Andrés Carrión describes his anti-Castro shouts during papal visit in Cuba
Posted on Sunday, 04.29.12
CUBA | PAPAL VISIT
Andrés Carrión describes his anti-Castro shouts during papal visit in Cuba
In an exclusive interview, the man who shouted anti-Castro-slogans recalls the globally broadcast incident that occurred during the pope's visit. BY JUAN CARLOS CHAVEZ jcchavez@ElNuevoHerald.com
Andrés Carrión, the man who shouted "Freedom!" "Down with communism!" and other anti-Castro slogans on March 26, shortly before the papal Mass on Antonio Maceo Square in Santiago de Cuba, remembers that moment as if it had been the end of his life. His throat was dry. He panted. He thought about his family.
"I was worried because I thought that, at the moment of truth, my voice would fail and my shouts wouldn't come out," Carrión recalled in a telephone interview with El Nuevo Herald. "But they did, and I know that they caused the dictatorship much harm."
The incident occurred in an area near the platform where TV cameramen and photographers stood. It was broadcast widely, throughout the world. As he was removed violently from the square, Carrión was struck by several government sympathizers. One member of the Cuban Red Cross beat him savagely on the face and struck him on the head with a folded stretcher.
"If I had an opportunity to find the stretcher bearer, I'd try to explain to him that his intransigence only benefits the government," Carrión said. "The same government that keeps him working hard and selling bleach on the streets."
Carrión thought that he wouldn't leave the square alive.
For days, Cuban authorities kept his identity secret, until it was disclosed by Alfonso Chaviano Peláez and José Daniel Ferrer García, members of the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU). Chaviano said in a phone interview with El Nuevo Herald that he had recognized Carrión but that he was unable to report it immediately because he lacked a means of communication and his home was under close surveillance.
"Not long ago, I was able to see some videos of the protest and the great pounding they were giving me," Carrión said. "But in the midst of that situation, your adrenaline and state of mind are altered and you don't realize it. The only thing I felt was that my soul was separated from my body."
Carrión said that the idea to stage a protest began when he heard that Pope Benedict XVI would visit Santiago de Cuba. One week after the papal Mass, he toured the square repeatedly. He even selected the best location for his protest.
That day, Carrión was among the first to arrive. He took 10 candies and a bottle of cold water. The wait was long and exhausting. He arrived at 11 a.m. The Mass was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. One hour before evading the police cordon and shouting his slogans, a Colombian journalist approached him and asked him what he thought about the Cuban government.
Carrión did not reply.
"I looked at him and said to myself, 'stick around and you'll find out what Cubans think,' " he recalled.
On the evening of March 26, the authorities took him to the Versailles Operation Center of State Security, in Santiago de Cuba. For at least two weeks, he remained in a cell, alone, without knowing if his protest had reached the outside world.
"The only satisfaction I felt was that I had done something in the name of all the Cubans who remain silent out of fear," Carrión said. "Now I'm fully aware that the regime will never forgive me for what I did. That's why I think they're waiting for the right moment to give me a final blow."
Carrión's situation provoked innumerable expressions of concern. Human rights activists and peaceful oppositionists in Cuba and abroad demanded his immediate release from prison. Carrión was freed one week ago, although he's under obligation to meet a series of conditions. The authorities have ordered him to appear every Wednesday at the Versailles center. They've told him not to have contact with foreign media.
The government also has taken additional steps in his neighborhood, Carrión says. An Interior Minister officer, a captain by the name of Figueroa, told the residents of the Sorribes housing complex where he lives that they may lynch or stone anyone who demonstrates against the revolution.
"State Security checks on me constantly and I'm the target of provocations," Carrión said. "The people are afraid but express their support to me covertly. On the street, they tell me, 'thanks from those of us who didn't have the guts to do what you did.' That comforts me."
Currently unemployed, Carrión has a diploma in social and occupational rehabilitation. His wife is a physician. They have no children.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/29/2774790/andres-carrion-describes-his-anti.html
The Cuban killer who fooled the CIA
Posted on Saturday, 04.28.12
The Cuban killer who fooled the CIA By Brian Latell
To CIA, Rolando Cubela seemed the perfect prospect to assassinate Fidel Castro. Young and fit, a battle-tested conspirator, he had killed in cold blood before. Unlike most Cuban officials who toiled under the suspicious gaze of the security services, he was allowed to travel abroad freely where illicit meetings with his Agency handlers were easy to arrange. He used a beach house adjacent to one reserved for Fidel at Varadero, a resort a couple of hours east of Havana. There it could be a simple hit, on the sand or in the surf where the Cuban leader and his security would least expect it.
A medical doctor and wounded revolutionary hero, Cubela circulated in the top ranks of the civilian and military hierarchies. When I met him in Miami in the summer of 2009 to talk about his exploits, he proudly showed me the long curving scar that ran from his right shoulder down the length of his bicep. It was acquired in combat during one of the watershed battles in the last months of the guerrilla war. He told me that he had lost faith in Fidel during those days. Declassified CIA files show that as early as March 1959 — three months after the victory — Cubela was already confiding in friends a desire to kill Castro.
Cubela was one of the top two leaders of the Revolutionary Student Directorate, originally a rival of the Castros' 26th of July Movement. The two forces were integrated after Batista fell, and a few leaders of the Directorate won important posts in the new regime, though tensions between the groups would always fester. Cubela served as the revolution's first university federation president but was never given a position of greater responsibility or trust, neither commanding troops nor managing a government agency.
He knew the Castros well, especially Raúl. The brothers respected his heroic record but were wary of his charm, dashing good looks, and cavalier nature. When flashing a capricious smile and swaggering, he was for all appearances an unpredictable rogue and seducer. Cubela was "a strange man,'' according to his first CIA case officer, temperamental and often exasperating. Nestor Sanchez, his last handler and the one who knew him best, remembered he was "moody, sensitive, mercurial.''
An Agency biographic and psychological profile oddly described his "almost petulant mouth.'' A handwriting analysis characterized him as "shrewd, clever, a role player, self-centered, and vain.'' It also held that "he can exercise various deceptive mechanisms in the most adroit fashion'' and "has not yet found his proper course.'' Some Agency case officers in the 1960s and 1970s believed graphology could help in agent assessment. This report turned out to be close to the mark.
Carlos Tepedino, a Cuban emigre jeweler and Cubela's co-conspirator with CIA, told me in Miami that his lifelong friend never trusted Fidel but that the Cuban leader "had great sympathy for him.'' Maybe, Tepedino offered, it was because "Rolando always spoke directly; and Fidel liked that.'' That may have been so, but modern Cuban history is littered with disgraced officials more clever than Cubela who talked too candidly to their commander in chief. Seven years younger than Castro, Cubela was his favorite in the Student Directorate, but that could have been because he was the most malleable, the most vulnerable to Fidel's charms and suasion. To be sure, they shared many unfathomable affinities, not least, similar violent pathologies.
In October 1956, Cubela carried out one of the most notorious assassinations in Cuban history in the predawn hours on a quiet Sunday. A group of police and army officers, some accompanied by their wives, had been drinking and gambling at the Montmartre, an elegant Havana nightclub. As they left the club, they were drenched in a merciless barrage of gunfire. A colonel, Batista's military intelligence chief, died instantly. A second colonel, his wife, and another woman were severely wounded. Amid the mayhem, Cubela and his main accomplice fled through the casino to safety.
In 1963, he was easily the best candidate the Agency ever had to complete another murder mission, one that had failed many times. The inspector general's report commissioned by CIA director Richard Helms in 1967, and now fully declassified, cataloged the sordid history of CIA assassination plotting against Castro.
It took many years, but the truth about Rolando Cubela's true loyalties gradually emerged. Evidence of his duplicity had been accumulating since the mid-1960s, and now, with what I have learned from a knowledgeable Cuban defector and a long-ignored CIA document, it can be stated unequivocally that he conspired with Fidel.
The first hint came from Castro himself. On May 2, 1966, he met with New York Times correspondent Herbert Matthews, whose archived notes of their conversation were not released for public use until a number of years later. Matthews quoted Fidel this way: "Cubela was a weak, neurotic type that they nursed along, but he was not getting the jobs he thought he deserved and he was in bad company.''
Matthews spoke to Interior Minister Ramiro Valdés the next day. Cubela, the latter said, "had been reduced to supervisor of medical education in a big Havana hospital, and his friends realized his discontent and neurotic nature, so he was, in a sense being watched.''
Valdés spoke definitively about Cubela nineteen years later on June 5, 1985, in a meeting with another visiting journalist. "Yes, we had information about his trip abroad, that he had contacts with the CIA, that he had a mission to assassinate Fidel. We knew this.'' The admission, stored at the University of Miami's Cuban Heritage Collection, seems to have gone unnoticed by earlier researchers.
But how did Valdés know of the assassination plan, and when was it compromised? Was there an informant close to Cubela? Could the crafty jeweler Tepedino have been a double agent? Had Cubela himself been reporting to Cuban intelligence, perhaps from the first meeting with a CIA officer in Mexico City? In May 1997, Ricardo Alarcón, the long-serving president of the rubber-stamp Cuban legislative body, the National Assembly, was the first authoritative source to suggest the answer. Alarcon was close to Cubela in 1960 when they served together in the top two positions in the University of Havana student federation. Author Richard Mahoney asked him about Cubela during a Havana interview. He said, "Cubela may have been a Castro plant.''
It was in the spring of 2011 when I was finally convinced that Alarcon had been right. It was then that I met Miguel Mir, another DGI (Cuban intelligence service) defector living in the United States. He had joined the DGI in 1973 at the age of sixteen, later serving at different times on the personal security squads of Fidel, Raúl and Valdés. He had worked his way up into those absolutely trusted positions, putting him in daily proximity to the top leadership. From 1986 until 1992, Mir was a principal bodyguard and security officer for Fidel.
It was during the first year of that assignment, as a DGI lieutenant, that Mir also served as chief curator for sensitive military and security archives. His title was Military Historian for Fidel Castro's Personal Security. Mir told me that in that position, he was custodian of the regime's records of historical memorabilia related exclusively to the commander in chief. They were kept in a secret vault at a military facility near Havana.
He told me, "I read documents there about Rolando Cubela, stating that he was a double agent.'' They dated from the 1961 to 1963 period. There were thousands of photos and records about Fidel. The archive, created by Castro's aide and one-time paramour Cecila Sánchez, memorialized him. "It was a record of all the attempts against his life,'' Mir told me. "That's why these were kept and not destroyed.''
I have no reason to doubt what Mir shared with me about this and other sensitive intelligence matters. What he saw in the archives indicates that Cubela was dangled in March 1961 in Mexico City and that he went on to report everything that took place in his meetings with CIA officers to Fidel and the DGI.
Even more recently I discovered yet more convincing evidence of Cubela's double game. Carlos Tepedino admitted during an aggressive CIA polygraph examination in August 1965 that Cubela "had strong connections with Cuban intelligence and was probably cooperating with them in various ways.'' He "had daily contact with them . . . worked with them closely…knew what was going on in intelligence circles.'' Even worse, Tepedino said that Cubela had told "everyone'' about his CIA relationships, "everyone knew.'' And Cubela had never tried to organize "a conspiracy to overthrow Castro and had no plan or followers who would work with him to achieve that.'' Tepedino said that "a group as such was nonexistent.'' Cubela had been toying with his CIA handlers all along.
Results of the interrogation were shared with the Church committee — the U.S. Senate committee that held hearings on the CIA in 1971 — and some of its contents cited in the committee's final report in April 1976. But Tepedino's startling admissions attracted no further attention. Until now they have not been cited as a smoking gun proving Cubela's duplicity and collaboration with Cuban intelligence, and thus with Fidel himself. The nine-page polygraph report was not declassified until 1998, and then filed away at the National Archives amid approximately five million pages of records relating to the Kennedy assassination. It was effectively lost until coming to my attention in October 2011.
But why did the CIA officers familiar with the case insist until their deaths that Cubela had been a reliable secret agent even after the results of Tepedino's polygraph exam were written up in September 1965? A copy of that report is known to have been shared with headquarters Cuba operations officers. Yet Helms and at least two other senior CIA officials ignored it — or were never informed. They were not queried about it during testimonies before the Church committee, nor were several other CIA officers who testified. The polygraph results were not mentioned in the 1967 inspector general's report on assassination plots.
An intentional cover-up? Quite possibly the information was too incriminating, too embarrassing for those involved. If it were known conclusively outside of CIA that Cubela had worked with the DGI all along, grave concerns about possible Cuban government involvement in Kennedy's death inevitably would have been raised. In any event, it appears that Tepedino's reluctant confessions were filed away in 1965 with the hope that they would never have to be explained.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/28/v-fullstory/2773722/the-cuban-killer-who-fooled-the.html
Massive Cuba Layoffs to Continue
Massive Cuba Layoffs to Continue April 27, 2012
HAVANA TIMES, April 27 — The Cuban government projects to lay off 170,000 workers this year as part of a reorganization plan aimed at "updating" the island's socio-economic system, according to a news report on national television on Thursday.
The current process is "more realistic than the one launched last year," said outspoken journalist Ariel Terrero, who specializes in economic issues.
He was speaking on his weekly news magazine program "Buenos Dias."
During his report, it was learned that more than 370,000 Cubans have turned to non-state forms of employment since the beginning of this drive by the government in October 2010.
It is expected that by the end of the year, that year this figure will reach 600,000.
Large scale layoffs are a keystone of the government's attempt to rescue the depressed economy. The only labor union federation, the CTC, fully supports the layoff program.
Opposition members take exception to remarks at Harvard by Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, Archbishop of Havana,
Posted on Friday, 04.27.12
Opposition members take exception to remarks at Harvard by Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, Archbishop of Havana,
Opposition members both in and outside Cuba take exception to some remarks made by Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, Archbishop of Havana. BY JUAN CARLOS CHAVEZ jcchavez@elnuevoherald.com
Members of the opposition both inside and outside Cuba rejected recent statements by Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, Archbishop of Havana, who described 13 oppositionists who occupied a church in Havana just before Pope Benedict XVI's visit as "delinquents." The demonstrators were removed violently from the church.
Ortega also said that the late Msgr. Agustín Román recommended to him not to use the word "reconciliation" during his first visit to Miami.
The demonstrators "were not removed by force," Ortega said. "They were a group that – this pains me a lot – all of them were former delinquents. There was a former Cuban prisoner who had been returned to Cuba, he had been in prison for six years and was one of the excludable people who were sent to Cuba […] among them were people without any cultural level, some with psychological disturbances."
Ortega appeared Tuesday at a forum titled "Church and community: A dialogue about the role of the Catholic Church in Cuba." The forum was sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center of Latin American Studies of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Ortega said the occupation of the Minor Basilica at the Church of Our Lady of Charity in central Havana on March 13 was organized from Miami. He also said that there are groups "that greatly harm any type of opposition or dissidence."
The removal of the 13 peaceful oppositionists from the Republican Party for Cuba was criticized because of the violence exerted by the authorities. The group remained in the church for two days. They demanded the release of political prisoners, access to the Internet, freedom of expression and the creation of a lawful government.
The removal lasted 10 minutes. The demonstrators were beaten, pushed and kicked and taken to the Fourth Precinct Station of the Revolutionary National Police. Hours later, they were set free, but first the authorities opened criminal files on them. The incident ended the most significant action of the opposition on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Cuba, March 26-28.
About the meeting with Román and his recommendations on how Ortega should approach his homilies, the cardinal said he followed Román's suggestions because of the bishop's experience and knowledge of reality.
"Román called me aside and said to me: 'In your speeches, in your homilies, you speak of reconciliation. Don't mention that word in Miami,'" Ortega said. "I was reluctant to omit it, but he knew the land better than I did. But it's awful that a bishop – that we should have to omit a word that's ours, that belongs in Christianity."
Román, 83, died April 11 of a heart attack at the parish house of the Ermita de la Caridad in Miami.
In his presentation, which lasted little more than one hour, Ortega referred to the role of the Catholic Church on the island and its relations with the exile community, the release of political prisoners in 2010 and the call to the Cubans on the island to take up the Catholic faith. He said that, as Christians, Cubans should support the changes with patience.
"The whole world has seen that the Catholic Church is alive and present in these long years of difficulties," Ortega said. "The Pope also reaffirmed that truth is the basis of freedom. Truth is the only foundation on which an ethical conduct can be built."
Under Ortega's leadership, the Catholic Church and the government of Raúl Castro began a dialogue to improve the living conditions of imprisoned dissidents. After a meeting on May 19, 2010, about 130 prisoners were freed. Among them were 52 activists and independent journalists in the Group of 75 imprisoned in 2003 during a wave of repression known as the Black Spring.
Most of them went directly from the prisons to the airport and were put on planes to Spain. Twelve of them rejected exile and chose to remain in Cuba. Among these were José Daniel Ferrer García and Oscar Elias Biscet.
In that context, Ortega said that the improvement in the prisoners' living conditions was at the request of the Ladies in White. He said that the women were in agreement with the forced exile.
"Two years ago, the Church, seeing the conflict created by the wives and mothers of the prisoners as they demonstrated for their release, turned to the government to express its concern and was invited to mediate with those ladies, to ask them to formulate their complaints and wishes," Ortega said.
"Among other things, they proposed to [me] that their husbands be sent to another country, that it was better to be separated by the sea than by a prison's bars."
In Havana, Berta Soler, spokeswoman for the Ladies in White, and former political prisoner Oscar Elias Biscet criticized Ortega's words.
"To call those men 'delinquents' is to use words that the Cuban government uses," said Soler. "I am not in agreement and ask myself, where did Ortega get the information that allowed him to call them that? As to the releases, we spoke at the request of some prisoners, not all."
Biscet said that he has a low opinion of Ortega and his work, because the Church must always side with the downtrodden.
"I think that the Church leadership does not understand that the government must be told that the changes are a person's basic rights," Biscet said.
In Miami, Radio Mambí journalist Ninoska Pérez, a member of the Council for the Liberty of Cuba, lamented that Ortega didn't direct his criticism at the Castro brothers.
"It seems to me vile that the severity of his criticism is always directed at the exile community and the victims, not the oppressors," Perez said. "Worse yet, he uses Monsignor Román, who is dead, and talks about reconciling with an enemy who has not repented and who continues to repress" the Cuban people.
Silvia Iriondo, a member of the board of ARC and president and founder of MAR for Cuba, railed against Ortega for his "despective" language.
"Clearly, the Church of Jesus Christ is not the same Church as the cardinal's," Iriondo said. "Our exile is a show of solidarity and capacity for reconciliation among Cubans. So, what reconciliation is the cardinal talking about? A reconciliation with the oppressors who continue to repress [Cubans] and committing crimes?"
Ortega's appearance took place one week after Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, chairman of the Committee for International Justice and Peace of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recommended to the Obama administration to reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Pates also asked that the restrictions on travel to Cuba be lifted, to promote religious freedom and human rights on the island.
Archbishop of Miami Thomas Wenski said that it is important to remember that the reference made by Ortega about his meeting with Román was made in another "historical context."
"Those were the Eighties and Monsignor Roman was not advising [Ortega] on the concept represented by the word 'reconciliation' but was saying that that word packed, at that moment, another emotional weight," Wenski said.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/26/v-fullstory/2770686/opposition-members-take-exception.html
Castro capitalism: How much is Cuba opening up?
Castro capitalism: How much is Cuba opening up? Power Shift: It is no Arab Spring, but Communist Cuba is trying to tap in to the country's entrepreneurial spirit By Connie Watson, CBC News Last Updated: Apr 26, 2012 7:19 AM ET
Rafael Hernandez, the head of Cuba's largest cultural magazine, Temas, lost his last editor to Canada. She fell in love with a Canadian, married and moved away.
So a few months ago, Hernandez put out the call for a replacement and nearly 30 qualified applicants replied. He was stunned.
In the past, he says, maybe three or four candidates would apply for that kind of position because it was a permanent job and, until recently, a permanent job meant a government job with pay so low it didn't pay the bills.
In Cuba, over the past 20 years or so, the only way to get ahead was to juggle several contract jobs at a time.
So what's changed? Why the sudden interest in Hernandez's magazine job?
"Many Cubans are re-evaluating how important it is to have a permanent job," says Hernandez, who believes that this re-evaluation is a sign of the times, a sign that Cuba's cloistered system is changing so much that suddenly workers are searching for stability, poorly paid or not.
What is going on here, though, is no Arab Spring.
There is no occupy movement taking over Havana's plazas, no chaos in the streets. In comparison to the tumult of the outside world, Cuba's power shift is pretty modest.
But when such an ideological, one-party state starts stirring in a little capitalism, albeit Castro-style, it's a bit like a controlled explosion. The foundations are shaking and it's waking up the residents. Downsizing the state
As part of this shakeup, some Cubans are clearly searching for more stable ground (the permanent job); others are taking on the challenge of striking out on their own.
One big motivating factor is that in the next little while half-a-million government jobs are about to be eliminated.
President Raul Castro announced the dramatic downsizing in 2010. It was supposed to happen early in 2011. But the layoffs have already been postponed twice.
That's another sign of the times. The Cuban government wants fewer people on the payroll. But so far there is not enough work for them elsewhere.
The private sector, such as it is, is just getting on its feet and municipal governments, which are supposed to pick up the job slack, are still waiting for Castro to deliver on his promise of handing along more power and projects from central command.
The Castro regime certainly doesn't want hundreds of thousands of Cubans sitting around with no work, no money and no prospects.
A pool of unemployed that large, in a country that once promised every citizen a job for life, would be difficult to deal with.
"The consequences," says Hernandez, "could be politically not good." Risk and reward
At this point, while legions of public service employees wait for the axe to fall, many have already made the transition.
Abiel San Miguel used to be a government architect. Now he's co-owner of a hot new restaurant in Old Havana called Dona Eutimia's.
Since it opened about a year ago it has become a favourite of the city's bohemian crowd of artists, filmmakers and musicians.
But its good food attracts anyone with enough money to dine out, and gives the old mansion an eclectic mix of clients.
San Miguel loves the risk and the reward of being his own boss.
"Honestly, I didn't change professions just for the money, although this does pay better," he says. "I love what I'm doing now. And the more you love what you do, the more success you'll have."
Still, the capitalist concept of risk and reward is new to the majority of Cubans, who have grown up under the one-party Communist state of Fidel and now Raul Castro, both of them now in their 80s.
San Miguel says many of his compatriots aren't ready to let go of the government's firm hand just yet. "We've always waited for the government to give and give and give. And we have to change that mentality," he says.
"This kind of change will take years and really I prefer that," he says. "It's better to take it slow and steady." Some missing pieces
Most of the Cubans I talked with during a recent trip seem to agree. After generations of Castro's control over every aspect of their lives, they're not clamouring here for the creative chaos of an Arab Spring.
They really seem to feel that the government is easing up and they are willing to wait and see how the changes pan out.
So far, Raul Castro has eased restrictions on cellphone use and travel, which is allowing at least some Cubans to see more to the world around them.
He is also permitting Cubans to sell their cars and homes, and set up private businesses.
All of these things were specifically requested by citizens who sent letters to the government, at Castro's invitation.
The new president is even encouraging them to complain about what isn't working.
And Cubans are complaining like I've never heard them complain before — at least to a foreign journalist. (Which has always been more risky than complaining to each other.)
The other noticeable change is that, the younger the Cuban, the more impatient they are for the system to open up and the less fear they have of speaking out.
That could be a generational shift, linked to how connected younger Cubans are to the outside world through their smartphones, computers and the internet. They're simply not as intellectually isolated as their parents were.
Thanks to blogs, emails and alternative publications, Cubans have more channels to express themselves than ever before.
But the change underway in Cuba right now can't all be explained by modern technology. The layoffs, the downsizing, the decentralizing all play a role.
"If people don't depend on the state for their job, that gives them a lot more freedom," says university professor Julio Cesar Guanche. Overall, this translates into "a lot less capacity for the state to exercise a monopoly over opinion."
That's a healthy sign — for a democracy. Which Cuba is not. Far from it, in fact, and the Castro government insists it has no intention of going there.
Cuba remains a one-party state, in full control of the legislature and the judicial system. Human rights advocates say the government is still harassing and rounding up its harshest critics and putting them in jail whenever it wants to.
But it's clear the government has less control over the livelihoods of its people, and is also handing along a certain amount of control to local mayors.
Power — whether it is over information, or income — is shifting away from the government, and towards individual Cubans.
Hernandez, the magazine editor, likens the power shift to a puzzle with many pieces still missing.
"You can see it's a different animal pictured in the puzzle," he says, "but you don't know what animal it is yet." And of course how much of this Cuban puzzle gets filled in, will depend on who ends up holding the missing pieces.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/04/25/f-vp-watson-cuba-capitalism.html?cmp=rss
Corruption and the Morality of Survival / Dimas Castellano
Corruption and the Morality of Survival / Dimas CastellanoDimas Castellanos, Translator: Unstated
Corruption — the action of corrupting — is the result of many causes, that range from personal conduct to the political-economic system of each country. It is an ancient social phenomenon to that occurs to a greater or lesser extent in all societies and has been present throughout the history of Cuba.
In the colony, the gift of the Governor Don Luis de las Casas to the Creole classes was the diversion of funds for the construction of La Cabaña, the gambling den and cockpit that the leader Francisco Dionisio Vives had in the Army Castke for their entertainment. In the first half of the twentieth century the conduct of the political-economic-military elite, emerging from the wars of independence, who made use of public positions for individual purposes, a picture Carlos Loveira reflected in his novel General and Doctors; later between 1940 and 1958 politicians and officials turned corruption into one of the worst evils, to the point where Eduardo Chibas attacked this scourge during the election campaign for the presidential elections to be held in 1952. In the second half of the twentieth century, corruption, which had been confined to the political and administrative sphere, became a widespread social phenomenon.
Thus, corruption is not new, nor did it arise with the Revolution of 1959, what it new is its presence at all levels and spheres of society and the emergence of a dominant negative morality and threatens to become the culture.
The reason for this transformation is in the slide towards totalitarianism that is weakening civic responsibility; the implementation of an economic system unable to establish an appropriate relationship between wages and cost of living, generated frustration and despair. What was the dilemma of the Cuban family in such conditions, with regards to survival?
If, in addition, this behavior was socially accepted and each family of one form or another was forced to use it, then it had to predominate. Faced with the phenomenon, the government's response was limited to repression, vigilance, and inspection, that is, actions on the effects without attacking the causes, as reflected in the official press during the first decade of this century.
The newspaper Juventud Rebelde, May 22, 2001, in Corruption Fighter. A people's inspector in charge of trade violations explained that when he detects a crime, the violators would say, "We have to live, we have to struggle," and tell him, when he tried to stand up for the rights of citizens, "they defend their own victimization"; and on the 1st and 15th of October, in The Great Old Deception, he reported that of 222,656 inspections conducted between January and August 2005, by comprehensive inspectors, they found price violations and alterations in products in 52% of the commercial centers examined, and in 68% of the agricultural markets.
The newspaper Granma, November 28, 2003, in Pricing Violations and the Never-Ending Battle, says that in the first eight months of this year, 36% of establishments inspected were found to have irregularities in markets, fairs, squares and in agricultural markets the index was above 47%, and in food service establishments it was 50%.
In the February 20, 2004, Granma, in Dealing Effectively with Irregularities and Economic Crimes, the Minister of Audit and Control, Lina Pedraza, said, "The causes and conditions that cause crimes and other violations are well know," among which she mentioned a set ranging from "insufficient confirmation of the origin and final destination of the products," to "insufficient supervision of the auditing system."
In the edition of December 24, 2005, it was reported that the regular meeting of the Popular Power National Assembly, Pedro Ross, then Secretary General of the CTC [Cuban Workers Union], "Commented and said that there are employees who are responding, but others do not and continue to justify the thefts and other misconduct."
On February 16, 2007, in Cannibals in the Towers, it addressed the theft of the pylons that support the transmission of high voltage electricity and acknowledged that "technical, administrative and legal methods implemented to date have not slowed the banditry," while on October 26, 2010, in the Price of Indolence, it was reported that in the municipality of Corralillo, in Villa Clara, over 300 homes were built with stolen materials and resources, for which they dismantled 25 kilometers of railway lines and used 59 of the aforementioned pylons from the high tension towers.
From official information, alternative media and rumors that circulate, a list can be compiled of companies and state agencies and senior officials involved in corruption cases between 2010 and 1011. Among them, the Sugar Industry, Basic Industry, Food Industry, Tourism, Aeronautics and Air transport, Internal Trade, Tobacco Industry, Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals, Sports, and Information Technology and Telecommunications. Many of these cases involved officials and members of the Communist Party.
In an interview of the political scientist Esteben Morales conducted by journalist Patricia Grogg, he characterized "corruption as an extraordinary danger" for its "corrosive power", which makes it a matter of "national security." That is, despite as army of inspectors and inspectors of the inspectors, of the hundreds of workers and officials convicted of bribery, diversion, theft and robbery, and the laws and resolutions, corruption continued on its march.
In an interview published in Juventud Rebelde on the 19th and 26th of February, 2012, Gladys Bejerano, Comptroller of the Republic, stated: I"n our experience, the causes of corruption range from the fact that there was no control of contracts, because those who should have done it did not, and those who had to review it did not review it, and if they did review it they did not do so in any depth.
It is known that the contracts and their reviews are an important mechanism for efficiency, but that aspect does not exhaust the causes of corruption. If this evil in the time before 1959 remained essentially in the political-administrative,realm, one must ask what factors caused its generalization. From my point of view, what is new is in the disappearance of thousands of homeowners who watched over their property and the replacement of this ownership by the Boss [Fidel Castro] with the concept of ownership by all the people, which combined with inadequate wages, led to theft, bribery and other negative manifestations.
Elsewhere in the interview the Comptroller said: If, for the Revolution, it is a matter of life or death to fight corruption, to protect state resources and also to work for greater efficiency, if that is so, and who made the Revolution? The people, because it is the people who have to struggle for it and the people who have to defend it.
The fact is that if the people made the Revolution it was not to be deprived of their property or to be paid a wage that is unable to meet basic needs, which explains that the same people had to adopt the morality of the survivor to survive, or escape to other places on the planet.
If to change everything all that is needed is to try, then there is no other way than to take the path of rights and freedoms for Cubans, like any other people, and to earn a salary that corresponds to the cost of living, to be able to participate in the economy of their country, not just as workers but also as owners and investors, so that in reality many Cubans, along with the State, will watch over their own property and not "the property of the whole people." Without this, corruption will continue along an unstoppable path.
Published April 2, 2012 in Diario de Cuba.
April 13 2012
Havana prisoner who took video transferred to isolation cell in notorious prison
Posted on Tuesday, 04.10.12
Havana prisoner who took video transferred to isolation cell in notorious prison
José Daniel Ferrer García, a leading Cuban dissident arrested in eastern Santiago de Cuba last week, remains in police custody.By Juan O. Tamayojtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
An inmate who shot several videos inside a Havana prison to publicize its awful conditions has been transferred to an isolation cell in one of Cuba's worst prisons, a dissident journalist reported Monday.
A Colombian inmate who appeared in one of the videos to proclaim his innocence has been on a hunger strike for more than a month and was moved to a cell in the hospital wing of the Combinado del Este prison in Havana, the journalist added.
Opposition activists also reported that all but one of the 43 government critics arrested last week in eastern Santiago de Cuba had been released as of Monday. The exception was José Daniel Ferrer García, a leading dissident and former political prisoner.
Dissident journalist Virgen Dania García said Dalvinder Singh Jagpal, an Indian citizen who shot the 10 videos inside the Combinado del Este prison in January, had been transferred to the notorious Agüica prison in the central province of Matanzas.
Singh is being held in an isolation cell, where he cannot speak to anyone or leave his cell and is always watched by four guards, said García, who added that she received the information from an inmate who left Agüica last week.
Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz said Agüica was among the five or six worst of Cuba's 50 maximum security prisons because its cells can be unbearably hot or cold, depending on the season.
"I've been in several prisons, and believe me, that's one of the worst," said Sánchez Santa Cruz, who was in Agüica serving part of the 30-month sentence he received in 1998 for criticizing the government.
Singh's videos of the Combinado del Este prison — which appeared to be the first ever smuggled out of Cuba's 200-plus prisons — showed filthy toilets, mold-covered walls, leaking sewage and food he described as worse than "animal feed."
García said he was transferred to Agüica one week after El Nuevo Herald published the videos. García, who writes the blog "Cuba por Dentro"— Inside Cuba — helped to smuggle the video camera into the prison and to smuggle out the videos.
Singh was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 10 years on a charge of corruption of minors. Ten months later, he was sentenced to another 20 years on a drug charge. He denies both charges.
García also reported that John Alexander Serrano, a 31-year-old Colombian who appeared in the videos, has been on a hunger strike for more than a month to highlight his claim that he is innocent of the drug smuggling charges pending against him.
Arrested early this year, he is now being held in the hospital within the Combinado del Este prison, according to García — not because he needs medical attention but because prison authorities want to keep him in isolation.
The dissident journalist noted that after the videos were made public, police interrogated her about how the camera was smuggled into the prison and whether any guards had been bribed. "I told them I did not know," she told El Nuevo Herald.
García added that she also was detained during Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Cuba last month, to keep her away from papal activities. She was beaten and kept handcuffed for 32 hours after she soiled herself, she added.
Sánchez Santa Cruz meanwhile reported that Ferrer García, one of the 43 dissidents arrested last week, was being held Monday at a State Security detention facility known as Versailles in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba.
Ferrer has been highly active in dissident activities, and helped found the opposition Patriotic Union of Cuba, since his release from prison last spring. He had been jailed since the 2003 crackdown that sentenced 75 dissidents to long prison terms.
In the past year, his hometown of Palmarito del Cauto and the neighboring town of Palma Soriano, 18 miles northwest of Santiago, have become the focus of scores of anti-government protest and harsh police sweeps.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/10/2739727/havana-prisoner-who-took-video.html
Why Soccer is Eclipsing Baseball in Cuba
Why Soccer is Eclipsing Baseball in CubaApril 8, 2012Dariela Aquique
Team Cuba at an internatinal event. Photo: baseballdecuba.com
HAVANA TIMES, April 8 — I heard a report by journalist and sports commentator Julita Osendi on the TV news recently. She was a alerting us about how the Cuban population was losing its passion for baseball, which is designated as the national sport.
She talked about how these days there isn't a street, park or open field where we don't see groups of young people playing soccer. The sport has experienced a huge outpouring of popularity in recent years, which has resulted in our "beloved baseball" having lost many of its fans.
The commentator insisted on analyzing the reasons behind the lack of interest in the current and most recent National Baseball Series, as well as emerging preferences for the FC Barcelona and the Real Madrid soccer clubs.
I don't understand why this sports and the media professional would take her time to file a report like that, one that even a five-year-old child would understand the reasons behind.
GOOOOOOAL!
Soccer is the most international of sports and is the "sport of the masses," as it's usually called. Its practice dates back centuries.
The "Futbol Club Barcelona" (or "El Barça") was founded in 1899 and the "Sociedad Madrid Foot-Ball Club" ("Real Madrid") goes back to 1902. Since then and until today both of them have done commendable work in the realm of sports.
According to a Harvard University study, the Real Madrid soccer club has the world's most fans (more than 228 million). Meanwhile the "El Barça" club — the world's second most popular — faces off with Madrid in their annual "El Classico" match, one of world soccer's greatest rivalries.
Both clubs have invested heavily in signing up the greatest stars from a host of countries. To cite some examples, playing for Barcelona we've seen Helenio Herrera (Argentina), Johan Cruyff (the Netherlands), Maradona (Argentina), Schuster (Germany), Lineker (Great Britain), Koeman (the Netherlands), Guardiola (Spain, and the team's present manager), Sotichkov (Bulgaria), Ronaldinho (Brazil), Eto'o (Cameroon), Deco (Brazil) and now the star Lionel Messi (Argentina).
Similarly, with Real Madrid we've watched Di Stefano (Italy), Kopa (France), Ferenc (Hungary), Butragueño (Spain), Ronaldo (Portugal), Suker (Croatia), Zinedine Zidane (France/Algeria), Luis Figo (Portugal), Owen (Great Britain) and Roberto Carlos (Brazil).
A Called Strike
The journalist's criticism is no less paradoxical, noting the tremendous promotion that big-money professional soccer gets on our television while at the same time the Cuban government strongly condemns professional sports. An example of this is the fact that Major League Baseball is banned on the television and in the press here.
The economic issue is another important factor. To play soccer one just needs a ball, while with baseball a whole array of equipment is required. A country with low purchasing power among its population should not establish as its primary sport one that requires funds beyond people's reach.
If our youth or our sports fans are now feeling more attached to foreign soccer clubs — over the national teams and for baseball itself — this too could be interpreted as a feature of the crisis facing our national identity, expressed more explicitly among the younger generation.
Sports is more than competition, it's a show, one in which the design of our baseball league leaves much to be desired. Added to this is the high level of politicization. Starting at the beginning of each season we have to hear tiresome political speeches in which the phrases "socialist sports" and "revolutionary athletes" never cease.
Likewise, our teams have suffered heavy losses from promising players who have opted to remain outside of Cuba, because only then can they achieve the dream of every baseball player: playing in the big leagues and being paid well for that.
The greatest aspiration of any Cuban baseball player is to be part of "Team Cuba," which represents the country in international events. However, this selection of this squad has always been influenced more by political strategies and assessments of the "athlete's commitment to the Revolution" than by their quality on the field.
That's why we often ask, why isn't this or that first baseman or outfielder or pitcher on the team? This is why the more recent performances of our team in major international events have not left the fans proud.
Before the triumph of the revolution, there were 951 sports facilities in Cuba. Likewise, the nation participated in seven Olympic Games with 114 athletes to win 14 medals – five of which were gold. This is much more than what a countless number of other countries have achieved throughout history. However these accomplishments are minimized and the data is manipulated to make it seem like there were only sports and athletes here after the revolution.
It is made to appear that certain figures were pre-revolutionary miracles (sports figures including Ramon Fonst, the Olympic fencing champion in Paris in 1900 and in St. Louis in 1904; Dionisio Manuel Diaz, the champion of the individual saber in 1904; Jose Raul Capablanca, the world chess champion from 1921 to 1927; world professional boxing champion "Kid Chocolate"; and the baseball player Martin Dihigo, the only player ever recognized in the Halls of Fame in four countries, Cuba, Mexico, the United States and Venezuela).
The sports page of the Cuban Encyclopedia Ecured reads:
Sports in Cuba prior to the triumph of the revolution enjoyed no massive government support in any discipline, nor were there any plans for sports facilities or schools in this area. Privilege went only to a few (…) Since the Revolution of 1959, Cuban sports has experienced a complete turnaround (…) The Revolution began to create the entire infrastructure required for advancing the Cuban sports movement, which resulted in the massive practice of sports throughout the island, (…) The achievements and results of Cuban sports have led the island to become a true power in this field and the subject of worldwide admiration. Sports isn't only a right conferred by the Revolution, it is also an expression of its lifestyle.
After reading this, it's incomprehensible how Julita Osendi could ever wonder why people prefer Barcelona or Real Madrid to the Cuban Baseball League.
Remembering Cuba’s Du Bouchet Hernández
Remembering Cuba's Du Bouchet HernándezBy María Salazar-Ferro/Coordinator, Impunity Campaign and Journalist Assistance Program
On Wednesday morning, exiled Cuban journalist Albert Santiago Du Bouchet Hernández took his own life, according to reports in the Cuban exiled media. He was the last of more than 20 Cuban journalists to be released from prison and sent to Spain following July 2010 talks between the government of Cuban President Raúl Castro and the Catholic Church. Du Bouchet Hernández, who reported opposition political news, endured inhumanity at home and, ultimately, suffered hardship in exile.
Du Bouchet Hernández was the director of the Havana-based independent news agency Havana Press. He was jailed twice, in 2005 and 2009, on "disrespect" charges. According to CPJ research, he drew the ire of Cuban authorities after reporting on an unprecedented gathering of hundreds of Cuban opposition activists in 2005. Like most political prisoners, Du Bouchet Hernández was jailed in inhumane conditions that included rotting food and overflowing wastewater.
I spoke to him many times between prison stints. He was determined, and continued working after his initial release. But it was clear from our conversations that he was also deeply affected by the continuous repression he faced from Cuban authorities.
Du Bouchet Hernández was released the second time in April 2011. He initially settled in Madrid with his former wife and son, but then moved to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where he died. News of his death was first reported by the exiled reporter Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta on Facebook. Herrera Acosta said he did not know precisely what motivated his friend but knew that he had been in pain.
Like most journalists released from Cuban prisons to Spain, Du Bouchet Hernández had a very difficult time adjusting. Economic woes and bureaucratic problems made the transition extremely difficult for many, as my colleague Borja Bergareche reported for CPJ in 2011. At the time, many said Spain would only be a temporary stop. Since then, at least seven journalists, including Herrera Acosta, have moved to the United States by CPJ's count.María Salazar-Ferro is CPJ's Impunity Campaign and Journalist Assistance Program coordinator. A native of Bogotá, she studied at Universidad de los Andes, in Bogotá, and graduated from the University of Virginia.
http://www.cpj.org/blog/2012/04/remembering-cubas-du-bouchet-hernandez-1.php
Cuba, An Island of Euphemisms
Cuba, An Island of EuphemismsMarch 30, 2012Dariela Aquique
People who were the "maggots," "worms," "traitors" and "scum" are now called "community members" or "Cuban-Americans" or "those living outside of Cuba."
HAVANA TIMES, March 30 — Euphemisms (which are of course words and expressions used for replacing other ones that are considered bad sounding, distasteful or inappropriate), are commonly used in Cuba, especially by those seeking to avoid "annoying interpretations."
An annoying interpretation, in turn, can be a word that describes a possible reprimand from a superior, boss or colleague who thinks your term is inappropriate. Let me give you some examples:
The words "maid," "housekeeper," "servant" and "service employee" disappeared from the national lexicon as they were considered bourgeois expressions, and all vestiges of the bourgeoisie needed to be eliminated from the lives of Cubans.
With the passage of time and the incontrovertible existence of class differences in the country, these types of words have reappeared among those who need to pay other people for domestic services and those who need to get paid for those services.
The circumstances have returned, but with new designations. Now these people are called "the woman who does the cleaning" or "the man who runs errands"; or — more amicably — they might be referred to as "the person who helps us at home," thus creating some degree of ambiguity. One might even get the impression that this person is not bound by money in providing this "aid or assistance."
People who were the "maggots," "worms," "traitors" and "scum" of the mass exoduses (from the port at Camarioca in 1960 and Mariel in 1980), after certain social and political conjunctures began to be referred to using gentler terms like "community members" or "Cuban-Americans" or "those living outside of Cuba."
This is why it's not at all uncommon for people who are "fired" or "laid off" to be described as having experienced "employment reorganization." Likewise "evictions" become the "distrainment of real property."
And anyone who provides information about other people to the police or to the Ministry of the Interior — rather than being labeled as "informants," "snitches" or chivatos — they are described as "auxiliaries" or "civilian collaborators."
A "prostitute" is now called a jinetera (escort), and theft (on a large scale by certain officials) has been dubbed "the mismanagement of resources."
But there are some terms that are completely exempt from the possibility of receiving any softer kinder euphemisms. These include "independent journalist" or "blogger," which are smeared with words like "cyber-dissident" or even "mercenary" in the worst cases.
In other words, euphemisms are employed to a degree directly proportional to the level of the commitment they have for the implantation or ordering by the system, in accordance with the period and the context.
These are the reasons my writings are never published in official media. Don't imagine, my friends, that the cause of this is "censorship" or a lack of "freedom of expression" its that I'm very apt to use amplified phraseology and opinions that are "exaggerated," "distorted," "imprudent" or "inconsistent" with our reality.
Please, I'm not asking for anyone to describe me as being "sardonic" with this. I'm only being "funny."
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