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.
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.”
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.
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.
LA HAVANA, Cuba, September, www.cubanet.org – I must confess that after the episode of the North Korean freighter, Gan Chong Chon, it is increasingly difficult for me to imagine what might be behind each of the surprising happenings of the Raul regime. And if, in fact, Silvio Rodríguez is involved, everything becomes more convoluted.
The troubadour-in-chief, has just announced on his blog Segunda Cita, that he has invited Robertico Carcassés and the Interactive group to be his opening act at the concert that will take place on September 20 in Santiago de Las Vegas.
The invitation comes at a time when the hype over Robertico Carcassés’ slip is not yet over: at the Protestdrome concert on September 12th, in which “as a result of an alcoholic outburst” or otherwise, he could not contain himself, in his tongue-twisting improvisation he demanded, “Freedom for all Cubans.” Boy, was Robertico out of line!
Did Robertico really think that Cuba would change with the Raul regime? That cracklings are pork meat and that mothers-in-law are really family? Was the outburst that big? Or did he just do it with an eye to his upcoming little jaunt to Miami?
Indeed I must confess that with so much yellow ribbon to demand the release of the four*, and so much drunkenness with the pachanga timbera and reggaeton, we didn’t know what was being celebrated: whether it was the dismantling of the Red Wasp Network*, the Day of Oshun, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the coup that defeated Allende, or the bombing of Syria.
Rodriguez, who claims to have an appointment with the angels — flying angels and fallen angels — after the little-yellow-ribbon revelry went off-script, should know what he is weaving when he steps up to rescue Robertico Carcassés, just as we got a whiff of the smell of Bobby’s son burning.
And several questions occur to me:
Is Silvio’s intention for us to forget his ridiculous performance with the graying Amaury Perez and a musical accompaniment that could have been first class but was incoherent due to the haste of the recording by Abdala studios, of the little ditty about the yellow ribbons and the old oak tree?
Does the author of The Blue Unicorn want to put a patch on the burst seam Robertico provoked at the concert of “Cubans of all stripes” demanding the return of the four*?
Recently, Silvio invited Isaac Delgado to sing at his concert in Santos Suarez: Is Silvio now into indulging musicians who are in trouble with the regime? Could we expect him to invite Willy Chirino and join him in singing “Our Day is Coming”? Is he planning to record a CD with the Interactive group, a rather odd CD, opportunistic, to please generación asere** and indulge the dissidence?
It occurs to me to ask Silvio whether, with this lifeline to Robertico Carcassés — taking into account his tour of the prisons, and the water tank that he resolved for the residents of the Lugardita neighborhood — he’s not aspiring to run for president, without having started the campaign for direct elections that Robertico asked for in his improvisations.
With Silvio everything is possible, especially in these times of miracles and reshufflings. Didn’t he engage in an epistolary controversy with Carlos Alberto Montaner at the risk of losing his mind? Or did they already forget how he got involved in the mess with Obama, Elton John, Pied Piper of Hamelin and The Little Green Men?***
Ultimately, Silvio’s turnaround has been so wide, he’s even talking about taking the R out of the word Revolution***, for those “dead of his happiness,” the dead provided by all of us under circumstances just as bad or worse.
When I watch the father of “Nueva Trova” in his attempt to be on good terms with the angels and the demons of change, I feel sorry for him.
I cannot help but admire his songs, but in all honesty, not as much as I did then, say 30 years ago. I have convinced myself that even if I’m condemned to listen to the music of the ’60s with nostalgia, I would never be a good dancer at his party.
I can not longer stand him and his songs, they lack freshness, clear accounts: How can I figure out what Silvio is up to now?
Translator’s notes: *”The four” refers to the Cuban spies of the Red Wasp Network serving sentences in the United States; originally known is “The Cuban Five” and “The Five Heroes” in Cuba, one of the original five has been paroled and allowed to return to Cuba. ** “Generación asere” is a cultural reference to those — generally of the younger generation — who like the kind of music the regime calls vulgar, thuggish, cheesy and overly-sexed. “Asere” is a casual form of address that means roughly “bro.” ***In a response to Carlos Alberto Montaner, Silvio Rodriguez asked a number of rhetorical questions relating to the pied piper leaving with all of Cuba’s children, Elton John saying that Christ was gay, people of all colors including green, and so on. And in a new song, Silvio suggests “transcending” the “R” in “Revolution” in favor of “Evolution.”
The theme of a lack of spaces to voice opinions has been a constant in this last half century of our national life. It has always started as a request for an opening to the authorities themselves and, using the pretext of a powerful enemy ninety miles away, their refusal to grant it.
The practice of recent years has shown that if citizens want to express their opinions they have to open their own spaces (independent journalism, blogs, twitter, etc) and, whenever possible, also use those of the government as well as others that exist.
This happened recently at the so-called Anti-Imperialist Bandstand, with the musician Robertico Carcassés: he took advantage of a government space to express his opinions as a citizen. This is something absolutely valid and shows courage, something most of his critics lack, as they seem to go along with the absurd demand that “criticisms and opinions are to be expressed in the right place at the right time to the right people,” a real straitjacket to avoid anyone’s doing so.
If, in all these years, every citizen had acted with civility and expressed his opinions honestly, taking responsibility for them, many of our problems would never have reached their current magnitude.
It has been precisely the lack of this civic exercise that has allowed our leaders, despite the multiple errors they have committed, to perpetuate themselves in power and to hold onto their positions in society, refusing to cede them, despite the speeches and lukewarm measures put into practice in recent times.
As long as the voices of citizens are not massively reverberating in the ears of the authorities, demanding the necessary changes and reforms, these voices will fall on deaf ears, so that the authorities may continue to act in their own interests, turning their backs on the true interests of the nation.
HAVANA, Cuba, September 25, 2013, Leon Padron / www.cubanet.org.- In the new “Cuba Says” segment on the TV National News, they addressed the problem of transportation. But it was not a simple confrontation between between some critics among the people and the accustomed triumphalism of the officials.
The Transport Ministry officials insisted that the minibus cooperatives, at a price of five Cuban pesos, have improved transportation in the capital. But they didn’t even remotely address the torments of those who have to travel to the interior of the country.
The national bus and train terminals are always crowded with anxious travelers, prisoners of inefficiency, delay and corruption. The ticket resellers have tickets at four times the official price.
The waiting list
La Coubre is located near the avenue of the port, where travelers headed for the eastern provinces converge without reservations. The embarkation depends on the faults at the national bus terminal, for those who have to put their names on a long waiting list.
Interior of the station. Photo by author
It is here where stoicism is put to the test, because sometimes people have to wait for whole days, sitting on the floor, or standing, with the worst filth, great heat, and a persistent clamor that is only comparable to the torments of hell.
At La Coubre I met a man from Holguin who for two years has come to the capital every month for his son’s medical treatment, because of lack of equipment in the hospital in his town. When I asked him how he arranged these trips, he said he sometimes he spends more than eight hours waiting for passage to Holguin and has to sleep on the floor with his sick child.
Chinese Buses
Nearly nine years ago, the Cuban authorities acquired a batch of Yutong buses in Chine, which improved inter-provincial transportation service. Today the reality is different. Most of these buses are out of service. Armando, a driver who covers the Havana-Moa route, told Cubanet, “These buses turned out pretty good, working without maintenance and without spare parts,” adding, “When I heard them talk about transportation on TV, I thought they would mention that the drivers, when the cars breakdown, we have to pay, from our own pockets, for the maintenance and the parts if we want to continue.”
When the “update of the model” was announced a few years ago, it was seen by many as a possible though certainly very limited way to slowly stimulate the country’s stalled economy. The first disappointment came with an absurd list of medieval-era professions in which self-employed workers were allowed to engage. The most optimistic observers felt this was only the beginning and that more options would be added later. Since nothing was said about regulating the exercise of these professions, it was thought that more information would be forthcoming. Some even more optimistic observers dreamed that authorization would later be extended to small and medium-sized businesses.
After a few years and the addition of only a few more medieval-era professions, regulations and stipulations began to be established. By then even some less bright citizens began to realize that the “update” was nothing more than a shell game, a stalling tactic not unlike that of “blind man’s bluff.”
Let us remember that slavery was replaced with feudalism, which represented an advance in economic productivity. It later gave way to capitalism, which constituted an even greater advancement by introducing new means and methods of production. Karl Marx, whose work is considered the pillar of socialism and communism, argued that socialism would be superior to capitalism and would advance the engines of productivity even further, fulfilling the ever growing needs of humanity until true communism was ultimately achieved. Lenin later altered and co-opted this theory to make it conform to circumstances in Russia and provide it with a theoretical and allegedly scientific basis. What later came of all this theory and practice is all too well-known.
Nevertheless, it makes no sense for Cuban authorities, who call themselves socialists, to impose medieval methodologies and practices on self-employed workers. To expect artisan craftsmen to be able to supply the private marketplace in the 21st century without also allowing small and medium-sized business access to industrial production constitutes a mistake of major proportions, or at the very least a serious misunderstanding of how material goods are produced in today’s world.
Cuba and Cubans are familiar with capitalism with all its pluses and minuses, though more so with the former than the latter. We are familiar with socialism too, though in this case with more of its minuses than pluses. Trying to impose medieval methodologies and practices on the output of the self-employed (they dare not call them private sector workers) is a ridiculous political and economic policy. Those who think and act in this way are doing nothing more than demonstrating their by now well-known inability to resolve Cuba’s problems.
I live on a planet called Cuba. I belong to a species that almost became in extinct here in the 1980s. In later years I became, like many of my species, a “protected specimen.”
But in this nature reserve we do not all enjoy the same privileges. There are specimens with much more flexibility in their necks and knees who enjoy greater protection.
I, like many, am a mere number in this great park. But rather than that being a disadvantage, this gives us a certain level of protection, allowing for “small freedoms,” which we realize we must exercise with caution. However, there are others — the more “notorious” ones — who are not allowed them, though they enjoy other, greater advantages.
During the above-mentioned decade there was exhibition of the plastic arts* that lasted only twenty-fours hours and ended like “the party at Guatao.”** Because of a huge confrontation between the public and officials over the artworks on display, the exhibition was shut down, sparking the subsequent exodus of participating artists as well as the imposition of disciplinary measures on its organizers, which left a great void in this artistic field.
Since then, certain people with some power and comparatively open minds decided to “protect” plastic artists lest they disappear entirely. It was then that we became part of this great Jurassic Park, of which I am fortunate to be a member. We are “independent artists”… until someone takes it upon himself to declare otherwise.
*Translator’s note: Art forms which involve physical manipulation of artistic media such as clay by moulding or modeling. Examples include sculpture and ceramics.
**A Cuban expression meaning an otherwise successful event that ends badly or in violence.
Ads for food in the Revolution newspaper of 16 Nov. 1959. Photo by Jose Fornaris
HAVANA, Cuba , September, www.cubanet.org – It is not possible to find antecedents — apparently they don’t exist — or any other moments in history when Cuban agricultural production fell as deeply and as long as in recent decades.
As long ago as 1960, Fidel Castro assured that there was a plan to supply poultry meat to the internal markets as of January of the following year. And he added, “Starting in 1962 the food supply will be fully resolved.”
A little later he affirmed, “It is in agriculture where we have immediate possibilities. It is in agriculture where the fruits are going to be seen most quickly… The development of livestock goes hand in hand with the development of sugar. Meat is red gold.”
Castro’s last attempt (there were many) in the agricultural sector, was the so-called “Food Plan.” The only thing that materialized from it was the image of a farmer carrying a bunch of bananas which is on the back of the 20 peso note.
Fidel’s brother, General Raul Castro, is following in his footsteps in this matter. Since taking power, he has been looking for the magic wand to make the earth bear fruit, even moderately.
The latest effort in this direction was the National Meeting of the Agricultural Sector Producers, which ended on 14 September at the Lázaro Peña theater in Havana.
Raul Castro sent a message to the event; in one paragraphs it reads, “In recent years, various measures have been adopted, in accordance with the Guidelines approved by the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, to eliminate the obstacles that hinder development of this sector. However, there still remains much to be done to make the contribution of agriculture to the national economy greater, without which we can not move the country forward in a sustainable way.”
In the early years of the Fidelistas coming to power, the contribution of agriculture was still outstanding. And that could be appreciated in the markets. But in 1962, the regime was forced to establish rationing for essential goods.
From that moment, the shelves of retail stores began to be emptied and the lack of food began to worsen, until today, when food prices are infinitely greater than they were at that time.
Why, for centuries, was the land of this Island able to provide different types of provisions and, instead, for more than half a century now, it is insufficient? The answer is obvious.
The musician Gorki Aguila detained at the 6th Police Station in Havana at 2:00 in the morning this Sunday.
Site manager’s note: While we wait for more news about Gorki’s arrest, we post this video version of one of Porno Para Ricardo’s “signature” songs — with lyrics in Spanish and English below. The original music video is here.
The [coma-andante] walking coma, wants me to work
El coma andante, quiere que yo trabaje
Paying me a miserable salary
Pagándome un salario miserable
The walking coma wants me to applaud
El coma andante quiere que yo lo aplauda
After he talks his delirious shit
después de hablar su mierda delirante
No walking coma
No coma andante,
Don’t you eat this dick, walking coma
no coma uste´ esa pinga coma andante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
If you want me to work give me some money
Si quiere que trabaje pasme un varo por delante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
You are a tyrant and there’s no one who can stand you
Usted es un tirano y no hay pueblo que lo aguante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
Walking coma, you hold elections
El coma andante, hace unas elecciones
that you invented to stay in power
que las inventó el pa´ perpetuarse
Walking coma, you want me to go and vote
El coma andante quiere que vaya y vote
To keep fucking myself over
para el seguir jodiendome bastante
No walking coma
No coma andante,
Don’t you eat this dick, walking coma
no coma uste´ esa pinga coma andante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
If you want me to vote give me a boat so I can leave
Si quiere que yo vote ponga un barco pa´ pirarme
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
You and your brothers cantankerous old fools
Usted y sus hermanos puros viejos petulantes
Don’t eat so much dick, walking coma
No coma tanta pinga coma andante
HAVANA, Cuba, 27 September 2013, www.cubanet.org – The generalship of the regime is showing particular interested in incorporating women into the army. In several sites in Havana where people gather signs have been posted lately calling on young unemployed women to sign up for active military service. The proposal includes two supposedly tempting benefits: a starting salary of 450 Cuban pesos a month (the basic salary of professionals in Cuba), and the chance to take advantage of the so-called Order 18, of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, which allows them to opt for university majors of their choice, with study facilities, according to their new circumstances.
Suddenly, one might think that this project is another nod from the regime to international progressives, whose members might easily have noticed the rancid sexism that prevails in the uniformed forces on the Island, where, if they are not abundant, there is also a lack of women, though they fill ornamental roles.
It seems then, that among the “reforms” to update their particular socialism, the generals resolved to finally grant women their rightful place among the ranks. However, if that were the purpose, it’s thinly reflected in some of the details of the call. For example, the professional salaries (which aren’t) that these young women will be paid from the start, don’t seem targeted to stimulate their attraction to the military life, because during their first two years they will work as civilians in the mosquito vector campaign, work already performed by hundreds of thousands of women and men (for a much lower salary) without the academic requisites they are demanding from potential candidates.
So these girls are not going to serve directly as the olive-green uniformed, nor are they going to study in the military academies to become technicians and officers in the army. Apparently, their recruitment will not entail any direct benefit to the FAR. They are being called to take on a civilian task, for which they will receive a “privileged” salary, along with other facilities, on behalf of an employer who does not need them.
Ad to recruit women for FAR posted in a market in El Cerro in Havana – Photo by Jose Hugo Fernandez
This leaves some doubts in the air, in addition to two or three half-baked conjectures.
Is the call nothing more than a new strategy to confront the practice of prostitution, continually growing and more scandalous among young Cuban women? Do the generals really believe that with a salary equivalent to less than 20 CUC a month, and offers of university entrance, they are going to manage to recruit girls en masse for their later control under the military regime? If so, why summon only those with twelve years of schooling? And why does it have to military who take on an eminently civil responsibility? Is it that the civil institutions are not sufficiently reliable, or they can only attract these young women with the economic incentive needed to inflate the payrolls, only to encourage these young women?
Any effort is welcome to try to contain the marked tendency of young Cuban women today towards prostitution. But paying a professional salary to high school graduates to devote themselves to hunting mosquitoes for two years, doesn’t seem a very lucid approach, neither in terms of civic rescue, nor as a response to the demands of the gender advocates.
To make matters worse, the decision contains at least two staggering inconsistencies. On the one hand, those who work in the mosquito control campaign have had their wages lowered recently, to the point that these girls would earn 100 Cuban pesos more to do the same job, but with less experience. On the other hand, it represents a useless swelling of payrolls, at exactly that time when they’re talking about laying off the hundreds of thousands of State employees as the regime insists on the need to eliminate unproductive jobs.
The anxiety of the generals before the imperative to win the support of these girls is understandable. Especially if we give credence to the assumption that the heir to the throne, Mariela Castro, convinced them that any good work they undertake against prostitution, shall be promptly rewarded by the praise of liberal forums and the international press. But it wouldn’t cost them anything to chart their strategies better, so as not to so obviously shoot themselves in the foot.
On 13 March 1963, during a commemoration on the steps of the University of Havana, Fidel Castro said: “For there walks a specimen, another byproduct we must fight (…), many of these lazy ‘hipsters,’ children of the bourgeois, walk around in their too-tight pants, some of them with a guitar thinking they’re Elvis Presley. And they have taken the extreme liberty of going to public spaces and freely organizing their ‘feminine shows’ (…), they are all linked, the little lumpen, the lazy, the Elvis Presleys, the tight jeans.
Then Castro added, “Don’t let these ‘hipsters’ think the streets of Havana are the streets of Miami.”
Also on a March 13th, but in 1968, Castro himself launched the so-called General Revolutionary Offensive, an operation that gave the coup de grace to small- and medium-sized private businesses, and that also killed the nightlife in the capital and in the whole country.
In the final months of 1967, in Czechoslovakia, the process of social democratization began that was remembered as the “Prague Spring”; something that set off an alarm in almost all the countries tied to the Soviet axis.
On 21 August of that year Russian military power occupied Czechoslovakia and dismantled the government of that country with the consent of the then Kremlin strongman, L.I. Brezhnev. This same year, in May 1968, there was the student rebellion that turned France upside down.
Meanwhile, in Cuba, in the months before March 1968, the usual audience of the nightclubs walked up and down La Rampa trying to kill their boredom. They take a turn around the central tower of the Coppelia Ice Creamery, along with spells at the cafe known as El Carmelo at 23rd, near the intersection of this street and the Avenue of the Presidents.
Other places frequented were the terrace of the cafe at N and 21, next to the Hotel Capri, the gardens of the Hotel Nacional gardens, and, in the area where it was located at the time, the Czechoslovak House of Culture.
A segment of youth, those who were assigned the adjective “enfermitos” — little sick ones — walked La Rampa at risk. The “hipsters” of the time, with their tight pants of Chinese khaki, their sleeveless shirts with embroidered decorations and their modified workboots. Long hair was the privileged headache of some.
In those days the young poet from Holguin, Delfín Prats, read his poems, “Language of Mutes,” in public. The Beatles’ White Album was listened to in secret.
At the same time, Ana Lasalle and her enthusiastic court of rabid leftists ravaged Vedado. The frenzied Communist lady actress wielded her scissors against manes and miniskirts. These scissors had their longest night on 25 September 1968, exactly 45 years ago today.
Around 9:00 at night that Saturday, a police cordon with uniformed and plainclothes officers fell on the area. The indiscriminately took prisoner everyone from casual passersby to pimps who besieged the Hotel Capri, where sometimes Greek or French sailors from ships anchored in the harbor stayed. The detainees were classified into three groups: Homosexuals, Hippies, and the third classification: Improper conduct.
According to those who experienced the events, two members of the rock group Los Pacificos were arrested very close to the corner of N and 23rd. That group, like another named Los de León (later, Los Kents), were very popular at the time among young rock fans in the Vedado area.
The group Los Pacificos didn’t survive the consequences of that harsh and bitter night and broke up.
In his speech on Tuesday, 28 September, Fidel Castro referred to the events of the previous Saturday. He justified the raid as a part of the offensive being waged against “social evils.” He generally accused those arrested of being involved in vagrancy, pimping minors and other things of this type.
On Sunday 12 October, the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) published an extensive compendium about the raid that had occurred days earlier. The headline read, “Yankee Dream Destroyed, the boys of the fourth world.”
Other articles appeared in the style of: “How do bands of juveniles converted into vehicles of imperialist propaganda think and act?” There was also a photo essay, with images of some of the boys arrested under the title, “Is this what you want for your son?”
Specifically, an article by the journalist Alfredo Echarry noted: “Encouraged by the role models of imperialism and inspired by the workings of their youth gangs, they try to give a structure to disorganization. Immediately, groups and bands identified by different names begin to emerge, among them: The Zids, Los Chicos Now, Los Chicos Melenudos, Los Betts, Los Chicos de la Flor, Los Chicos del Crucifijo, Los del Palo, Los Sicodélicos, Los del Banano…” Within Echarry’s article, the term “ideological divisiveness” was the condemnatory stigma.
Today, 45 years later, the ghosts of that night of the long scissors seem to be revived in the schools. The “moralizing” offensive of Raulism evokes the demons of “the night of the three P’s” and that tragic 25 September 1968.
Although it seems incredible, the Revolutionary terror lurks still, ready to attack and “bring to heel” a society ever more disenchanted and rebellious.
