013 was a success.  In nearly all the competition events better times and season records were achieved.

In the case of those who competed from our island, this is a pending subject. For years now Cuban athletes, with exception of Pedro Pablo Pichardo, Yipsi Moreno y Omar Cisneros, haven’t gotten the best results in their most important events.  We have to check the methods, something is wrong with the technique and strategies.  The best marks are obtained in the first few months of the year.

Of course, to sweep the house you have to switch the furniture.  The work of the Cuban Federation of Track and Field is awfully bad.  This was confirmed by a source that would rather stay anonymous:

“You can’t obtain big results when the attention to the athletes is shameful.  You could make an extensive list of the athletes that have left the country or simply have stopped competing due to lack of support from the authorities.  It is an authentic cartel of the immoral.  Corrupt to no end.  Look at the Panamerican Stadium where the stars of track and field train; it is a shame.  The gymnasium is disgusting.  The boards are not working; the food and the working conditions are deplorable.  Yargelis Savigne, Aliecer Urrutia and others have decreased their performance due to the lack of support and training.  The best Cuban trainer, Santiago Antunez, had to retire.  The Commissioner Jorge Luis Sanchez is a straw-man.  It is the despotic Alberto Juantorena is who pulls the strings of track and field in Cuba.  If they aren’t charged with corruption or fired, in a few years we won’t have any great athletes.  The material and talent are there, but there is lack of direction in accord with the new times that shine.”

Three years ago, the pole vaulter Lazaro Borges, in second place at Daegu 2011, and Yarisley Silva who won bronze in Moscow 2013, didn’t even have a pole vault to train or compete.  If they hadn’t had high-caliber results, today they would be completely unknown athletes.  The mentality of the Cuban government has always been “put the cart before the horse.”

If athletes don’t show results, there is no guarantee of physical or monetary resources.  This sewer of bandits that the island track and field federation has become is the genesis of the poor showing at the world competition in Moscow.

Is the second worse result since 1987.  Now we are in 23rd place with two bronze medals and one silver.  This is not a matter of medals.  I repeat, the majority of the athletes didn’t achieve their best marks of the year or their personal bests in the tournaments.

The complacency of the official press and the mendacity of the leaders will attempt to cover the sun with one finger.  But something must be done if we want to come back to first places; and that something can’t be done the way that the unpopular Alberto Juantorena is doing with jewels of the track like Dayron Robles.

The sports authorities of the island need to “really” look at their calendars.  We are living in the 21st century.  If they don’t change strategies, with their absurd rules and silly speeches they will bury what little is left of Cuban sport.

Changing topics; Jamaica stole the speed show.  They took six gold medals.  What happened to Usain was to be expected.  He is unrivaled; he comes from a different galaxy.  Seriously, they should take into consideration to retire him with honors and keep the videos of his performances for future generations of runners.

It can’t be fun to compete against yourself; that’s why I saw, a very serious Bolt.  If new rivals don’t emerge the guy will get bored.  He won, but he lacked the Caribbean and reggae spark.  With the gold of the 4×100 relay, Bolt will surpass athletes like “Pato” Johnson and Carl Lewis in their number of medals.  Until proved differently, he is the greatest runner in history.

From his same country Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce is not too far behind.  She started better than anyone else and surpassed the three American runners.  In speed, Jamaicans have a dynasty; ones leave and new ones show up.  In the short runs Jamaica runs against Jamaica.

Another one that imprinted his name in Gothic letters was Mo Farah.  Running is his natural state.  He did double in 5 and 10 thousand meters.  He has a final sprint that any 400 meter runner would envy.  He’s not only a pride to the world but for Cuba too.  His trainer, Alberto Salazar is Cuban.

Watching experts like Salazar or Ivan Pedroso, who train the world champion in the triple jump, the French Teddy Tamgho — who marked 18.04 on the August 18th Moscow afternoon, the best in the last 15 years — we can see what can be done when you have the drive and resources to display the athletes’ qualities.

Russia showed its condition of host and took the first place among countries.  Isinbayeva showed her grandiosity despite certain statements made to the press.

The Cuban delegation showed a display of new blood like Pedro Pablo Pichardo, Omas Cisneros and Yarisley Silva.  One must be careful with some of the ages of the cadets and youths that competed in Moscow.  This wasn’t their world championship but it served its purpose.

The sickness at the heart of track and field in Cuba is the same as the regime, it is systemic.  Is not due to lack of talent; but rather due to the rules of the game.

Photo: With his silver medal, Pedro Pablo Pichardo (born Santiago de Cuba, 1993) gave Latin America its sixth medal in Moscow 2013. Pichardo was beaten by Frenchman Teddy Tamgho, who since 2011 has been coached by the Cuban Ivan Pedroso, quadruple world long jump champion and Olympic gold in Sydney 2000.

 Ivan Garcia

19 August 2013

A Leak of Advanced Age / Rebeca Monzo

Twenty-eight years ago, when Patricia was pregnant, she was treated at González Coro Hospital, the former Holy Cross Clinic, on 21st Street between 4th and 5th in Vedado. In those days it was the desire of every mother-to-be to be treated there since it was the place with the most prominent specialists. Among the last such facilities to have been built in the 1950s, it also had not yet deteriorated as much as its counterparts.

At the time my friend noticed that in the Obstetrics and Gynecology waiting room there was a leak coming from the dropped ceiling under which a towel and bucket had been placed to catch the splashing water. Back then, this could be “overlooked” since it was logical to assume it was only a temporary situation. At least that is what she thought.

Twenty-eight years have passed and my friend recently returned to the same waiting room, this time with her daughter, who is now expecting. Imagine her horror when she saw that the same old leak, which had been her constant companion during the nine months of her pregnancy, was not only still there but had grown to be much bigger. It is now almost a waterfall, like the one at Soroa*, and a large part of the dropped ceiling has been destroyed. The bucket currently used to catch the water is much bigger and the towel is no longer large enough to contain the splashes forming a giant puddle around which the medical personnel and patients must navigate, subject to the obvious risk of slipping and falling.

It seems to me that, with all the money invested over the last twenty-eight years in buckets and towels, they could have — if they so desired — fixed the  problem in the dropped ceiling, as they should have, and thus avoided the risk of an accident, which in the case of a pregnant woman could be fatal. Who are the officials responsible for correcting this situation? It is perhaps the hospital director? Might it be members of the National Assembly. What is quite clear to me is that it is certainly not the doctors or patients who are responsible for fixing this problem. I am also convinced that, if no one complains, this unfortunate situation will continue until one day the waiting room is closed, then the clinic, then the whole floor and finally the hospital, as we have seen happen with other such facilities.

 *Translator’s note: A site in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province.

1 October 2013

The General Gains Time / Juan Juan Almeida

To the President of the Councils of State and Ministers of the Republic of Cuba, the words freedom, prosperity, love and family are plain and simple “persuasion” that, when it comes time for manipulation and pressure, have more of an effect than fear. He didn’t lie last Friday when, in feverish runaway of egotism and pride, he publicly revealed during one of the plenary sessions about the recent closure of the Eighth Congress of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), “We must change the methods of struggle, but not the combat.”

Developing objective. The law has allowed it; and his immorality facilitates it.

With the rise of self-employment, the General has managed to entertain the illusion that some sectors traditionally repressive and, in a parallel way, has managed to gain the appreciation of some who, with money (ill-gotten or not) today see the chance to feel and present themselves as successful businessmen.

Changing the immigration law was a smart move, and internationally applauded. By itself, it alleviates state inefficiency, opens the social valve opens and results in good income. And along with the new form of repression, more surgical, that no longer seeks to imprison but rather to crush the internal opposition and civil society to the point of exhaustion, it has become an essential weapon, Because following a simple logic, the most notable figures in the opposition, on traveling and comparing, will relocate outside or keep on traveling until they disappear from the national scene.

Some unwittingly, and others very reluctantly, are transmuted into spokespersons  in a well-calculated government move that shows a false but convincing transformed vision of this “Raulista” Revolution which, in order to gain territory as part of the same combat using different methods; instead of sending soldiers, today it signs business and/or bilateral cooperation agreements with various countries in the world, where it then sends a very opportunistic invasion of Cuban doctors who, with admirable sacrifice and laughably remuneration, take on the noble labor of returning smiles to those who lost the teeth.

In short, like I was taught one day by my late grandmother Rosario, who could not write but was very successful with pithy sayings, “Beware of those who always boast of wearing a cross on their chest, because they carry the devil in what they do.”

Personally I think that, lacking an element of surprise, the only thing capable of robbing the slant-eyed pro-Russian President of Cuba of his dream, is the regional situation. To wit, Venezuela, for fuel; and the convenient peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government in Havana, in temporary recess, which should continue as of October 3rd.

The General, like any military strategist, knows that the more prolonged these dialogs are, the smaller the maneuvering room for the Colombian government to negotiate. And, if the FARC guerrilla group is converted into a political force capable of participating in presidential elections, by diving “magic” it could win and change the balance of forces on a regional map extending the influence of Cuba in the area.

Then, what they once did with weapons, they could solve with agreeable words, firm handshakes, and seductive female company. Trained and ready to dance and kiss. Actually, they are very effective methods, but nothing new.

1 October 2013

Ignorance Hurts / Cuban Law Association, Osvaldo Rodriguez Diaz

Osvaldo Rodríguez Díaz

Guided by low-flying vultures, three young men, who moments before had been cutting wood on the mountain in order to build a fence, found the remains of a cow, which 24 hours earlier had been stolen and killed by unknown rustlers.

Though they could smell the odor of meat exposed for a long time in our hot climate, the newcomers felt that it could be useful for their dogs, or perhaps with some treatment, for their own consumption. With their tools they then proceeded to cut the bones along with the remaining meat and hide.

The task was interrupted by the police, who arrived with the animal’s owner, who already knew where the animal had been slaughtered, having found it before youngsters had, also guided by the birds of prey.

At noon it was decided to incinerate the remains of the animal and what the three boys had cut up, necessitated by the state of decomposition.

Not knowing who the perpetrators were and powerless to discover their identity, the police took the three young men as defendants to the police station. Because one of them was a soldier, it was decided that the case would be transferred to military jurisdiction, unfortunately for the three.

Over three months passed before it was presented to the regional Military Court based in La Cabaña. Do not be shocked:

– Acquisition of beef slaughtered illegally, under Article 240.1.3 of the Criminal Code, and

– Illegal Possession of Weapons, under Article 214 of the Criminal Code, both accomplished.

The latter charge, perhaps to justify the prison sentence, which exceeded the minimum limit for the first offense, which was charged from the outset.

The penalty imposed was six months imprisonment for both offenses, or three months for each one.

The incorrectness of these sentences is beyond absurd. To claim that a rotting carcass, which had to be incinerated, has the same character as meat fit for human consumption, as required by law, is extremely unjust.

Further, to treat the woodcutting tools used to cut bones as illegal weapons is breathtaking to any jurist. There is no known way to relate and illegally connect the two offenses, one a crime against public order, the other a crime against the economy.

How do these inexplicable things happen?

Someone should review these cases of clear judicial blundering.

The saddest thing about this story is that the people in court reacted with happiness, considering the sentence appropriate because, as the prosecutor explained, they had already served three months of the six, and had almost become eligible for probation.

Will they give it to them?

30 September 2013

A Month of Work to Buy a Pair of Jeans / Leonel Alberto P. Belette

1-de-octubre-jeans-300x167Havana, Cuba. September 27, 2013 . José Antonio does not have family to send him dollars, so he had to work more than a month in a private restaurant to be able to buy a pair of jeans.

Taking his wages and tips, he had a little over $40 and went to store offering Fariani, the military-owned state chain Caracol SA, located in the Comodoro Hotel in Havana, to choose some jeans.

He didn’t buy the jeans that he wanted, but the ones that he found there. But he no more than hit the streets in his “new” jeans than the seams split. They were rotten.

José Antonio’s odyssey is common in Cuba. This reporter has suffered the same. He could not recover the money invested, as it is not customary among men to save the receipt. And besides, he was afraid of inviting ridicule by appearing at the store with such plunder.

Caracol, at 1st and 20th in the Miramar neighborhood, stocks its chain of stores with goods from the Panamanian supplier Ariela SA, directed by Miguel Alonso. Fariani is one brand offered.

Basically they offer out-dated clothes, aged and deteriorated, bargain lots acquired by the Cuban military, who for their bad taste are nicknamed “Bananas spots” by their subordinates.

Brands like United Colors of Benetton, Rifle, Paul and Shark, are sold to Cubans at the prices of European boutiques. But be careful ! They are out-dated clothes, having been in the stores for years. Garments that have remained unsold in the international market.

Shirts with enormous lettering, huge pants about to split at any seam. The Adidas brand is, perhaps, an exception because it requires that its foreign buyers to be the same sellers who show their faces to the public.

Cuba is a captive market. Cubans have no other option than to buy in the shops of the generals.

The customs authorities imposed a penalty of $10 for each additional pound of imported clothing. Now the Ministry of Labour just passed a resolution that, from the first day of next month, they will no longer allowed self-employed people who operate little businesses under tailors or dressmakers licenses to sell current and cheap clothing acquired by people traveling outside, who leave without luggage and return loaded like mules.

Shortages in the State markets are nothing new like the authorities want us to believe. Since the coming to power of the current regime in 1959, it’s not even possible to keep using one brand of toilet paper so people usually use the official organ of the Communist Party, the newspaper Granma, as a common replacement.

The absurd Cuban system is loaded with prohibitions — despite certain changes — where some professionals such as veterinarians are forced to open business facades as dog groomers, because they are not allowed a license to practice privately.

By Leonel Alberto P. Belette

From Cubanet

30 September 2013

The Eternal Wait for the Glass of Milk / Osmar Laffita Red

text
You finally brought me my glass of milk. // Hmm… no. It’s sugar water. But it was made by a self-employed person.  Try it, bobita… By Garrincha

HAVANA, Cuba , October, www.cubanet.org – More than six years ago, President Raul Castro announced that he would guarantee a glass of fresh milk to the majority of children as a result of the plan to distribute this food through a group of bodegas (ration stores), experimentally. He said that as production increased, it would be extended to the whole country.

As of today, it is unknown how many bodegas and municipalities are distributing daily milk to children. Something that did not work as expected.

At the end of 2012, nationwide milk production was 516,246,500 liters. Of that amount, livestock enterprises produced 62,660,200 liters, but it is unknown what really was the destination of this production, because in none of the bodegas in the major cities in Cuba, nor in the chain stores selling in hard currency, is fresh milk or butter produced in Cuba offered.

Of the remaining 453,586,300 liters, most of it was provided by farmers who delivered 341,834,400 liters. Agricultural Production Cooperatives (CPA) and Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs) produced 111,751,900 liters.

Given their dispersal throughout the country, both private producers and cooperatives were assigned the task of ensuring that fresh milk reaches the majority of the ration stores in the municipalities that are contemplating the sale of milk.

This would be very important substitution for imports, as the price of a ton of milk powder exceeds 4,000 dollars, but it’s unknown if, in the last legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power, the issue was analyzed by the deputies and government.

It seems that substituting for milk powder, which costs so much, for domestic production, is not among economic priorities of the current Cuban government.

With regards to milk production, the official press does not provide any information. When it does, it is very general. Evidently they are not authorized to go into detail on the matter.

Nine months into the present year we do not know how many millions of liters of milk are produced, how much has been destined for industry, what number of bodegas directly distribute it in how many municipalities, total households that receive it and what this represented in foreign exchange savings through import substitution.

The latest data available are for the period January to March, when there were 84,778,800 liters of milk. Of these, livestock enterprises reported a production of 11,297,800 liters, the remaining 73,481,700 liters were collected by cooperatives and private producers. The latter produced the most, with a delivery of 55,233,200 liters.

An example of how rapid the decline in milk production in livestock enterprises has been, we have in the province of Camagüey the largest producer of milk nationwide. In 2012, its dairies reported a production of 96,299,600 liters. Of that total, livestock enterprises only produced 43,896,600 liters. Between January and March of this year, it was reported that 14,507,500 liters were produced in Camagüey. Livestock enterprises only produced 761,800 liters.

Historically, drought served as justification to hide the poor results, but since June it has rained continuously throughout the island. Those who tore out the marabou weed, prepared the land and planted king grass so there would be no shortage of food for cows, and also provided the dairies with water and lighting for twice a day milking so that they could meet their respective production plans with no complications.

From January to August, most livestock enterprises, despite the good performance of the rain, recorded very low milk yields. Serious organizational problems, the lack of control, lack of demand, lack of foresight, have adversely affected production and brought these poor results.

By Osmar Laffita Red / ramsetgandhi@yahoo.com

From Cubanet

2 October 2013

Prison Diary LVI: Decency and Decorum According to the Dictator – Part 2 / Angel Santiesteban

Discourse of the Dictator II

“President” Raul Castro, cynically, busied himself patching the leak, as we Cubans say, when in his speech he said, “I imagine the news in the coming days, in the great international press that specializes in denigrating Cuba and subjecting us to a frenzied scrutiny,” that is: their having a different opinion, as they have for the more than half century of the dictatorship, is an attack on the country, a subversive plan.

With complete shamelessness, he said, “We have become accustomed to living under siege and don’t restrict ourselves to debating the reality with total harshness,” which might seem like a joke had it not cost the Cuban people so dearly.

Later on, although it seems impossible, in increased the government’s audacity.

He spoke of the pain of twenty years, of the “increasing deterioration of moral and civic values, such as honesty, decency, shame, decorum, honor and sensitivity to the problems of others,” as if the great school of these losses wasn’t his mis-governing, for more than fifty years, a country that he has administered as if it were a private ranch, an extension of the Biran of his parents.

A subject people, that has been brought to a high level of poverty and human misery, where crime began to be a method of survival and stealing food from workplaces, in order to survive, began to be seen by society as acceptable, permitted, and as the years passed the act of stealing came to be called “struggle” and those who did it “fighters,” as he recognized in his discourse: “So, one part of society has come to see stealing from the State as normal,” as if it weren’t legitimate and they hadn’t stolen the lives of several generations.

That was the beginning of the amorality, they turned the country into that: a gold digger people, going to the West, risking everything to try their luck. Except that for the Cuban, any latitude looked promising, a better song than reality, like an unreachable promise offered by its leader Fidel Castro.

In this way, Raul Castro summarized the negative which had been known for years: it is an unstoppable epidemic. This, the massive number of Cuban prisons, overcrowded with young people waiting for the chance to get out and commit crimes, because they know no other way of life; there is no hope ahead for them or decent way to survive, other than to emigrate.

At the end of his speech he detailed, photographically, the Cuban society they turned it into, the “new pines that dreamed“; but never acknowledged their guilt, never admitted that we need another model, that fifty-four years are more than enough to understand that they are not offering a dignified path, and that it’s time to allow Cuba to start its ascent to economic development and human betterment.

In his speech Raul Castro asserted that screaming out loud in the street is bad behavior, forgetting that earlier it was they who screamed and called it “Revolutionaries defending the Revolution.” When they screamed “Worms! Let them go!” and handed out beatings and humiliations, their conduct then wasn’t improper. From the time we were children they trained us to scream slogans in the street in support of some national event, or to repudiate, in the world they programmed, those they classify as undesirable.

Illegal constructions, like the black market, have been the relief of the Cuban family, because their non-working government has not given them solutions to their needs.

How can they demand that people work full days when they don’t pay them for their real work? Their sacrifices, like during colonization, are paid for with trinkets.

One of Raul Castro’s great lies in his presentation was to assert that if society is warped and overrun with disorder and marginality, it has been, “Abusing the nobility of the Revolution which hasn’t resorted to the use of force, favoring conviction and political work.”

Don’t panic dear readers, it’s not a joke, although it could be in the genre known as “noir.” Later he urged State agencies, “the Police, the Comptroller General of the Republic, the Prosecutor, and the Courts,” to push even harder. That is, we should expect the prison population to grow even more than its already excessive numbers, the prisons will triple. It will be one great prison within the other floating prison.

Then, the ruler “meditated” on the negative demonstrations, thought about everything that had deceived the world, the specialized agencies, like the United Nations, and he had “the bitter feeling that we are an increasingly educated society, but not, perhaps, a more cultured one.”

Unfortunately this is Cubans’ reality, but even worse is that in his speech he didn’t recognize his inability to govern, nor even touch on the possibility of accepting some blame.

One comes to the conclusion that he presides over a putrid society that should force him to resign, to give way to a new formula that reawakens and steers the twisted path followed in this half century.

To retrace all our steps will cost us just as much as the distance we have strayed from the dignity and honesty of José Martí that we have lost.

But we must come to the conclusion that our country was corrupted, crime and marginality became widespread, by the work and grace of the Caribbean winds.

The Castros… they never had anything to do with this reality.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, Prison 1580

Editor’s note: This post is the second part of what Angel sent me when he was still in Prison 1580, in San Miguel del Padron. It refers to Raul Castro’s speech at the First Ordinary Session of the VIII Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power at the Convention Center on 7 July 2013. The first part was published August 5th.

30 September 2013

Self-Employed “Dandies” / Yoani Sanchez

10037230194_d505ae987c_zImage from Yoani’s Twitter: A listing of approved “professions” for the self-employed:

176: Caricaturist: Show off your drawing talent through caricatures of tourists.

177. Artificial Flower Seller: Sell artificial flowers with small souvenirs, carrying a basket and maintaining an appropriate appearance.

178. Street Painter: Through your art reflect the colonial architecture of the Historic Center.

179. Dandy: Dress in a suit of the era, with cane and hat. In the development of your work you can execute dance steps…

Epidemic / Regina Coyula

A great concern for public health is the epidemic of urinary incontinence that has been plaguing us for a while. It cannot be attributed to the endemic lack of public toilets, given that the public toilets disappeared long before the first cases appeared; on the contrary, now with private businesses there are many bathrooms, which are required to be clean, have running water, soap and toilet paper, a requirement that was never present in the bathrooms of the State restaurants. So, this troubling epidemic worries me, but cannot be linked in any way to the lack of sanitary facilities.

At first they were nocturnal cases, anonymous overnight emergencies, only recognizable by ammonia odor in the atmosphere, but the advance of the epidemic has changed the knowledge of the ill. In its etiology it is described a loss of modesty, so that those infected can be detected with the naked eye in public and in broad daylight discharging their urination. Also, it more frequently attacks males under forty years.

Given this proliferation, it’s no longer just the area around the Capitol or the doorways of the Hotel Cohiba’s mall that are affected, now may be an innocent hibiscus in a planting strip, the entrance of a private garage, the side of a bakery.

My mother often repeats a phrase and I surprised myself several times repeating it also: “In my day …” And in my day, readers, people did not so blithely piss in the middle of the street.

30 September 2013

Cuban Adolescents Facing an Employment Contract / Dora Leonor Mesa

By Lic. Dora Mesa Crespo Coordinator of the Cuban Association for the Development of Early Childhood Education, and Lic. Odalina Guerrero Lara, Attorney for the Cuban Law Association.

Labor Law is a system of principles governing employment relations.  Thus, we understand that the essence of Labor Law is precisely the employment relationship.

Analysis of the draft Labor Code Law [1]

Chapter III. EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT. Section One Formalities and the Capacity To Make Employment Contracts

Article 20 (Chapter III) provides:

ARTICLE 20: The employment relationship between employer and employee is formalized with an employment contract…

In the Draft of the Labor Law Code, hereinafter Draft, when it defines Contract, it omits that Article 20 refers only to an individual contract.

The Individual Employment Contract is entered into individually between the employee and the employer, which can be a person, although reality shows us that in one employment relationship there can be many physical or legal parties, simultaneously or successively, corresponding to the employer.

The Draft of the Labor Code, Chapter III, Article 20 explains it in the following manner:

Acticle 20.  The employment relationship between the employee and the employer is formalized via an Employment Contract, in which the employee, on one side, is committed to perform the work, follow disciplinary rules and the employer on his side, is required to pay wages to the employee and will guarantee safe working conditions, labor rights and social security which are established by legislation.  The contract will be considered null if there are any violations to this Law.

The employment relationship

Per professor Cavazos, the employment relationship starts at the same moment in which the employee begins work; however, the employment contract is achieved with the simple fact of agreement.  Therefore, there could be instances of the existence of an employment contract without an employment relationship; it occurs when a contract is entered into and it is agreed that the service will be performed at a later time.

The existence of an employment relationship presumes the existence of a contract, between the party performing the work and the one that receives it; it presumes the employment relationship, and the lack of agreement is always imputable to the employer.

Chapter I GENERAL DISPOSITIONS, First Section, Principles and Fundamentals to Employment Law.  Perhaps to make it easier for the employees, the legal article defines the ones subjects to the “employment relationship”, (Article 9), identifies the employer and worker, but omits the description of the “employment relationship” which does exist when defining the contract, but with an inexplicable omission as to what an “Individual Work Contract” relates to.

In the section that relates to Contracts (articles 26 through 28) it really refers to the length of time of the individual relationships of employment as established in Chapter III, Draft of the Labor Code Law.

Chapter III Employment Contract – Second Section – Types of Employment Contracts

ARTICLE 26: Types of employment contracts used:

a) For an undetermined time, the work is to be undertaken in character permanent in nature and it doesn’t express the date of termination;

b) for a determined time, for the execution of a determined work or project, to complete potential or emergent work, for seasonal work or for the fulfillment of social work, for a trial period, to fill in for absent employees due to justified causes protected to continue for an undetermined time; they are arranged to be performed in a permanent manner and it doesn’t express a termination date.

Therefore, in a legal definition, it’s said that there is a contract when two or more parties, with contractual capacity agree under a common declaration of intent, meant to regulate their rights and obligations.

In modern law, the employment contract is not freed to the autonomy of the contractual parties, the law imposes limitations, fundamentally intended to protect the rights and obligations of the employee, or beneficiary, especially if they are under the age of 18.

There is a reciprocal relationship between both parties in an employment contract.  By adhering to the limitations, what is a right to one party it becomes an obligation to the other.  This is the legal relationship that is protected by the legal bodies.

[1]  http://www.trabajadores.cu/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Anteproyecto-Ley-Codigo-TRabajo-Cuba-2013.pdf

Translated by – LYD

16 September 2013

The Conspiracy of “The Divine Shepherdess” / Miriam Celaya

The Divine Shepherdess in the background, in El Morro Havana.
The Divine Shepherdess in the background, in El Morro Havana.

A title that cheesy might seem like something straight out of the most mediocre thriller, but it refers to real events: The Divine Shepherdess restaurant, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Gaviota corporation of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), tucked away in an area of the Historic Morro-Cabaña Park, has been closed to start a bidding process. Its workers have been made “available” on the “employment exchange,” in hopes of future “relocation.” They are the new victims of another conspiracy of the olive-green mafia.

None of them saw the blow coming. Frustrated and deeply worried about the loss of their income and anxious about unemployment, the 23 workers have addressed letters of complaint to different agencies, including the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. To date, they haven’t received any responses.

However, many of them resist assimilating what happened, without understand that the conspiracy was planned in careful detail by the uniformed leaders. There are those who, naively, still believe there is hope of a solution. But theirs is a lost battle: from the beginning the die was cast and their fate sealed. The economic interests of the military leadership would not stop for trifles such as respecting the work of a handful of perfectly dispensable individuals.

The Plot

Months ago it began to be rumored that The Divine Shepherdess would be among the restaurants that would form part of the pilot experiment of non-agricultural cooperatives that the Government proposed to develop, immersed in its controversial “reforms.” In the beginning, the workers were concerned about the possibility that this would give rise to a layoff plan to increase profitability and efficiency, characteristics of a cooperative; but soon their enthusiasm over the idea of working autonomously and increasing their personal incomes, without incurring the risk of the illegalities that abound in all state institutions, in particular in those operating in convertible currency, as this one did.

Given a major venture “from above,” they were assured there would be no layoffs. This dispelled their initial reserves and raised the expectations of those who thought it would be a new and advantageous start of a restaurant in a privileged position, right at the entrance to Havana Bay, within La Cabaña fort, on the other side of the city: a panoramic view of the capital and a place frequented by numerous foreign tourists.

The first surprise surfaced when, on a Roundtable TV show dedicated to the topic, a journalist declared that “the workers of The Divine Shepherdess” didn’t want to form a cooperative. Astonished at such a slander, they wrote the program demanding that the Institute of Radio and Television elevate their written complaint to the most diverse authorities. The official media have not rectified the mistake and, with the passing of days, they took the incident as a small involuntary slip up, perhaps due to misinformation or confusion on the part of those responsible for the program.

Shortly after, the president of Gaviota corporation appeared before the workers at the restaurant in person, conciliatory and paternal and, among other things, explained to them that the cooperative would be positive, favorable to everyone, and was an essential part of the economic transformations that were imperative for the country. It was a plan prioritized by the Government, ineluctable. So, they had to elect four workers who would represent all of them, to attend a seminar about what a cooperative enterprise would be and the characteristics of the transformation process to the new way of operating the restaurant.

The elected representatives, in effect, went to the seminar and gave their utmost to educate themselves about the issue, while the expectations of their comrades rose given the imminent change.

The Blow

The first blow to their illusions came when, at another meeting, they talked to the employees aspiring to be cooperative members about taxes and concrete figures. They were simply astronomical. According to the parameters imposed, they would have to pay, in addition to all the taxes imposed by disimilar concepts, 40 CUC for each square yard of occupied space, including the parking areas, which, for obvious reasons, don’t generate the same income as the lounge-restaurant itself.

And this was the least of the figures they heard: to start the cooperative they would need an advance of 116,000 CUC, a definitely shocking sum. A sense of unreality started to set in, expanding like a solid body in the middle of the meeting and sparking a general outcry. This must be an error, they couldn’t be serious. Surely someone made a mistake. Where could they get such a huge sum of money? But no, the number had already been assigned by the specialists and Gaviota’s board. Ah, comrades, we must ask for a bank loan and accept the repayment terms and interest rate!

They decided that a representation of the workers would go to the bank to apply for the loan and make the arrangements. Nobody wanted to be discouraged.

MINFAR: A Tax Haven in Itself?

The friendly bank employee didn’t understand what these people were asking for. What credit were they talking about? Based on what funds did they believe they could qualify for a loan, and especially such a large one? In fact, she explained to them, The Divine Shepherdess had never invested a single cent in the coffers of the bank. What’s more, Gaviota itself hadn’t realized any income in all the years of its existence, from any concept, as if it were a ghost entity. But then, what could the workers do? The kind bank employee didn’t know; she only knew what they couldn’t do: obtain credit.

But, beyond the drama of a work collective, this leads to considerations of another kind in a country where, at least by right, there is a tough battle being fought against corruption and illegalities, for which the General-President has created an implacable Controller who conducts the most rigorous searches and who operates through an inflexible body of inspectors in coordination with the People’s Revolutionary Police (PNR). Those with carts, hustlers, small traders and every kind of operator of a timbiriche — a very small business — could attest to the frequent operations and physical inspections that regularly subjects them to a ton of fines, in addition to the other scoldings at the slightest violation (or suspicion of it).

But, assuming it’s true that there are no visible traces of the financial transactions of the “state” corporation Gaviota in the bank (also a state entity), if we ignore that their income, investments and accounts are absolutely unknown, how can they be subjected to the controller’s checks? By virtue of what supra-constitutional rights would a military corporation be exempt from fiscal scrutiny? Do they consider their finances to be “sensitive information” and so secret, simply because they are an economic entity of MINFAR, though eminently capitalist?

And is it that this is a corporation which includes both restaurants and hotels in the country’s different tourist sites, transport bases, stores and other establishments, with significant income, and in which, in addition, thousands of civilian employees work, paying social security and earning salaries, vacations, and other benefits such as maternity and sick leave, etc. Are there no bank records of their costs and incomes from these concepts.

Undoubtedly, there are dozens of unanswered questions in this as in other macro-businesses of the olive-green elite. We know that the elite doesn’t market through timbiriches. At least no one has seen anyone with military epaulets dragging a cart with food, fruits and vegetables through our streets, nor selling jewelry or other merchandise in little stalls; humility is good only in speeches. Everything suggests that in Cuba there are three currencies circulating, two of them visible, the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC) and the Cuban Peso (CUP), and an invisible and untraceable one, the capital of the military monopolies.

So it’s no surprise that, given the obvious financial incapacity of The Divine Shepherdess workers, and given their complaints and demands, the director of Gaviota stood before them again, this time frowning, authoritarian and invested with all the powers, and he unceremoniously snapped that the assigned figures for the taxes on the space, as well as the initial capital, “were not negotiable.” Curtain.

Epilogue

The beleaguered workers were told that on Friday, September 20, 2013 the restaurant would be closed and a bidding process would proceed. Because it turns out that there already is (and in reality, always has been) an investor with disposable capital to take over the “cooperative.
” As readers may have guessed, it is a prominent member of the anointed caste who surely did not need a bank loan or an income statement to amass the money needed.

As for the workers, well — and thank you for asking — each one is at home trying to swallow the bitter pill. You might be wondering what use it was to them to pay their union dues promptly for years, to attend “Revolutionary” marches called by the same power that has now evicted them, and that — trying “not to distinguish themselves” — meekly and without question obeyed every direction from the heights. For now, they are just waiting for someone to explain to them what the president of Gaviota meant when he told them that “no one would be left defenseless.”

From Diario de Cuba

30 September 2013

Teenagers’ Access to Cuban Universities

Source – Access to Cuban Universities of Qualified Workers and Trade School Graduates, Mesa Crespo, D.L.

Although Cuba’s reputation as an advanced third world country with regards to education, annually thousand of students and workers under the age of 18 don’t have access to college level education due to social and governmental obstacles.

The Youth Code, a law implemented in 1978 and approved by the National Assembly of Popular Power, the supreme organization of the State power, explains in one of its articles that newly graduated students from basic education (up to 9th grade) can continue their education depending on their academic performance and political and social attitude.

In reality, new directives and resolutions added to the code present obstacles to the academic development of a portion of the students, who due to their age are considered adolescents.

Since the 90’s, social investigative centers run by the government have conducted studies, where diverse realities among the Cuban youth were identified: disintegration and poor social mobility in the most vulnerable population sectors and the incipient lack of motivation to continue college education.

This post belongs to a series that attempts to analyze the access to higher education of the students attending polytechnics; especially those classified as “qualified workers” who are a part of the Technical and Professional Education (ETP).  After this analysis we can concentrate on the deep fundamental aspects related to the socioeconomic and educational environment at this level of education.

The term “polytechnic student” applies to qualified workers, which refers both to the studies for qualified workers — in some specialties that relates learning a trade or skill — and to the category known as mid-level, known generically in Cuba as mid-technicians.  The differentiations between the two level of students will be made when the need arises in the coming articles in order to better understand the topic.

Translated by – LYD

2 September 2013

dreaming in gUSAno* / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The dreams begin, comrades.

Noises in hotel rooms.  I begin to hear noises in the hotel rooms where I stay from coast to coast in the United States.

In Cuba, I was never a victim of the homeland paranoia; I only had the certainty of being spied on with criminal cruelty. Millimetric, butcher. I am sorry for Castroism: it failed to sow in me the syndrome of suspicion.

But, in Philadelphia, for example, or in Washington DC, in LA, in Miami, in La Crosse, in Madison, in Chicago, in Boston and who knows in what other city of the union, it is very different.  There are hotels, those labyrinths that in Cuba are a rarity in terms of civility.  And in the hotels things are heard late at nights.  Sounds, whispers.  And a cosmic cold that penetrates the soul and only then do you understand that you do not exist here.

Halfway through the late hours of the night, frantic knocks on my room door wake me up.  Or not.  Perhaps they are at the room across, who knows.  The fact is that I wait and wait, but the assault does not repeat itself. Until the next day, during the wee hours of the night, at any time after the silent midnight.

They drag cleaning carts at random times. They scratch the parquet or the cardboard walls that make every building Made in USA.” They walk loudly.  They speak a language of unknown accent that in Havana I would have perceived as English.  There are little permanent lights that come in through the curtains or fall from the ceiling tiles in the form of a sea of alarms that never cease.  And then begin my dreams. My North American dreams.  North American dreams about Cuba, it is understood.

At this point in history, to dream of Cuba is purely a preservation instinct.  I dream that I am back there, of course. And I laugh, I laugh like a madman.

I laugh at the assassins paid by the powers-that-be who did not arrest me or search my things with the twisted pleasure of rapists at the airport customs. I see things as if they were very small, dilapidated, but with an insane shine, like a drug addict.  I see the houses of my city, the ones that I can recognize with my eyes closed.  I see the small house of wooden planks, the only one in my life, the one in which I was born and died several times in Lawton; and I see my sacred objects, the ones I barely said goodbye to; and then someone tells me (usually someone I loved a lot, but not anymore): “When are you returning to the United States?”

“Never,” I reply, and suddenly I cannot breathe in the dream, and at that point I invariably wake up crying.  With pouting.  A baby’s cry, a cry of mental patient.

To return.

Cuba.

Never.

The United States.

The agony of the fighting fish.  Their branchiae wide open, like swords. The oxygen of an atmosphere  that will never be my atmosphere. Not having ground under my dreams.  To be without existing.  Orlando, Orlando…why have you forsaken us…?

I open my eyes. It is not dawning yet. I want to forget. My temples hurt. There are weird noises in the rooms around me. I am alone.  Desolate.

If one day I go out on a walk, if it snows, and I get lost erasing my footsteps, who and when is going to ask about me?  Who takes care of me?  Who misses me?  Who will feel sorry for my loved ones if one bad day my country’s military death reaches me by edict so that I do not live my life after Fidel?

I turn to the other side of the bed. I sleep naked. I curl up under the blankets and sheets which the American hotels provide me from coast to coast in the nation.  The beds are cold here. More than exciting, they are pure erection. I cannot resist myself.

Nor am I sleepy now, but I surrender very quickly.  I yawn, I must be exhausted. I nod. I myself make the noises and whispers that are going to reach, incognito, the other room.  Strange. I do not stop myself. It is warm and tender like the deep light of the northern skies.  Like the smile of teenagers who dispense insipid dishes at a cafeteria while they complete their PhD. I swallow air. I retain it. I am choking. I am not here.

I think about collecting all the Cuban dreams of exile.  They are not here.

I am asleep, we are asleep.  Soon it is about to be dawn.

*Translator’s note: The word “Dreaming” appears in English in the original. “Gusano” (worm) here refers to the insult hurled by the Cuban regime and its vassals at every person who has opposed the regime in any way, or who has left the country to escape it.

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

29 September 2013