Cuba, Where Sheep Are Trained To Venerate Wolves
Op/Ed – 1/31/2012 @ 11:15AM
Cuba, Where Sheep Are Trained To Venerate Wolves
With the death of Cuban dissident Wilman Villar Mendoza, Cuba has lost one of its precious remaining brave souls. While a sputtering dissident movement shows occasional signs of life, reminding us of the hell the Cuban people endure, it casts a pale shadow compared to the fury of the Arab Spring. How is it possible that the Castro brothers have been able to run one of the world's most repressive and dysfunctional gulags for so long without their meeting the fate of the Ceausescus by now?
Their technique of how to introduce communism on an island scale is worth studying.
First, take a geographic area and build a firewall around it. Allow an elite group of monomaniacal thugs to subject the people trapped inside to five decades of brutal repression, privation, confiscation, and humiliation, all bolstered by relentless propaganda designed to convince victims and observers alike that this is necessary for the greater glory of the revolution.
Second, enlist an army of global intellectuals to manufacture a smokescreen of respectability for a governing philosophy that extols the virtues of equality and sacrifice, despite the fact that it delivers the equality of poverty and the sacrifice of self respect. Build a few Potemkin village medical facilities to fool the gullible into believing some noble purpose or higher achievement motivates the endeavor.
Third, make it is risky, but not impossible, for anyone who possesses the ambition and courage to rebel to escape instead.
Finally, marinate for two generations as you chase off the best and the brightest and observe what happens to the character of the people that survive.
Welcome to Cuba, where the human spirit has been so thoroughly crushed that a nation of sheep passively waits for their predatory wolves to die of old age, safely in their beds, not a hand raised against them.
Given the Cuban people's apparent resignation to their own fate, is it any surprise that the rest of us just shake our heads in wonder and go about our business, our political leaders impotently decrying the occasional human rights outrage that escapes the censors and makes it into the news?
When the nightmare runs its course and the complete story is finally told, there will be no redeeming chapters.
But what about the lower-than-average infant mortality and longer life expectancy touted by the Castro regime's boosters, if such statistics can be believed? Isn't living longer an end that justifies the means? Think about what living longer implies if you're forced to live under tyranny. America's founders—and indeed, the leaders of the Central and South American independence movements—preferred death to that sort of life, and said so with their words and deeds.
What about the famously low crime rate, where a midnight stroller is safer in Havana than in Washington, DC? Yes, violent crime is a government monopoly in a police state. Plus, in a country that has so little, there is nothing much to steal. After all, how many iPhones can get ripped off when nobody can afford one and posting the wrong thing on Twitter can earn you a visit from state security?
It'll be interesting to see what happens to a demoralized people after Castroism breathes its final breath. A new pack of wolves might try to keep the workers' paradise going, but at this point even the most devoted cadres may well be weary of the experiment. Look for them to enrich themselves by "privatizing" the economy Russian oligarch-style, as they carve up the island to remodel it into the Caribbean resort destination it has every right to be—so long as the "right" people profit.
A brief vintage car export market will likely open up as the world's largest living auto museum sells off its collection. Prostitution will return, or more precisely come out of the shadows, perhaps along with the revival of what once was a thriving pornography industry. It's hard to imagine a manufacturing base springing up to take advantage of the cheap labor as this needs to be coupled with a work ethic, something the Castro regime has made every effort to destroy. Surely, some unique comparative advantage will come to the fore. But having tolerated the intolerable for so long, will the Cuban people know what to do with their newfound freedom once liberated from their chains?
That is the experiment that awaits the return of capitalism.
One can imagine a scenario in which an influx of returning expats, rich in both human and financial capital, blow past the locals as they reintroduce the courage, entrepreneurship, and work ethic they took with them when they escaped. A two-tier society could easily emerge, with returnees and their children lording their success over the bewildered and resentful locals. Petty theft likely will make a comeback, so expect a vigorous market for alarm and security services.
Cubans who have managed to get an advanced education under Castro, like the many doctors staffing its medical system, will probably do fine, though many might move to the U.S. seeking better pay, filling our looming doctor shortage. Cigar exports will spike, although once Cuban cigars lose their naughty cachet they will have to compete with many excellent products produced by Cuba's neighbors. And the music industry will thrive once it is coupled with international distribution—some talents just cannot be stamped out.
But what will happen to the rest of the populace? Many might go to work as the cooks, dishwashers, waiters, and hotel maids that will surely be in demand when Club Med comes to town. They'll be much better off than they are now. But don't expect that to stop the mainstream media from running nostalgic stories about the equality that should have, would have, and could have been had Marxism only been implemented properly.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2012/01/31/cuba-where-sheep-are-trained-to-venerate-wolves/
China, Cuba and the espionage alliance against the U.S.
Reflections in the Dragon's eye:
China, Cuba and the espionage alliance against the U.S.Author – Toby Westerman Tuesday, January 10, 2012
China's intelligence operations are the "core arena" for achieving the superpower status which the Communist elite in Beijing so passionately desires. Central to its spy activities is the island of Cuba which is strategically located for the interception of U.S. military and civilian satellite communications. China's spy services also cooperates closely with Havana's own world-class intelligence services.
Inexplicably, the U.S. mass media are ignoring both the existence of the spy base as well as the Cuban-Chinese alliance which is responsible for it.
International News Analysis Today is challenging that media silence in an exclusive interview with counterintelligence expert Chris Simmons, who explains why China needs Cuba and details the dangers to the United States in Havana's espionage partnership with Beijing.
Simmons is a retired Counterintelligence Special Agent with 28 years service in the Army, Army Reserve, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and has testified on the subject of Cuban espionage before members of U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Simmons notes that China has the largest espionage network in the world with an estimated two million career staff intelligence officers, making Beijing's spy services larger than the intelligence operations of all the other nations in the world combined.
While Americans are well aware of China's financial might, its espionage activities get relatively little attention.
"We are too often distracted by China's economic gains. For China, however, espionage and economics are tied hand in hand, and China has the largest appetite for U.S. secrets in the world," Simmons told International News Analysis Today.
The members of China's intelligence services, both its officers and those recruited as agents by those officers, tend to be ethnic Chinese, Simmons observed. This ethnic orientation of China's espionage services limits the available avenues of access to American security information. China's spy alliance with Cuba, however, assists China in overcoming this potential handicap.
Cuban penetration of U.S. society augments Chinese efforts and makes an extremely valuable contribution to Beijing's overall espionage effort. Cuba's human intelligence operations give needed perspective to information China receives both from its own operatives and from electronic spy bases operating in Cuba.
"That is why China needs Cuba," Simmons stated.
The kind of restricted information gathered electronically in Cuba covers military, economic, and political affairs, and ranges from how foreign policy is determined to indications of troop and fleet movements to significant details on important political figures.
The value Beijing places upon the information acquired via Havana can be seen in the October 2011visit to the island by Gen Guo Boxiong, Vice Chairman of China's Central Military Commission. Guo's presence in Cuba underscored that China has a special military commitment in addition to a sizable economic investment in Cuba.
China is in the process of replacing Cuba's aging Soviet-era military equipment, purportedly supplying only "non-lethal" aid. The U.S. prohibits "lethal" assistance to Cuba, and Beijing is risking U.S. sanctions if that prohibition is known to be violated. The true volume and nature of Chinese military aid to Cuba is, of course, difficult to assess.
General Guo's trip to Cuba follows a December 2010 military agreement, signed by top ranking PLA General Fu Quanyou, insuring needed military aid to the Castro regime.
Simmons pointed out that China's electronic intelligence activities on Cuba are particularly interesting, because China claims they don't exist.
"Officially they are not there," said Simmons, commenting upon Beijing's denials that it has electronic spying capabilities in Cuba.The island of Cuba has been used as an electronic spy base for decades
The island of Cuba has been used as an electronic spy base for decades, going back to the Soviet construction and use of the facility at Lourdes. The construction of the base at Lourdes was hard to miss as the concrete buildings and large antennas appeared on the Cuban landscape.
The Russians pulled out of Lourdes in 2001, much to the relief of many in Washington and the expressed displeasure of Fidel Castro and his regime. Simmons stated that Moscow scored a propaganda victory in the U.S. media and among the U.S. political establishment with its abandonment of Lourdes.
The reality of the matter, however, was much different than appearances seemed to indicate, Simmons told International News Analysis Today.
When the Russians left Cuba, they also left a well-trained Cuban electronic intelligence battalion functioning on the island at the base in Bejucal, as well as an understanding with Havana to share intelligence information important to Moscow.
As a result, Russia saved millions of dollars which had been spent on the Lourdes base, Moscow avoided Congressional censure and obtained important economic cooperation from the United States, all at the same time still receiving important intelligence information on the U.S. from Cuba.
"It was a win-win situation for the Russians," Simmons stated.50-100 Chinese intelligence officers are at Bejucal gathering and interpreting information
The base at Bejucal, however, is still operating. While the Cubans technically run it, some 50-100 Chinese intelligence officers are at Bejucal gathering and interpreting information, according to Simmons.
In sharp contrast to Moscow, there is no political cost to China.
"It took us years to find out they [the Communist Chinese] were operating there. We found out through émigrés, defectors, and travelers to Cuba," Simmons told INA Today.
Unlike the Soviets, China has not constructed a facility and only with the greatest of difficulty can the Chinese be connected with Cuban electronic spy base activities. In this way, China can plausibly deny both the use of the base and the transference of information from its Havana embassy to Beijing, Simmons informed INA Today.
The Chinese even took pains to cover the expected increase in radio traffic from the Chinese embassy in Havana to Beijing as the Bejucal base, and smaller bases across the island which are connected with it, became more active.
In anticipation of a greater volume of radio communication activity between Cuba and China, Beijing gradually increased useless or "dummy" radio traffic with Havana. These "dummy" messages were later replaced, at least in part, with actual intelligence information generated from the Bejucal facility and its sub-stations as they became an important Chinese information source.
As a result, the U.S. has difficulty determining the "spikes" of real intelligence information within the broadcasts of "dummy" transmissions coming from the Chinese embassy in Havana, Simmons said.
The eye of the Chinese dragon is upon the United States. We do not know what information is coming from bases that supposedly do not exist, but Simmons commented on China's military and commercial investment in Communist Cuba and declared that, "Whatever they [the Chinese] are paying, they are getting a steal."
Chris Simmons is a security consultant and is author of the soon to be released novel, The Spy's Wife.
We Were So Young… / Jeovany J. Vega
We Were So Young… / Jeovany J. VegaJeovany J. Vega, Translator: Unstated
Helping hands sent me these words that made me think. Is this speech still valid. Will its author be accused of being a counterrevolutionary? For having demanded exactly those rights thousands of Cubans were treated as such, we were punished and stigmatized, over the 50 years that followed. Let's see:
*Fragments of a speech delivered by Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, in the Plaza of the City of Camagüey, January 4, 1959.
"… There is freedom of the press now, because everyone in the world knows what as long as there is one revolutionary standing there will be freedom of the press in Cuba (Applause). Whomever says freedom of the press, says freedom of assembly; whomever says freedom of assembly, says freedom to freely choose their own leaders (Applause). When we speak of the right to freely choose, we are referring not only to the president and other officials, but also to the directors; the right of workers to choose their own directors (Applause). When we speak of a right after the triumph of the Revolution, we are talking about all rights; rights are rights because they cannot be taken away, because the people have secured them in advance.
When a leader acts honestly, when a leader is inspired by good intentions, he does not have to fear any freedom…" (Applause)
"… I am sure that Cubans are not content simply to be free in their homeland. I am sure that Cubans also want to enjoy their homeland. I am sure they want to partake of bread and also of the wealth produced in their homeland.
How are we going to say, "this is our homeland" if, of that homeland, we have nothing, "my homeland," but my homeland gives me nothing, in my homeland I am dying of hunger. This is not a homeland! It will be a homeland for a few, but it will not be a homeland for the people (Applause.) Homeland cannot mean only a place where one can shout, talk, and walk without being killed; homeland is a place where one can live, homeland is a place where one can work and earn an honest living, and what's more, make what is a fair wage for their word (Applause). Homeland is a place where citizens are not exploited, because to exploit the citizenry, to take what belongs to them, to rob them of what they have, that is not homeland.
It is precisely the tragedy of our people that we have not had a homeland. And the best proof, the best evidence we have that we do not have a homeland is that tens of thousands of the children of this country leave for other country, to be able to live, because they don't have a homeland. And they are not all those who want to leave, they are all those who can leave. And that's the truth and you know it. (Shouts)
Thus, we have to fix the Republic. There is something wrong here or everything is wrong (Shouts of "Everything!") but we need to fix the Republic, you and us (Shouts), and we have to start somewhere…"
End of quotation.
Could the Comandante have been mistaken to give this speech? At what point did he deny giving that speech during the advance of the Rebel Army on the capital? When and why did he abandon that path? Then everything seemed possible. These words were directed to a people who only aspired to be assured to honest work to feed their children, to be allowed to live decently, to leave behind the material and spiritual poverty with the fruit of their labor; who wished to be represented by political leaders and not to betray their authentic working class interests; to have a home, however humble, to ensure a minimum level of comfort and security to their family; to enjoy the wealth generated by them without petty prohibitions humiliating them at the doors of hotels denied to them; to count on an ethical press, uncensored, that didn't remain silent before any ignominy by divine decree of any party; to stop living in fear and lies; to conquer a Rule of Law that guaranteed that there was no power above the Law that could trample ordinary citizens with impunity, and to be able to live in dignity in their homeland without being forced to beg for their prosperity in other countries in the world.
January 4 2012
The Castros and the Kims: Historic Parallels / Iván García
The Castros and the Kims: Historic Parallels / Iván GarcíaIván García, Translator: Unstated
Autocrats are clones of the same litter. They're not separated by ideologies, what joins them is an unhealthy ambition for power. Each and every one of modern dictators consider themselves enlightened. Types essential on the national map. Founding Fathers. Irreplaceable. They could not be more narcissistic. Egos more than enough. The nation is their private estate.
They arise in periods of bad governance, economic crises, wars of decolonization and political instability. They usually have a foolproof formula under their arm to catapult the country forward. When in the embryonic state they are very popular. Humans need icons. Heroes. Heavy-handed leaders.
Then the despots come through the back door. In this 21st century, with Internet, social networking and digitization, and there are few left. You can count them on your fingers. In Equatorial Guinea, an unpresentable man named Teodoro Obiang has all the makings of a dictator.
The monarchies of the Middle East and Morocco are another variation of dictatorships. Natural dynasties. By blood, the throne belongs to a family. And there is nothing, or little, you can do about it. Already in the 18th century in Europe there were monarchies, but after the French Revolution republican forms arose and the kings and princes were mere decorative objects. Dedicated to works of charity or creating foundations. Certainly one of them, the son of King Juan Carlos, Iñaki Urdangarin, is embroiled in a corruption scandal.
There are people who consider themselves superior intellectually to lead the destiny of a nation. It may be a gene to be discovered.
The guy with ways of a dictator knows the league. He does not like to be out of power. Neither stands. They make up laws, such as Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega, for indefinite re-election. The reckless one of Barina went to the executive for votes. Those same votes would put him back in the house.
Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung took over the throne by bullets. Castro overthrew the illegal and tyrannical government of Fulgencio Batista. Sung was boosted by Moscow. Military preparations in the USSR. A golden age for Stalin after World War II where the map began to change colors and the Red Army imposed Marxist socialism by force of their T-34 tanks.
It has always intrigued me whether these two Third World autocrats had among their purposes to remain in power. Perhaps they move, for a time, fair ideals to build a decent way of life for its citizens. But betting on the wrong horse.
The communism of Marx has been inefficient everywhere in the world where it has been established. Never mind that the country has wealth or not. Within a few years, the economy and the nation go adrift. It is, no doubt, an unnatural system. That goes against the human soul. A slapstick.
An autocrat never acknowledges he's wrong. Right there is where their pathological cases are slated to be part of medical studies. Castro, for example, is never wrong. Others are wrong.
Kim Il Sung was the only God allowed in North Korea. He turned the nation into a cult. His ego was so overwhelmed that he invented a new philosophy, Juche.
Yes, because some dictators want to go down in history as thinkers and righteous men. Gaddafi, the jackal of Tripoli, between cocaine and sexual abuse of the young, gave birth to a pamphlet called The Green Book.
Fidel Castro wasn't given to outline a new social philosophy. But he dipped his oar into all fields. He is the most knowledgeable about cattle, sugarcane, bananas, dams, cyclones … And baseball: the preparation of the Cuban team to play against the Baltimore Orioles in 1999 was designed by the commander. He was master of everything and the student of nothing.
Kim Il Sung idiot of the unhappy Koreans with a cult of personality more potent than a narcotic. Statues everywhere and him dressed in grey with the stamp of a leader on the lapel. After these autocrats a change doesn't necessarily come.
In North Korea Kim Jong Il, the son of Sung. Another madman. North Korean media said, in two years he wrote 6 operas and read 180,000 books. He used to play 11 holes of golf on one drive. His writings were released daily by the state radio. It is said that such was his passion for film, he kept 20,000 films under lock and key, and later, maybe in his cups, he ordered the kidnap of a couple of directors of South Korea to make a personal film.
He liked to eat lobster with silver chopsticks while his people starved and fell like flies on the streets of Pyongyang. A rotten collection.
He ordered the kidnapping of Japanese citizens. Downed planes in flight. And to prove he was a tough guy when he came to the throne in 1993 he ordered a terrorist act in Rangoon that cost the lives of 17 South Koreans.
Not content with his mischief, he produced half a dozen nuclear bombs. He made North Korea a rogue state. After his death on December 17, he'd hand-picked its favorite son Kim Jong Un to continue the communist dynasty. The child knows little: 28 years, fat, and fan of the NBA.
The parallels between Castro and Kim are remarkable at the time of passing power to his family. In Cuba, now, General Raul Castro (another hobby of autocrats is to get many stars on the epaulet), rides to the rescue and attempts to repair the damage to the economy.
But Castro II, 80, is as old as his brother, 85. On the island, the average age of life for men is 76 years. Both are past it. The question is whether in these parts after the two die, their offspring and hand-picked relatives will touch the presidential chair.
We must wait. Meanwhile, Cuba was among the few countries that declared three days of national mourning for the death "of Comrade Kim Jong Il." Autocrats are part of a club. They play in another league.
Video: 1986. Fidel Castro visits the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. At the foot of the stairs of the plane he is received by Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il's father and the grandfather of Kim Jong Un.
January 5 2012
The Circus is in Town! CELAC is Born / Ernesto Morales Licea
The Circus is in Town! CELAC is Born / Ernesto Morales LiceaErnesto Morales Licea
That the first summit of the "Community of Latin American and Caribbean States," the newly born CELAC, would be a quaint circus where some of the worst habits of our part of Latin America would be on display was well-known. We didn't know the dimensions of the tent, the variety of numbers that its protagonists would perform, and the rare specimens that would make up the circus acts.
Who didn't count on the star of the cartel being the bloated Venezuelan president, whom not even the terrible cancer cells can bring to his senses?
Hugo Chavez has managed to establish himself as the official harlequin of all attending the conclave. Suffice to recall that the Iberoamerican Summit of 2007, where he was ordered to shut up by King Juan Carlos I who'd had enough of the leader's verbal incontinence; or the Trinidad and Tobago Summit of 2009 where, in one of those act supposedly symbolic but in fact ridiculous, he presented Barack Obama with a copy of "The Open Veins of Latin America."
(It was never clear if the gesture had a symbolic purpose or if was just a boost to the economy of his comrade Galeano, the book's author; after the git to Obama "The Open Veins of Latin America" moved up on Amazon's bestseller list from position 60,280 to position 10. A commercial miracle.)
Now, a Chavez of inexhaustible rusticity is one-man band: he described with hand movements and delightful onomatopoeia ("Rrrrrrrrrrr") how he had looked inside the Cuban scanners; he presented Argentine president Cristina Fernandez with a gigantic painting of her deceased husband and former president Nestor Kirchner, (that he himself painted), which even without the triple squint represented by the artist was, per se, in bad taste; and to put the icing in the cake: he named as provisional leader of CELAC a Chilean president who had arrived in Caracas with Sebastian for a name, and sent him back to Santiago rebaptized (again, by he himself) as Samuel.
Sebastian "Samuel" Pinera is, in my judgment, a figure of major importance this time. And not because of his heroic and Hollywoodesque rescue of the miners. But I will leave that for X paragraphs below.
Does anyone doubt other proved comic incidents would season the meeting that, according to figures from the always nebulous government in Caracas, cost Venezuela some 25 million dollars?
Appearing there was the sullen president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, in a Venezuelan army jacket that more than an attack on the morale of the Uruguayan army was a crime against aesthetics. Under the most pleasant acts of Mujica, with his everlasting affect of a friendly armadillo, we can include the words of the Uruguayan senator Ope Pasquet in a radio broadcast on El Espectador: "The image of the president is the image of the country, and the image of the president dressed liked this is the image of a backwater."
Among the endemic species impossible to ignore at such a Summit was Fidel Castro. The old guy was there. Through the mouth of his brother.
As an apology for being such a teeny thing, such a tiny little President, Raul Castro stepped foot in Venezuela and excused himself, "He who should really be here is Fidel. He is the one who deserves it." and of course he said it with that voice of his, in the higher octaves.
During his speech at the summit, a speech that was written badly and read worse, Raul Castro had to interrupt his words and ask if the gunshots he heard were Chavez's war against the mosquitoes. A very refined sense of humor. No, the General has no one to tell him that those cannonades silenced by Chavez's acolytes were the Venezuelan people banging on pots and pans demanding food.
And someone for whom food is a first priority, is the graceful Evo with whom I share a last name. Morales swore that the new community, without the presence of the perturbing United States, would be able to debate "how to deal with the energy crisis, the economy and the hunger ravaging the countries of the region."
Yes, Evo is concerned about feeding his people. So to do this he has taken chicken off the Bolivian menu; he knows, he knows very well that chicken hormones create baldness and homosexuality, as immortalized in another little speech, and this cannot be allowed among his comrades of the coca and the poncho.
However, perhaps the least visible and at the same time most scandalous act, a number subtly presented, without the spotlights of the spectacle, was another. It was that starred in by the democratic presidents, decidedly distant from the populists and their totalitarian derivatives, those such as Sebastián Piñera, Felipe Calderón, Juan Manuel Santos, and Ricardo Martinelli, reunited with the repulsive ruling class of Daniel Ortega, Raul Castro, Evo Morales Rafael Correa and the host, Hugo Chavez.
I definitely cannot find a sensible explanation.
What Latin American Unity are they talking to me about, that functions as a framework for cooperation that can exist between countries led by impresarios of the center-right such as Piñera and the Panamanian Martinelli, and those run by individuals from the fierce left with authoritarian mentalities such as Raul Castro and Daniel Ortega?
Still worse: I can't believe that none of these statesmen gathered at the 1st CELAC Summit ignored that this organization, conceived in minute detail by the Chavez brain, is not pursuing, even from afar, an economic purpose. Before, long before, it has a political objective: distancing itself from the only two countries in the Americas that were invited to join the group The United States and Canada.
If, as is an open secret, the principal directive of CELAC was to dilute the Organization of American States (OAS); if only to supplant the OAS by another community with more respect and credibility were its essence, I think that I myself would have signed on to create it. It would be about burying once and for all an organization dull and useless like few others, whose death throes would not trouble me too much.
But, to give shape to a CELAC whose economic and strategic framework is that of Chavez and Castro, establishing a distance from the United States that frankly could be defined as hypocritical (even the Phoenix capsules that rescued the 33 miners were made by the Chilean Army working with the United States' NASA), seems to me to be an ethical and moral disaster unparalleled in recent history.
Ugly history begins to demarcate the entrepreneur Piñera, one of the politicians with the most democratic vocation and liberal thinking in the whole region, if he has no qualms in leading a ruling troika of CELAC whose other two members are none other than Hugo Chávez and Raúl Castro. From the time I was small I learned what happens to someone who sidles up to a bad seed: tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are.
CELAC's Big Top rose in Caracas, amusing many, surprising others with its bizarre actions. But having dropped the colorful mantle and started up the ruckus, a strange sensation of Latin American farce, of the populism of some interwoven with the opportunism of others, left the too attentive audience with a frozen smile.
Contextualizing and broadening the spectrum of the most famous phrase of the disenchanted Peruvian, it seems that for too long we've continued to ask ourselves, like that delicious character of Vargas Llosa, at what moment in time did we fuck over the region.
(Originally written for Martí Noticias)
December 7 2011
Cuba’s Workers After the Revolution
Cuba's Workers After the RevolutionDecember 7, 2011By SAMUEL FARBER
(Part two of six excerpts from "Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959" )
HAVANA TIMES, Dec 7 — The general strike that took place immediately after Batista fled the country in the early hours of January 1, 1959, was not a class but a national action called by Fidel Castro and the 26th of July Movement. Practically the whole population supported the strike, including the Cuban bourgeoisie and the middle classes, which were still enjoying their "honeymoon" with the revolutionary leaders.
The January 1959 strike was the rebels' insurance policy against any possible coup aimed at preventing them from achieving a total victory. The strike became a national holiday when for a whole week tens of thousands of people lined up to greet Castro and the rebel army in their slow procession from the east of the island toward Havana.
Soon after, a huge wave of labor conflicts and strikes erupted throughout the country, expressing the pent-up economic and political frustrations of the Cuban working class during the Batista years, as well as the great expectations aroused by the revolution.
Among many labor conflicts, there were work stoppages in twenty-one sugar mills due to wage demands. Unemployed railway workers and workers who had lost their jobs at a closed paper mill near Havana went on a hunger strike. Employees of the Compañía Cubana de Electricidad, the US-owned national electrical utility, declared a slowdown to demand a 20 percent increase in wages, and six hundred workers who had been dismissed by the company in the previous two years demonstrated at the Presidential Palace to demand their reinstatement.7
Fidel Castro and the revolutionary government tried to solve the myriad labor problems that confronted them during this early period with a clear and strong tilt in favor of the workers. Measures such as substantial reduction in urban rents decreed in March 1959 contributed to the development of the distributive radicalism that characterized the early period of the revolution.
Castro, like any other intelligent observer, must have been aware that such radicalism was the keystone for growing mass support for the revolutionary government. On various occasions, as I indicated in chapter 1, he expressed his concern with the type of consciousness prevailing among the working class. Perhaps anticipating rougher times ahead, Castro tried to "educate" the masses to trust and rely on the regime rather than simply supporting a government that was delivering the goods.
Castro's government, very much afraid of losing control of the working class, let alone afraid of economic instability, tried to discourage strikes. The government convinced the new revolutionary union movement led by David Salvador, a former Communist who had become a 26th of July Movement leader in the clandestine struggle against Batista, to go along with its efforts in this direction.
For their part, the Communists still had an arms-length relationship with the government and tried to push it in a more radical direction. While the PSP voluntarily avoided calling for or encouraging strikes even in the earliest days of the revolution, the party took the position that "strikes, when they are necessary and just, help rather than harm the Revolution."8
The friction between Fidel Castro and the PSP increased when several Communists reportedly encouraged a few instances of "spontaneous" land seizures. In response, Castro made clear in a televised interview on February 19, 1959, that any persons involved in seizing land without waiting for the Agrarian Reform Law would be engaging in criminal conduct and lose their right to any benefits from the law.9 Three days later the Communists retreated and agreed "that it was necessary to put a stop to the anarchic seizures of land."10
Shortly after Batista fled the country, union halls throughout the island were occupied by revolutionary trade unionists of various stripes, with those associated with the 26th of July Movement most numerous and influential. These new leaders quickly proceeded to purge all the supporters of Eusebio Mujal—the "Mujalista" labor bureaucrats who had collaborated with the Batista dictatorship.
A vigorous organizing campaign was quickly launched that greatly enlarged the already sizable, although bureaucratic and corrupt, union movement. In the spring, every single local union in the country held elections, and these were followed by elections at the regional and national level. This turned out to be the most important exercise in autonomous grassroots democracy during the revolutionary period.
The candidates associated with the 26th of July Movement emerged as the overwhelming winners, and the Communists managed to obtain only some 10 percent of the union posts (some of the elected 26th of July Movement candidates did have Communist sympathies). In any case, the outcomes of the spring union elections were remarkably consistent with the results of the union survey the PSP had conducted in 1956.
The election results prodded the Communists into putting a great deal of effort to increasing their influence in the organized working class, which, as one might expect, provoked a great deal of conflict with their political opponents inside the unions. Nevertheless, the elections of delegates in early November for the Tenth Congress of the CTC (Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba, Confederation of Cuban Workers) that was to take place later that month produced results very similar to those of the spring elections.
Once the congress began, it was clear that the Communist delegation would take a drubbing and would be excluded from the leadership bodies of the labor confederation. At this point, Fidel Castro intervened and a different leadership slate was approved. While well-known Communist unionists were kept off the slate, the so-called unitarian elements of the 26th of July Movement, who were friendly to the Communists and were led by Jesús Soto were given a predominant and controlling role.
After the congress concluded, the Labor Ministry, under Fidel Castro's control, assisted by the Communist union leaders and the "unitarian" elements friendly to them, began to purge a large number of trade union leaders who had resisted Communist influence, accusing them of being "Mujalistas."11 The purge took place by means of purge commissions and carefully staged and controlled union meetings instead of new elections.
About 50 percent of the labor leaders, most of whom belonged to the 26th of July Movement and had been freely elected in the spring 1959 local and national union elections, were removed; many were persecuted and jailed as well.
Veteran PSP cadres and their "unitarian" collaborators took over those leadership positions. Castro and his revolutionary government enjoyed such great support in 1959 and 1960 that any labor leader they chose could have easily been removed from office had there been new elections; any slate of candidates supported by Castro and his government would undoubtedly have won.12
However, from the Cuban leader's long-term perspective, new elections would have allowed the unions to retain their autonomy. The purges allowed the unions to be turned into his policy tools at a point when he had begun to move politically toward the Soviet Union and the Cuban Communists.
In August 1961, less than two years after the fateful Tenth Congress of the CTC, the government approved new legislation that brought the nature and function of Cuban trade unions into alignment with those of the Soviet bloc. According to the new law, the main objectives of the unions were to help in the attainment of the national production and development plans; to promote efficiency and expansion of social and public services; to improve the administration of all sectors of the economy; and to carry out political education.13
A few years later, a CTC Declaration of Principles and Union Statutes further elaborated on the role and duties of the Cuban unions as the government's agents to impose production discipline. The unions had to organize socialist emulation and unpaid labor; strictly apply labor legislation, work quotas, wage scales, and labor discipline; promote an increase of output; improve the quality of production; reduce costs and maintain equipment; develop political consciousness; and expand recreational, sports, and cultural facilities.14
Eventually, the unions were reorganized into fewer national unions such that all workers in a given industry, regardless of their job description, belonged to the same industrial unions. Membership in the unions was supposedly "voluntary," a convenient fiction accepted by some foreign observers who somehow failed to notice and acknowledge the enormous coercive pressures to join the "mass organizations" of a one-party state.15
The Eleventh CTC Congress, which took place in November 1961, could not have been more different from the congress two years earlier. Unanimity had now replaced controversy. With no contest allowed for the leading positions at stake, all leaders were elected by acclamation. Not surprisingly, old Stalinist leader Lázaro Peña regained the position of secretary general that he had last held in the forties under Batista.
Of the seventeen national union leaders in 1959, only five remained in the twelve-member leadership group "elected" at the conclusion of the congress. In order to save production costs, the Eleventh Congress also agreed to give up gains that many unions had won before the revolution.
It approved the eight-hour day, thereby adding work time to those union members who had already gained the seven-hour day. The nine days of sick pay, previously paid automatically, would be paid only to those who could prove that they were actually sick. The extra month's pay as an end-of-the-year bonus was abolished.
Although an abstract case could be made for the desirability of at least some of these changes in a new socialist order, here they were imposed from above with little or no discussion. There was no open confrontation with the opposing views actually held by a large number of Cuban workers, who could not openly express them, nor organize in support of what they thought.
Undoubtedly, the benefits that the workers had otherwise obtained from the revolution along with the then-prevailing revolutionary fervor in the country greatly facilitated the government's ability to establish its vision of the role of workers and unions under its version of socialism.
Even the dramatic change of leadership carried out at the 1961 congress did not put an end to the process of erasing all remaining traces of independent unionism. By the end of the Twelfth CTC Congress in 1966, only one of the members of the 1961 national committee remained. Of the twenty-five other heads of labor federations in 1961, only one remained in office by 1966.
After 1961, several top leaders of the CTC had been removed and others appointed by the party's political bureau, not by the CTC itself,16 without even the slightest regard for formality and appearances. In any case, the radical change in leadership personnel within such a short period of time was a faithful reflection of the no less drastic change that had taken place in the nature and function of the Cuban unions. In fact, the revolutionary leaders were politically quite upfront about the changes that they had established in the unions.
Vice Premier Raúl Castro declared that "yesterday it was necessary [for unions] to struggle continuously in order to gain certain advantages, to obtain a little more from the profits being made by the magnates. Today the great task confronting the CTC and the unions is to increase production, recruit voluntary workers, tighten labor discipline, push for higher productivity, and improve the quality of what is produced."17 }
In what amounted to a veritable "educational" campaign, similar pronouncements were continually being made throughout the early sixties by "new" Communist leaders such as Fidel Castro as well as by the members of the Communist "old guard" such as Blas Roca.18
As one might expect, the character of collective bargaining itself also changed. The Ministry of Labor published a model collective-bargaining agreement in 1962 with instructions on how to implement it throughout the various sectors of the economy. This model agreement followed closely the Soviet regulations on collective bargaining published in 1947.19
Regarding the right to strike, during the first five years after the victory of the revolution in 1959, various laws were enacted to regulate labor conflicts. The Ley de Justicia Laboral (Law of Labor Justice), enacted in 1964 and put into effect at the beginning of 1965,20 did not mention strikes, following the Stalinist theory that since the workers were the owners of the means of production they could not strike against themselves.
In fact, the right to strike had been explicitly mentioned only in the regulations that were in force until 1960. In June 1961, Ernesto "Che" Guevara had put forward the notion that "the Cuban workers have to get used to living in a collectivist regime and therefore cannot strike."21 Therefore, it was hardly surprising that the 1964 law did not mention strikes and neither did the "socialist" 1976 constitution, even though the progressive prerevolutionary constitution of 1940 had explicitly declared the constitutional standing of the right to strike in its article 71.
Indeed, the main overall purpose of the 1964 law was to strengthen labor discipline and increase productivity. The law singled out for punishment not only those workers who committed economic crimes like fraud but also those who displayed signs of laziness, vagrancy, absenteeism, tardiness, foot-dragging, or lack of respect for superiors, and who damaged equipment.
The law paired violations with three grades of punishment: light, moderate, and serious penalties. Light penalties ranged from a simple warning to a small wage cut. Moderate punishment included a major wage cut or transfer to a different job in the same work location. Serious penalties ranged from transfer to a different location, which could be far from family members, to loss of employment.22
In mid-1969, a little over ten years after the victory of the revolution, the minister of labor announced that the government was preparing regulations for the "labor file" or identity card carried by every Cuban worker. The official unions did not discuss the original draft; they were eventually given some input into how the regulations were to be administered after they became law in September 1969.
The labor file, or the "workers' biography," as the minister of labor called it, would include the workers' merits, such as, for example, overfulfillment of work quotas or overtime work without pay, as well as demerits such as absenteeism, negligence in handling equipment, and nonfulfillment of work quotas. The "labor file" would also record any sanction or punishment applied to the worker by any of the relevant disciplinary bodies and courts.23
Notwithstanding all the mechanisms of control that were introduced in the sixties to make Cuban workers more productive, the government did not feel they were effective enough. For one thing, absenteeism grew throughout the late sixties and reached some 20 percent of the labor force by late 1970. On October 15, 1970, Minister of Labor Jorge Risquet, who had been politically formed in the ranks of the old Communist Party, proposed resolution number 425, which in effect was a vagrancy or antiloafing law that called for the placement of nonproductive workers in labor camps.
From the government's point of view, this was preferable to imprisonment since the labor camps would achieve the double purpose of contributing to production and simultaneously segregating "lazy" people and preventing them from influencing other workers. Before becoming law, the proposal was presented for public discussion, supposedly to obtain the workers' opinions but in reality to engage in a one-sided government media campaign in support of the objectives and procedures of the proposed law. The campaign succeeded in incorporating some 100,000 men into production, which was after all one of the central objectives of the proposed legislation.
Finally, on March 15, 1971, the government enacted the Law against Laziness. According to this law, all men between the ages of seventeen and sixty had to put in a full workday. Anyone who missed or left work for fifteen days or more without justification or who had been reprimanded by his work council at least twice would be classified as being in a "precriminal state of loafing," while recurrent absentees would be charged with the "crime of loafing."
Sanctions ranged from house arrest to internment in a rehabilitation center doing forced labor for a period ranging from one to two years. The law also lengthened the incarceration period and even authorized the use of capital punishment for serious crimes such as "economic sabotage." In all cases, the courts were to consider such factors as age, the record of labor and social activities of the accused, and the personal and family factors that may have affected the behavior of the guilty party.24 We do not know the extent to which the law was implemented in practice.
At the time, it was noted that the law against absenteeism and "loafers" had actually been in the works for a considerable amount of time before it was proposed in late 1970 and enacted into law in the spring of 1971. The preamble to the law had actually been written as early as 1968, but the law had not been decreed then because government leaders thought that certain prerequisites had to be fulfilled before it could be effectively implemented.
According to the Cuban minister of labor, these prerequisites included (1) the total eradication of the private sector, excepting small farms, making it impossible to hide the person's employment status, (2) creation of personnel records for every worker, which were inaugurated in 1969, and (3) a census of the population in order to have exact information on manpower by region, zone, and street block.25
Samuel Farber
Footnotes:
7. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 1196.
8. Blas Roca, "Huelgas o 'no huelgas,'" Hoy, 10 febrero 1959, 1.
9. Fidel Castro, Discursos para la historia (Havana: Imprenta Emilio Gall, 1959), 1:137.
10. "Declaraciones del PSP: El PSP pide a los campesinos que impidan pro si mismo las ocupaciones de tierras; Considera innecesaria y peligrosa la Ley 87," Hoy, 22 febrero 1959, 1.
11. If such a claim had been correct, Mujal would have been shown to have far greater support in the union movement than the government's supporters had ever given him credit for! Regrettably, some social scientists studying Cuba have accepted the Cuban government's claims at face value. See, for example, Linda Fuller, Work and Democracy in Socialist Cuba (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 47–56.
12. Marifeli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course and Legacy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 72–73.
13. Law 962, August 1, 1961, in Gaceta Oficial (special edition), August 3, 1961, cited in Roberto E. Hernández and Carmelo Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," in Revolutionary Change in Cuba, ed. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), 212.
14. "Declaración de principios y estatutos de la CTC," El Mundo, July 6, 1966, cited in Hernández and Mesa-Lago in "Labor Organization and Wages," 212.
15. A good example of this kind of inability to understand the reality of Cuban labor is to be found again in Fuller, Work and Democracy in Socialist Cuba, 43–44.
16. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution, 271–72.
17. Raúl Castro, Revolución, January 23, 1963, cited in Hernández and Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 212–13.
18. Fidel Castro, "Los buenos y los malos dirigentes obreros," speech of June 15, 1960, reproduced in Diario Granma, 10 junio 2010, www.granma.co.cu/2010/06/10/nacional/artic03.html; Blas Roca, "El nuevo papel de los sindicatos bajo el socialismo," Hoy, 28 febrero 1962, reproduced in Granma, 16 junio 2010, 3; and Blas Roca, "La disciplina en el trabajo," published as "Aclaraciones de Blas Roca," Hoy, 1 julio 2010, reproduced in Granma, 1 julio 2010, 3.
19. Hernández and Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 218–19.
20. Law 1166, September 23, 1964, in Gaceta Oficial, October 3, 1964, cited in Hernández and Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 219–20.
21. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Revolución, June 27, 1961, cited in Hernández and Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 220.
22. Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture, 136–37.
23. Hernández and Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 237–38.
24. Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture, 158–59; Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, 95.
25. Maxine Valdes and Nelson P. Valdes, "Cuban Workers and the Revolution," New Politics 8, no. 4 (Fall 1970): 44. The Valdeses in turn drew from information that appeared in Granma on September 10, 1970.
Cyber commandos spill phone numbers of top Cuban officials
Posted on Saturday, 11.26.11
CUBAN CYBERWAR
Cyber commandos spill phone numbers of top Cuban officials
Critics of the Castro regime have adopted a new, Internet-savvy tactic: publishing the addresses and phone numbers of top Cuban officials.By Juan O. Tamayojtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
Want to know the home address of Cuban ruler Raúl Castro's daughter? How about the home phone number for his No. 2, José Ramon Machado Ventura? Or the cell number for Minister of Communications Ramiro Valdés?
A Miami-based website is publishing those and myriad other details on the private lives of top Cuban officials, saying it wants to warn "the darlings of the dictatorship" that they will face a dark future if the government collapses.
Also obtained from inside Cuba are digital lists of the cell phone numbers for tens of thousands of security and intelligence officers, and the street addresses of virtually every single military base on the island, contributors to the site say.
The leak of such personal details, out of a communist-ruled country where secrecy has long been paramount, reflects the Castro government's growing inability to control the flow of information in the age of the Internet.
"Technology is going to destroy them," said one post on the website CubaalDescubierto — Cuba Uncovered — where the details are being posted by FUEGO, or "fire," a group that claims to be made up of Cubans in Cuba and on the outside.
The site already has published what it says are the home addresses, phone numbers and other personal information of more than 20 top Cubans since it started posting those kinds of details about six weeks ago.
They include Machado Ventura, Castro's No. 2 in the ruling Council of State and the Communist Party; former Defense Minister Julio Casas, who died Sept. 3; and Valdés, a former Interior Minister, widely viewed as one of Cuba's most powerful officials.
It also published the address and home phone of Castro's daughter Deborah and her husband, Luis Alberto Rodriguez López Callejas, an army colonel who runs military-owned businesses that account for an estimated 60 percent of the island's economy.
The addresses and phone numbers for Angela and Agustina Castro Ruz, sisters to Raúl and Fidel Castro, and for Sonia and Jose Alejandro Espin, sister and brother of Raúl Castro's late wife, Vilma Espin, also appeared on the page.
El Nuevo Herald could not confirm all of the details published, but its calls to eight of the phone numbers confirmed that five were correct. One was confirmed by a female relative and two by housemaids. Three others did not answer, including Valdes' purported cell.
Percy Alvarado, identified by the Cuban government in the late 1990s as one of its intelligence operatives, told El Nuevo Herald that he received a threatening call on his cellular phone earlier this month from people who identified themselves as members of FUEGO.
He called the publication of the addresses and phone numbers a "flagrant violation of the right to privacy and international laws."
Miami blogger Aldo Rosado Tuero, a member of FUEGO and publisher of the blog Nuevo Acción, said publishing the details about the Cuban officials and relatives was designed to "send some of them the message that they are known, that we know where they live."
"We also want to try to push these people to ease the repression [against dissidents] in Cuba, and we believe there should be some record for the future, so that crimes do not go unpunished," Rosado added. "We're talking about justice, not vengeance."
CubaalDescubierto's postings are the latest effort by some government critics to shine a spotlight on Cubans who actively work for the island's totalitarian government, in hopes of persuading them to temper their activities.
The Web site and Twitter account CubaRepresorID publishes the names and photos of people it describes as State Security agents, "snitches" who collaborate with them and Cubans who repeatedly join government-organized mobs that harass dissidents.
Part of the information posted on CubaRepresorID and CubaalDescubierto has come from FUEGO, the Spanish acronym for the United Front of Exiles and Organized Groups, which describes itself as being dedicated to "damaging the tyranny and helping the internal opposition."
Other details have come from digital lists that have been making the rounds among Cuba watchers this year — including one list of more than 60,000 unlisted phone numbers for sensitive sectors such as State Security and senior government officials.
The blog Penultimos Dias — Penultimate Days — recently noted that if it hears of a crackdown on dissent in eastern Santiago de Cuba, for example, it can send text messages to every single State Security agent in the province saying, "stop the repression."
Some Cubans say that list was accidentally posted on the website of the island's telephone company, the Cuban Telecommunications Company SA, or ETECSA, and was quickly taken down. Others say it was leaked on purpose by a government opponent.
The Armed Forces Ministry recently banned the use of portable memories, such as flash drives, CDs and DVDs, as well as personal computers for ministry work, according to Penultimos Dias.
Another digital ETECSA list included a home phone for Juan Pablo Roque, one of the Havana spies linked to Cuba's 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes in which four South Florida men were killed. The listing was later removed.
Making public such details is the flip side of the "acts of repudiation" staged by government supporters to harass and intimidate dissidents, argued Luis Dominguez, part of a group within FUEGO that calls itself the Cuban Cyber Commandos.
"No one can imagine the amount of information that reaches us from Cuba through the CCCs," Dominguez told El Nuevo Herald. Government officials "should start thinking that they can never again be anonymous."
Asked if publishing the private information for Cuban officials was not a way of threatening them, Dominguez replied, "I don't threaten anyone. Each person can decide what to do with this type of information."
Dominguez, 48, a Miami security company administrator, has been involved in several previous digital jabs at the Cuban government, and sometimes jokes about starting a website for leaks about Cuba called "WikiCuba."
In 2009, he passed himself off online as Claudia, a Colombian woman, and maintained an eight-month exchange of salacious emails with Fidel Castro's oldest son, Antonio Castro Soto del Valle.
Dominguez says FUEGO and CCC have plenty more details that will be published slowly on Cuba al Descubierto.
On Wednesday, the website posted the Havana street address and two telephone numbers for the recently created Special National Brigade of the National Revolutionary Police — an elite unit trained in crowd control and SWAT tactics.
A man who answered the phone confirmed it was the home of the Special National Brigade, known in Cuba as "the little roosters" because their shoulder patches feature a black fighting cock on a red, white and blue background.
"Today we already know where each one of Fidel Castro's bodyguards lives, and each one of Fidel's neighbors," he told El Nuevo Herald. Castro's house in western Havana has long been marked on some of Google Earth's satellite photos.
"But that's not the worst for them," Dominguez added. "What is really going to hurt them is when we publish precise information about [the location of] ALL the units" of the armed forces and the Interior Ministry, in charge of domestic security."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/26/v-fullstory/2519901/cyber-commandos-spill-phone-numbers.html
Craziness in the Neighborhood / Rebeca Monzo
Craziness in the Neighborhood / Rebeca MonzoRebeca Monzo, Translator: BW
Yesterday was payday for retired people and active workers who collect their pay by debit card. The wandering to and fro by people of various ages, in search of a Cadeca (a place where money can be exchanged), a bank that doesn't have long queues (lines) or for an ATM that works, arouses disgust and some heated remarks between the neighbors of our neighborhood. It should be noted that the payments to retired people don't happen at the end of the month as was custom some time ago. One fine day in one blow, they changed them to the first few days of the following month, bringing with it the agony of being without a penny extended, therefore, a couple of days more.
But this was not the case for my neighbor, who still works, and collects her pay by debit card. She was very needy the same as the vast majority of people collecting, even more so because she had to make a payment that had a due date. She went in search of an ATM and that's where here odyssey began. The one at the Ministry of Transport was broken, the one at the Cadeca didn't have any cash, the same thing happened at the Bank of the Ministry of Agriculture, finally, she went through all of the ATMs and banks in the neighborhood, and couldn't get cash at any of them, because the only same was working and had available funds, but had a long line that wasn't moving. She joined that very line and a little while later she overheard a conversation between two people.
One, an older person said to a young person: I don't know what's going on, I just went by the agricultural market of the YLW (Youth Labor Army) and they didn't have anything, nor did the one on Tulipán, nevertheless, the self-employed individuals in their trucks have everything. How is it that the State is not able to supply their farmers markets and but the self-employed can!
The young person, without getting upset, answered: Lady, you yourself just answered your own question, because the State, as you rightly said, is not capable, at least that is what it has demonstrated so far.
The woman, without answering back, moved in the line to move away a little from the young person. Meanwhile, the rest continued complaining to each other about the slow way that they advanced. Finally, my neighbor, abandoned the line protesting without being able to achieve her objective, walking to her house frustrated and indignant, to use a word that is so in style.
Note: the photo had to be taken from far away, because the guard at the Cadeca at Panorama and Tulipán wouldn't let me get close with camera in hand, he told me that I couldn't take photos there, and I told him that he should show me documentation of the prohibition, and he answered that it didn't exist, but that it is forbidden.
Translated by: BW
November 7 2011
The Fate of the Cuban Taliban / Angel Santiesteban
http://translatingcuba.com/?p=12491
The Fate of the Cuban Taliban / Angel SantiestebanAngel Santiesteban, Translator: Unstated
Reading Carlos Alberto Montaner's book, Conversation at the funeral of the Comandante. What will happen after the death of Fidel Castro?, from the first pages I could recognize a reality that was predicted by the author several years before it happened.
Who could have predicted that Carlos Lage — the "majordomo" of the Palace who, from his youth, devoted his best efforts to comply meekly with every injustice and Machiavellian policy that occurred to Fidel Castro — would be ousted in such a humiliating and burlesque way? Only an expert on the psychology and ideology of a dictator, like Montaner, could almost prophesy so great a madness without having to wait for the burial of "leader."
Just months after Raul Castro came to power, the prophecy of the author was fulfilled, and Lage was unceremoniously dismissed from the government elite. And weeks later, in the heat of the day, over 90 degrees, I saw this character — someone might say "thrown to the lions" — walking, almost choking, through Red Square in Vibora (notice the irony of the name of the place). He was just one of the crowd. His elegant and expensive brand-name shirt completely sweaty… I still can't decide whether it was pity or satisfaction I felt at that evaporated "grain of salt."
I've always wondered how Fidel Castro forgot some of the young people he himself conceived, and whom later he couldn't stand. Some were children when they came into to his hands and, like a potter, he shaped them in his image and likeness. They turned out hideous, lacking decorum, lacking humanity, and, right before his eyes, they looked so much like him that they became dangerous to him. The twin brothers Tony and Patricio La Guardia, in 1959 they were young boys not even twenty. He made them what they were, efficient Generals of his elite corps. And then he shot one of them and sent the other to prison for years. What could the biological parents of Tony and Patricio think of Fidel Castro, in whom they confided their sons, healthy in mind and heart? How much pain have these parents survived to see the death of one and to face the humiliating imprisonment of the other?
That reminds me of the anecdote told by Comandante Benigno, of the young boy of 14 that a peasant couple entrusted to Fidel on a night when he visited their hut, there in the deepest forest of the Sierra Maestra. "We give him to you," said this elderly couple, "because he is our only treasure, we conceived him in our old age and do not want Batista's army to force him into service, it would kill us." But perhaps better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
Fidel entrusted the young man to Camilo Cienfuegos who had been with him that night with the elderly couple, and of course with the young man. Shortly afterward, the teenager stole a can of condensed milk one morning ]. When he discovered it, Camilo sent a message to Fidel asking advice on what punishment to impose. And Fidel replied emphatically: "Shoot him." Camilo, surprised, sent another message back saying that it was the youngster offered up by the elderly couple who stole a can of condensed milk. And Fidel, with the icy impulse that characterizes him, again answered, "I already told you to shoot him."
The questions are my great torture because I always want to understand others, though I do not share their feelings or their actions. But was it not an act of cowardice for Camilo Cienfuegos to execute the order when he did not share the view, especially since we're talking about the life of a teenager? And in contrast, Benigno says, Comandante Camilo hid in the toilet so as to not witness the shooting. Perhaps the place he found at that time was the most suitable to his feelings.
But back to the book of prophecies of Carlos Alberto Montaner. To be cautious, he predicted that once Fidel Castro was gone, the "Group Supporting the Comandante," would have to make an alliance to survive, as their political weight would vanish because they were barely anchored in the institutions.
And what happened with the young "Taliban"?
Raul Castro, without delay in his brother's absence, took steps against this political "alliance," caught them one by one and unceremoniously deposed and expelled them like stones in his shoe: Felipe Pérez Roque, Otto Rivera, Hassan Pérez, Juan Contino Aslan and Carlos Manuel Valenciaga. And as he couldn't ignore Abel Prieto, the Minister of Culture, he suppressed his political power but kept him on as a "lion tamer" to face up to the conflict-ridden and volatile intellectual sector, perhaps until he finds the right person to replace him. And if we look back, we understand that it has been a process of continual political defecation: José Luis Rodriguez, sentenced to several years in prison, Roberto Robaina, who came from the Federation of University Students (FEU) from before the Revolution and the Young Communist Union (UJC) after, and who was the former Minister of Foreign Affairs. Humberto Rodriguez, President of the Cuban Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER). General Abrantes, whose death in prison remains a mystery to be elucidated. And we mustn't forget General Ochoa, "Hero of Cuba," whom he also made bite the bullet in front of the firing squad in 1989.
In the end, their entourages have been no more than puppets who expose the image and sacrifice their bodies, their hands implementing the designs of the brain that drives them, the hand that really frames the policy and reaps the benefits.
It is so true that those names, for years, occupied the spaces of the official media, and now no one remembers them. This is the payment for being part of the Government, without making their opinions known, much less managing to prevail against any mistaken speculation of the Comandante, or other member of the sacred sphere of the Government, and whom the people would identify as defenders of their way of life. Just following orders, never achieving their political dreams, save to suck from the teat of power and accept one hundred percent the Maximum Leader's every suggestion. History will gather up, at some point, this pack of Taliban as part of the diabolical mechanism of the prevailing system on the Island.
What is left of those old Comandantes?
As my neighbor would say, "Just their helmets and their bad ideas." Or, as Carlos Alberto Montaner writes in his book, "Elderly and inform, tied to the ancient legend of the Sierra Maestra." Some of them, those who are still breathing in this accepted death, resigned to consume the benefits of the Revolution, attend the official events to present a false image of unity. Instead, they continue to live like millionaires in a country plunged into the greatest poverty of its history. Before the eyes of the people they live in their sumptuous homes which, by the way, they didn't even have the decency to build themselves, they sail on their recreational yachts, buy in the international market with the people's money, or with money confiscated from the drug traffickers who entered Cuban waters. Many of these characters squander the resources of the nation to please ex-wives or former intimate partners.
The hands of Fidel Castro, of the potter he claimed to be, contaminated the clay with blood, and those young people he imagined shaping, in some way he deformed. Under his distorted and putrid aegis he never managed to become a teacher and role model for anyone. All he can expect in future years is to be used as a symbol of death and misery.
His egotism and his caudillo's cunning made him forget the true history, not that which he has tried to distort and manipulate at will, but the voice of the people by whom he will ultimately be judged and who will write the pages of the books of the future, though, for now, the fear before the terror he imposes prevents these people from screaming TYRANT.
November 3 2011
New Law, Old Mentality / Regina Coyula
New Law, Old Mentality / Regina CoyulaRegina Coyula, Translator: Unstated
Photo: Katerina BampaletakuWe were talking about the new law for the sale and transfer of vehicles, but what caught my attention was the reasoning of my interlocutor. As I and many others understand it, the law is inadequate, leaving many unknowns and maintaining inequalities in determining who can buy a new car, for instance. But what caught my attention, as I said, was the reasoning of my interlocutor. It seems alright to him that the law has been enacted, although with these defects, because we have been committing illegalities for fifty years and this resolves the transfer of vehicles. People will always find fault with it because people because people protest anything and it's never good enough for them (these are his words).
You who already know me will know roughly what my thoughts were, but what stuck with me was not the joy of my interlocutor that he could legally own a motorbike in his own name that he's had for a thousand years, it's the satisfaction with which he accepted as food that after such a delay in legislating, they legislate badly.
I have understood that young graduates of Law School who are finishing their service in the Armed Forces are charged with preparing the body of law that will try to transform. Housing Law, Immigration Law, to name two of the most anticipated, are in the hands of the Army and not the Ministry of Justice or of competent and experienced lawyers. So I don't believe I have false expectations of what will be legislated.
October 31 2011
Another Look at the Grito de Yara* / Fernando Dámaso
Another Look at the Grito de Yara* / Fernando DámasoFernando Dámaso, Translator: lapizcero
Nobody can deny the foundational importance of October 10, 1868 for the Cuban nation. Though twenty years before Narciso Lopez had, for the first time, unfurled the national flag calling for combat against the oppressor, though his voice was not listened to then, the opposite occurred in Yara, when Cubans, conscious of their nationhood, responded to the call of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes.
This historic feat, praised and respected by all generations, is generally presented only from the point of view of the heroism and selflessness of its protagonists, ignoring the economic interests, which had a fundamental role and that should not be forgotten. Many of those who rose in arms that day, maybe most of them, were rich landowning Creoles who for some time had been conspiring against Spain, as their interests in expansion clashed with the restrictive policies it ordained, that constrained their development.
They, other than their national sentiment, which without a doubt they possessed, needed to throw off the Spanish yoke that smothered their businesses and, as a result, the garnering of profits, needled by what was happening further North, where the United States was rapidly becoming a world power, with a regime of liberty and rights, that constituted the example to follow.
It is not surprising then, that even Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, in the beginning, supported annexation to the American Union, though he soon gave up on that idea, focusing his efforts on obtaining Independence. It must also be pointed out, if we are to be one with historical truth, that the initial call for emancipation of the slaves included indemnity for their owners and their incorporation into the uprising's army as condition of their liberty, something that was only eliminated months later in the Assembly of Guaimaro, where the total abolition of slavery was decreed.
As can be appreciated, historical facts are not simple and crystal-clear, as they are sometimes presented. They are influenced by interests of a different nature, material as well as moral, that far from diminishing their value, make them more real, and illuminate their protagonists not as gods of purity come down from Olympus, but as mere mortals, with light and shadow, that sometimes are right and sometimes are mistaken, but that are capable of imposing themselves over their difficulties and reaching their objectives.
On October 10, 1868 patriotic and economic interests conspired. The same has happened in other historical moments of the Cuban nation, up until our days. Today, the same as in 1868, the political and economic chains imposed by the model, hinder the development of citizen initiative and that of its the productive forces. To overcome this anachronistic situation is everybody's obligation, so that the country can advance, eliminate the accumulated misery and take its rightful place among free nations, a place it once held thanks to the work of all her children and that, because of erroneous policies, it lost.
*Translator's Note: The Cry of Yara.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Years%27_War
Translated by: lapizcero
October 13 2011
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