The Most Popular Song in the Nursery / Dora Leonor Mesa
The Most Popular Song in the Nursery / Dora Leonor Mesa Dora Leonor Mesa, Translator: Unstated
The mother, overwhelmed byhow muchwas left to do after her long work day, gathers her two-year old daughter from the private nursery that they had recommended to her. "The children are very well cared for and learn a lot," they had told her.
In her urgency to get home, the doctor listened to the little girl murmur a melody that seemed familiar, but she barely paid attention trying to get home as soon as possible. She was observing for some time that the girl had been better behaved and followed diverse orders that they gave her. She even made demonstrations of movements that he teacher of Education taught her.
The day ended normally, and the next morning before dressing for work she again heard "the little song" without giving it great importance.
Some weeks passed, and one afternoon, while the family was watching television, waiting for the beginning of a sporting event, how great was their surprise to see the little girlsaluting the Cuban flag like the athletes at the beginning of the notes of the national anthem. Immediately, without pause and puffed with pride, the girl hummed completely and with the greatest solemnity the anthem, or the Anthem of Bayamo as it is also known.
Private Cuban nurseries can and should be educational establishments.
Preschool Education in Cuba constitutes the initial link of all the education of boys and girls; it also forms the first subsystem of all the National System of Education; it has as its objective to the maximum harmonic and complete development of the infant from six months until five years of age and consequently his preparation for school.
The system of home schooling, or education in the home is only permitted for exceptional cases, generally for sick boys and girls. Although preschool is not obligatory, Cuban families willingly acceptsending their little ones of five years to school.
Preschool Education contemplates three fundamental variants, essentially constituted under the supervision of the State: the nursery schoolfor children from zero to five years of age, the preschool grade or preparatory school for children from five years of age, and the informal channels, currentlytransformed into the program "Educate your child," from birth until four years of age, through the cooperation of the parents and the community.
Except for the nurseries directed by religious institutions and other international organizations, the development of private Cubannurseries as educational centers is in its infancy. In order to begin tospeak of the topic we must mention that the owners of these child establishments, frequently located in their own homes, appear legally registered as "nannies" although they are supervised by diverse State institutions and are regulated by various legal regulations, they receive visits from functionaries and professionals of the Ministry of Public Health, etc.
In the private nurseries of Cuban citizens, boys and girls of different ages and social strata live together. In the places where we work, age differences are not established, provided that the little ones show sufficient maturity, discipline and motivation to participate in the activities that are carried out. This has permitted our young children of ages two to four years to acquire abilities that generally surprise parents, relatives and concerned persons.
Learning the National Anthem, recognizing the Cuban flag and other national attributes form part of a strategy to develop their identity as Cuban citizens, besides improving their vocabulary and communication skills and giving rise to their later adaptation to an educational institution, in this case the school.
The mother of the two-year-old little girl marvels that her little one sings the National Anthem. We explain to her that the main purpose of our work is that Cuban preschool education continue benefitting society and the families of the country. It makes us proud that the children learn, but we will be happier when Cuban teaching reaches the excellence of that on the continent.
Families with small children in private childcare need a place that will care for their offspring at irregular hours, secure and with great confidence for their later educational development.
Napoleon Bonaparte said: "We can always stop ourselves on the way up, but never on the way down." A comment from a historic person that is worthy of reflection and not for nothing do the members of the Cuban Association for Early Childhood Education repeat among ourselves, "Not one step back, don't even think about it."
Whenever we can do something every day for the development of Cuban children, we do it with the best disposition and spend whatever time is necessary.
May 15 2012
A Ground Level Look at Cuba’s Farm Policy
A Ground Level Look at Cuba's Farm Policy May 18, 2012 Fernando Ravsberg
HAVANA TIMES – This week marks the anniversary of the signing into law of Cuba's Agrarian Reform, which transformed the life of tens of thousands of peasant families who were subject to the cruelest forms of misery, as a 1957 survey of the Catholic University Group documented.
The farm workers were able to stop their constant traveling in search of work in the harvests, and they settled down on farms of their own, from which no one could ever again evict them. Their children had access to school and they themselves were taught how to read and write.
Nevertheless, the revolutionary government soon came to believe that agricultural collectivization was more in line with their ideology than individual plots. They pressured the farmers to annex their land onto the state farms or to the cooperatives, also controlled by the State.
The Soviet-style "koholz" was imposed on Cuba despite the poor results that they had exhibited in the European socialist countries. Mr. Ramón Labaut, my wife's communist grandfather, gave up his lands with pleasure, but his son-in-law Narváez Arias decided to continue in the old style.
A few years ago we went up into the mountains and visited the farms; that of the grandfather has been swallowed by vines. That of the Arias family, in contrast, produces so much coffee that they have built a nice house in town and he lives there in retirement while his children continue working the land.
Alejandro Robaina, the tobacco grower, was another of the rebellious farmers: he roundly refused to give up the lands that his father and his grandfather had planted. Decades later, Fidel Castro himself approached him to inquire how he had managed to achieve such yield and quality.
Mr. Robaina was a plain-spoken man, and responded by saying that if Cuba wanted to develop a good tobacco crop, the only way was to give the lands back to the farmers. And life has proven him right.
Most of the Cuban soil is very compact, so tractors are needed to turn it. Photo: Raquel Pérez
In the eighties, Fidel Castro counseled the French Communist Party leader George Marchais: "Don't even think about socialized agriculture. Leave the small producers alone, don't touch them. If you do, say goodbye to your good wine, your good cheese and your excellent foie gras." (1)
Nevertheless, for two more decades the Cuban leaders insisted uselessly on looking for new forms of collectivization that could surpass the productivity of the small farmer. It wasn't until 2008 that it was decided to put the land into the hands of the "guajiros" and others who, although not farmers or peasants, were willing to dedicate themselves to this way of life.
The bureaucracy set to work immediately: they prohibited them from constructing houses on the farm; they prohibited them from importing machinery; they attached exorbitant prices to the few tools that were available for sale; and they obligated them to distribute their products only through "Acopio", the State network famous for its inefficiency.
Despite all the obstacles, the guajiros used machetes to clear the marabou brush weeds, raised production, and left the country wondering what they would in fact be capable of doing if only they were given freedom to decide, if they were sold agricultural inputs, and were allowed to buy trucks for distributing their products.
I met a retired functionary from the Ministry of Foreign Trade who had received a parcel of land on the outskirts of Havana and now raises pigs with tremendous success; he grows the food for his animals and cooks with biogas that comes from their waste matter.
Agriculture is tough work, but in Cuba it has a certain attraction. Small farmers not only have access to education and health benefits, but they have also become one of the more prosperous sectors of the population, a rarity in Latin America.
The life of the Cuban peasant changed radically when land was distributed to them in 1959. Photo: Raquel Pérez
At any rate, the lack of water and the erosion of the soil makes it difficult to imagine that local agriculture could ever supply all of the country's necessities. Even in 1959, with half of the current population, Cuba imported a large volume of food.
I asked a farmer one day if it were true that Cuban land will produce anything you plant on it. He smiled astutely and said: "Yes, if you're referring to tropical products, and if you enrich it with fertilizers, and you fumigate with pesticides and if you apply herbicides and you install irrigation systems."
Only with great difficulty could Cuba become the garden that the popular imagination dreams of, but neither does it have to continue being a land plagued with weeds with a productive yield much less than that of a half-century ago.
The land distribution has begun to bear its first fruits, but in order to advance more in this they will need to eliminate the foolish restrictions imposed by an inefficient agricultural bureaucracy which would be better off shrinking into non-existence, together with the agricultural model that engendered it.
If 53 years ago the Cuban peasant raised high the slogan of "Land for those who work it!", today they should understand that this in itself is not enough: they also need resources, and above all the power of decision and participation in the design of agrarian policies.
(1) From the book, "A hundred hours with Fidel," by the author Ignacio Ramonet.
Breaking the Silence on Racism in Cuba
Breaking the Silence on Racism in Cuba Ivet González interviews documentary-maker GLORIA ROLANDO
HAVANA, May 17, 2012 (IPS) – Gloria Rolando has been revealing hidden chapters of Cuban history since the 2010 premiere of the first part of her documentary series "1912: Breaking the Silence," about the virtually unknown story about the only legal political party to promote racial equality in this country.
The documentary-maker defends the legacy of the Independent Party of Colour (Partido Independiente de Color), which was active from 1908 to 1912, and is a recurring focus of debates among activists for non-discrimination in Cuba.
The second part of the series, produced independently, is being shown in community and institutional locales, and will hit Havana movie theatres this month.
A century after the slaughter of the main leaders of the Independent Party of Colour, and as the International Decade for People of African Descent gets underway, Rolando, who also heads the autonomous video-makers' group Imágenes del Caribe (Images of the Caribbean), talked with IPS about the need for teaching another side of history, and the importance of the family in achieving racial equality.
The Independent Party of Colour
Led by two veterans of the third war for independence, Evaristo Estenoz and Pedro Ivonet, the Independent Party of Colour was created to fight against racism in the nascent Republic.
On May 20, 1912, the party's top leaders organised an armed protest against a decree that prohibited the party from running candidates in the elections. The protest ended in the massacre of more than 3,000 black and mixed-race people and the imprisonment of survivors by the authorities. Q: What has been the main contribution of "1912: Breaking the Silence" (1912: Voces para un silencio)?
A: This series is aimed at all Cubans, because it addresses a complex chapter of our history, involving both blacks and whites. The film helps us to understand a troubled period, which is studied in school in a very schematic way.
When the ambassadors in Cuba from member countries of the CARICOM (Caribbean Community) saw the film, they were fascinated. They had come here without knowing about this fundamental chapter of Cuban history, which is also part of the development of the Caribbean.
That was a time of generalised repression. A person was treated with prejudice simply for being black or mixed-race. For that reason, the events of 1912 were silenced: people knew that they could face problems for telling the truth. That is how the version that endured until now was a distorted one, and many historians do not talk about the events as they actually happened.
Q: What has been the impact on the Cuban public?
A: The first reaction is lack of knowledge: that has been the hook for getting people to continue to watch the film. When the first part premiered, people became hooked. I was able to identify that effect in places where it was shown, such as Havana's main movie theatres.
Generally speaking, nobody knows about the history of the Independent Party of Colour, or about the massacre of many of its members. I am basing my work on that. We (the production crew) want people to learn about the facts and then evaluate that part of national history and its consequences for the present.
Q: At what point in the public debate over non-discrimination in Cuba did your series come out?
A: These questions are the focus of a lot of movement these days: there are different types of publications and there is a visible debate. Hopefully the polemic will expand beyond academic circles. At least, that's been the case in the capital, which is the environment I know best.
The issue became a boomerang in the 1990s, but now we are beginning to address it in a theoretical and scientific way, so that people can understand that it is not an emotional issue.
It is essential for all of this information to be made available in the public education system. My goal is not just to make the documentary and show it, but also for the recovery of the memory of the Independent Party of Col
Part Two of "1912"
The first part of "1912: Breaking the Silence" was broadcast on "Mesa Redonda" (Cuba's nightly political talk show), and was shown in the country's main movie theatres in 2010.
The second part has been shown in places such as Havana's Casa de las Américas cultural centre and La Ceiba community centre. Rolando is now working on the third part of the project. lour to be incorporated in teaching.
My greatest hope, once the third part is done and the project can be presented as a whole, is for it to be shown on the programme "Pasaje a lo desconocido" (Journey into the Unknown, a Cuban television programme that airs on Sundays and features documentaries), which has a large audience.
That way, it will no longer be an issue that is unknown to the Cuban population and that stirs up controversy. I also hope for it to be seen in community spaces, and it is being passed around informally so that people will use it, learn and tell others.
Q: Do the conditions exist in Cuban society today for recognising that racism persists here? And if so, why?
A: Cuban society is many-sided and very complex. Life in Havana is totally different than life in Holguín (700 km east of the capital), for example. In some of the provinces where we worked to make the series, people commented to us that they didn't have those problems.
In fact, Cuba is different in the central and eastern regions. There is the Haitian presence that came with a huge wave of immigration in the early 20th century. In Guantánamo, where a large part of the population is black, it might be that they don't feel the need for this debate as intensely as in the capital or in the western part of the island in general.
However, racial discrimination is also related to economic status, housing, the neighbourhood, food and structures for organising activities that certain population groups experience.
To try to eliminate it requires very complex actions. It's not enough to have free education and health services for all. Services for families and a return to family values play a fundamental role.
Q: What proposals have you identified for contributing to greater racial equality in Cuba?
A: There needs to be a television programme devoted to the Cuban family. The diversity of families needs to be shown — the ones that live in Baracoa (in eastern Cuba) or in Miramar (a residential neighbourhood in Havana) – to see how different people live their lives.
It could invite, for example, a sociologist who has researched the Havana neighbourhood of Pogolotti, or historians and other specialists who address the real problems faced by Cubans.
It could focus on a plan of action to ensure that many black girls and boys reach university. The doors are open to them, but few of them make it there. To make that possible, housing conditions and family history are two of the decisive factors.
Hoes / Francis Sánchez
Hoes / Francis Sánchez Francis Sánchez, Translator: mlk
I went shopping in search of a hoe.
Perhaps it was suddenly suggested to me by the partisan propaganda which always lays a guilt trip on the will of the majority — yeah, the runaway slaves who can't be allowed to govern themselves — while the saving ideas inevitably fall from above, from that select club of the intransitive neurons.
Perhaps proving the burden of remorse like that state of deep coma that socialist agriculture crosses being only the fault of those who are closest to the earth, those below — as the great novelist Mariano Azuela would say — in this social pyramid where the bureaucracy gives orders.
At best I was beating my conscience, living as I had always lived in the midst of an extraordinarily fertile savannah, for not having ceded to the State my part in this social contract — not of work, but of simulation — that is summarized by a useful and popular saying in Cuba, symptom of the post-classical era or of eternal bankruptcy: "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
I definitely had never employed many hours of my life even in that metaphysical wage relation, comparable to the poetry by which the "beautiful pretense" marks the count of Salinas. I could repent suddenly for not have participated either in many voluntary working days under the precepts of Che Guevara, in search of the New Man throwing to the ground all the molds, those "Red Sundays" in which the united proletariat dispersed the fossil fuel and marched from the city to the field to get the harvest from the scrubland using the happy method of the gods Orpheus and Bacchus together: singing, dancing and drumming with agricultural instruments.
The truth is that, one morning, desiring to see what kind of means of production, specifically hoes, the governmental apparatus had put within reach of the people to make more realistic the new act of contrition to which it called the masses, after labeling them as stupid masses, whose support cost two eyes from the face: you get sick of vagrancy, indiscipline, unproductivity, and finally, being like "pigeons" with beaks always open. . . I went through the stores to see what hoe we had within reach of our wallet for ridicule our yearning for leisure.
I walked through the city with the suspicion that my search would be in vain. But, by luck, I had been mistaken. In the last establishment on my list, a little hardware store, I finally located the service of sale of hoes to the people, or better,to beexact: the sale of one hoe. There it waited, alone, abandoned. With the digits of the price it was enough to explain to me its marginal status among the merchandise, because it could barely be seen placed in a corner. It cost $22.45! Without doubt that seemed more like the number that identifies the photo of an assassin behind bars. With reason my hoe had its head down.
As is logical, I deduced that the exposed sample in the pillory of the ridiculous prices did not gather all the responsibility, it would be treated only as a sample, representing the shame of many more tools of its kind that would wait neatly inside of boxes for the return of the collective faith in agricultural work. But that clerk caught me in my error. There existed no more in the warehouse. This was the only one, or maybe, a Platonic archetype and, at the same time, its concrete manifestations: the Hoe. I wanted to make myself the discovering fool, apparently upset, if the scarcity was due to high demand, and the sharp clerk got me from my disguise with a crafty smile, telling me the price in case I had not seen it: "$22.45!" We laughed together.
No one remembered when it had arrived there, even if it was in the way among the other products, like a dead animal that would not decay, nobody claimed it but neither did the administration send it to the other world. Obviously, neither did I make a sign of paying for its rescue, because I was dissuaded by that prohibitive figure, the equivalent of more than an average monthly salary.
Hereinafter I inevitably became accustomed to visiting it each time I passed nearby, to see how it was doing. One day I asked if the price was an exclusive karma or if the ones that came later would cost the same. Of course, still no employee of that establishment could know it, first one had to begin to come out of there. One afternoon I found that they had reduced the sentence from $22.45 to $14.20. I had the slight impression that curiosity ended up acting on its destiny.
Some days and weeks have passed, the Hoe is still hanging there. Some other time I will come closer to the counter to look at it from top to bottom.
The documentary images of the great Agrarian Reform show the happy faces of those farmers with almost no teeth, almost with no speech, that raised for the first time, thanks to the Revolution (1959), a property title to the land they worked. Nevertheless, in those rural pictures of multitudes that shook awake the memory of Robin Hood, there is missinga figure just as good-natured. If the epic camera man could repeat a portrait of the same group through the years,registering the morphological changes, we would see him come out of anonymity and overshadow, each time more, the poor people who apparently disappear behind his embrace, growing fat and at the same time polishing their manners, meanwhile decking himself out with the highest technology of the bureaucracy itself, including demagoguery.He is the most favored figured with the great share, because since then it would grow indefinitely at the cost of its advantages as alegal person: the State. The Commander-in-Chief already said it then: "If they question us, what are the earthly limits of the State? We answer them: They extend from the Punta de Maisi to the Cabo de San Antonio, and they embrace the lands included between the north and south coasts of our island."
In the end, one must ask oneself: Will there not be something working in a twisted way under the very same earth? Will there be a curse that the Utopia will return to the ideal of the primitive community as far as making the excess production rain the same over everyone, not catching, just sprouting on this coral island? In a country where the need for progress always encouraged the cultivation of the noble crust, after consummating the seizure of the map on the part of the supreme will to uphold the common good, supposedly, above all every individual interest, increasing the literacy rates, education levels and hygiene, with the result that everywhere this same social control rises to the surface in the form of a chronic ruin.
At the same time it slowed and frustrated the access of natural people, that is, of flesh and bone, the control over the means of production — with this, so individual and difficult to collectivize: a real hoe, handy, truly serviceable — and its direct benefits, the omnipresent State channeled the maximum instruments of its institutions in stimulating, rewarding, socializing other types of "hoes." We ourselves found in a very illustrative dictionary, Popular Cuban Speech Today1 , that "hoe" is an adjective and common substantive with the meaning "sycophant" and many synonyms: asskisser, minion, bootlicker, brownnoser, groveler, flunky, doormat. There are "multiple intellectual servants" making "the protective ring of power and carrying out its orders"2 , weapons of pleasure for the autocracy, with an effect much more illusory and indigestible, parasitic, sterilizing in the long run.
These other "tools", belonging to the sector better "read and written," they give to themselves by the ton at every crossroad of a society whose roads all lead to State ownership and, through it, to a centralized bureaucracy. They satisfy only the high demand for luster in the social superstructure, while the economic base continues being the unpromised wasteland.
1 Argelio Santiesteban: El habla popular cubana de hoy, Ed. de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1985, p. 243.
2 Ángel Rama: La ciudad letrada, Ed. Arca, Montevideo, 1998, p. 32.
Translated by mlk
March 31 2011
The Double Nine / Rebeca Monzo
The Double Nine / Rebeca Monzo Rebeca Monzo, Translator: Unstated
On my planet dominoes have been and continue to be the most popular table game.
Game played with twenty-eight rectangular tiles, generally white on the face and dark on the reverse, with each divided into two squares, each one of which is marked with from one to six dots, or with none at all.
Thus says the Volume I of the Encyclopedia Espasa-Calpe, sa. Madrid 1035 (third edition).
But we Latinos, we like to do more complicated things, we add to make it fifty-five tiles in total, and there reigns the dreaded, unwanted, hated and sometimes loved double nine.
I remember papa Manolo, Cubanized-Asturian, passionate lover of this game, who for many years proudly wore a belt with a wide buckle of silver and enamel that said champion. In the first years after 1959 he sold it, who knows for what paltry sum of money, to put food on our table, back in the seventies when we could barely manage one meal a day. All this led me to think that our country, by the work and grace of a personal utopia, was becoming a metaphor for this game:
Double Standard: To express in public the exact opposite of what you really think, and say, behind closed doors.
Double Currency: One, with which they pay our meager salaries and retirements, which has barely any value, and another which, even though it's only good inside the country, at least can be used to acquire most of the basic necessities, and that must be gotten and spent at your own risk.
Double Health: One very precarious and lacking in resources, which is offered to the people. Another more specialized, with a wide range of medicines and better facilities for the leaders and foreigners.
Double Education: One very deficient, with schools in a terrible state and most improvised teachers. And the other with very good conditions and qualified teachers for the diplomatic corps and a very few privileged Cubans.
Double Market: One, with little variety in products and prices extraordinarily inflated (more than 250% of costs), and the other in the so-called Cuban Convertible Pesos.
And another only for diplomats and senior leaders, with more varied products and better prices.
Double Migratory Law: One, draconian and violating human rights, which is applied to the population in general, and another, more expedited and economical, that favors only the leaders and high officials.
Double Supply: Almost nothing for the people's markets, and another with home deliveries in record time, for the ruling elite and selected officials.
Double Justice: The surprisingly cruel, pompous and media focused applied to citizens who violate the law, and another quiet, almost secret and less aggressive, applied to officials who have committed crimes against the economy.
Double Information: One, transmitted to the population through all the official media, and another of antennas and Internet, fiercely persecuted, which only a few privileged have access to.
As you see, there are various doubles. Now we just have to focus on the table, calculate how many tiles are still to come, and above all, try to guess who is crouched over the double nine, because in any moment he can play it and that's the game!
As I told you, this may be the most uncomfortable and surprising tile, of this other twisted entertainment.
May 15 2012
Universities and foreign companies in Cuba are shrinking
Posted on Wednesday, 05.16.12
Universities and foreign companies in Cuba are shrinking
Cuban leader Raúl Castro's push to carry out needed economic reforms has led to reduced enrollment at universities and departure of some foreign companies. By Juan O. Tamayo jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
Cuban universities have slashed enrollment by nearly 26 percent, apparently because of deep cuts in government spending, while several foreign investors are leaving the island, according to official and news media reports.
The two reports reflected the downsides of Cuban ruler Raúl Castro's effort to fix the island's doddering economy by cutting state spending on education, health and food rations, and his campaign to carry out tight reviews of foreign investments amid a slew of corruption scandals.
Cuba's National Statistical Office (ONE), reported this week that overall enrollment in universities — all state-controlled — dropped from 473,309 in the 2010-2011 school year to 351,116 in the 2011-2012 period. That's a drop of 122,193 students, or 25.8 percent.
The largest group of students, 118,914, was enrolled in medical sciences, reflecting the government's high interest in educating doctors, dentists and nurses — Cubans to staff the domestic health system or work abroad, and foreigners on scholarships to study there.
The biggest drop in enrollment was in social sciences, though it remained the second largest group with 77,200, according to the ONE report.
Cuba's Ministry of Higher Education sets admission quotas depending on the skills needed, but government officials have complained recently that universities are turning out too few scientists who can help modernize the economy and open new areas of production lines.
"Like other developing states, Cuba is trying now to push away from ideologically useful education — the social sciences and humanities — to job and wealth producing fields," said Larry Cata-Backer, a Professor of International Affairs at Pennsylvania State University who has studied the Cuban education system.
Cuba's communist government has long boasted of its achievements in health and education — the record of 711,000 university students in 2008-2009 was a stunning figure in a country of 11.2 million — although both areas have suffered significantly since the Soviet Union halted its massive subsidies in the early 1990s.
The Health Ministry announced in January that it had cut its 2011 budget by 7.7 percent, and officials at the Higher Education ministry have noted that each university graduate costs the state 25,000 to 40,000 pesos — roughly $890 to $1,450.
Castro has trimmed the food ration card and other government subsidies, allowed more private micro-businesses like barbershops and announced plans to slash 500,000 workers from state payrolls in hopes of "updating" Cuba's Soviet-styled economy.
His reform package, approved by a full congress of the ruling Communist Party last spring, also called for a more positive attitude toward foreign investments — only grudgingly accepted by older brother Fidel Castro before he passed power to Raúl in 2006. Cuban generally insists on owning at least 51 percent of any joint venture.
The so-called "guidelines" noted that the government was negotiating with foreign investors for several projects, including at least four multi-million dollar golf and condo resorts, some with access to beaches or docks for recreational boats.
Cuba's desperate need for foreign investments has been especially clear since cancer struck Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, whose oil-rich government provides Cuba with subsidies estimated at anywhere from $4 billion to $6 billion a year.
Yet Castro's plans to attract more foreign investments are off to a slow start because his government has focused more on inspecting and regulating than in stimulating the investments, according to an exclusive Reuters news agency report Wednesday.
The Reuters report cited Cuban and foreign business sources as saying that the island now has about 240 joint ventures and projects between the government and foreign investors, a drop from the 258 reported in 2009 and the 700 estimated a decade ago.
In fact, more joint ventures have closed than opened in Cuba since the "guidelines" were approved last spring, the dispatch by the Reuters bureau in Havana added.
Among those reported to have left are the London-based consumer product giant Unilever PLC and Grupo BM, a Panama registered company controlled by Israeli investors that operates citrus groves and juice plants in Cuba.
Foreign investors in Cuba have been increasingly uncomfortable since early 2009, when the global financial crisis sparked a shortage of hard currency on the island and led Castro to freeze the bank accounts of joint ventures operating there. Castro has been slowly paying out the money, estimated at more than $800 million, since then.
The 2011 "guidelines," while making positive comments about foreign investors, also noted the need to establish "rigorous" regulations on the joint ventures, apparently because of the mounting corruption scandals involving foreign companies in Cuba.
In April, government investigators reportedly arrested British architect Stephen Purvis, who had been spearheading an ambitious project by Coral Capital Group Ltd., to build a 1,200-home golf resort just east of Havana.
Amado Fakhre, Coral Capital's managing partner and also a British citizen, already had been arrested in October. The firm, registered in the British Virgin Islands, was founded in 1999 to invest in Cuba projects.
Also caught in corruption probes have been top officers of the Tokmakjian Group and Tri-Star Caribbean, two Canadian trading companies that have sold foreign items, especially heavy constructions and transportation vehicles, to government ministries.
Other scandals have hit Cuba's aviation, telecommunications, nickel, juice, cigar and other industries and led to the arrests or dismissals of scores of government officials – including Julio Cesar Díaz Garrandés, boyfriend of Castro's youngest daughter.
Most of the top Cuban government officials who handle deals with foreign companies, often worth several millions of dollars, earn much less than $50 a month and can be tempted to pocket bribes in exchange for throwing business to the foreign companies.
A dispatch from the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana to Washington in 2006, made public by WikiLeaks last year, noted that corruption in Cuba was so widespread that the island has become "a nation on the take."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/16/v-fullstory/2802903/universities-and-foreign-companies.html
Cuban universities cut student intake by 26 pct
Cuban universities cut student intake by 26 pct Published May 15, 2012 EFE
Havana – Cuba's universities reduced admissions by 26 percent in the 2011-2012 academic year, the National Statistics Office, or ONE, said Tuesday.
Its report says that for 2011-2012, Cuban universities have enrolled a total of 351,116 students, almost 123,000 less than the 473,309 recorded in the previous academic year.
The system of higher education has slashed enrollment in all areas, but particularly in social sciences and the humanities, which nonetheless continues to have the second-largest number of admissions with more than 77,200 students.
ONE notes that the highest number of students in the country are taking medical science courses with a total of 118,914.
According to official data, the Cuban university population reached its peak in 2008-2009 with 711,000 students, of whom more than 80 percent were enrolled in degree programs in social sciences and the humanities.
Cuba, with a population of 11.2 million, announced in 2010 that the country had more than 1 million university graduates as a result of the revolution's decades-long policies of training professionals.
The plan of economic reforms promoted by the government of President Raul Castro stipulates that university quotas must be "at the level needed to develop society and the economy."
The Web site of Cuba's Higher Education Ministry said that for the 2012-2013 academic year, some 69,270 new openings are planned, most of them in the fields of pedagogical, medical, technical, agricultural and economic sciences, in that order.
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/05/15/cuban-universities-cut-student-intake-by-26-pct/
Handicapped Girl Still Without Social Assistance / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada
Handicapped Girl Still Without Social Assistance / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada Translator: AnonyGY, Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada
Some days ago a brief note denounced to the world, what a mother described as hell. After she knew from the workers from Social Security that that agency decided to withdraw the pension given to her each month, for her handicapped daughter Keylis Caridad Alemán Rodríguez.
A month after such arbitrariness, the situation is the same and the mother of the minor, in order to be able to support her, has had to do what we know as a part-time job during the week, while the minor is at school. So that she can make some money and take home some relief.
The decision to withdraw the pension of social assistance from the minor of divorced parents, is because — according to the Social Security agency of the municipality of Santo Domingo and the municipal group of Social Prevention of the Municipal Assembly of Municipal Power, this last entity ruled by Rafael know as the Cat — it's due to the fact that the mother of the minor has informal relations which someone who is now her partner.
Yamayki Rodríguez, mother of the girl, recognizes the fact that she has a new relationship with someone she plans to marry in the future if both decide, but with what she doesn't agree with is with the fact that the governmental entities question her personal life and that they cite it as an excuse to withdraw the assignment to the minor, that her new partner has to take the responsibility of her minor daughter.
Keylis Caridad Alemán Rodríguez is a 15 year old girl, handicapped, with congenital malformations in the hips, knees, and ankle to which can be added that the girl's heart was operated on during the first months after she was born, for which illness she gets regular check ups, being check up followed by a specialist in cardiology.
At the time of writing the note Keylis Caridad Alemán Rodríguez, a native of Santo Domingo, province of Villa Clara, is being analyzed by the municipal entity of education to see if she can continue her studies. Her mother and the girl prefer that she study at the "preuniversity" high school nearby, but her school performance, according to the educational directives, doesn't not allow her to have access to this superior level.
It is important to clarify that rating given to her school performance, is the result of the non-participation of the girl in sports activities, her non-participation in the schools in the countryside, and her non-cooperation in voluntary activities of her school. According to Yamayki despite her disagreement the directors of municipal education say that they would let the girl attend higher education but it's not possible simply because of the problem that this educational center has not eliminated the architectural barriers and that they don't have resources for this.
Up to the moment she's only be given the possibility to graduate as a qualified worker doing manicures and pedicures. Yamayki cites that the girl is not physically suitable to do such job and that she is suitable to continue her studies.
The pictures before you show the minor, in one of the snapshots she poses next to her mother and in the others are proof and testimonies of each of the surgeries she's been submitted to, surgical operations that despite the effort of the relatives, some have not been finished so some are pending.
Despite what they go through, for both hope is not lost, they believe something can be done for them and that somebody can listen to them. According to the minor and her mother that hope is what motivates them in front of these adversities caused by those who have the local power, to continue knocking on the doors of any necessary institution denouncing what they call an injustice.
Keylis Caridad Alemán Rodríguez and her mother Yamayki Rodríguez live at Calle Agramonte # 38, on the corner of Calle Maceo, in the municipality of Santo Domingo, Villa Clara.
Translated by Anony GY
May 14 2012
The Loss of Self Esteem / Rebeca Monzo
The Loss of Self Esteem / Rebeca Monzo Rebeca Monzo, Translator: mlk
Some days ago I read in the international press a story entitled Serving, not servile, by the journalist from Juventude Rebelde (Rebel Youth), Jose Alejandro Rodriguez, where he laments the tendency of Cubans to appear servile to foreigners. In one of his paragraphs he said and I quote:
"Neither can it be forgotten, in order not to repeat it, that certain public institutions have well matched this neo-servile tendency when in a political double standard they demand certain attributes and guidelines of a Cuban in order to access not a few sites, in contrast with the permissive submission with which they treats the foreigner."
"If the Cuban were to travel more he would be able to see more and value more, by contrast, the good things of his country," he continues in another paragraph.
If there is a guilty party in all this deformation of the Cuban, it is due principally to the government which, during the last half century, has treated its own people like third class citizens. At first they enclosed us on this little island, without permitting us to have contact with the outside: that lasted several decades.
The only valid references were the Cuban dailies and some Soviet magazines. We who worked were prohibited from writing to our family or friends in capitalist countries, above all in Europe, on pain of losing our jobs. Remember that the State was the only employer. Likewise, particular trips were prohibited or extremely restricted.
All this served to intensify the material misery and therefore morale. A feeling of distress began to grow because of not possessing the most urgent articles, which was transformed little by little into envy towards those who had access to them. The few trips to the outside were for the party militants or the youth with the most proven loyalty to the regime. Here it began to get worse and to develop the double standard.
One had to pretend and pretend well in order to be deserving of the trust and, therefore, of the little trip that would permit us to breathe a little and to be able to bring shoes and clothes to our relatives, and in a plastic bag the little food that the airplane let us ingest, so that the child at home or the old one could enjoy it. Economizing to the max on food, although that would involve hunger, in order to return to the fatherland with a little money, plus the little soaps gathered in the hotels.
With the economic crisis at the beginning of the 1980's and the lack of tourism, flights from the Comunidad — Cubans abroad — were authorized. Those countrymen of ours who were denounced in meetings when they expressed the desire to leave, these same ones who were insulted and told never come back, now as if by magic would be converted from "worms" (the epithet that had been screamed at them), to butterflies and would come to save the country's weak economy and to fill a little the empty bellies of the relatives and even some of the neighbors of those who had been insulted.
I have here other manifestations of the double standard: lying to keep a job,lying to earn a little trip,lying to be able to enjoy a reunion with family and friends and lying to try to contain proportionate happiness, at least publicly.
Now, many years have passed, the Special Period that started at the beginning of the 1990's does not seem to have ended. Because of that, as soon as tourism began to increase, the siege of the visitors increased at the same time. The bid to see who is the most favored has made many men, women and even children seem like street clowns, trying to win over the foreigner, which is likewise a cunning way of begging.
One must not blame only the suffering people; one must consider the circumstances that have surrounded all this moral deterioration. When a society loses its civility, loses the family and all its values, anything can be expected from it.
Cuban pride is very battered. That national feeling that we used to have, that made us walk with our heads held high and treat others correctly, without difference, including the tourists, without having to lower our s ingratiate ourselves, we have been losing it almost without noticing.
The daily urgencies and the lack of good education, have made us underrate ourselves. I remember when I was a girl, for us a tourist was more ordinary. The only thing that sometimes made us turn our faces towards them was the bright attire that they wore.
As far as the flower vendors of Old Havana, I believe that the costume is excessive or unnecessary. It seems when one walks through the restored streets in that part of the city that one is moving on a movie set. This is too much for me, just like the flattery and mollycoddling that they dispense to the tourists provided that they buy the merchandise that they offer. It would seem that in the whole colonial zone, they were the estates of the big movie companies.
Translated by mlk
May 12 2012
Cuba’s Raul Castro backs gay rights: daughter
Cuba's Raul Castro backs gay rights: daughter (AFP)
HAVANA — Cuban President Raul Castro backs greater gay rights and ending discrimination against homosexuals, his daughter Mariela, a famed sexologist, said Saturday during a colorful gay rights march in Havana.
"He has done some advocacy work, speaking of the need to make progress in terms of rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity," Mariela Castro told reporters.
"The Cuban president… has been talking about this issue, but he has not made it public. It is surely part of his strategy," she added, when asked if her father backed her campaign to legalize civil unions for gays and lesbians.
"He himself has said that… we cannot make progress if we continue to live with these prejudices."
Mariela Castro runs Cuba's National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) and is an outspoken advocate for the rights of homosexuals and transsexuals in Communist-ruled Cuba.
She is pushing for passage of legislation that would legalize same-sex unions, but stops short of endorsing gay marriage. She is hopeful that lawmakers will take up the bill sometime this year.
The president's daughter led a colorful conga line that was part of a march through the streets of Havana attended by about 400 transvestites as part of festivities marking the Fifth Cuban Day Against Homophobia.
"Down with homophobia! Long live sexual diversity!" participants yelled. Many carried rainbow flags symbolizing the gay rights movement.
In January, Cuba's Communist Party Congress resolved "to fight against all forms of discrimination, including against sexual discrimination, and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and sexual identity."
"It's a hugely important first step," Mariela Castro said earlier this week.
Traditionally stigmatized in Cuba, homosexuality was fiercely repressed for many years by the regime, which interned homosexuals in work camps in the 1960s and ostracized them in the 1970s under the rule of Fidel Castro.
Raul Castro succeeded his brother Fidel as president in 2006.
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