The “Present Press” and Diaz-Canel’s Phone Call

The "Present Press" and Diaz-Canel's Phone Call / Juan Juan Almeida
Posted on March 25, 2014

On 14 March, one more anniversary was celebrated of the appearance, in
1892, of the first issue of Patria, an old dream of Jose Marti in which
Tomás Estrada Palma, Manuel Sanguily, Gonzalo de Quesada, Manuel de la
Cruz, Enrique José Varona and other important figures participated,
managing to fuse politics and literature. The role, at that time, of
this important newspaper was clear, and the apostle — Marti — described
it in his editorial: "What the enemy has to hear is nothing more than
the voice of attack itself… This is Patria in the press. It's a soldier."

Because of this commemoration, Cuba's first vice-president Miguel
Diaz-Canel, toured the facilities of the national television information
system, and afterwards congratulated all the workers on the anniversary,
baptized as "Day of the Cuban Press," and he called on them to perfect
their reporting work.

A small concern seemed to upset the leader on making these declarations,
in the "improvised" conversational exchange, later rectified with
absolute precision: Any work of the Revolution is incomplete if it's not
in the present press.

Why the urgency to amend the supposition. Because Mr. Diaz-Canel, like
any other leader, knows very well the invisible guiding hand that
manages our real politik, where there is no room for these kinds of
errors, they are simply deliberate negligence, or purposeful
inaccuracies, that should be punished.

The unaware assert that the Cuban leaders fear the opposition; but for
them the dissidence doesn't exist, they are afraid of their own power
and paranoia leads them to calibrate every accent, every word, every
phrase in its multiple interpretations and every detail with maximum rigor.

In Cuba there are no secrets, but we must distinguish them. Everyone
should know that for Cuban parliamentarians, the concern isn't the time
that their names appear in the news, but the location of the chair that
they will occupy during the next session of the National Assembly.

If we looks closely at the image of a plenary session in the Palace of
Conventions, irrespective of whether its organized by the provinces of
municipalities, it will not be difficult to decipher the terror of the
officials who know how their own goodwill is measured by the tapestry of
their chair and how close it is to the leader.

Occupying a plastic chair, located in lowlife class, feels as secure as
prostitutes felt in Moscow during the Cold War.

The leather armchairs in tropical class represent the more important and
deserved reward. Space reserved for people skilled in the art of
meanness. Knowing you're in tropical class provokes a certain
expectation and converts you into hungry wolves or quarrelsome sheep
waiting for the slightest opportunity to tear to shreds, circumstances
which can serve to climb into the beige leather armchair on the great
podium of superiority. Where Diaz-Canel sits. Hence his justified
tremor, knowing that if he commits a single mistake, in less than five
minutes he can be in the dungeon.

As my grandmother said of someone who didn't speak for days,"Ah son,
when are you going to understand that in Cuban politics ideology is pure
facade, so leave it in the hands of the idiots and the military."

18 March 2014

Source: Translating Cuba | English Translations of Cuban Bloggers -
http://translatingcuba.com/