Translating Cuba

While in Sao Paulo and other cities in Brazil the outraged people flooded the streets to protest the increase in transportation prices, rampant corruption and the millions in public expenditures for the World Cup and the Olympic Games, in Cuba the men garbed in olive-green govern at their pleasure, supported by a hard autocratic staff and a Constitution that prohibits strikes and anti-government marches.

Because of a twenty cents increase in public transportation, the Brazilian people took the streets. The Castros’ ability to perform ideological somersaults is indisputable. And they are masters in selling a discourse of effort, honest and sacrifice, while living like millionaire capitalists.

The power of the autocracy cannot be quantified. Or can it? A magnate like Bill Gates could be a ruthless monopolist and evade taxes, but he does not control the strings of foreign policy making or with just a simple phone call send a dissident to jail.

The Cuban autocrats do have real power.  They control the State in an absolute manner thanks to a network of special services, informers, neighborhood organizations that with a simple order can start an act of repudiation or provoke the beating of any opponent.

Even in former communist countries like East Germany, Czechoslovakia or Hungary, there were workers striking and mass demonstrations, crushed by the treads of Russian tanks and bursts from Kalashnikovs. In 54 years of the Cuban regime there has never been a general strike in the island.

One of the few exceptions was the rebellion of August 5, 1994 in the largely poor and majority black neighborhoods of Cayo Hueso and San Leopoldo in Central Havana.  The detonator for the protest — known as “el Maleconazo” — was the desire of people to leave the country.  They weren’t asking for political changes, better wages nor demanding that the government hold free elections.

Due to the scientific repression, many Cubans are devious pretenders.  If the gate of an embassy opens, as with the Peruvian embassy in April 1980, those same people would leave their red Party card at the door.

Or they would play the game of mirrors learned over decades.  They take cover behind political speeches, revolutionary jingles, raise their hands in unanimous consent at a union meeting or respond to a call from the intelligence services and shout vulgarities at the Ladies in White.

The majority of the Cuban population is peaceful. Too much so.  Some prefer to take a rubber raft and risk their life crossing the dangerous Florida Straits rather than to become affiliated with a dissident group.  With harsh words they criticize the government in public buses or private taxis or maybe while drinking the cheapest rum with their friends or in living rooms in their homes; but that’s it.

If we compare ourselves with Brazil, Cuban could have seen several strikes and lots of massive protests of the outrages. The minimum salary in Brazil is $678 reales or $326 dollars.  In Cuba it is $20 dollars.

If you need to buy a home appliance, you have to have access to convertible currency or CUC, a currency in which workers or retired people do not get paid.  The products sold in stores for that currency and are taxed between 240% and 300%.

A jar of mayonnaise, made in Cuba, is one-third of the median salary.  A bag of frozen potatoes is pretty much the same.  From 2003 to date many items sold in hard currency have increased between 40% to 90%.

One hundred dollars in 2003 represents forty-five dollars in 2013, due to the 13% tax levied on the US dollar, decreed by Fidel Castro in 2005, along with the silent price increases for staple products.

In contrast, wages have barely grown in the last twenty years. The sending of remittances by family members from the “other side of the pond” is what supports the basic needs of their family in the island.

It is predicted that in 2013 the regime will receive more than $2.6 million dollars from these remittances.  At the same time, the registers at the stores are happily chirping and the subsidies from the State are decreasing.  The message from the rulers is loud and clear. Make ends meet however you can, establish a small place to refill lighters or fix old shoes.

The bus fare in Cuba, the genesis of the riots in Brazil, have risen from five cents in 1989 to forty cents in 2013.  However, due to the tremendous scarcity of twenty-cent coins, people are paying one peso. To travel in an overflowing bus and with a horrific service.

Nobody has taken the streets to protest.  The mute revenge of Cuban workers is to work little and poorly and to steak what they can from the jobs. Fidel Castro never liked democracies.  The strikes, protests and free elections give him allergies.

One afternoon during the 1990’s, it is said that someone whispered in the Nicaraguan politician Daniel Ortega’s ear, after his loss in the referendum: you don’t hold elections to lose.  Ortega and the compatriots of the PSUV in Venezuela took note.

Cuba, which economically speaking is a failure, has shown that only an autocracy can keep popular discontent in the dark.

If anyone wants some advice as to how to run a country without disturbances, please come by Havana.

Ivan Garcia

Picture from Primavera Digital

Translated by: LYD

18 September 2013

In the 1950’s there were two hotels out of their league: the Hotel National in Havana and the Hotel International in Varadero.  The first one is still standing in the heart of Vedado, the second one will be demolished.

This was just confirmed by Jorge Alvarez, Director of Center of Inspection and Environmental Control.  This institution is in charge of controlling, supervising and regulating the protection of the environment and the rational use of natural resources.  The cause?  The alarming coastal erosion discovered by the scientists and specialists who were given the task to visit and analyze almost six thousand kilometers of Cuban coast.

Although the authorities have chosen prudence and remaining silent, the conclusions are alarming. “The government realized that the protection of the coasts for an island like Cuba, long and narrow is a matter of national security”, said Alvarez recently.

The study showed that the rising ocean level could damage or wipe off the map around 122 small coastal towns, many beaches would be under water, drinking water sources would be lost and cultivated parcels unutilized.  It is possible that by the year 2050 the sea level will rise around 27 centimeters and some 85 centimeters by 2100.  It sounds small, but experts explain that this represents a penetration of salt water of up to two kilometers around low laying areas.

In October 2010, they were already talking about the probable demolition of the Hotel International.  A wave of rumors and conflicts were set off, inside and outside of the island.  Luanys Morales, spokesperson for Gran Caribe, the administrative group of the hotel said: “Is a shame that a rumor can influence the decision of many tourists who have called, alarmed by the news.  The Hotel will not be demolished and it is all part of a fallacy invented to grab headlines by people who don’t want what’s good for our island and their time spewing venom in their informal blogs.”

One month later this was corrected, supposedly officially, by a statement made by the Cuban Section of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, signed by their president, the architect Jose E. Fornes, corroborating the rumors about the intentions to demolish the Hotel International in Varadero and the Cabins of the Sun (Cabañas del Sol), both places considered “part of the Cuban and Caribbean modern patrimony,” which marked a milestone in Cuban architecture, due to their advanced design and visual integration between the landscape and the sea.

In an internet forum, Armando Fernandez said “Yes, they will demolish it. And not only the International which is an emblematic hotel of Varadero, but the cabins as well, which in their time represented a national prize of architecture. They made the decision without consulting anyone. I agree that there are important investments that must be made, but not at the expense of a symbol of national identity.”

Around the same time, Teresa, retired, confessed, “I felt a mixture of sadness and indignation when I heard that they were going to demolish the International.  I was born in Matanzas and before the revolution, when summer came, my parents would rent a house in Varadero. They loved going to the hotel cabaret and the kids would eat ice cream in the cafeteria.  Back then a working family like mine could do those luxury things.”

International Hotel in Varadero was inaugurated on December 24, 1950 in the city of Cardenas, Matanzas.  Because of its architectural style it was considered the “brother” of the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, opened in 1954.  Until the mid-80’s, when Fidel Castro decided to develop tourism as one of the most important sources of hard currency, the International Hotel was the tourists’ favorite.

Designed by the Cuban architect Ricardo Galbis, 300 workers took part in its construction.  Ninety percent of the materials used were imported from the United States.  Its cost was over three and half million pesos, which at that time was valued the same as the dollar.  It consisted of 163 rooms and a penthouse.  In the lobby, there was mural with an ocean theme, a work by the Spanish painter Hipolito Hidalgo de Caviedes, who in 1937 exiled himself to Cuba.  Hidaldo returned to Spain in 1961 and passed away in 1994 in Madrid, the same city where he was born in 1902.

When the Hotel International was inaugurated Varadero already had 17 hotels,  among them the Kawama, Miramar, Torres, Playa Azul and Varadero, the oldest of all dating back to 1915.  But the hotel boom really started around 1990 with the construction of Melia Varadero, Sol Club Las Sirenas, Sol Palmeras, Brisas del Caribe and Meliá Las Américas.

In 1887, the year of the official founding of Varadero, if a Havana native wanted to swim in its blue and translucent waters he had to have time, patience and energy.  To travel to Varadero, he would have to take a train to Cardenas and then from cross to the beach on foot, in a horse-drawn carriage or “carreton” or in a schooner.

Today, the trip of 130 kilometers between Havana and the famous beach resort is along a wide highway which by car or bus takes a little more than an hour.  Varadero is still the most popular tourist destination of sun and beach in Cuba.  It currently receives more than a million tourist visitors annually and it contributes around 30% of the tourist sector earnings.

Three years ago it was speculated that behind the Hotel International demolition was perhaps the discovery of oil reserves in the area or the construction of new golf resorts.  However, the grave damage done to the environment was the reason.  I hope there is time to save the eroded Cuban coasts.

Ivan Garcia

Picture Taken from Cubazul.

Translated by LYD