Speaking of frustrations
Speaking of frustrations May 8, 2012 Maria Matienzo Puerto
HAVANA TIMES — My mother used to always tell me: "Study Maria. One day things are going to return to normal, and you'll get back more from knowledge than what you spent."
I should note that my mother's idea of ??"normalcy" was linked to the idea of professionals returning to the top of the social and economic pyramid.
In any case, even though I wasn't a very obedient child, I kept studying. In the meantime, I didn't stop having boyfriends or quit going out dancing.
Likewise, I continued wearing the clothes that I could come up with; they weren't anything that made the fashion statement and they were often homemade – but I went out to have fun, not to model.
This is the topic of conversation between Liu and me every time we meet. We recall the old days, when we exchanged clothes so that it would always seem that we each had something new. We laugh at that. We don't regret all the crazy things we did together because in the end we were studying what we wanted.
Then, among all the memories, popped up the name "Julitico."
He wasn't a child of either of us, nor was he an old boyfriend. He wasn't a dance partner or anyone who we once shared a beach cabin with on some weekend excursion.
I simply asked Lui: What ever happened to Julitico?
As she hadn't lost touch with him, Lui answered, "He's the same as always; still hoping to get the right clothes, a good job and a house to seduce a woman."
I couldn't believe it, though nor did I doubt what Liu was telling me. She said that throughout the duration of school he always kept saying that once he graduated, he would start a new life, one that would include women.
Julitico is a man about six feet tall, thin, a mulatto, nice looking and someone who knows about everything that's discussed in his presence. If you talk about sex (at least in theory), he knows it all. If the subject is astrology, he can share his opinion. If it's about cooking, he'll not only talk about it but he'll cook up a spectacular meal.
He's an open type who accepts his gay, lesbian and straight friends for what they are. Everyone seeks him out to confess their troubles and he'll always give good advice.
His mother also told him that life would change him once he became a man who was economically self-sustaining. But she didn't let him run the risk of not surviving the nineties, when you had to block out a lot to be free of the differences.
Julitico is now a professional (like the two of us) and he doesn't have anything – no wife or children or house or a decent wage. His engineering degree has served him only to deepen his frustrations.
We don't have anything either; or rather, we don't have much – because at least Liu has a home (her husband's) and children.
It's true, Julitico is crazy if he thinks his problem will be solved when the economy improves, but everyone cements their personality in what they can or what they want – whether right or wrong.
My mother, Liu's mother and Julitico's mother were right. You had to study, but not because things in this country would ever return to normal, but because the only thing that saves us from madness are our professions.
Tourism… or? / Anddy Sierra Alvarez
Tourism… or? / Anddy Sierra Alvarez Anddy Sierra Alvarez, Translator: Unstated
Tourism in Cuba is an organism that because of its importance carries great economic weight in the country. What is going on with Cuban tourism? How is it there are no creators in the Cuban architecture, this being an educational powerhouse?
We don't see architectural projects relevant to the view, that serve as tourist attractions. They only come on all-expense paid packages, meaning the tourists don't spend much money in the country and such a gift is unfavorable to the Cuban economy.
There is a small growth in visits to Cuba, but no related growth in the economy.
The directors in charge of the tourism agency offer a figure of two million annual tourist visits as if it were an accomplishment. This figure compared to the Cuban population of "11 million inhabitants" is equivalent to 18%, not even a quarter of the population on the Caribbean island.
When the government allowed Cuban citizens to enjoy the tourist facilities, the economy of this sector grew in proportion. We Cubans are contributing more than half of what the tourists bring to the Cuban economy. Such a situation affects the country, but many who visit tourist recreation facilities have relatives abroad who send them money, making the Cuban a target in the island's economic growth.
If Cubans didn't have family abroad, would the government open the doors of the hotels, the cell phones…"
It's a question that makes my head spin, if tourism isn't given to the tourist they don't come and many of those who come don't return so Cuban tourism becomes a tourism with no return.
May 7 2012
Unions in Cuba: Who Do They Defend?
Unions in Cuba: Who Do They Defend? May 8, 2012 By Samuel Farber*
HAVANA TIMES — In the 1930s, at the height of Stalinist terror, a Russian miner called Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, became famous – and infamous – for supposedly having extracted 102 tons of coal in less than 6 hours, exceeding his quota by a factor of 14.
Under the direction and thrust of the Communist Party of the USSR, and, of course, with the support of the unions totally controlled by the government, the Stakhanovite movement spread to all industries forcing the competition for hyper production among workers.
Stakhanovism left a very bitter memory in the political culture of the USSR and Eastern Europe, analyzed and pictured in the unforgettable film The Man of Marble, by the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda.
It was that quasi mythical figure of Stakhanov that came to mind when I read the May Day speech and interview published in Trabajadores (April 29, 2012) with Salvador Valdés Mesa, general secretary of the Confederation of Cuban Workers and member of the Political Bureau of the Cuban Communist Party.
In fact, Valdés Mesa sounded a lot more like the Head of Personnel of the Cuban state than a union leader particularly when we consider that the unions exist to defend the interests of the workers, even in a supposedly socialist state.
Although in his interview Valdés Mesa mentioned, almost in passing, the improvement of working conditions and consumer goods as a goal of his Confederation, he did not even mention the subject in his May Day speech. It is clear that the dominant theme in both pronouncements was his demand for the Cuban workers to work harder and more productively.
A legitimate workers' leader would at least have asked for a salary increase to protect the Cuban workers from the uninterrupted rise in the prices of consumer goods. But Valdés Mesa did nothing of the sort.
Without ifs or buts he declared that there will be no salary increases "while the country, with the measures that have been adopted, has not yet reduced payrolls and eliminated undue subsidies and free goods that conspire against an increase in the productivity of labor."
The union leader did not even demand an improvement in the notoriously deficient transport system so that the workers could get to work on time thereby contributing to a rise in productivity.
Neither did he demand that the administrators share in the sacrifices of the workers and that they also become productive.
To be sure, the union leader defended piecework rates (pay "according to results") rejecting the well established union principle that opposes pay by piecework in favor of payment according to time worked.
Valdés Mesa as well as Raul Castro and other Cuban Communist leaders are invoking the "principle of socialist distribution" to justify piecework. The "principle of socialist distribution" refers to pay according to work (in contrast with the communist principle of distribution according to needs).
But pay according to work does not necessarily imply piecework. Compensation according to work can easily and perfectly be established by counting the hours, days, weeks or months that workers have labored.
It is obvious that in contrast with piecework, from the point of view of the workers, compensation according to time worked constitutes an elementary defense against super exploitation by the bosses, in this case the state being the boss.
Besides, pay for time worked is more compatible with the development of solidarity among workers, while piecework stimulates competition among them. Can there be any doubt about which of those would be the choice in a socialist economy and society truly controlled by the workers in contrast with an employer state like the Cuban?
Valdés Mesa also rejects the right to seniority. Throughout the history of capitalism, genuine unions have insisted in giving priority to the workers that have worked longest not only to defend the older workers, for whom it would obviously be more difficult to find a job, but also to protect all workers from favoritism and the arbitrary behavior of supervisors and bosses.
But Valdés Mesa rejects seniority – and ignores any other measures that would protect black workers and women – on behalf of "suitability," precisely the criterion favored by big business in the capitalist countries when they lay off workers.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, where I live, has undertaken a big campaign to layoff public school teachers without regard to seniority, supposedly to retain only the "suitable" teachers. But the real agenda behind this policy is to attack the teachers' union and weaken the solidarity among its members.
And how is "suitability" to be determined in Cuba? As decided in 2010, this will be the task of a "Committee of Experts" elected, by a show of hands, in general workers' assemblies, before which a slate of candidates jointly elaborated by the enterprise management and the official union will be submitted.
For anyone aware of the political situation in Cuba, it is obvious that those elections will be purely cosmetic. It is worth noting that the government has excluded from the jurisdiction of the Committee of Experts any decision affecting administrators and political cadres and leaders.
The work status of those people will be decided by the institutions and authorities that appointed or elected them.
It is evident that not too many Cuban workers see their official unions as genuine unions and as a "suitable" instrument for the defense of their interests, whether inside or outside their workplaces.
Valdés Mesa implicitly recognizes this when he admits, in the interview published in Trabajadores, that "there are workers who do not believe in the union."
It is understandable that for this and other reasons the general secretary of the official central union is worried about the Confederation having the "capacity to be a protagonist in the updating of the economic model."
That is why the official workers' confederation has organized the newly self-employed people; the union leaders already claim that they have recruited the great majority of these.
Although we do not yet know for sure what the Confederation is planning to do with the self-employed Cubans (and quite apart from the fact that only a minority of these are workers and that the great majority are proprietors, although of small businesses) is there any doubt that the main impulse behind this is to control the self-employed just as in the case of the state workers?
It is very clear that the official workers' confederation and its affiliate unions are not authentic unions but representatives and allies of the employer state.
It is also clear that never before has an independent union movement been as necessary as in the present transition towards a new exploitation model that will likely lead to numerous protests by workers and peasants as has happened in China.
What will the nascent independent left in Cuba do in regard to such an important matter? —–
(*) Samuel Farber was born and grew up in Cuba and is the author of numerous articles and books about that country including his most recent Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959. A Critical Assessment (Haymarket Books, 2011.)
University of Michigan groups visit Cuba after Obama eases travel restrictions
University of Michigan groups visit Cuba after Obama eases travel restrictions Posted: Sun, May 6, 2012 : 1:11 p.m.
Jacqueline Haber grew up hearing stories of Cuba, the communist island her father, once a member of the Cuban military, fled nearly half a century ago.
In April, 45-year-old Haber, a nurse for the University of Michigan Health System, stepped foot on Cuban soil for the first time.
[ University Students, Faculty and Staff Receive 5% off purchases of $25 or more. ]
She and 34 U-M alumni became a few of the first Americans to visit Cuba since U.S. President Barack Obama eased travel restrictions in 2011. The group was the first of three U-M contingents to tour Cuba as part of U-M Alumni Association-backed travel expeditions. The last group, which includes Lisa Rudgers, U-M vice president of global communications, is touring the country now.
"It was a bag of mixed emotions," Haber says of her trip to Cuba. "My father always wanted to take his family back to Cuba, to the country he left behind to go to the States for freedom."
In many ways, the Cuba Haber experienced during her visit was similar to the one her father left for America. There's been little construction in the 50 or so years since the U.S. closed doors to Cuba. People drive bike taxis and pre-revolutionary cars and pay to use public restrooms, where toilet paper is rationed by the square and toilets don't have lids.
"Havana is a city frozen in time, with buildings that are just crumbling. The infsatructure is just a mess over there," Haber said.
In other veins, however, the city has changed vitally.
"Almost all of these very large, old estates and homes that were built by the very rich in the (1940s and 50s) have all been turned over to renters," said U-M Alumnus David Morrison, a retired foreign service worker who traveled to Cuba with Haber beginning March 19. "There are huge numbers of families crowded in each of these places."
Morrison and his wife, along with other travelers, paid $3,845 each for the eight-day trip to Cuba, during which they visited with Cuban artists, ballet performers, economists and students and toured several cities, including Havana, the island's capitol.
U-M Alumni Association travel coordinator Carrie Fediuk originally planned for just one departure but response was "so overwhelming" she decided to tack on two extra trips. Fediuk applied for an educational travel visa to Cuba in June 2011 and received the go-ahead in November.
Travel to Cuba has been heavily restricted since the 1960s and in 2003 George W. Bush fully eliminated licenses to travel there. Obama in 2011 eased restrictions, allowing educational trips to Cuba, and the first group of U.S. citizens landed in August. Other elite universities, such as the University of California at Los Angeles and Harvard University, have since led similar trips to Cuba.
"It was a very labor intensive process. The U.S. government wanted to know everything about our program, our history, what our intentions were to travel there," Fediuk recalled, adding that officials circled back with her twice requesting additional information. Fediuk, who regularly arranges trips to countries like Egypt, Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands and Turkey, said she can't recall a more detailed vetting process.
The difficulty, she said, was well worth the eventual reward.
"It was uncharted territory," Fediuk said. "Cuba is a place we knew our travelers would want to go. They're curious and they wanted to see a place that's been closed off to U.S. travelers for many, many years."
That's not to say the expedition didn't stir up a little controversy.
"Cuba is a communist regime that not necessarily everybody approves of. We know people have lost their lives trying to flee the country and that's bothersome. So when we opened the trip up I knew there would be some people who didn't agree with our decision to go," Fediuk said. "They were concerned about our traveling there and supporting their economy. Based on the fact that it is a dictatorship and not a free economy."
It was the effects of the restricted economy that shocked Morrison the most.
"The irony is that you have doctors and university professors who stand on street corners and offer guided tours to earn a decent living, which they can't get from either being a professor or a doctor," he recalled.
For Haber, the short trip was "an eye-opener."
"Now I totally understand why my family is the way they are," she said. "Cubans are definitely survivors. They do the most they can with the little they have."
Fediuk says she is planning additional trips for 2013.
Cars, Costs and Benefits / Eliécer Ávila
Cars, Costs and Benefits / Eliécer Ávila Eliécer Ávila, Translator: Unstated
In Cuba, there are many things we take for granted and count on for ourselves and for the world as settled matters, normal in how they work, but in reality they are obsolete things, of poor quality and even dangerous or extremely harmful to our health.
Most people don't realize it because our level of development is so low, so in terms of appreciating the quality of the things around us, almost anything available for subsistence satisfies us. There could be thousands of examples, perhaps millions, because every Cuban could offer several related to his or her own environment and experience.
This time I will address an issue that illustrates some of this insidious reality: cars.
The equipment that is considered ordinary cars in Cuba could not circulate on the streets of any country at a certain level in the world, unless it were for an antique show. Much less if the country is proud of being a tooth-and-nail defender of the environment. The same goes for almost all the motorcycles, most of which are two-stroke (banned for years by international protocols).
An American vehicle of the '40s and '50s circulating on our streets leaves a trail of black smoke in its wake that contaminates more than 100 modern cars would, worse than the ones the Chinese make, and what's more, since they are practically the only ones in the country in private hands, their sale prices are enough to make you die of sadness.
An American "almendrón" (the old cars used in private shared taxi services), reasonably maintained for its year, with an adapted gas engine, can easily cost 25,000 to 35,000 CUC and more, a figure that is even higher in dollars. A Soviet made motorcycle with original parts no longer exists, but would have been almost completely reinvented thanks to Cuban ingenuity, and could be worth between 2,000 to 7,000 CUC, depending on the make.
But a simple search on the Internet will show you how many cars — modern, economical, ecological, safe, and above all "cheap" — can be purchased in international markets. There are even places where you can buy a used car manufactured after 2000 for $300, which would be a dream for any doctor, engineer or teacher in Cuba. And it's the same thing with motorcycles.
Recently I saw an ad for a 2011 Italian Lambretta, a top flight bike of world-renowned quality and durability, for not more than 800 Euros, which is less that a Karpaty would cost in Cuba which, along with the Berjovina, is the worst motorcycle made on the face of the earth, though every day they carry thousands of Cubans all over the place, at cost of spending all your money on it, constantly "babying it along," living covered in grease and permanently pissed off because anything can break on it anywhere, such that people have nicknamed it "prison sentence"; and still it's a privilege to have one at a price which very few people can afford (800-1,700 CUC).
But the issue also involves the subject of fuel, which in spite of all the treaties and the "integration" with countries like Venezuela where, according to Cuban doctors themselves — who are serving on overseas Missions there — "water is more expensive than gasoline"; the fact is that in Cuba fuel prices are rising and according to some Europeans with whom I've talked it is more expensive than in their countries.
It's crystal clear that the greatest institutional fraud is the fact that as Cubans we have to pay much more for almost everything, it being more expensive here than anywhere in the world, while, paradoxically, we earn the least money for a month's work.
This is a topic that the "people's representatives" never seriously addressed at any conference of the Party or the National Assembly. It is very clear that those who don't sleep thinking of our welfare and our development will not face these problems because with the money that is left over after paying an entire people, they are able to buy very nice and comfortable cars, as well as the fuel to go from meeting to meeting in their very clean clothes, not squeezed in with people of all kinds, without sweating their lives away, without losing their health breathing the carbon coming from the bowels of one of those priceless truck-tractors (being operated as public transport) that are imposed on ordinary Cubans. Then there is the TV spot that speaks of the danger of exposing yourself to secondhand smoke…
The truth is that since the year 1959 no Cuban can go to an agency and buy a car normally. The State is the only one who has this privilege and it takes advantage of it to "work" more efficiently, for example, the thousands of men the government has to better monitor — from their modern and comfortable transport — each sheep in the flock who is traveling on foot.
Our people have a right to demand that companies around the world come and sell their equipment directly here. And also that this happens because they pay us according to the standards of the international economy in which a worker (and more if they are professionals which a great number of Cubans are) can have a decent vehicle to get to work and take care of the problems and necessities of life.
The word "safe" is very important in this issue; we all know that accidents have become one of the leading causes of death in our country. But how are they not going to kill people traveling on top of each other crammed into pure iron crates without the slightest guarantee of safety! That, coupled with the deplorable state of the roads and the age of the aircraft fitted with homemade inventions "to keep them flying" is a perfect combination to kill yourself. But the Cuban government seems to only see the responsibility of drivers.
The saddest part is that the propaganda and all the mechanisms of government do not allow people to realize that this one-party system is the permanent barrier that will not let us develop and access the vast store of progress and benefits we could achieve with an open, participatory and democratic society.
It is a mortal sin and suicidal for us and for future generations not to see that everything, absolutely everything, happens because of politics. If we don't change the way we do politics in Cuba, we cannot change anything, we cannot have development, progress, the public good, respect, tolerance, peace or happiness. We will always be backward and hungry and in the end in hell, where we have already lost a good part of our lives and are threatened with losing them completely.
Eliécer Avila Puerto Padre, Las Tunas, Cuba
This text was published in Spanish in the blog Penultimos Dias, courtesy of La Cubanada social network which will bring weekly chronicles from this author.
4 May 2012
Cuba without Chavez
Cuba without Chavez
How far could the island fall if Venezuelan leader can't beat cancer — or his election opponent? Nick MiroffMay 5, 2012 06:00
HAVANA, Cuba — Ask Cubans what the worst years of the so-called "Special Period" were like, right after the Soviet Union's demise dumped the island's economy in a ditch, and you're likely to hear a recitation of the era's most notorious menu options.
Sautéed rags. Burgers made from grapefruit rinds. Cat-meat stew.
Apocryphal or not, the stories of Cuban desperation are so much a part of popular lore that they now serve as shorthand for Cuba's lowest point, in the early 1990s, a time of acute hardship the island has been trying to recover from ever since.
Now, with Hugo Chavez and his Cuban oncologists locked in a mortal battle with an undisclosed form of cancer — and the Venezuelan president facing uncertain re-election in October — Cubans are wondering if hard times are coming back. If so, how hard will they be?
The Venezuelan leader supplies the island with about two-thirds of its oil on favorable credit terms, a mysterious arrangement whose details remain a state secret here. Chavez also pays the Castro government more than $6 billion a year for the 40,000 or so Cuban doctors, nurses, security advisers and other professionals sent on "missions" to Venezuela, typically to provide social services in the poor neighborhoods where support for Chavez is the strongest.
These missionaries are Cuba's biggest source of hard currency, bringing in far more revenue for the island than tourism, nickel exports or other industries.
That arrangement looks increasingly shaky with Chavez now in a Havana hospital, undergoing another round of radiation therapy but assuring the public he's in the "home stretch" of his treatment schedule. It's not much comfort, given that he has yet to disclose what type of cancer he's fighting.
Instead, the world has seen a worried-looking Chavez praying for Jesus to spare his life — a scary sight for many here.
If Chavez beats the cancer with the help of his Cuban doctors and his nurturing mentor, Cuba's former President Fidel Castro, the Venezuelan leader's bond with the island will likely be stronger than ever. A vigorous recovery would give a huge boost to his re-election bid, converting his larger-than-life heroic image into a death-defying one.
If Chavez's cancer is terminal but he lives long enough to win re-election, a hand-picked vice president could take over and keep Venezuela's trade agreements with Cuba in place, since that figure would likely need Havana's help to maintain support among Venezuela's poor.
But if Chavez can't win or can't survive, and his campaign rival Henrique Capriles wins the presidency, Cuba's generous subsidies could be a fat target for his red pen.
Experts say a split between the two countries wouldn't necessarily happen immediately, playing out more as a gradual untangling than an abrupt break. Pulling thousands of doctors and other Cuban social workers out of Venezuela's toughest neighborhoods too fast might be tricky, unleashing a wave of anger and unrest.
Still, few believe a post-Chavez trade balance would stay sweet for Cuba very long.
University of Havana economist Pavel Vidal said the island would likely face a recession lasting "one, two, even three years" if Venezuelan subsidies dry up, with an economic contraction projected at 9 percent of Cuba's gross domestic product (GDP).
The Soviet collapse in 1991, by contrast, produced a 35 percent economic contraction, he said, but warned that the island's economy is in some ways more fragile now.
"Cuba doesn't have the same kind of economic cushion it had back then," said Vidal, noting that the island has been facing acute cash shortages, with little ability to borrow money.
"There isn't as much of a margin to work with," he said, "which is why it's even more important to accelerate economic liberalization and reforms."
There are signs that Chavez's illness has created new urgency for Cuban President Raul Castro to move faster on his economic reform agenda. Last month a top Cuban Communist Party official said that while nearly 95 percent of the island's economic output is generated by state-owned businesses today, that figure will drop closer to 50 percent in the next four or five years, as millions of government workers shift to private sector and other "non-state" jobs.
Given that Cuba still restricts small business and self-employment licenses to micro-enterprises like snack bars, room rentals and barber shops, there is potentially a good deal of room to grow. But the government would have to allow Cubans to own medium-sized businesses and accelerate the conversion of money-losing state companies into worker-run cooperatives.
At this week's May Day rally in Havana, employees from several privately owned businesses marched alongside state workers, some carrying large banners which conveniently doubled as free advertising.
One restaurant owner and his 21 employees marched in their red company shirts, handing out business cards.
Another Havana entrepreneur, Lazaro Enciso, said he sees his capitalism as a patriotic calling. "I'm creating jobs, and that makes me feel useful to society," said Enciso, who runs three businesses — a snack bar, a clothing shop, and a stand selling religious items — for which he's hired about 20 workers.
"We're providing our country with exactly what it needs right now," he said.
Cuba’s little capitalists are ready to rumba
Cuba's little capitalists are ready to rumba By Jeff Franks HAVANA | Fri May 4, 2012 6:10am EDT
(Reuters) – When Ojacy Curbello and her husband opened a restaurant at their home in Havana in late December, not a single customer showed up.
It was a disheartening debut for Bollywood, the first Indian restaurant in the Cuban capital. Curbello worried that their dream of cashing in on recent reforms in this Communist-run country would collapse.
The next day customers began trickling in. As word spread, the trickle became a flood. Many nights the couple had to turn people away or serve them at the family dining table and call in extra help. Today they are planning to increase the 22-seat capacity by expanding their 1950s home and putting tables and a bar in what is now their bedroom.
"It has been amazing how quickly it has taken off," said Curbello, still looking slightly stunned. She sat with her husband, Cedric Fernandez, a Londoner of Sri Lankan descent, in the main dining area, hung with prints of Indian figures.
Bollywood's story is an example of how life is slowly changing in Cuba since President Raul Castro launched a string of limited economic reforms in 2010.
After his ailing older brother, Fidel, stepped down as president four years ago, Raul Castro began to encourage self-employment. He initiated changes in sectors previously restricted to the state or which had operated illegally in Cuba's vast black market.
He has given Cubans the right, with some restrictions, to buy and sell homes and cars for the first time since the early days of the 1959 revolution, led by Fidel.
Would-be farmers can lease land from the government. New small entrepreneurs are being allowed to enter into contracts with state companies and local governments.
As a result, more Cubans are setting up their own businesses as the cash-strapped government moves to cut spending and boost tax revenue.
The self-employed, known on the Caribbean island as "cuenta propistas," literally "on their own account," are selling food, services and assorted goods out of their homes or off sidewalk tables. Private restaurants are opening, and the cries of street vendors, common before the revolution, again echo through neighborhoods.
Havana says more than 371,000 Cubans are self-employed, up from 157,000 before President Castro announced his private-enterprise measures in September 2010. Economy Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez has said as many as 240,000 more nonstate jobs will be added in 2012.
More such change may be in the works. In April, a senior Communist Party official, Estaban Lazo Hernandez, said in a speech that Cuba will move nearly 50 percent of the country's economic activity to the "nonstate" sector in the coming five years, up from 5 percent now.
This is not capitalism for capitalism's sake, however – and political reform is not part of the program.
The goal is to keep the Communist Party in power by nurturing a larger private sector and a smaller, more efficient state bureaucracy. Cuba says it is developing its own model, but think China 30 years ago, on a far more modest scale.
Whether it will work is one of the great unknowns about Cuba's future.
Interviews with a wide range of cuenta propistas found a mixed record of success and failure, with most doing well enough to keep going but only moderately improving their lives.
A few said they are succeeding hugely. Others have already quit or are thinking about it. Roughly 25 percent of the new businesses have failed, local economists say.
Cuba needs the budding private sector to thrive because in the future the government will no longer offer what essentially has been guaranteed employment.
The state employs about 85 percent of its 5.2 million workers. The plan is to cut a million jobs by 2015, with the hope that many of those laid off will go to work for themselves.
CONSERVING POWER
Some observers believe Castro is opening a Pandora's box with his reforms. Allowing a little capitalism could lead to a desire for more and perhaps pose a threat to the future of communism he envisions. Others think that if Cubans become less dependent on the government, they will be less accepting of its social and political control.
For that reason, said Marifeli Perez-Stable, a Cuban-American professor of sociology at Florida International University in Miami, Castro is proceeding cautiously.
"Raul is going slowly because he knows what he faces," she said. "They are being conservative because they want to conserve power."
Cubans seem generally pleased that economic change is afoot. Some like the idea they can strike out on their own, with an opportunity to earn more than the paltry state wages. The average Cuban salary rose slightly in 2011 to the equivalent of $19 a month.
While most Cubans say change is needed, they also worry about losing their social safety net if there is too big a dose of capitalism. They get low-cost or free housing, a heavily subsidized monthly food ration, and free health care and education.
Cuba, which nationalized all businesses in the years after the revolution, allowed a brief blush of private enterprise in the mid-1990s following the collapse of Havana's patron, the Soviet Union. When that grim time — known in Cuba as the "special period" – began to ease, the government put the brakes on the low-level capitalism that had bloomed and used onerous regulations to run many cuenta propistas out of business.
This time, government leaders have said the reforms are not temporary.
"We are not applying patches or improvising, but looking for permanent solutions to old problems," 81-year-old Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura said in a speech in central Ciego de Avila last July.
"It's deeper, the scope is much bigger, and the objective is larger," says Philip Peters, a Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute in Virginia. "In the 1990s the goal was to make a few adjustments to the model to get their heads back above water. … This time they are making changes to the model."
Cuba's new entrepreneurs face challenges common everywhere, as well as some peculiar to a country where private enterprise has been largely prohibited for a half century. Many lack startup capital and experience, and their customers have limited purchasing power.
A vice minister in Cuba's Labor Ministry recently said the self-employed are heavily concentrated in the making and selling of food, transporting cargo and passengers, and working as contract laborers.
Two-thirds were not working when they started their businesses, he said. A state television report said 16 percent are pensioners.
Former agriculture worker Oscar Oquendo is 78 years old. A tall man with wispy gray hair and a withered face, he walks along a crumbling central Havana street selling pastries he makes at home.
Like many of his generation, he says he is loyal to the Castros and communism, but needs money to supplement his monthly pension, equivalent to $10.
4 CENTS APIECE
Oquendo, 78, sells his pastries for one Cuban peso, or 4 cents, apiece. Without a word, he pulls a pastry from his bag, holds it up to a potential customer's startled face, looks him in the eye and waits for a response.
It works – he says he is earning $33 a month.
"I'm very happy with that. I'm helping myself and my country," Oquendo said as he prepared to confront another passerby.
Success has been more elusive for Rafael Barrios, who sells plumbing items from a stand on 10 de Octubre Avenue, where dust swirls past century-old buildings.
At 42, he wonders if he should have left his job at a state warehouse. The insecurity and the long hours needed to earn a little more money are wearing on him.
"At least there I didn't have to work very hard and I got paid every month," he grumbles from behind a table he set up in between abandoned buildings.
But with the government cutting jobs, there is no turning back for him. He is scouting new locations.
Leather goods salesman Arle Toro Perez, 58, faced the same dilemma as Barrios, glumly sitting on a folding chair in a gravel-strewn driveway with few customers to buy the few belts, key chains and wallets he hung from a stand.
He was making about three times more than the $13 a month he earned at the state job he had quit, but still just scraping by. Taxes were high and business slower than he hoped. Some days he sold nothing at all.
He later moved to a new location across from the Havana Libre hotel, which opened in 1958 as the Havana Hilton, and things picked up. There were more tourists and more sales. Today he has a much bigger inventory and a smile on his face.
"Some days I'm making twice as much as I did at the old location. I can take better care of my family," he said.
Some of the new entrepreneurs are stretching the limits set out by the government and doing well.
Alex, who spoke on condition that his last name not be used, was an architect before he discovered the profitability of "pirateria." Today he sells counterfeit DVDs from a dingy, makeshift storefront in central Havana.
He moves between shoppers examining his movie selection, heavy on the latest Hollywood features. One customer looks over a copy of "Killer Elite," starring Robert De Niro and Clive Owen, then hands it back.
Alex has had the business for years, but before the reforms the store was illegal, though not the copyright violations. In Cuba, copyright laws are ignored and state television and movie theaters routinely show pirated movies.
Now, his feel for capitalism unleashed, Alex is diversifying, expanding and, by Cuban standards, making a bundle of money – about $80 a day.
"I have two other stands like this one, and with the money I've accumulated I'm getting into the food business," he said. "I've got a big house with four bedrooms and I've got two cars."
TOURISM TROVE
Much of the entrepreneurship is aimed at the lucrative tourist trade. In the colonial city of Trinidad, 175 miles southeast of Havana, Osmary and Alberto jumped into the business out of necessity.
In late 2010, shortly after Raul Castro announced the opening for the self-employed, the restaurant where Alberto worked closed. They painted their home bright orange and turned it into a guest house, renting rooms to tourists.
One of the first guests praised it on the travel website TripAdvisor.com, and it has been mostly full ever since. The couple began with two rooms, expanded to four and now want to add another and perhaps a pool. A chef now cooks for guests.
"We are more comfortable," Alberto says, declining to divulge numbers. He praised the reforms for giving Cubans a chance to do better. "The people have many ideas."
As a group, the splashiest new businesses are home-grown restaurants, or "paladares" as they are known in Cuba, which have exploded in number in the past year. ("Paladar" means "palate" in English and was the name given to a chain of restaurants opened by a small-time vendor in a popular Brazilian soap opera.)
Expatriates and visitors used to complain that there were too few good places to eat in Havana. Now they have trouble keeping track of all the new ones.
An Internet list showed 93 paladares in Havana districts where foreign residents and tourists are centered. Some date back to the 1990s, but the latest have popped up so quickly they are not yet cited.
The eastern province of Santiago de Cuba had four such eateries before the reforms; now there are 104. In the same period, the total number of self-employed in the province jumped from 8,000 to 25,800.
Many of the new paladares are upscale, with names like Le Chansonnier, El Partenon and Cafe Laurent. They are usually in nicely renovated homes, with fancy decor and hefty prices. Filet mignon with pepper sauce, grilled lobster, roast duck, and fish with white wine replace the usual Cuban fare of rice, beans and pork.
Some owners complain that business has not lived up to expectations and taxes are high. The self-employed must pay 10 percent sales tax every month, a monthly license fee that varies according to profession, and a yearly income tax that also varies but is 50 percent for paladares.
The government says it keeps taxes high because it needs money and doesn't want its reforms to lead to wide class differences, with some people accumulating great wealth.
RAMPANT REAL ESTATE SALES
But the housing market, which the government has opened, could be a major source of capital for Cubans, with the potential to boost living standards and infuse money into the economy. Cuba has billions of dollars worth of real estate that could be turned into liquid assets, and prices are already rising.
"Home ownership is very high in Cuba, about 85-90 percent," says Antonio Zamora, a Cuban-American lawyer who visits Cuba regularly and has studied its investment laws.
Cubans who stayed after the revolution were allowed to keep their homes. Over the years, through laws designed to do away with the for-profit real estate market, renters were also able to earn title to the places where they live. Selling homes was not permitted, and instead a home-exchange system was introduced.
"The net value of Cubans and the country as a whole is going to go through the roof," Zamora said.
Interest in buying and selling homes is running high. A recent check showed 11,025 listings on revolico.com, an Internet marketplace for Cubans, with prices ranging from a few thousand dollars for cramped apartments to several hundred thousand for spacious homes built before the revolution.
On Paseo del Prado, a main Havana avenue, unlicensed sales agents say the market for less expensive properties in better neighborhoods has been so brisk that stock is running low. The Cuban government says the country needs another 600,000 homes. Foreigners are still largely barred from buying Cuban property.
Retired government worker Jose Leon said he turned down an offer equal to $100,000 from a European buyer with a Cuban wife for his 1950s three-bedroom apartment in Havana's once-exclusive Miramar neighborhood. He did not want to pay the 10 percent fee the agents charge and thinks prices will go up.
Many believe that as long as keeping communism afloat is Castro's goal, he will not go far enough to make much of a difference to their lives. Others think he will, but slowly. Castro has said his reforms will take five years to implement because the leadership wants to avoid making mistakes.
Skeptics point out that the government still tells people how many homes they can own and how many chairs they can have in their restaurants. It has set out 181 jobs in which self-employment is allowed – but everyone must be licensed for their jobs.
Alex, the seller of pirated DVDs, nonetheless argues that the changes have put Cuba on an irreversible path. "Three years ago we didn't even think about having cell phones, now we have cell phones," he says. "For years we couldn't sell houses, now we can sell houses. For years, we couldn't buy a car, now we can buy a car.
"And now we can have a business. They are small, they are micro-businesses. But it's yours, and it depends on your ability, your effort, your tenacity."
(Additional reporting by Nelson Acosta, Rosa Tania Valdes in Havana and David Adams in Miami; Editing by Kieran Murray, David Adams and Prudence Crowther)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/04/us-cuba-economy-reforms-idUSBRE8430K320120504
May Day in Cuba: The Doctors Out in Front
May Day in Cuba: The Doctors Out in Front May 2, 2012 Fernando Ravsberg*
HAVANA TIMES, May 2 — This year's May Day demonstration in Havana's Revolution Square was led by a broad representation of health care workers, whose work abroad has turned into the principal source of income for the country.
Tens of thousands of Cuban doctors, nurses and medical technicians annually bring in more foreign exchange than tourism and family remittances – the two sources that in the 1990s were the oxygen that allowed the country to withstand the brutal economic crisis.
The majority of the physicians work in Venezuela in "social missions" promoted by Hugo Chavez, but officials of Cuba's Ministry of Public Health report that there's cooperation in dozens of places in the Americas, Africa, Asia and even Europe.
Moreover, this trend seems to be progressively extending to other sectors, with Cuban professionals engaged in several countries as water engineers, architects, chemists, computer scientists and sports trainers. There are thousands of them now working in several African nations.
The sale of medical services
The Cuban government manages these statistics with great discretion, but all sources conclude that there are about 40,000 of their health care workers serving overseas – most of them in Venezuela, but also in 69 other countries.
According to studies by centers specializing in the analysis of the Cuban economy, health care personnel bring in $5 billion USD annually, a significant figure when compared with the $2.4 billion received from tourism or the $1.2 billion from remittances.
The doctors spend periods of two years working in one country or another, during which time they receive part of their salary there while another part goes to their family in Cuba (who are paid in regular pesos and convertible pesos, and are given a discount card to make purchase in stores). Likewise, on their return to Cuba, these workers are allowed to import a large amount of goods with them.
However, the salaries received by these doctors represent a small part of what the Cuban contracting company charges customers who demand their services. This means the bulk of the money goes into the state treasury, making it one of the government's highest profit-generating activities.
"People of Science"
Public health has been one of the greatest accomplishments of the Cuban Revolution, which is not mere propaganda: Health indexes of Cubans are enviable when compared to the rest of the region. Photo: Raquel Perez
In January 1960, in one of his first speeches as prime minister, Fidel Castro announced that "the future of our country must necessarily be a future of people of science" and the following year he launched the nation straight into a massive literacy campaign.
Half a century later, Cuba has more than 1 million professional graduates in diverse branches – of which 70,000 are doctors, or about 10 times more than the country had when the victorious barbudos (bearded guerillas) entered Havana.
Despite the country being left with only 3,000 doctors after the revolution, the provision of medical assistance to other countries began immediately, as far afield as Algeria. Such aid was provided for decades for free.
It was at the insistence of President Hugo Chavez that this system of "internationalism" be transformed into a relation of South-South exchange in which Cuba provides tens of thousands of doctors, teachers and coaches while Venezuela pays with oil.
With the arrival of Raul Castro to the presidency, that system was extended to relations with other nations, such as South Africa, Algeria and Angola. Some 3,000 Cuban professionals are working in Angola, whose services annually contribute more than $100 million to the island's economy.
The new strategy
The government's new policies seem to pursue the use of those human resources that are available to Cuba: that wealth of college graduates that the national economy is unable to assimilate and see themselves forced to do other jobs.
Although currently the work of most doctors serving in other countries is charged for, Havana has retained free missions – such as in Haiti, where hundreds of Cuban aid workers have played a prominent role since the earthquake and in the fight against cholera.
Cuba is also involved in other altruistic projects, such as "Operation Milagro" (which has restored eyesight to millions of people), medical research in the ALBA bloc nations, and a school of medicine that graduates thousands of doctors from across the Americas and the Third World every year.
The fact that the May Day march was led by health care personnel is a tribute to one of the sectors that has worked best internally over the last five decades and today is also the mainstay of the Cuban economy. —–
(*) An authorized translation by Havana Times (from the Spanish original) published by Cartas Desde Cuba.
Cuba’s New Mantra: Viva Private Business
Cuba's New Mantra: Viva Private Business by Nick Miroff Listen to the Story
Two self-employed florists prepare bunches of flowers in Havana last year. The Cuban government is stepping up economic reforms and estimates that in four or five years, nearly half the workforce will be employed in the private sector. text size A A A May 2, 2012
Socialism has been Cuba's official economic policy for more than a half-century, and some 85 percent of the Cuban workforce is employed by the state.
But that is changing fast. Communist authorities say that nearly half of Cuba's economic activity will shift to the private or "non-state" sector in the next four or five years.
Those plans signal a new urgency to Cuban President Raul Castro's economic reforms, and one reason is that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the island's biggest benefactor, is battling cancer and facing re-election in October.
The new approach was evident in this year's May Day parade in Havana, which was a little different from the Soviet-style processions of the past.
Between the drumming and the dancing girls writhing around on floats in tightfitting tops, it was hard to hear Cuban officials exhorting workers to greater efficiency and more discipline.
The state workers, duty-bound to attend the parade, were making the most of it, even if there wasn't a lot to celebrate. Average salaries in Cuba remain stuck at about $20 a month, with officials saying wages can't rise until productivity increases.
Still, there was a growing contingent of new Cuban workers on the march this year: self-employed entrepreneurs and private business owners like Lazaro Enciso. Carrying a banner with some of his 20 employees, he said he'd come to show support for Raul Castro's liberalization moves.
"This is a new way to create jobs for our country," said Enciso, who runs a snack bar, a clothing shop and another business selling religious items. "As long as you're entrepreneurial, honest and revolutionary, there's no obstacle to success here."
Venezuelan Lifeline In Jeopardy?
As Cubans marched and chanted "Long live the revolution," the island's biggest financial backer, Venezuela's Chavez, was in a Havana hospital for another round of cancer treatments.
Chavez provides the island with two-thirds of its oil on favorable terms, along with more than $5 billion a year in exchange for the Cuban doctors and other professionals working in Venezuela.
Now, with Chavez so ill he has prayed on national television for Jesus to spare his life, Cuban economist Pavel Vidal says it's clear the economic reforms must move faster.
"Cuba's economy is small, and from a political-economic standpoint, it's closed, with a high level of dependency on access to hard currency for growth," says Vidal. "A loss of support from Venezuela would send Cuba into a recession."
Vidal and others say the damage to Cuba's economy wouldn't be as severe as the sudden demise of the Soviet Union a generation ago. The island's relationship with Venezuela is more interdependent, and even if Chavez is no longer in power, it might take time for their two-way trade to untangle.
Despite Changes, More Openness Needed
Still, the possibility is putting pressure on Raul Castro to broaden the reforms. Cuban entrepreneurs still can't contract directly with foreign suppliers or wholesalers, and the government only grants licenses in about 200 types of trades and businesses.
A Havana car wash is one example of Cuban entrepreneurs learning to diversify beyond selling snacks or renting rooms to tourists. But the driveway-sized business only has space to wash and vacuum one vehicle at a time, and it's always full.
Hildelisa Cespedes says her family is waiting to see if local officials will let them rent out a rundown garage around the corner that is owned by the state, the kind of arrangement Cuban authorities say they're still studying.
"If we had a bigger place, we could have more customers and hire more workers," Cespedes says. "We're ready to make the investment."
Cuba's uncertain economic outlook may find a new lifeline even if Venezuelan support dries up. A host of foreign companies are starting to drill for oil in the deep water off Cuba's north coast. If sizable deposits are found, the crude could take years to bring to market, but economists say Cuba's government would get access to fresh lines of credit right away.
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/02/151860734/cubas-new-mantra-viva-private-business
Hard-up Cuba celebrates scaled-down May Day
1 May 2012 Last updated at 21:39 GMT
Hard-up Cuba celebrates scaled-down May Day Sarah Rainsford By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Havana
Tens of thousands of workers marched through Revolution Square in Havana in Cuba's traditional May Day celebration.
As they surged past shouting "Long live Fidel and Raul!" and "Down with imperialism!", a dancing choir sang songs from the revolution and President Raul Castro smiled and waved in greeting.
A huge poster on the wall of the National Library vowed that Cuba would never return to capitalism; workers carried banners proclaiming "Socialism or death!" or waved images of Lenin and Che Guevara.
They were familiar scenes on this Communist-run island, a highly organised annual show of support.
But Cuba is in the midst of major changes – cutting state employment and subsidies – making this an uncertain time for workers. 'Preserve socialism'
In a bid to ensure the system here survives, the government is attempting an urgent overhaul of the struggling, centrally-planned economy.
As a banner across Revolution Square put it, it is a drive to "preserve and perfect socialism".
The plan is to reduce the bloated state payroll by around 20%, or a million workers, and cut costs.
So far, a limited amount of private business has been permitted to absorb them.
More than 370,000 licences have been issued for everything from watch repairers to privately-run restaurants as workers abandon state salaries of around $20 a month, and strike out in business alone.
But earlier this month, a senior official indicated that bigger change was afoot.
"Within four or five years, between 40% and 45% of GDP will result from non-state production," Esteban Lazo told the Havana city government.
Today, the figure is around 5%.
The next stages might include an expansion of the co-operative system beyond agriculture to light industry. Highly educated – but low-paid – young Cubans hope the categories for self-employment will expand, to include professions like law or architecture. Cunning advertising
For the moment it's the private restaurant sector that's most popular, offering the most potential for profit. But there are difficulties, including restrictions on advertising.
So one new entrepreneur decided to get creative this May Day.
"Whether we're state employees or not, we're still workers and marching on 1 May is a habit here," explained Sergio Alba Marin, owner of Pachanga cafe. The La Pachanga restaurant supporting May Day The La Pachanga restaurant advertised its support for May Day, circumventing a ban on TV advertising
So the businessman handed staff bright red T-shirts and caps emblazoned with his logo, and they all joined the workers' parade.
Banner held high, they marched alongside a giant fake cigar representing the state firm Cohiba and a cage full of live hens, brought by workers at a state research institute.
"Of course it's an advert. We want people to see we're there, that we're present," Mr Alba said of his own efforts. "There are no TV adverts here, but we do what we can."
Cost-cutting
Meanwhile, in the still-vast state sector, Cuba is on efficiency drive.
"We must increase productivity at work, discipline and quality," trade union leader Salvador Valdes Mesa instructed workers in his May Day speech.
"We must make clear that making savings is a key source of funds," the unionist added.
In a sign of that policy in practice, this year's May Day parade was a scaled-down affair. There were fewer fixed stands and posters, and fewer workers too – meaning less state spending bringing them to the square.
In fact, the whole event was over in what locals called record time. The last worker had filed out of Revolution Square by 09:15, well under two hours after it all started.
Open Sesame… Travel Restrictions in Cuba / Jeovany Jimenez Vega
Open Sesame… Travel Restrictions in Cuba / Jeovany Jimenez Vega Jeovany J. Vega, Translator: Unstated
On Friday, April 20, Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban Parliament, in an interview with the digital daily World, of the Huffingtonpost.com, reaffirmed Raul Castro's announcement from last year that Cuba will launch "… a radical and thorough immigration reform in the coming months …" which will remove restrictions we've had for decades on Cubans traveling abroad. Let's remember that even now, to travel abroad Cubans need an exit permit, at the extortionate cost of $150 U.S., which is good for 30 days and can be extended 10 times, after which they must return home or lose the right to reside in their own country.
In force since the dawn of the Revolutionary process, restrictions imposed on the travel of Cubans to and from abroad, have become one of the most serious stigma carried by this government. This abusive policy has been responsible for an incalculable amount of suffering for our people, having separated for decades, and even permanently, thousands of families.
Alarcon also said that "… there is another explanation for these restrictions: the need to protect our human capital. The training of physicians, technicians, teachers, etc., is very expensive to the Cuban State and the United States does everything to deprive us of this human wealth."
Sustained by the need to avoid a brain drain, among other arguments, this policy has systematically deprived Cubans of one of the most basic rights of man: the right to free movement and to choose where to live. But in resolving this issue, it seemed much simpler to our government to retain, by force, the professionals, than to guarantee them a dignified way of life which, in medical terms, would be the equivalent of amputating the limb of a patient suffering from lymphatic vessel inflammation which, it is true, regardless of the consequences, would "solve" their problem.
Alarcon said the reform will also favor the Cuban immigrants who today need an entry permit, who do not now have the same "profile" as those who left in the early years.
"Things have changed a lot (…). Nearly half a million Cubans installed outside our borders visit each year. The vast majority of Cuban migration has a normal relationship with their country of origin…"
What has never been even remotely normal, however, is the relationship of the Cuban State with respect to that emigration. As for the "profile" of these emigrants, Mr. Alarcón knows that definitely changed after that wave of the first five years of the Revolution, when it constituted mainly of former Batista supporters and oligarchs.
By the time of Camarioca, of the Mariel boat lift, and of the Maleconazo and the subsequent rafter crisis in 1994, Cuban migration had been made up of people who were, as a rule, younger, and desperate to having lost all hope in their country.
Alarcon also said that "…the immigration issue (…) has always been used as a weapon to destabilize Cuba since 1959 and as an element of distortion of the Cuban reality…" and, he says it as if he were talking about some sneaky trick orchestrated by Yankee think tanks, as if it were a true aberration systematically and massively perpetrated for half a century by the Cuban Government against the will and interest of its people.
At this point some questions present themselves: Why right now and how far will they dare to go? In Havana circles of thought whose opinion I could sound out, it is said that these measures could be oriented with the foresight to open the door to a Cuban emigration that so far has been unnaturally excluded from investing in its own country due to the absurd policy followed by our government, which for decades has preferred to negotiate with foreign investors before offering any opportunity to offer its own emigrants or their descendants. This posture presumably reflects a deep fear of the influence that they might come to gain in the domestic political environment.
This may or may not be the result of the uncertainty that surrounds Hugo Chavez, whose health is perceived to be broken just a few months before the upcoming Venezuelan elections — because losing his support now would be lethal — as will be seen.
But what offers few doubts is that the emigration, although eager to invest in Cuba, given the traumatic memory of the expropriations of the past, might be demanding a series of legal safeguards to make sure that, this time, their investment would not be impounded, beginning with radical changes in their migratory status which, until today, has completely denied their Cuban citizenship.
Another side of the coin makes this moment most "opportune" — for the Cuban government — as the time to make this decision, because if they finally decide to open the doors wide, then there would be embassies in Havana that would possibly close theirs, and show more aversion to issuing visas, not to mention that the U.S. government might repeat the controversial Cuban Adjustment Act.
Even so, those who finally manage to travel will find the majority of their destinations in the world mired in the worst economic crisis since the Crash of 1929, and not offering too many opportunities right now to any newcomers. If to this we add that those who leave no longer face the confiscation of their house and so can leave here their home, family and concrete interests and can return when they please, then I would dare to predict that the first wave of emigrants would stabilize in a few years.
In exchange, the remittances would increase and provide considerable oxygen to the economy — in this sense the investments of the emigrants, were they authorized, would be crucial — and the country would begin to flow in a much more natural way.
So, how far will they dare to go. They certainly have to be thinking big, or everything would be half measures. For an immigration reform today at the level the Cuban people need, they have to leave behind all the current policies. They have to guarantee, unequivocally, through an appropriate body of binding laws, that every Cuban citizen can enjoy his or her right to freely leave the country, and equally to enter it without conditions of any kind including, of course, political ones, for differences of opinion, which would exclude only those involved in terrorist acts, or those who have a debt to the legal system, beyond which absolutely any official who dared to violate this right of a Cuban citizen would be legally called before a People's court.
It is also urgently needed to eliminate once and for all the ominous category of "final departure," a monster that has uprooted entire generations of Cuba, as well as the controversial "letters of invitation" and of course, crushed under its own weight, the odious permission to leave or "white card" whose funeral no one would attend.
But one point I can not overlook in this matter is one of the most controversial nuances, and that is the solution to the problem or releasing those workers in my sector who are required to apply for permission if they wish to permanently or temporarily leave the country.
Who could forget the thousands of former members of the Cuban Public Health sector, who, overwhelmed by spurious wages and harsh living conditions, and finding no other means whatsoever to emigrate, decided to leave from some Medical Mission work abroad, and so were branded with the status of deserters and condemned to banishment, not permitted to enter their own country for at least 10 years?
Would anyone dare to catalog as normal the relations with these emigrants before such heinous treatment? Without any doubt, we can assert that the workers in the Cuban Public Health have received the most denigration treatment in this story and today our government has the opportunity to redeem its position, hopefully to act with wisdom.
Any approach that they apply to the immigration issue at this time, that does not address everything at once and guarantees our right to travel, will restrict the freedom of the Cuban people, and therefore work against the prosperity of the country.
April 30 2012
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