The sinking of the tugboat 13 de Marzo, on the morning of July 13, 1994, with over 70 people on board, ordered by the dictatorship that governs us, does not appear in the nation’s list of anniversaries.
It is a taboo subject. It has been deleted from the official story, so they do not remember the infamy, but it is important to remember that it has been 19 years since the horrific slaughter that still remains unpunished and that those who ordered it to be perpetrated still remain in power, and now they are trying to pass the scepter to their chosen ones in order to “retire or die quietly”.
This murder has been written about many times, and many others have been read with horror. Survivors testified that they managed to cross the Morro and evade the pursuit seven miles offshore. Their captors surrounded the tug in which they were fleeing, and did them in them with their prows and water jets.
One day, without the repression of the government as a barrier, the Cuban people will go to the Malecon with flowers and remember those 41 children, women and men killed at sea in the horrendous summer of 1994.
The same way we used to remember a famous guerrilla* in elementary school. Although we did not understand why, we walked after the teachers to the nearest stretch of coast to throw flowers in the water in honor of a rebel commander** who disappeared at an uncertain point along the coast.
Teachers told us that they searched for this rebel commander by air, land and sea for many days, although it wasn’t know where his plane went down.
Even though the authorities knew from the start the exact place where, in an single onslaught, fanaticism and intolerance had sunk the ship in which 72 Cubans were fleeing the tyranny, the bones of those 41 men, women and children killed remain abandoned at the bottom of the sea.
Relatives of the victims were not allowed to bury their dead. The weak excuse that the government had no specialized divers to recover them. Perhaps what the government feared was a spontaneous and massive burial, in which the tears of a people would make injustice tremble.
Fidel Castro justified the murder in a speech: “The workers’ behavior was exemplary, you can not say it wasn’t, because they tried to stop them from stealing your boat. What can we say now, let them steal the ships, your livelihood? What will we do with those workers who do not want them to steal their boat, who undertook a truly patriotic effort, we could say, to stop them from stealing the boat? What are we going to tell them?”
Those words acquitted the murderers, and denied to the families of the victims their right to justice. Any future investigation was prohibited. Any accusation from the families fell on deaf ears in the complicit courts nationwide.
But as Fidel Castro himself said in his time, “There is always time in history to hold each person responsible for what they did.”
Meanwhile, the souls of the victims emerge daily and roam the coast of Havana, and pray that one day they can finally rest on land in an ossuary with flowers and an epitaph.
In Combinado del Este Prison, in the presence of a lieutenant from the Ministry of the Interior, a common prisoner threatened political prisoner Ernesto Borges with death.
This past June, the common prisoner, who was appointed by the prison authorities as “Head of the Council of Prisoners” despite being a convicted murderer and drug addict with a reputation for violence, told Borges Pérez:
“I’m going to stab you here (pointing to Ernesto’s liver), and leave you to die. They’ll have to bury you in the United States.” The political prisoner described the threat to this reporter during a private visit.
The visiting area is a dining hall. No Cuban independent journalist or foreign news agencies not serving the propaganda interests of the Cuban socialist state, nor the rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council of the UN, have had access to the inside of the Cuban prison system.
After receiving the threat, Pérez Borges warned the inmate that he would make a formal complaint, and would use as his witness Lt. Javier (known as the “re-educator,” because he was in charge of the political indoctrination of common-prisoners), who had been present for the altercation. But the officer replied:
“I won’t be your witness. I wasn’t here.”
Pérez Borges believes that such a response is a green light to a violent convict to assault a political prisoner.
“In general,” he says, “the prison population respects political prisoners unless State Security intervenes.” He adds: “Every month officers meet in an office with the common prisoner they designate as Head (whom everyone else calls “The Enforcer”) and give him precise instructions on how to deal with political ones.”
Death Sentence Commuted
Borges Pérez was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the Military Court of the Cuban Western Army, on January 14, 1999, for the crime of espionage, in case No. 2 of that year. The sentence of death by firing squad was commuted.
He was tried for the crime of having collected the records of 26 “bait agents” of the Cuban secret services, for later disclosure. He was arrested for this action on July 17, 1998.
The prosecutor told the family, at the conclusion of the trial that he would have to serve only one-third of the sentence, ten years, and would then be paroled, because he had been a career soldier with no previous infractions.
Borges Pérez, at left. Photo from his personal album, courtesy of the author.
But Borges Pérez has not backed down ideologically. He has continued to work in exposing human rights violations against the prison population, and has provided written testimony against the 1996 case against Robert Vesco, in which he served as senior analyst of Department 1 of the General Directorate of Counterintelligence, during the interrogations.
Fifteen years after the events that resulted in his imprisonment, Borges Pérez recalls his reasons for moving from officialdom to the opposition:
“There were a number of factors,” he says: “Perestroika, the corruption I saw within Security of State, the influence peddling, the realization that the only priority of the system is to perpetuate the Castro clan in power, the insensitivity of the State and Party to the misery of the population during the years of the Special Period, in order to maintain political and economic control of the country.”
“Cuban State Security,” he adds, “is a bloated and corrupt apparatus, because it has an excess of resources that have no relation to the non-violent resistance that exists on the island, and a culture of violence shielded by the ideology of the Castro regime. After the end of the Civil War, which ran from 1961 to 1966, and with the arrival of the 1970s, the opposition in Cuba has focused on defending human rights and peacefully struggling against the institutionalized violations by the system. But State Security maintains its structure of repression identical to that used during the Civil War. Being oversized in personnel and resources, its counterintelligence operatives create networks of informants in all segments of society, and thus the Police State is born.”
Hunger Strike
In 2012, Borges Perez went on two hunger strikes. The first lasted 9 days, during which he demanded the right to make phone calls regularly, especially to talk with his daughter who lives abroad, as well as the return of his drugs, prescribed for chronic ailments, including bronchial asthma, and access to specialized medical services. He ended the strike when Lieutenant Colonel Vargas, at that time Chief of Prisons Havana, promised that they would meet his demands.
But the authorities did not comply. Less than a month after he suspended the first hunger strike, he began a second, demanding to be released on parole.
On February 28, 2012, after 18 days of starvation, Cardinal Jaime Ortega came to his cell and promised to discuss his freedom with the General-President of Cuba. “For seven days I valued this promise of the Cardinal and abandoned the strike for 25 days,” he says.
A ministerial committee visited him after a month: “They reviewed my prison record for the first time, and said they had recommended my probation to the court my probation, but it’s been 14 months since that visit.”
“When a political prisoner starts a hunger strike,” said Borges Pérez, “they establish a Command Post, which has to report daily to the top chief of the Interior Ministry. Creating a command post means more gasoline for cars, coffee, cigarettes, special food allotments, vacation homes on the beach, certificates of appreciation, promotion. It is a repressive bureaucratic inertia. They live off that. “
After this latest death threat that he denounced by phone, prison authorities made the decision to change the whole makeup of the floor, keeping only Borges and his cellmate and bringing in a new group of prisoners. Also, Javier the re-educator was transferred.
Sealed Envelopes
Borges Pérez, in a little known photograph, courtesy of the author
But on June 29 he was led, handcuffed, to an office in Combinado del Este where a colonel, who introduced himself as a Vice Director General of Jails and Prisons. The threat was repeated: in the event that democratic changes in Cuba begin, said the colonel, “we are prepared, and you also have to prepare. We have precise instructions in sealed envelopes, on how to deal with you.” (He understood this to mean political prisoners.)
This colonel also said that once again his right to make phone calls would be suspended.
On July 5, an officer with the rank of Major officially told him that his telephone calls would occur, from now on, in an office, and he would only be entitled to a 10 minute call per week, at no pre-set specific time, and monitored by Javier the re-educator.
“By doing this, the prison authorities are violating not only internationally established law on the treatment of prisoners, but are also in breach of the agreement reached after the cessation of my hunger strike in 2012,” says Borges Pérez.
Eliécer Ávila (third from left) with friends during his stay in Sweden.
This morning I was awakened by a call from a friend to tell me that finally señor Ricardo Alarcón had uttered words referring to our encounter*. I immediately started to make arrangements to see where I could download this post, but nothing worked. It was already around 11:00 and curiosity made me make a sad decision: to spend the equivalent of several yards of plaster for my house on an Internet card at the Hotel Nacional.
Señor Alarcón:
I want to thank you, first, for directing yourself to me respectfully. It is time for someone to reciprocate this conduct.
I am compelled, however, to clarify some questions.
First: At the end of that encounter, I left by another door, almost in the arms of many of my compañeros, who invited me to eat pizza to celebrate, and to thank me for having represented them. You did not converse with me, I never saw you again.
Later, they tried to destroy me in many ways and if it weren’t for the vote and opinions of my compañeros, I never would have graduated. Among the reprisals they also denied me the possibility of living and working in Havana. Angry and upset about that, I went to talk to you at the National Assembly of People’s Power. Your staff did not allow me to see you.
Prof: I am amazed and surprised to hear you say that you were censored and that I had the advantage in the argument. I spent more than two years without any chance to talk, the Cuban media has never allowed me to express myself, with the exception of the material on Cubadebate when I thought it would be alright, and they needed me to deny what later clearly would be true.
You were the president of the Parliament. Anyone in the world holding a job like that could call the national or international press and make whatever declarations they wanted. In a second, your words would have traveled the globe. Who would not allow it? I’m glad to know that it wasn’t me.
On the other hand, I must say that I owe my travels to myself and, in any case, to the decent working Cubans who invited me, one after another, to visit with their families in different latitudes.
One of them, who offered me the main invitation, and with whose wife and children I spent the majority of my time, was expelled like a dog from here, his own country, and even his little one-year-old girl, just for visiting me in my little native village and spending time with my family. Nobody told you about that?
On another note, everyone who wants to, inside and outside of Cuba, has already seen the complete video of the event. Not only your words and mine, but also those of the other kids who participated. By the way, one of them, another guajiro from Baracoa, has experienced almost the same as me, including jail cells, and now he has created an organization to also oppose the management of this Government.
Returning to the video, according to what thousands of people have told me from those days, seeing a fragment or seeing the whole thing leaves the same impression…
I take advantage of these lines to give you a message from several Cubans with black skin who live in New York. They took me for a walk along Fifth Avenue to show me**; not only were they not expelled, but many of the owners of those stores are black or immigrants of the most dissimilar ethnicities and colors… The message of these Cubans was, “Please tell this gentleman not to offend us and to stop confusing Cuban youth.” (I have it in writing.)
The issue of my traveling to Sweden and not to Bolivia*** is really annoying and demonstrates the low level of whomever raises it. It’s obvious that I can’t go to an airport and travel wherever I want. I wish! When someone in Bolivia invites me and pays my fare, I’ll go with pleasure.
Look, I am going to be honest, I don’t like it very much when every step I take someone on the street says: “Kid, are you the boy with Alarcón?”
Outside of Cuba, every time a journalist would let me I said, “Could you do me the favor and not ask me the same questions about Alarcón?” I always feel more comfortable talking about what I think we need to do to have the country we desire. I have been the Cuban who has least offered an opinion about you, because believe it or not, I don’t like to take advantage of the mistakes of others, but to advance on my own merits.
I also see that you like souvenirs. If I’d had your home address, or your phone number, or your email or something… I surely would have sent as a gift one of the excellent books they gave me during my journey. Oh wait, sorry, I remember now: they took them from me at the airport… I don’t know who ordered them to take them from me. Would it have been the same if he’d talked to you? If you like, we can go together to claim them, who knows if they’ll listen to us…
But hey, here’s my telephone number so you can call me whenever you like and without any press interest we could have coffee and converse at length in an atmosphere of decency, culture and respect…
Translator’s notes: *The video of Eliecer Avila’s encounter with Ricardo Alarcon, which came to light in 2008, is available with English subtitles here. **In the videotaped exchange with Eliecer Avila, Ricardo Alarcon says [starts at minute 30] that when he and his family lived in NYC, where he was serving as Cuba’s representative to the United Nations: “How many times [on 5th Avenue] did they throw us out of a store? Because we had a Latin accent or by our hair color they knew we weren’t Anglos, they didn’t want us in that store. Watching, ’get out’, how many times?” *** In the exchange with Alarcon, Eliecer asks why Cubans can’t travel freely and says he would like to go to Bolivia to see where Che Guevara died. In his current post about the exchange, Alarcon points out that when Eliecer got the chance to travel he went to Sweden, not to Bolivia.
The Congress of the Journalists Union of Cuba (UPEC) has just been contradicted. Barely a few days after that meeting of official reporters, reality has put them to the test … and they failed. Yesterday, the news that a freighter flying under the North Korean flag, coming from Havana and found with missiles and other military equipment in its hold, jumped to the first page of much of the world’s press. In Panama, where the arms were detected, the president of the country himself sent out a report via Twitter about what happened. Knowing that in this day and age it’s almost impossible to censor — from the national public — an event of such scope, we awoke this morning to a brief note from the Ministry of Foreign Relations. In an authoritarian tone it explained that the “obsolete” — but functional — armaments were being sent to the Korean peninsula for repairs. It did not clarify, however, why it was necessary to hide them in a cargo of sugar.
At a time when newspapers are offering lessons that governments can’t get away with secrecy, the conformist role of the official Cuban press is, at the very least, painful. Meanwhile, in Spain several newspapers have challenged the governing party by publishing the declarations of its former treasurer; in the United States the Snowden case fills the headlines which demand explanations from the White House about the invasion of privacy of so many citizens. It is inconceivable that, this morning, Cuba’s Ministry of the Armed Forces and its colleagues in Foreign Relations are not being questioned by reporters calling them to account. Where are the journalists? Where are these professionals of the news and of words who should force governments to declare themselves, force politicians not to deceive us, force the military not to behave toward citizens as if we were children who can be constantly lied to?
Where are the resolutions of the UPEC Congress, with their calls to remove obstacles, abolish silence, and engage in an informative labor more tied to reality? A brief note, clearly plagued with falsehoods, is not sufficient to explain the act of sending — secretly — arms to a country that the United Nations itself has warned others not to support with the technology of war. They will not convince us of their innocence by appealing to the antiquity of the armaments; things that produce horror never entirely expire. But, as journalists, the most important lesson to come out of this “crisis of the sugar missiles” is that we cannot settle for institutions that explain themselves in brief press releases, that cannot be questioned. They have to speak, they have to explain… a lot.
The first time I saw Havana was when I walked it holding your hand.
The city smelled of coarse capitalism, of drinks and meals suddenly very expensive, of transparent dusk, of lateral light, of placards that no one will renovate now, of Fidel Castro the cadaver, of dirty grey, of a stampede of guayaberas and neckties, of restrained madness, of cool air from the secret police’s modern sedans, that smell exactly like the modern sedans of the Cuban exile.
The tyranny of the market is universal.
The first time I walked Havana holding your hand I understood that I was losing it forever.
You didn’t know anything. You still don’t know anything. But, yes, all of it was a trap.
Castrismo in Cuba is a question of genetics and it is carried into the future like a curse of phobia against Man, against those who are different, against the Other. Fears and mediocrities that make us miserly, mean, very mean, precisely against that which we love most and least want to see laughing with the rabid laughter of freedom.
The soul of Cubans is a roofless jail, open to the sky. That is already the most immortal legacy of the Cuban Revolution. There is absolutely no totalitarianism, rather only sadness.
You and your skirt of fine white fabric looked like eternity.
And eternity is ephemeral, we know that already. A vision.
Havana passed by slowly at our side and didn’t touch us, we wouldn’t have allowed it to touch us. That cowardly, shitty, abusive, ignorant city, where it’s impossible to say “I love you.”
The city was only a set. Cardboard streets. Cane pulp façades. Prop arches. A dictatorship of backroom deals where only assassins survive. Little men of cotton padding.
Because only death could go on being real.
Death like a gleam of wisdom in our eyes.
Death like a promise that Havana will soon be an uninhabited planet.
Death like that gentle breath that we needed.
Death like the very sense for loving.
Death like the dead waters of Havana Bay, where the smokestacks hoist their flags of stinking incense, little cocktails of churches and animals decapitated in the middle of the street in the anonymous name of a god.
Ah.
I looked at my hands, with yours inside them, and told myself: it can’t be.
I wept under the rain of one cold front after another, we lost track of those tears among those belated little drops from the sky, and I talked and talked to you about attack ships on fire in my imagination, in a Cuban novel that would unfold among those stars that we watched burning out up there, on Orion’s pelvic sword; I talked and talked to you about infrared beams cracking on the edges of the main gate at Colón Cemetery; I talked and talked to you with a delirium right out of the end of times that wanted to be from the beginning of another time, another world, other souls, other bodies, another Cuba that, upon being possible, would no longer be possible, please; I talked and talked to you about things that you all, Cubans, will never create.
All those words, like the rain in the United States, that announces itself in two languages before falling on transmitters from coast to coast.
All those words, like digital maps that regenerate a strange reality, cognizable and unrecognizable.
All those words, said for the last time, and after them the silence facing the rest of you, Cubans, that you all would never believe.
You can’t. You won’t.
The last time I saw Havana was when you let my hand go.
The city smelled of childhood, of abandoned mothers, of genocide. I didn’t care.
I still don’t care.
As you get out of the trap, you also learn while getting out of the trap.
Remain, then, in the posthumous peace of the perplexed.
Yoel Martínez, guitarist and member of the duo Buena Fe, (Good Faith) bought a house facing the sea. He and Israel Rojas hired a brigade to repair it and convert it into a bar-cafeteria-restaurant, Melesio’s Grill, which opened its doors the public on July 12.
With that name, and with both musicians being from Guantanamo, many think they named it in honor of a family member, but that’s not it. According to the source, the 90-year-old actor Reynaldo Miravalles, whose granddaughter lives in Cuba and represents him, is the one who made the “strong investment” in assembling the business and chose the name in memory of his beloved character, Melesio Capote, who played in the telenovela “The Rock of the Lion” and who lives in people’s hearts. They say that in the few days since the establishment opened, the son of Carlos Lage has visited it — will a green jar be found? — as have foreigners and some members of the Anacaonas orchestra. There are also many who expect it to be a major sales success because the prominent Cuban actor will promote it from Miami.
Business hours are from 12:00 pm to 12:00 am every day of the week, the staff wears uniforms and there are two work teams directed by Israel’s wife; on one team is the daughter of Cuba’s former Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. In addition, that assert that there are cameras everywhere to avoid costly mistakes. Two neighbors on the block live on-site: a cleaning assistant and a night custodian.
The locating of this private gastronomic center has generated great expectations among the neighborhood peanut gallery, in which they might expect to take a drink or enjoy a meal accompanied by some national entertainment celebrity. But the cheapest menu offering costs 5 CUC and already the neighborhood “roosters” resignedly assume that “this fight” is not theirs.
However, we wish the young entrepreneurs success in their business. To Miravalles, that the “mantel” of health will ways protect him, that fortune will rain on his life and his business, that abundant fruits will rain down in return for the good faith of his investment.
Cuba Today, El Vedado, Havana, (PD): Bit by bit some of the early activists who were able to cross the sea are returning; they were guests or sponsored by organizations or individuals the “outside world.”
I say some, because you must remember that under their inalienable right, there are friends who took the opportunity to stay “there”, and others, who even asked for political asylum.
In a very short time these compatriots went from being pro-democracy activists in Cuba to being the latest economic migrants to the northern neighbor. The worst thing projects they were responsible are left adrift, or at least without a visible face. I refer specifically to the Voices editorial project, and the Christian Liberation Movement.
These reflections come after an informal meeting in the home of Reinaldo Escobar and Yoani Sanchez, on June 28. There, gathering together, were the regulars of these libertarian meetings. Politicians, artists, independent journalists, bloggers, photographers, students, lawyers, Christian pastors and even the occasional diplomat, gathered around a theme, and interspersed with those who returned and those who did not leave.
That evening there were sympathetic anecdotes, deep thoughts, sharp questions and even the occasional vain folly of the islander who, having crossed the sea, believes that have crossed, like Julius Caesar, the Rubicon. But the important thing is that the meeting clarified, in silence, the inadequacy of leaving the foreign policy of the democratic opposition in the hands of others; and, once again, the lack of institutionalization.
Because a handful of brave people travel outside to tell their truth, is not enough to justify expectations or clearly establish what happened and what is going to happen, nor to establish ties to pressure, on our behalf, the military dictatorship. The so-called citizen diplomacy can’t be exactly this in our specific case. Our travelers, in this case and save exceptions, just competed with Uncle Traveling Matt, the character from Fraggel Rock, with regards to traveling to the outside world.
Unlike Uncle Traveling Matt, an adventurer with his own funds, our citizens went abroad thanks to the gracious decisions of strangers (?), who arranged the agendas of their guests. And even more important, they established the foreign policy agenda of the democratic opposition in Cuba. But also,they established distances and origins difficult to reconcile, in an archipelago marked by misery and deprivation described in Maslow’s pyramid of needs.
The patrons of the journeys highlighted once again the lack of funds among the democratic opposition in Cuba is not a sad page of our reality, but a timid Decalogue of our shame.
Among the unpardonable gaps among the dazzles is that most don’t offer a logical and visible strategy of how, after their return, they will open new doors in those countries for our transition. Leaving behind some pitiful complaints to take steps to work together: what we need to construct a true citizen diplomacy.
Off-the-cuff pronouncements, misplaced speeches, nonsense in front of the international press, ministers and politicians of the first level in foreign scenes, are anecdotes that those present ignored in favor of the harmony of the meetings, but they hang like a Sword of Damocles, over the consciences of those present. This also was a part of the tours of our illustrious friends and if we want to learn we can’t overlook our mistakes.
The closest thing we could do to realize a diplomatic alternative to the military dictatorship would be to use “paradiplomacy,” a neologism that reminds us that the actors of civil society also take the reins of international relations. This private phenomenon of postmodernism, where non-state actors play an increasingly significant role, must be our path. But to get there, first we have to strengthen our pro-democratic institutions.
Piloto Barceló is in the punishment cell for demanding his rights. He has served more than half of his sentence, so he should be receiving the benefit of “minimum security”; but the authorities are like always, and their ears are especially deaf to opponents of the regime.
Piloto finds himself sentenced to six years in jail for protesting in the Plaza of the Revolution against the atrocities of the Cuban regime. According to his indictment “for threatening the figures of the leaders of the Revolution,” that is, right now, Pilot has served the same amount of time that Fidel Castro served for assaulting the barracks of the constitutional army, to which must be added the lives of the fallen soldiers. Clearly, Piloto will be imprisoned longer for shouting and handing out leaflets, than was Castro for assaulting a barracks with their firearms.
Whoever utters a word against the dictator, is punished as if he assasinated him. However, Piloto, from his cell, continues to struggle against the regime, and warns them that the time will come when he will be testifying before a jury about their abuse.
In the second half of the 18th century Creole capabilities along with the effects of the English occupation of Havana and the Haitian revolution created favorable conditions for turning Cuba into a sugar powerhouse. Land owners understood the importance of rapidly developing the island’s agriculture before Haiti could recover. It was necessary to look to the neighboring island not only with compassion, said Francisco de Arango y Parreño, but also through political eyes. As a result Cuba became the main producer and exporter of sugar in the world.
Sugar production, which in 1860 was 447,000 tons, had reached 1,400,000 by 1895. In 1919 it exceeded 4,000,000. In 1925 it reached 5,300,000; in 1952 it was 7,200,000. In 1970, after a colossal effort that disrupted the entire Cuban economy, 8,500,000 tons were produced. After that, it began to decrease to the point that in 2001 it was no more than 3,500,000, a figure lower than that of 1919.
To reverse the decline General Ulises Rosales del Toro was appointed to head the Ministry of Sugar (MINAZ). The Sugar Industry Restructuring initiative and the Álvaro Reynoso Project were also implemented. The goal of the former was to achieve 11% output (to extract 11 tons of sugar for every 100 tons of sugar cane); the goal of the latter was to produce 54 tons of cane per hectare (according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization the world average was 63 tons).
The results of both projects led to 2.2 million tons being produced in 2002, 2.1 million in 2003, 2.52 in 2004 and 1.3 million in 2005 (a 40% decrease from the previous year). Results for 2006 and 2007 were similar to 2005. 2009 saw a slight increase to 1.4 million tons (the same as in 1895). The figures hit a low point in 2010 when only 1.1 million tons were produced. The annual average over ten years has barely topped 1.8 million tons. The harvest in 2011 remained below 1.3 million tons.
In response to its failures, MINAZ was replaced by the state sugar monopoly AZCUBA. With the two major factors that led to significantly reduced production on everyone’s minds, the organization made sure to plant enough cane and at the outset managed to secure almost all the necessary resources it had contracted for the 2012 harvest. Nevertheless, it was still only able to fulfill a target of 1,450,000 tons, and even then it did not meet its target date. Finally, in December 2012 — the beginning of the current harvest — AZCUBA decided to pool its accumulated knowledge and proposed a production quota of 1.7 million tons of sugar (20% higher than the previous harvest). It also announced that a majority of its factories would close before May to avoid the negative effects from that month’s heat and rain, factors which reduce the quality of sugarcane.
Difficulties quickly mounted. By the beginning of February there was a production delay of 7.8%. By the middle of March the state-run press noted that most of the thirteen sugar producing provinces would have to continue refining operations past the target date in order to be able to produce 1.7 million tons. By the end of March production delays had reached 18%. At the beginning of April the country was refining at 65% of its normal capacity due to a shortage of sugarcane. Cienfuegos and Artemisa provinces have reached approximately 90% of their goals. Matanzas has a shortfall of 30,000 tons while Villa Clara, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Las Tunas, Granma and Mayabeque are milling at 60% of normal capacity. At the end of May it was discovered that Camagüey, one of the provinces that had hoped to fulfill its quota, was lagging behind. Now, in late June, the end of the current harvest has still not been announced.
Results from the Uruguay central sugar refinery in Sancti Spiritus province, which for the last six years has fulfilled its technical economic quota, produced 8,000 tons more than the previous year and achieved an 11.95% rate of gross economic output, the highest in the country.
In summation, a change of management, the Sugar Industry Restructuring initiative, the Álvaro Reynoso Project, the closure of some one-hundred sugar factories, the reallocation of a large percentage of fields reserved for sugar cultivation to other crops, the replacement of MINAZ with AZCUBA and a varied package of economic and structural measures have not been sufficient to raise the per-hectare production of sugarcane or planned industrial output.
The 2013 harvest suffers from the same problems as those that preceded it: late starts, sugarcane shortages, low agricultural and industrial output, transportation problems, inadequate maintenance, industry-wide breakdowns, poor repairs to agricultural equipment, aging raw material, lack of spare parts, poorly trained personnel, administrative incompetence and high per-ton production costs, among other factors.
Although twenty years is nothing according to the popular tango anthem by Carlos Gardel and Alfredo Lepera*, in economic terms it is long enough to know it is time to get rid the current model. Whether discussing the obsolete or the updated version, it simply does not and cannot work. This is because economic issues remain subordinate to ideology. State ownership of property predominates and the system of economic planning has no relationship to reality, having been copied from the Soviet model. The situation is similar to that of Cuba at the end of the 18th century when solutions imposed by Spain were no longer appropriate given the changes that had occurred on the island. Francisco de Arango y Parreño summed it up nicely when he said, “If the model no longer works, what hope is there for the copy?”
Havana, June 3, 2013
1 Ponte Domingo, Francisco J. Arango y Parreño; estadista colonial cubano, Edición del Centenario, Havana, 1937, p. 27.
*Translator’s note: A reference to a line from Volver, a popular 1934 tango by Argentinian singer and composer Carlos Gardel and lyricist Alfredo Lepera.
Miguel Luna drawn by Abel Prieto, in Viajes de Miguel Luna.
“The day that rabble gets into the UNEAC*, we’re lost.”
– Abel Prieto, from his Viajes de Miguel Luna
What does a Minister of Culture think about when he turns into an author? What does he aesthetically cling to and what does he judge as too politically incorrect to include in his work? Does he play? Does he confess? How does he balance the influences and disguise the secrets of the State? Does he compare his stories with the classics of the Cuban canon or only with his contemporary competition? Does he censor himself? Is he sucking up to or betraying his superiors (His Superior)?
Viajes de Miguel Luna is an invaluable document for dissecting the mind of citizen Abel Prieto, public official in the upper echelons of power during the last two decades of the Revolution. Literally, the last. And the most profitable from the point of view of fiction: those of the decline and fall of just about everyone, here on the Island as well as in Exile.
The official presentation, in February 2012, at the Book Fair of the Cuba Pavilion, required (perhaps due to the bulk of the novel, 540 pages) three veterans in turn: Graziella Pogolotti, Eduardo Heras León and Rinaldo Acosta. To this was added the presence of Ambrosio Fornet, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Eusebio Leal, Miguel Barnet, Frank Fernández, Fernando Martínez Heredia, Reynaldo González and, of course, his predecessor in the post, transformed that evening into an involuntary vision of a generational wake.
A devotee of Lezama among the earliest after the death and burial of Lezama (between the ambulance sent by Alfredo Guevara and the bugs planted by the secret police), at last Abel Prieto achieves the miracle of a book as arduous to read as Paradiso, although for diametrically opposed reasons: Lezama’s magnum opus is an untranslatable labyrinth that forges its very reader (the rest get burnt out); while Viajes de Miguel Luna is the spasm of the legibility of Cuban dialect loud and clear (quasi-military jargon), an anecdotal hyper-transparency that ends up overstuffed (the accursed circumstance of the drivel-ography of Miguel Luna, or “Mick or Mike or Miki or Mickey Moon or simply Mikimún” from all sides).
In a Stakhanovite effort of “popular dissemination”, written like volunteer work from behind his political desk at the Ministry of Culture or the Central Committee of the Communist Party, this is the sympathetic saga that the New Man had been expecting to read since 1989 (the perestroika on paper); it is the coming-of-age story that our middle class cried out for, demanding a relief from the vacuum of this Imaginary Era of transition toward State capitalism; it is the best seller that we intellectuals can give as a gift on a Sunday in May to our mothers (without awaiting the death of a Rosa Lima, such an affectionate repressor); and it is, also, more than a travel epic, the last of the “scholarship novels” of 20th century Cuba, that genre that was born senile, yet has yielded so many functionaries during peace time.
There is a lot of kitsch in this type of tropical gaiety in the gulag: from Marcos Behmaras to Enrique Núñez Rodríguez, from José Ángel Cardi to F. Mond, among other ourselves-and-others, the text wants to laugh but what comes out isn’t a smirk, but something worse: a grimace (rigor mortis of the State). Falsehood as poetic license used by a bully in search of authenticity. Because here we won’t find even traces of the stigmatizer of young Cuban artists, nor of the audiovisual censor, nor of the manipulator of pro-Cuba solidarity movements, nor of the hijacker of Cuban exit permits, nor of the bandit-hunter setting his sights on the Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana magazine, including the coercion of this island’s hostages who collaborated with it (a publication that, after observing a minute of silence at UNEAC when its editor/founder died, they finally managed to sabotage). But it is precisely these omissions that open up a bridge, a great bridge to our residual freedom in so many perverse readers. Thus, the archeological eloquence of these Travels of Miguel Luna will face the researchers that will descend from, let’s say, North American academia to celebrate the Great Centennial of 2059 — mulg-kästrismo beaming as one of the fine arts.
The proof of success, guarantor of an imminent Critics Prize and perhaps a National Literary Prize, is that this book by Abel Prieto is nowhere to be found inside the country: it sold out before its introduction into the market! This will not impede Abel Prieto’s trips now to collect praise and euros from a parliamentary Europe suffering from nostalgia in its terminal stages, plus the corresponding thousand and one translations of this work, including into Mulgavo: a dead post-socialist language (part Basque, part North Korean, part Iranian?) in which an unbearable percentage of monologues of our “Kübb-hím-póet-Míkel-Lún” are written (the ex-minister uses Mac or gets by with the accent marks in Microsoft).
It is curious that Cuban literature (the same as with the more recent Dictionaries of Cuban Literature) does not dare over-mention that dystrophic year of 1989. In style and theme, we are nailed to a remote, ludicrous past: Cuba’s trauma is that no holocaust will be tragic. Our day-to-day amnesia can’t withstand it, and we lack the capacity to narrate the horrifying void of a nation forced into fidelity, at the whim of a personalistic power that made us live un-chronologically outside of global history, anachronistically in that stop-motion time of absolute totalitarianism.
Abel Prieto, upon writing (or dictating to his deputy ministers) the screenplay of this Goodbye Lenin awash in semen, need not be the exception: the action transpires in hops between the September 29 of 1948 and the September 29 of 1989, while the author’s alter-ego masturbates from the start (over the fields and cities goes the onanist…), while Congolese hutias as demonic as they are endemic (pardon the redundancy) masturbate, while the masses and sub-Soviet leaders of the putative proletarian utopia masturbate, while the mobs rush out to shoot themselves to death, no sooner does mulg-demökratia arrive in the Pastoral Agricultural Democratic Popular Socialist Workers Republic of Mulgavia. It’s obvious that Abel Prieto can see the processes of change like a blitzkrieg of mafias (Mulgavo-American?) and fluorescent McDonald’s icons, where today’s communist hierarchs will without doubt be masters of war and capital (let us trust that it will have been for health reasons, not this kind of imagination, which will have cost him his ministerial purse). Of that hypothetical country that yesterday was associated with Cuba, we know nothing after page 540 (Wikipedia isn’t God either). For the author, it probably wasn’t worth wearing oneself out on an anti-climax of economic growth, the opening of borders, respect for human rights and, if it’s not too much to ask, the training of Mulgavan Boy Scouts by People in Need to fratricidally undermine a still surviving little revolution in the Caribbean Sea. I don’t recall even one single mention of the word “revolution” in the novel, as if this situation were out of context, of zero influence on the thesis (even though “counter-revolution” is mentioned and even provokes a fainting spell in a supporting character: someone taken out of the novel who writes the character who in turn is written by Abel Prieto). Ecstatic with retrospectives that cover up any association with local historical horror, the jovial jargon of the sexagenarian Abel Prieto achieves a novel for all and for the good of all. It doesn’t matter that he himself could have gone to jail for daring to write it in real time. It doesn’t matter that he would have been shot by firing squad without trial for having published it then in the “Red Island in the Black Sea”. What is transcendent here is that all future time must be better (an idyll of the Left), and that this text in Cuba now proves it against our Eternal Enemies. Thus, due to its ecumenism or maybe its communist Catholicism, from the theorist of global anti-imperialism, to our provincial dissidents with “Made in Miami” digital copyrights, all should find something to praise in this mammoth opus by Raúl Castro Ruz’s current salaried subordinate. Congratulations! I suppose the consensus-building had to start somewhere.
What does an advisor think about when he turns into an author? What does he politically cling to and what does he judge as aesthetically correct to include in his work? Is he free or does he run every concept by State Security? Does extensive writing distract his parliamentary concentration, is it a diversion of resources from the Council of State, or is it simply an extracurricular hobby edited in record time by Letras Cubanas publishing house? Is this an exemplifying work meant to monitor the literary market (for good reason, the novel imparts a Delphic mini-course on adolescent-adventurer readings)? Will Abel Prieto retire with this dramatic effect or is he already plotting a new hilarious project for his next two decades in power?
In an interview, the author implores us to not abandon reading his work until the KONIEC** (“not because it’s so good, but because I’d like it if someone reached it”). As with Paradiso, in effect, I recommend resisting until the bitter end the half-a-millennium of pages in Viajes de Miguel Luna. Maybe this is the novel that, since the “Revoluzoic Era”, Armando Hart should have written for us? This is a book that can be put to use as a Rosetta Stone of 21st century socialism, Cuban style, and it includes, as a bonus track, a histrionic colophon that parodies, or maybe pays homage to, the telenovela writer Mayté Vera, not to mention half of a century’s worth of excellent vignettes signed by the author (the untapped potential of a Marjane Satrapi emanates from Abel Prieto, self-portrait included).
Mikimún has died, long live the Ministrún. Quod scripsi, is crisis.
Translator’s notes: * National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba ** This is the Polish term for “finish” or “end”.
As much as I try to reconstruct that image of a famous former baseball player who, in the middle of The Special Period, gave my little boy and I a lift, and with such courtesy drove out of his way to drop me off, I can’t reconcile myself with the manager of Matanzas’ baseball team. An explosive player, a restless personality, he has the undeniable merit of having shaken up the drowsy Matanzas team, but none of this precludes that as a manager he’s a boorish, ill-mannered buffoon. The work of a manager extends beyond directing a team; and on the subject of the shaping of values and acting as good example to his devotees, Víctor Mesa isn’t only baffling, he also gives the impression that he’s out to prove his contempt for the rules… and for the press.
I can imagine the hopes of matanceros, but I’ll be very happy if Villa Clara wins.
*Translator’s note: matancero is the demonym for residents of Matanzas.
We are living in a world where, dangerously, what’s important for the work of many is just to show results. Perhaps for that reason, for nostalgia, convenience, desire, hope, belief, deception or passion; we make the mistake of looking to Havana and distorting the reality, imagining the Cuban government as a bankrupt controlling consortium.
Sorry, but much to my regret, impartially, things don’t appear the same. The government was reorganized, continuing to take well-aimed steps toward their new legitimacy, and the ruling elite gathers strength obscuring people who have proven to be loyal and capable of obeying every order, including confessing to homicides not committed.
So things go. Last May, by presidential decision, the first secretaries of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) in the provinces of Matanzas and Artemisa were relieved of their posts, curiously both provinces located in the west of the country. Then, as recently as last week, the same changes were made against the party bosses in Guantánamo and Holguín, located in the south and north.
It’s reasonable to think that because the circus elite is aging and with the intent to make their mark on eternity, they seek certain changes to show a much more heterogeneous composition of the deputies who have the opportunity to approach with a much more integrated focus the search for solutions to the current problems in different sectors of our national life.
I think not, and I feel disillusioned, their only goal is to reconquer spaces, regions and areas. The General, corresponding to his background, applies military strategy. It was no accident that the National Defense Commission of the Cuban Parliament (led by its president Brigadier General Juan Rafael Ruiz Pérez) in session this July 5, ordered the participants to immediately execute a new set of measures to strengthen and expand the power, already excessive, possessed by State Security and the National Police. It’s the same as imposing citizen peace at the stroke of a major, the whip and the barracks.
And to round it off, the recently concluded seventh plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, trumpeted the appointment of 11 new members, while removing from its ranks leaders who, although it seemed new to many, had already been removed from office in September 2012.
It’s worth noting the case of Misael Enamorado who, being “enamored,” had his head in the clouds and not recognizing the laws of gravity instead of falling, rose, taking on new functions putting him closer to the euro, the dollar and the sun.
Different but at the same time similar, he succeeds the former president of the National Assembly, Dr. Ricardo Alarcón; who instead of being awarded a well-earned place as an air traffic controller, is reassigned as adviser to the President to deal with — in what appears to be a parallel government — everything concerning relations between Cuba and the United States.
I don’t know about you, but to me all this, more than any commentary coming from the other side, forces me to think that the Commander-in-Chief is paving the way he announced last February, in a very hurried way, to allow him to exercise his “right” to retire from the Government, completely monopolize power, and dictate the decisions of the State from behind the scenes.
It all started very early, at the beginning of the seventies. Soon the Maximum figures of the triumph of the ’fifty-nine revolution, realized that they if they wanted to install themselves in power, firmly and indefinitely, they are going to have to take over the mass media of communication, in the then flat press, radio and television.
Soon the pressure started on the major newspapers in the country, still with their current owners. Then came the infamous “tagline,” a kind of explanatory note, that accompanied the news that the regime considered it ideologically dangerous, and it was imposed, supposedly, in the name of the workers of the daily in question (although no one ever consulted them). This was the apparently “innocent” but the germ of the iron censorship that would come next, and that continues to the present day.
That’s why the congresses of the UPEC (Union of Journalists of Cuba) are very striking, an organization created to replace the previous association of journalists and control and impose official criteria, where there are never inconsistencies, and the “suspicious unanimity” is which ensures all decisions taken in them. Always ignored in these meetings, are alternative journalism, civic and independent filmmakers whose creators are considered by the regime as “mercenaries of the empire.”
All this happens in a new universal context, where technology is almost uncontrollable by dictatorial regimes that still persist in controlling the mass media. That is why it is extremely sad and old-fashioned to talk about journalism in a country like Cuba, where Internet access is still very restricted and controlled by the government, as is the acquisition of foreign newspapers and magazines, and the possibility of listening to short wave radio without interference, to certain specific news programs about our country.
All this makes it increasingly difficult for the vast majority of the population, immersed in the tasks of survival, to know the reality in which we live. We hope some day soon to rescue our country and our culture, a free press, like that when Cuban had true masters in this important and beautiful craft.
The Old Havana Municipal Court suspended the trial of anti-eviction activist Madelín Caraballo Betancourt, scheduled for the morning of July 10 in Havana, according to statements by the independent journalist Dania Virgen García, who was outside the court along with a twenty human rights activists who were there to show solidarity with Caraballo Betancourt.
All the witnesses came forward to testify in favor of Madelín, accused of public disorder offenses, contempt, incitement to crime and resistance under the Criminal Code, and subject to a sentence three years’ deprivation of freedom.
Defense attorney Amelia Rodriguez Cala, requested the release of Madelín Caraballo arguing that the prosecutor’s request does not correspond to the crimes charged, and that the document issued by the prosecutor presents the assessment that Caraballo “meets with people with antisocial behavior with whom she has no occupational relationship” and that “she has appeared, on countless occasions, to be against the revolutionary process.”
The afternoon before the suspension of the trial several activists were arrested and threatened so they wouldn’t support Caraballo Betancourt, among them Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco. The telephones of some of them had their service cut off, including Madelin’s mother, an old woman of 81 years old.
I am not going to refer to the song by Mexican Jose Alfredo Jimenez but to the spirit, the intention that gravitates like smog over the Cuban archipelago and part of the world. Given the person that it concerns, we should be accustomed to that kind of personal publicity stunt, but in that respect he does not cease to surprise us.
Fidel Castro, the ex-president of my country, appears from time to time in the media to intone with his muffled voice like the whisper of an old conspirator and guerrilla the melody “I keep being the king.” First it was Rafael Correa for his retaking possession of the highest post in Ecuador, now he makes public a letter of congratulations to Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo for their interventions in the Petrocaribe Eighth Summit.
One could not miss in the letter “the recognition” of the black Venezuelan udder, now led by the verbose Nicolas Maduro. Throughout this process we have observed Castro I’s fawning over all who have financed and supported in some way his blunders and experiments in his management as head of Cuba.
In the Soviet era they uniformed our children in the Russian style, filled our television with films and cartoons from that country and even made us study the Russian language by radio.
He still shows the same stagnant and immoveable political discourse — for the Cubans — anchored in past decades from which there is no possibility of success, because he leaves behind the school of delay, corruption and lack of liberties that fosters, among other abuses, excessive control.
That’s why they begin with populism and transform themselves into dictators — I wonder if it is something implicit previewed by the strongmen leaders — because only so can they maintain power in spite of their resounding failures and ineptitude.
From the flattering political bubble with its rusted chain, he projects himself as the historic leader of the so-called Cuban revolution, maybe oblivious to the reforms that his brother Castro II is making to his inflexible model, but aware of those who provide the continuity of his last name, family and lineage in order to wax eloquent.
If anyone has any doubt about Castro I’s blandishments, he only has to refer to the end of the letter of yore, dated June 28, 2013. In it he committed a monumental historical error by erasing with a keystroke the known phrase “Until Victory, Always” by Ernesto “Che” Guevara in order to award it to his friend and oil creditor Hugo Chavez who borrowed it, included as a goodbye in his speeches and made use of it repeatedly. So, if Paris is well worth a mass, Venezuelan petroleum that guarantees them the permanence of power, well deserves whatever praise, although it may be an evil thing.
Havana, Cuba, July, www.cubanet.org
Even though the authorities knew from the start the exact place where, in an single onslaught, fanaticism and intolerance had sunk the ship in which 72 Cubans were fleeing the tyranny, the bones of those 41 men, women and children killed remain abandoned at the bottom of the sea.
