Posted on Friday, 10.05.12
Spaniard tried in Cuba dissident death; no verdict
By FERNANDO GONZALEZ
Associated Press
BAYAMO, Cuba -- A Spanish political activist was tried Friday on charges
of negligently causing the car crash that killed a prominent Cuban
dissident. Several government opponents including noted blogger Yoani
Sanchez were detained around this eastern city where the proceedings
were taking place.
Defendant Angel Carromero's trial wrapped up in the evening in Bayamo,
about 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of the capital and near the site
of the July 22 highway crash in which Oswaldo Paya and another
dissident, Harold Cepero, died.
Authorities accused Carromero of speeding and charged him with the
equivalent of vehicular manslaughter, and prosecutors asked the court
for a seven-year sentence. In videotaped statements, the Spaniard has
said he lost control upon driving onto an unpaved section of road under
repair and the vehicle skidded into a tree.
Carromero's attorney argued Friday that it was impossible to determine
the exact velocity of the vehicle, showed photographs of allegedly poor
road signs warning of the upcoming roadwork that have since been
replaced and asked for him to be acquitted. Carromero did not testify.
A panel of judges will now consider the evidence and issue a ruling at
an unspecified future date.
Spanish consul Tomas Rodriguez, who observed the proceedings, called the
hearing "a clean, open and procedurally impeccable trial."
"From the Spanish point of view, there are reasons to be optimistic," he
added. "I am practically sure that there will be a reduction in the
sentence. I think it will be significant."
Bloggers in Bayamo reported that Sanchez, whose candid writing about
daily life in Cuba earned her both international acclaim and the enmity
of authorities, was detained by local officials shortly before reaching
the city.
Calls to Sanchez's cellphone went unanswered, but human rights monitor
Elizardo Sanchez in Havana also reported the detentions Thursday night
of Sanchez; her husband, Reinaldo Escobar; and a third man in the
vehicle. He said at least a half-dozen other dissidents also were
detained in and around Bayamo.
Yoani and Elizardo Sanchez are not related.
Her detention was condemned by Amnesty International and media watchdog
groups, including the Inter American Press Association and the Committee
to Protect Journalists, as well as the U.S. government.
"We are deeply disturbed by the Cuban government's repeated use of
arbitrary detention to silence critics, disrupt peaceful assembly and
impede independent journalism," State Department spokesman William
Ostick said.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais, for which Yoani Sanchez writes a column,
said she traveled to Bayamo to cover the trial.
But a prominent pro-government blogger who uses the handle Yohandry
Fontana accused Sanchez of planning to "attempt a provocation and media
show that would damage the proper development of the trial."
The government did not confirm the detentions and rarely does in such cases.
In the afternoon, the same pro-government blogger said authorities were
taking Sanchez and her husband back to Havana.
Earlier Friday, wearing khakis and a white dress shirt and with his head
shaved, Carromero arrived in a white van at the blue-painted courthouse
in Bayamo on Friday morning. He was escorted by Cuban security agents
and did not speak to reporters outside the building.
Police patrolled the surrounding blocks and nearby streets were closed
to traffic.
Relatives of Paya traveled to Bayamo but complained that they were
denied access to the courthouse. Rosa Maria Paya, his daughter,
reiterated the family's doubts about whether her father's death was
truly an accident.
"We are asking for an alternative investigation, and that is the only
thing that will give us the truth," she said.
Carromero, who is affiliated with a youth wing of Spain's ruling
conservative party. He and Aron Modig of Sweden, also a political
activist in his home country, came to Cuba to support the island's
dissidents, who are branded traitors and mercenaries by the Cuban
government.
They were driving to eastern Cuba with Paya and Cepero in the back seat
when the crash happened. The Europeans, who were in the front and
wearing seatbelts, were not seriously injured.
Modig returned to Sweden a little over a week after the accident.
Paya, 60, was famous for leading the Varela Project, a petition that
gathered thousands of signatures calling for a referendum on rights such
as freedom of speech and assembly.
The European Union awarded Paya its Sakharov human rights prize in 2002
in recognition of the project.
Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Bradley Klapper
in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/05/3035732/spaniard-on-trial-in-cuba-in-dissidents.html
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Arrested in Cuba, Yoani Sanchez “is not alone”
Posted on Friday, 10.05.12
Arrested in Cuba, Yoani Sanchez "is not alone"
By Fabiola Santiago
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
This is the real Cuba — not the one of circular and unproductive policy
debate in Miami and Washington, D.C., but the one people suffer and endure.
Already virtual a prisoner in her own country — her requests to travel
abroad denied or ignored by the government — Cuba's best-known
journalist, blogger Yoani Sánchez, and husband Reynaldo Escobar were
arrested Friday, communication cut off.
Sánchez, who pens the internationally read blog Generación Y, and her
husband were on their way to the eastern town of Bayamo to report on the
trial of Angel Carromero.
He's the 27-year-old Spaniard blamed by the Cuban government for the
death of dissident leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and dissident Harold
Cepero in a car accident in July.
Carromero, the driver, faces manslaughter charges and a possible
seven-year sentence. Payá's family doesn't blame Carromero, and has
called for an independent investigation.
Unbelievable to those of us in the free world, Payá's three grown
children were also kept Friday from the first day of trial by police who
blocked them at the courthouse entrance.
Adding to the absurdity, news of Sánchez's arrest was posted by
pro-government bloggers, part of a government campaign to steer public
opinion away from Sánchez's popular and intimate reports of what she
calls "my reality."
One blog dubbed Sánchez "pro-American" and accused her of traveling to
Bayamo to stage a "provocative show and hurt the Carromero trial."
Despite its inventive propaganda machine, the Cuban government can't
hide its totalitarian face the way it flagrantly did before the age of
the Internet. In this connected world, news of detentions, abuses, and
suspicious deaths like Payá's travel the world in seconds.
From the BBC to the Spanish news agency EFE to the Huffington Post,
news of Sánchez's arrest spread Friday. Spain's El País newspaper said
Sánchez was their correspondent and confirmed the arrest.
"Yoani has always been aware of the dangers she faces, and that is, in
part, what makes her work all the more fascinating and admirable,"
Columbia University professor Mirta Ojito, who interviewed Sánchez last
December for the blogtalkradio webcast Tweeting Under Castro, told me
Friday. "No one who lives in a dictatorship is exempt from punishment —
of one kind or another. For years, they have tried to silence her by
refusing to give her exit visas. Now, it's come to this. Let's hope the
government of Cuba understands that the world is watching and that Yoani
is not alone."
Indeed.
As she traveled Thursday from her Havana home to Bayamo, Sánchez
reported via Twitter what she was experiencing, doing what she does best
in her blog: lift the curtain on Cuban life.
In Camaguey, she tweeted, police frequently stopped her car to spray it
inside.
"I ask the policeman if it's because of the dengue and he stays silent,"
she said.
Now the world needs to speak up, and energetically condemn this brave
journalist's detention, and the farce of a trial designed to deliver a
public relations show for the dictatorship, but certainly not justice.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/05/3036450/arrested-in-cuba-again-yoani-sanchez.html
Arrested in Cuba, Yoani Sanchez "is not alone"
By Fabiola Santiago
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
This is the real Cuba — not the one of circular and unproductive policy
debate in Miami and Washington, D.C., but the one people suffer and endure.
Already virtual a prisoner in her own country — her requests to travel
abroad denied or ignored by the government — Cuba's best-known
journalist, blogger Yoani Sánchez, and husband Reynaldo Escobar were
arrested Friday, communication cut off.
Sánchez, who pens the internationally read blog Generación Y, and her
husband were on their way to the eastern town of Bayamo to report on the
trial of Angel Carromero.
He's the 27-year-old Spaniard blamed by the Cuban government for the
death of dissident leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and dissident Harold
Cepero in a car accident in July.
Carromero, the driver, faces manslaughter charges and a possible
seven-year sentence. Payá's family doesn't blame Carromero, and has
called for an independent investigation.
Unbelievable to those of us in the free world, Payá's three grown
children were also kept Friday from the first day of trial by police who
blocked them at the courthouse entrance.
Adding to the absurdity, news of Sánchez's arrest was posted by
pro-government bloggers, part of a government campaign to steer public
opinion away from Sánchez's popular and intimate reports of what she
calls "my reality."
One blog dubbed Sánchez "pro-American" and accused her of traveling to
Bayamo to stage a "provocative show and hurt the Carromero trial."
Despite its inventive propaganda machine, the Cuban government can't
hide its totalitarian face the way it flagrantly did before the age of
the Internet. In this connected world, news of detentions, abuses, and
suspicious deaths like Payá's travel the world in seconds.
From the BBC to the Spanish news agency EFE to the Huffington Post,
news of Sánchez's arrest spread Friday. Spain's El País newspaper said
Sánchez was their correspondent and confirmed the arrest.
"Yoani has always been aware of the dangers she faces, and that is, in
part, what makes her work all the more fascinating and admirable,"
Columbia University professor Mirta Ojito, who interviewed Sánchez last
December for the blogtalkradio webcast Tweeting Under Castro, told me
Friday. "No one who lives in a dictatorship is exempt from punishment —
of one kind or another. For years, they have tried to silence her by
refusing to give her exit visas. Now, it's come to this. Let's hope the
government of Cuba understands that the world is watching and that Yoani
is not alone."
Indeed.
As she traveled Thursday from her Havana home to Bayamo, Sánchez
reported via Twitter what she was experiencing, doing what she does best
in her blog: lift the curtain on Cuban life.
In Camaguey, she tweeted, police frequently stopped her car to spray it
inside.
"I ask the policeman if it's because of the dengue and he stays silent,"
she said.
Now the world needs to speak up, and energetically condemn this brave
journalist's detention, and the farce of a trial designed to deliver a
public relations show for the dictatorship, but certainly not justice.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/05/3036450/arrested-in-cuba-again-yoani-sanchez.html
Friday, October 5, 2012
Update on Arrest of Yoani Sanchez, Reinaldo Escobar, Agustin Lopez (and others?) in Bayamo
Update on Arrest of Yoani Sanchez, Reinaldo Escobar, Agustin Lopez (and
others?) in Bayamo
Agustin Valentin Lopez Canino, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Oswaldo Paya,
Reinaldo Escobar, Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo, Translator: Unstated, Yoani
Sanchez
Site manager's note: The following excerpts are translated from an
article in Cubaencuentro. In addition, an official government blogger
reported that Yoani traveled to Bayamo intending to disrupt and put on a
"media show" at the trial of Angel Carromero, who was driving the car in
which Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero were killed.
For those who are unaware, Yoani is a correspondent for the Spanish
newspaper El Pais, and was intending to cover the trial. Oswaldo Paya's
children also traveled to Bayamo, and according to tweets from Rosa
Paya, his daughter, they have been prevented from attending the trial.
Also note, Agustin Lopez has been reported in some tweets to be Agustin
"Diaz." Finally, the Paya and the Cepero families have specifically
stated that they do not hold Angel Carromero responsible for the car crash.
From Cubaencuentro:
The well-known Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez and her husband,
thejournalist Reinaldo Escobar, among other activitists, have been
arrested this Thursday in Bayama, reported the official journalist
Garcia Ginarte and it has been confirmed in Twitter by several sources
on the Island.
…Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo on his account on the social network, who says
he received the information from Teo, Sanchez and Escobar's son.
According to what Teo Escobar told the blogger, the activists were
detained at 6:00 in the afternoon and were not permitted to make
telephone calls until 3:00 in the morning, the time when his parents
called him to report their arrest.
5 October 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/update-on-arrest-of-yoani-sanchez-reinaldo-escobar-agustin-lopez-and-others-in-bayamo/
others?) in Bayamo
Agustin Valentin Lopez Canino, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Oswaldo Paya,
Reinaldo Escobar, Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo, Translator: Unstated, Yoani
Sanchez
Site manager's note: The following excerpts are translated from an
article in Cubaencuentro. In addition, an official government blogger
reported that Yoani traveled to Bayamo intending to disrupt and put on a
"media show" at the trial of Angel Carromero, who was driving the car in
which Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero were killed.
For those who are unaware, Yoani is a correspondent for the Spanish
newspaper El Pais, and was intending to cover the trial. Oswaldo Paya's
children also traveled to Bayamo, and according to tweets from Rosa
Paya, his daughter, they have been prevented from attending the trial.
Also note, Agustin Lopez has been reported in some tweets to be Agustin
"Diaz." Finally, the Paya and the Cepero families have specifically
stated that they do not hold Angel Carromero responsible for the car crash.
From Cubaencuentro:
The well-known Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez and her husband,
thejournalist Reinaldo Escobar, among other activitists, have been
arrested this Thursday in Bayama, reported the official journalist
Garcia Ginarte and it has been confirmed in Twitter by several sources
on the Island.
…Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo on his account on the social network, who says
he received the information from Teo, Sanchez and Escobar's son.
According to what Teo Escobar told the blogger, the activists were
detained at 6:00 in the afternoon and were not permitted to make
telephone calls until 3:00 in the morning, the time when his parents
called him to report their arrest.
5 October 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/update-on-arrest-of-yoani-sanchez-reinaldo-escobar-agustin-lopez-and-others-in-bayamo/
Mourning or Celebration?
Mourning or Celebration? / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado
Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado, Translator: Unstated
This September 28 they celebrated the fifty-second anniversary of the
creation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution(CDR). In
contrast to years past I did not see reports on Cuban television of two
or three previously planned nighttime parties,"which customarily are
celebrated on the 27thin "anticipation of the big day." Normally, the
national media "casually" attends these festivities in order to have
broadcast images of CDR enthusiasm for the event. Instead, there was
only one news report and it dealt with a daytime event in which the
president of one committee spoke. His audience was a small group of
passive and silent participants. There was not the usual interview with
an ordinary member, who was "emotional and aroused" by theanniversary.
With the passage of years and the "permanent special period," to which
we Cubans living in this archipelago have been subjected, the
festivities that were sponsored by these organizations have been
replaced in the city by "a people's cookout" featuring on an open-air
caldosa* on each cuadra – the lineal space between the two corners of a
block – and cheap rum for those who like alcohol. On the street where I
live,in a cauldron blackened by poverty and evocative of the
countryside,there was a pig's head and two or three kinds of vegetables
covered by a lot of water, all placed in the planting area in front of
the house of my neighborhood's CDR president. This time no music was
heard during the very few and boring activities that took place, and the
mood seemed to be more one of mourning than celebration.
This farcical institution — managed and founded decades ago to send a
message of "consensus," of a revolutionary honeymoon and a happy
marriage between the citizenry and the authorities — is out of date.
Almost no one expects anything positive from this organization, which
has only offered interference in personal lives, surveillance, betrayal,
nighttime security patrols — we never found out if they were acting in
the role of police or of decoys — a lot of meetings, voluntary work
brigades, rallies, marches and permanent blackmail through the use of
negative reports if you did not actively participate in the tasks
assigned by the organization.
After returning from a fact-finding tour of my neighborhood, I could see
from my balcony the depressing sight of the few people willing to be
served the "substantial" brew. They carried jugs, metal pitchers and
other containers, gathering around the cauldron and, on command from a
group of political warlocks with no future, conspire to annually expose
their misfortunes.
*Translator's note:Caldosais traditionally a thick broth or stew.After
the Cuban revolution cooking it became a communal event in which
neighbors brought whatever ingredients they had at hand. Some say this
came about because of food scarcity; others believe that the change had
more to do with the collective emphasis of socialism. (Source:
cubaentuscon.blogspot.com)
October 2 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/mourning-or-celebration-rosa-maria-rodriguez-torrado/
Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado, Translator: Unstated
This September 28 they celebrated the fifty-second anniversary of the
creation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution(CDR). In
contrast to years past I did not see reports on Cuban television of two
or three previously planned nighttime parties,"which customarily are
celebrated on the 27thin "anticipation of the big day." Normally, the
national media "casually" attends these festivities in order to have
broadcast images of CDR enthusiasm for the event. Instead, there was
only one news report and it dealt with a daytime event in which the
president of one committee spoke. His audience was a small group of
passive and silent participants. There was not the usual interview with
an ordinary member, who was "emotional and aroused" by theanniversary.
With the passage of years and the "permanent special period," to which
we Cubans living in this archipelago have been subjected, the
festivities that were sponsored by these organizations have been
replaced in the city by "a people's cookout" featuring on an open-air
caldosa* on each cuadra – the lineal space between the two corners of a
block – and cheap rum for those who like alcohol. On the street where I
live,in a cauldron blackened by poverty and evocative of the
countryside,there was a pig's head and two or three kinds of vegetables
covered by a lot of water, all placed in the planting area in front of
the house of my neighborhood's CDR president. This time no music was
heard during the very few and boring activities that took place, and the
mood seemed to be more one of mourning than celebration.
This farcical institution — managed and founded decades ago to send a
message of "consensus," of a revolutionary honeymoon and a happy
marriage between the citizenry and the authorities — is out of date.
Almost no one expects anything positive from this organization, which
has only offered interference in personal lives, surveillance, betrayal,
nighttime security patrols — we never found out if they were acting in
the role of police or of decoys — a lot of meetings, voluntary work
brigades, rallies, marches and permanent blackmail through the use of
negative reports if you did not actively participate in the tasks
assigned by the organization.
After returning from a fact-finding tour of my neighborhood, I could see
from my balcony the depressing sight of the few people willing to be
served the "substantial" brew. They carried jugs, metal pitchers and
other containers, gathering around the cauldron and, on command from a
group of political warlocks with no future, conspire to annually expose
their misfortunes.
*Translator's note:Caldosais traditionally a thick broth or stew.After
the Cuban revolution cooking it became a communal event in which
neighbors brought whatever ingredients they had at hand. Some say this
came about because of food scarcity; others believe that the change had
more to do with the collective emphasis of socialism. (Source:
cubaentuscon.blogspot.com)
October 2 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/mourning-or-celebration-rosa-maria-rodriguez-torrado/
Cuba, an Aging Island
Cuba, an Aging Island / Ivan Garcia
Ivan Garcia, Translator: Unstated
The figures are disturbing. For over 30 years the Cuban women, on
average, have less than one daughter by the end of their reproductive
years.An aging population without any replacements.And it is only
decreasing. BecauseCuba has begun to subtract inhabitants in absolute terms.
This conclusion came as a report from the National Bureau of Statistics
in 2011. Add the ages of the three strongmen of the country, both
Castros and Machado Ventura, and it totals 249 years. To add more drama
to the aging population, annually more than 20,000 people aged between
10 and 45 years emigrate from Cuba.
One solution the Cuban government has come up with to fight the high
ages and shrinking size of the population is to raise the retirement age
for men and women to 60 and 65 years respectively.
A retired person earns a salary in Cuba, between 100 and 300 pesos (5
and 16 dollars) and that does not even cover 30% of their needs. For a
citizen to have a breakfast and two meals a day requires no less than
2,500 pesos a month (113 dollars).
We also have the grave problem of the living quarters. Some 62% of the
houses on the island are in either regular or bad state of repair. Three
or four different generations have to live under the same roof.
When space is needed in the living quarters, the displaced are usually
the elderly. The best option is for the grandparents to have to sleep
with the grandchildren. The worst is that the family decides to put them
in some run down State asylum.
There's no worse lead up to death for an old person than to live in a
State hospice. Badly treated, lack of hygiene and poor food. Already
last year, more people died in Cuba than were born.
Obviously the haphazard and weak economy is not prepared to guarantee a
decent life for the two million people over 60.
If currently the average age in Cuba is 38, in 2025 it will be 44.
Almost 26% of the population will be over 60. By 2030, 3.3 million
people will be over 60.
Today the group of Cubans older than 60 is 17.8%. It is more than the
number of children ages 0 to 14 which is 17.3%. The ideal would be to
promote policies to motivate women to have two or more children.
In Europe, the benefactor state usually pays a stipend to mothers with
children. But the public coffers in Cuba are just about empty.
Since General Castro inherited power from his brother, the construction
and social and leisure facilities for the population has dropped to
almost zero. They only invest in projects that return hard currency,
like tourism, or strategic projects such as petrochemicals or the
transfer of water to the eastern region.
Therefore, one should not expect that at a meeting of the monotone
National Parliament they will announce a cash incentive to encourage
women to have more than one child. The accelerated aging in Cuba is a
phenomenon that will have to be dealt with by a future government. By
2025 the Castro brothers will rest in a mausoleum or be two infirm
elderly nearing the century mark.
The next president, in addition to aspiring to spectacular economic
growth, will have to try to renegotiate the foreign debt and try to
design a coherent society, inclusive and democratic.
All this work should be undertaken with an aging human capital. And the
growing segment of women, professional or otherwise, who due to material
scarcities put off forming a family.
To convince them that Cuba needs rejuvenation and more daughters would
be a commendable task. We'll see whether in ten years leaving for
Florida continues to be the personal quest of many Cubans. Hopefully not.
September 22 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-an-aging-island-ivan-garcia/
Ivan Garcia, Translator: Unstated
The figures are disturbing. For over 30 years the Cuban women, on
average, have less than one daughter by the end of their reproductive
years.An aging population without any replacements.And it is only
decreasing. BecauseCuba has begun to subtract inhabitants in absolute terms.
This conclusion came as a report from the National Bureau of Statistics
in 2011. Add the ages of the three strongmen of the country, both
Castros and Machado Ventura, and it totals 249 years. To add more drama
to the aging population, annually more than 20,000 people aged between
10 and 45 years emigrate from Cuba.
One solution the Cuban government has come up with to fight the high
ages and shrinking size of the population is to raise the retirement age
for men and women to 60 and 65 years respectively.
A retired person earns a salary in Cuba, between 100 and 300 pesos (5
and 16 dollars) and that does not even cover 30% of their needs. For a
citizen to have a breakfast and two meals a day requires no less than
2,500 pesos a month (113 dollars).
We also have the grave problem of the living quarters. Some 62% of the
houses on the island are in either regular or bad state of repair. Three
or four different generations have to live under the same roof.
When space is needed in the living quarters, the displaced are usually
the elderly. The best option is for the grandparents to have to sleep
with the grandchildren. The worst is that the family decides to put them
in some run down State asylum.
There's no worse lead up to death for an old person than to live in a
State hospice. Badly treated, lack of hygiene and poor food. Already
last year, more people died in Cuba than were born.
Obviously the haphazard and weak economy is not prepared to guarantee a
decent life for the two million people over 60.
If currently the average age in Cuba is 38, in 2025 it will be 44.
Almost 26% of the population will be over 60. By 2030, 3.3 million
people will be over 60.
Today the group of Cubans older than 60 is 17.8%. It is more than the
number of children ages 0 to 14 which is 17.3%. The ideal would be to
promote policies to motivate women to have two or more children.
In Europe, the benefactor state usually pays a stipend to mothers with
children. But the public coffers in Cuba are just about empty.
Since General Castro inherited power from his brother, the construction
and social and leisure facilities for the population has dropped to
almost zero. They only invest in projects that return hard currency,
like tourism, or strategic projects such as petrochemicals or the
transfer of water to the eastern region.
Therefore, one should not expect that at a meeting of the monotone
National Parliament they will announce a cash incentive to encourage
women to have more than one child. The accelerated aging in Cuba is a
phenomenon that will have to be dealt with by a future government. By
2025 the Castro brothers will rest in a mausoleum or be two infirm
elderly nearing the century mark.
The next president, in addition to aspiring to spectacular economic
growth, will have to try to renegotiate the foreign debt and try to
design a coherent society, inclusive and democratic.
All this work should be undertaken with an aging human capital. And the
growing segment of women, professional or otherwise, who due to material
scarcities put off forming a family.
To convince them that Cuba needs rejuvenation and more daughters would
be a commendable task. We'll see whether in ten years leaving for
Florida continues to be the personal quest of many Cubans. Hopefully not.
September 22 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-an-aging-island-ivan-garcia/
Why Are Private Businesses Failing in Cuba?
Why Are Private Businesses Failing in Cuba? / Eliecer Avila
Eliecer Avila, Translator: Unstated
A wave of recently implemented layoffs sent an undetermined number of
workers into the streets. Official data on the initial number of people
laid off referred to something around a half million; later there would
be a second round that would lead to a total figure of about a million
jobs lost, to be identified through rigorous State analysis.
If this process had been called by its name — by what the world would
call these "readjustments" — it would have been a scandal; even more so
when the one to blame for the current situation is the State itself. But
as often happens in Cuba, after many long faces and some show of
displeasure, people end up accepting the "package" and venting their
outrage at home, consoling themselves with tears and stored up hatreds.
Among those affected by the mass layoffs have been experienced and
competent professionals. For them, like the rest, the options provided
by the State were farm work or "self-employment" in just the few dozen
trades allowed. Most people "available" — they invent terms here to
avoid universal standards and statistics — have no experience in making
land produce, whether it is vacant or overrun by marabou weed and
available for leasing in usufruct, so most of them opted for
self-employment.
So it was that an army of entrepreneurs (?!) began to take out licenses
to try their luck in the uncertain world of business. The most fortunate
could count on family or friends abroad to provide resources to invest,
or advice and information about the operations of their businesses.
What these excited people didn't know was that there were already some
macabre minds who had planned everything in reverse. The communist gurus
in charge of the necessary accounts had designed a system of taxes and
controls in which the conditions of the country resulted in armed robbery.
This was explained with absolute clarity on several Roundtable TV shows,
but the hopeful and enthusiastic did pay attention. "This is designed in
such a way as to avoid the accumulation of wealth on the part of
individuals," was what they said on these programs.
But if business owners don't accumulate capital, how are they going to
invest, acquire technology, widen their opportunities, improve quality
and increase production, to be able to lower prices so that people
benefit? If they can't accumulate enough money, how are they going to
develop their business and compete?
This means that no matter how much effort and investment they put in, no
one is going to turn their business into a success nor prosper much
beyond what is allowed by decree for any humble Cuban.
A devastated landscape
The current tax system alone is enough to make you throw in the towel
and give up. But things don't stop there. The brave aspirants find
themselves in a country designed from beginning to end to have an
anti-business approach. More than fifty years of building this absurd
philosophy would not be erased by magic, not even when one of its main
promoters said in a speech that a "change of mentality" was needed.
Among other things, the raw materials for food and supplies to provide
basic services continued to come from "illegal" sources, and the
supplies promised by the government in the vast majority of territories
never arrived. Thus, within a few months, the avalanche of tiny
businesses and kiosks that initially flourished began to disappear.
(Some owners keep their licenses to pay their social contribution and so
they won't appear unemployed, thus dodging the surveillance of the
Sector Chief and being able to dedicate themselves to other activities).
Another element that de facto destroys any initiative, especially in
small towns and rural areas, is the total lack of economic capacity
among potential consumers. Thousands of people who have the need and
desire to acquire products are lacking resources. The population is
economically dead, consisting mainly of the unemployed, poor
farmworkers, wage laborers, etc…
On economic issues, first there must be money in the hands of those who
would consume, so that investors are found to take the risks, borrow,
look for alternatives: no one will risk anything to sell to skinny
phantoms and neutral onlookers. At the same time, it's curious that
journalists in the official media who reflect endlessly on the increase
in license applications and the proliferation of small businesses that
are supposedly "going full steam ahead," have not said a word about this.
And the result is always the same: after the failures, exhausted hopes,
and with no sign of any more rabbits to be pulled out of the dark hat of
the government, people look even more desperately than before for ways
to leave the country. Especially the young. The lines at the embassies
are ever longer.
It's a shame that so many prefer to leave rather than to stay and fight
to change things. Although in the end it's understandable: who wouldn't
want to go from being someone who needs help to being someone able to help?
From Diario de Cuba
3 October 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/why-are-private-businesses-failing-in-cuba-eliecer-avila/
Eliecer Avila, Translator: Unstated
A wave of recently implemented layoffs sent an undetermined number of
workers into the streets. Official data on the initial number of people
laid off referred to something around a half million; later there would
be a second round that would lead to a total figure of about a million
jobs lost, to be identified through rigorous State analysis.
If this process had been called by its name — by what the world would
call these "readjustments" — it would have been a scandal; even more so
when the one to blame for the current situation is the State itself. But
as often happens in Cuba, after many long faces and some show of
displeasure, people end up accepting the "package" and venting their
outrage at home, consoling themselves with tears and stored up hatreds.
Among those affected by the mass layoffs have been experienced and
competent professionals. For them, like the rest, the options provided
by the State were farm work or "self-employment" in just the few dozen
trades allowed. Most people "available" — they invent terms here to
avoid universal standards and statistics — have no experience in making
land produce, whether it is vacant or overrun by marabou weed and
available for leasing in usufruct, so most of them opted for
self-employment.
So it was that an army of entrepreneurs (?!) began to take out licenses
to try their luck in the uncertain world of business. The most fortunate
could count on family or friends abroad to provide resources to invest,
or advice and information about the operations of their businesses.
What these excited people didn't know was that there were already some
macabre minds who had planned everything in reverse. The communist gurus
in charge of the necessary accounts had designed a system of taxes and
controls in which the conditions of the country resulted in armed robbery.
This was explained with absolute clarity on several Roundtable TV shows,
but the hopeful and enthusiastic did pay attention. "This is designed in
such a way as to avoid the accumulation of wealth on the part of
individuals," was what they said on these programs.
But if business owners don't accumulate capital, how are they going to
invest, acquire technology, widen their opportunities, improve quality
and increase production, to be able to lower prices so that people
benefit? If they can't accumulate enough money, how are they going to
develop their business and compete?
This means that no matter how much effort and investment they put in, no
one is going to turn their business into a success nor prosper much
beyond what is allowed by decree for any humble Cuban.
A devastated landscape
The current tax system alone is enough to make you throw in the towel
and give up. But things don't stop there. The brave aspirants find
themselves in a country designed from beginning to end to have an
anti-business approach. More than fifty years of building this absurd
philosophy would not be erased by magic, not even when one of its main
promoters said in a speech that a "change of mentality" was needed.
Among other things, the raw materials for food and supplies to provide
basic services continued to come from "illegal" sources, and the
supplies promised by the government in the vast majority of territories
never arrived. Thus, within a few months, the avalanche of tiny
businesses and kiosks that initially flourished began to disappear.
(Some owners keep their licenses to pay their social contribution and so
they won't appear unemployed, thus dodging the surveillance of the
Sector Chief and being able to dedicate themselves to other activities).
Another element that de facto destroys any initiative, especially in
small towns and rural areas, is the total lack of economic capacity
among potential consumers. Thousands of people who have the need and
desire to acquire products are lacking resources. The population is
economically dead, consisting mainly of the unemployed, poor
farmworkers, wage laborers, etc…
On economic issues, first there must be money in the hands of those who
would consume, so that investors are found to take the risks, borrow,
look for alternatives: no one will risk anything to sell to skinny
phantoms and neutral onlookers. At the same time, it's curious that
journalists in the official media who reflect endlessly on the increase
in license applications and the proliferation of small businesses that
are supposedly "going full steam ahead," have not said a word about this.
And the result is always the same: after the failures, exhausted hopes,
and with no sign of any more rabbits to be pulled out of the dark hat of
the government, people look even more desperately than before for ways
to leave the country. Especially the young. The lines at the embassies
are ever longer.
It's a shame that so many prefer to leave rather than to stay and fight
to change things. Although in the end it's understandable: who wouldn't
want to go from being someone who needs help to being someone able to help?
From Diario de Cuba
3 October 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/why-are-private-businesses-failing-in-cuba-eliecer-avila/
Spaniard goes on trial in Cuba dissident's death
Posted on Friday, 10.05.12
Spaniard goes on trial in Cuba dissident's death
By FERNANDO GONZALEZ
Associated Press
BAYAMO, Cuba -- A Spanish man held in Cuba went on trial Friday in
connection with a car crash in which a prominent dissident was killed,
and several government opponents were detained in this eastern city
where the proceedings were taking place.
Angel Carromero arrived in a white van at a courthouse in Bayamo, about
500 miles (800 kilometers) east of the capital and near the site of the
July 22 highway crash in which Oswaldo Paya and another dissident,
Harold Cepero, died.
Authorities accused Carromero of speeding and charged him with the
equivalent of vehicular manslaughter, which carries a possible penalty
of up to 10 years under Cuban law. In videotaped statements, the
Spaniard has said he lost control upon driving into an unpaved section
of road, and the vehicle skidded into a tree.
His defense argued Friday that it was impossible to determine the exact
velocity of the vehicle, and asked for him to be released to house arrest.
"We will see how it all comes out. We are optimistic," said Spanish
consul Tomas Rodriguez, who was observing the trial.
Pro-government bloggers in Bayamo reported that dissident writer Yoani
Sanchez was detained by local authorities shortly before arriving in the
city. Calls to her cellphone went unanswered, but human rights monitor
Elizardo Sanchez in Havana also reported the detentions Thursday night
of Sanchez; her husband, Reinaldo Escobar; and a third man in the
vehicle. He said at least a half-dozen other dissidents in and around
Bayamo also were detained.
The government has not confirmed the detentions and rarely does in such
cases.
Yoani and Elizardo Sanchez are not related.
Carromero, who is affiliated with a youth wing of Spain's ruling
conservative party, and Swede Aron Modig, also a political activist in
his home country, had traveled to Cuba to support the island's dissident
community, people are branded traitors and mercenaries by the Cuban
government.
They were driving to eastern Cuba with Paya and Cepero in the back seats
when the crash happened. The Europeans, who were in the front and
wearing seatbelts, were not seriously injured.
Modig returned to Sweden a little over a week after the accident.
Paya, 60, was famous for leading the Varela Project, a petition that
gathered thousands of signatures calling for a referendum on rights such
as freedom of speech and assembly.
The European Union awarded Paya its Sakharov human rights prize in 2002
in recognition of the project.
Associated Press writer Andrea Rodriguez in Havana contributed to this
report.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/05/3035732/spaniard-on-trial-in-cuba-in-dissidents.html
Spaniard goes on trial in Cuba dissident's death
By FERNANDO GONZALEZ
Associated Press
BAYAMO, Cuba -- A Spanish man held in Cuba went on trial Friday in
connection with a car crash in which a prominent dissident was killed,
and several government opponents were detained in this eastern city
where the proceedings were taking place.
Angel Carromero arrived in a white van at a courthouse in Bayamo, about
500 miles (800 kilometers) east of the capital and near the site of the
July 22 highway crash in which Oswaldo Paya and another dissident,
Harold Cepero, died.
Authorities accused Carromero of speeding and charged him with the
equivalent of vehicular manslaughter, which carries a possible penalty
of up to 10 years under Cuban law. In videotaped statements, the
Spaniard has said he lost control upon driving into an unpaved section
of road, and the vehicle skidded into a tree.
His defense argued Friday that it was impossible to determine the exact
velocity of the vehicle, and asked for him to be released to house arrest.
"We will see how it all comes out. We are optimistic," said Spanish
consul Tomas Rodriguez, who was observing the trial.
Pro-government bloggers in Bayamo reported that dissident writer Yoani
Sanchez was detained by local authorities shortly before arriving in the
city. Calls to her cellphone went unanswered, but human rights monitor
Elizardo Sanchez in Havana also reported the detentions Thursday night
of Sanchez; her husband, Reinaldo Escobar; and a third man in the
vehicle. He said at least a half-dozen other dissidents in and around
Bayamo also were detained.
The government has not confirmed the detentions and rarely does in such
cases.
Yoani and Elizardo Sanchez are not related.
Carromero, who is affiliated with a youth wing of Spain's ruling
conservative party, and Swede Aron Modig, also a political activist in
his home country, had traveled to Cuba to support the island's dissident
community, people are branded traitors and mercenaries by the Cuban
government.
They were driving to eastern Cuba with Paya and Cepero in the back seats
when the crash happened. The Europeans, who were in the front and
wearing seatbelts, were not seriously injured.
Modig returned to Sweden a little over a week after the accident.
Paya, 60, was famous for leading the Varela Project, a petition that
gathered thousands of signatures calling for a referendum on rights such
as freedom of speech and assembly.
The European Union awarded Paya its Sakharov human rights prize in 2002
in recognition of the project.
Associated Press writer Andrea Rodriguez in Havana contributed to this
report.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/05/3035732/spaniard-on-trial-in-cuba-in-dissidents.html
Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez detained
Posted on Friday, 10.05.12
Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez detained
The Associated Press
BAYAMO, Cuba -- A Spanish man detained in Cuba has gone on trial in
connection with a car crash that killed a prominent dissident and
another anti-government activist in July.
Pro-government bloggers in the city where the trial is being held are
reporting dissident writer Yoani Sanchez has been detained by
authorities in Bayamo, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of Havana.
Human rights monitor Elizardo Sanchez in Havana confirms the detention
of Sanchez, her husband and a man who was driving them.
Spaniard Angel Carromero is charged with the equivalent of vehicular
manslaughter in the July 22 crash in which dissidents Oswaldo Paya and
Harold Cepero died.
Carromero arrived at a Bayamo courthouse Friday morning for his trial.
He could face up to 10 years behind bars.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/05/3035719/spaniard-on-trial-in-cuba-in-dissidents.html
Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez detained
The Associated Press
BAYAMO, Cuba -- A Spanish man detained in Cuba has gone on trial in
connection with a car crash that killed a prominent dissident and
another anti-government activist in July.
Pro-government bloggers in the city where the trial is being held are
reporting dissident writer Yoani Sanchez has been detained by
authorities in Bayamo, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of Havana.
Human rights monitor Elizardo Sanchez in Havana confirms the detention
of Sanchez, her husband and a man who was driving them.
Spaniard Angel Carromero is charged with the equivalent of vehicular
manslaughter in the July 22 crash in which dissidents Oswaldo Paya and
Harold Cepero died.
Carromero arrived at a Bayamo courthouse Friday morning for his trial.
He could face up to 10 years behind bars.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/05/3035719/spaniard-on-trial-in-cuba-in-dissidents.html
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Three Elections, One Country
Three Elections, One Country / Yoani Sanchez
Translator: Unstated, Yoani Sanchez
What does the voice of Henrique Capriles sound like? A neighbor asked me
a few days ago. I didn't know whether to tell him it was high-pitched or
deep, soft or forceful, because the Cuban media is careful not to air
it. Instead, we only have the opportunity to hear the agitated shouts of
Hugo Chavez, the verbal attacks he throws at his young opponent.
A few days before the Venezuelan elections, our official press has
closed ranks around the current occupant of the Miraflores Palace in
Caracas. The television commentators assure us that there will be a
landslide victory for the Socialist Party and celebrate in advance. But
that's just in front of the cameras; behind the cameras is nervousness,
not certainty.
Raul Castro's government has too much invested in the Venezuelan
elections on October 7. Much more than with the dismemberment of the
USSR and the conversion of the Eastern European countries. On that
occasion, the loss of the Soviet subsidies and the political allies of
the socialist bloc submerged the country into a profound material and
diplomatic crisis. But within the country the control exercised by Fidel
Catro's regime had the strength — and stubbornness — to withstand the blow.
Today, more than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, little
remains of the fervor, the stubborn will, with which we faced what Fidel
Castro called The Special Period, a crises presented to us as a
necessary sacrifice, a test of ideological fortitude.
There are so many similarities and yet profound differences. The loss of
the economic underpinnings from the Kremlin forced Fidel Castro to allow
self-employment, the renting of houses, the development of farmers
markets, foreign investment, and opening of the Island to international
tourism and dollarization.
However, it was precisely the rise to power of Hugo Chavez in 1999 that
was the key element to the walking back of these reforms. With a
powerful and nearby partner lavishly giving us oil, why continue to
deepen the process of relaxations that resulted in a loss of power.
Raul Castro, years later, would retake the path of economic openings
that his brother had retracted. This time he would be supported by the
Venezuelan subsidy, which has enabled him to implement the few changes
slowly in a lukewarm fashion. Perhaps there was a moment when he
believed that offering farmers the ability to lease land in usufruct, or
expanding licenses for self-employment, would allow Cuba to take its
first steps towards economic independence.
Or maybe he always knew that this type of dependency, once established,
ends up becoming a chronic situation. More than a circumstance, the need
for external subsidy is the core of the Castro regime, the direct result
of its inability to successfully manage the national economy.
If, on Sunday, Venezuelans reelect Hugo Chavez as president, Raul's
regime will get some breathing room. But the great polarization in Simon
Bolivar's fatherland will make it more difficult to publicly sustain the
maintenance of Cuba. It will no longer be the same.
On top of that, the obvious physical collapse or the expected death of
Fidel Castro is an open secret throughout the whole country. His last
brief and delirious "Reflections" column was published in the newspaper
on June 19. Some say they are only waiting for the end of the Venezuelan
elections to put an announcement date on his obituary.
The government in Havana is approaching complicated months. Venezuela's
will be the first in a cycle of three elections that will influence, to
a greater or lesser extent, our national life. The presidential election
in the United States follows immediately in the list of electoral
processes that lie ahead. Mitt Romney has promised a heavy hand with the
Cuban authorities, but Barack Obama can also be very caustic to the
Cuban system if he deepens his policy of family, academic and cultural
approaches.
The first five-year term of Raul Castro will end in February 2013. Few
are betting that he's thinking of retiring to make way for a younger
figure. These elections, the third that await us in the coming months,
are also the last in importance and in generating expectations. The
process of nominating People's Power delegates and installing them in
the National Assembly has already begun, and this body will approve the
nominations to the Council of State.
If the Venezuelan results will decide whether we are granted billions in
subsidies, and our relationship with our powerful neighbor to the north
is in play in those elections, the Cuban elections smell strongly of a
play whose script is already written. We don't even need surveys or
voter polls. There is no possibility of a surprise.
4 October 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/three-elections-one-country-yoani-sanchez/
Translator: Unstated, Yoani Sanchez
What does the voice of Henrique Capriles sound like? A neighbor asked me
a few days ago. I didn't know whether to tell him it was high-pitched or
deep, soft or forceful, because the Cuban media is careful not to air
it. Instead, we only have the opportunity to hear the agitated shouts of
Hugo Chavez, the verbal attacks he throws at his young opponent.
A few days before the Venezuelan elections, our official press has
closed ranks around the current occupant of the Miraflores Palace in
Caracas. The television commentators assure us that there will be a
landslide victory for the Socialist Party and celebrate in advance. But
that's just in front of the cameras; behind the cameras is nervousness,
not certainty.
Raul Castro's government has too much invested in the Venezuelan
elections on October 7. Much more than with the dismemberment of the
USSR and the conversion of the Eastern European countries. On that
occasion, the loss of the Soviet subsidies and the political allies of
the socialist bloc submerged the country into a profound material and
diplomatic crisis. But within the country the control exercised by Fidel
Catro's regime had the strength — and stubbornness — to withstand the blow.
Today, more than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, little
remains of the fervor, the stubborn will, with which we faced what Fidel
Castro called The Special Period, a crises presented to us as a
necessary sacrifice, a test of ideological fortitude.
There are so many similarities and yet profound differences. The loss of
the economic underpinnings from the Kremlin forced Fidel Castro to allow
self-employment, the renting of houses, the development of farmers
markets, foreign investment, and opening of the Island to international
tourism and dollarization.
However, it was precisely the rise to power of Hugo Chavez in 1999 that
was the key element to the walking back of these reforms. With a
powerful and nearby partner lavishly giving us oil, why continue to
deepen the process of relaxations that resulted in a loss of power.
Raul Castro, years later, would retake the path of economic openings
that his brother had retracted. This time he would be supported by the
Venezuelan subsidy, which has enabled him to implement the few changes
slowly in a lukewarm fashion. Perhaps there was a moment when he
believed that offering farmers the ability to lease land in usufruct, or
expanding licenses for self-employment, would allow Cuba to take its
first steps towards economic independence.
Or maybe he always knew that this type of dependency, once established,
ends up becoming a chronic situation. More than a circumstance, the need
for external subsidy is the core of the Castro regime, the direct result
of its inability to successfully manage the national economy.
If, on Sunday, Venezuelans reelect Hugo Chavez as president, Raul's
regime will get some breathing room. But the great polarization in Simon
Bolivar's fatherland will make it more difficult to publicly sustain the
maintenance of Cuba. It will no longer be the same.
On top of that, the obvious physical collapse or the expected death of
Fidel Castro is an open secret throughout the whole country. His last
brief and delirious "Reflections" column was published in the newspaper
on June 19. Some say they are only waiting for the end of the Venezuelan
elections to put an announcement date on his obituary.
The government in Havana is approaching complicated months. Venezuela's
will be the first in a cycle of three elections that will influence, to
a greater or lesser extent, our national life. The presidential election
in the United States follows immediately in the list of electoral
processes that lie ahead. Mitt Romney has promised a heavy hand with the
Cuban authorities, but Barack Obama can also be very caustic to the
Cuban system if he deepens his policy of family, academic and cultural
approaches.
The first five-year term of Raul Castro will end in February 2013. Few
are betting that he's thinking of retiring to make way for a younger
figure. These elections, the third that await us in the coming months,
are also the last in importance and in generating expectations. The
process of nominating People's Power delegates and installing them in
the National Assembly has already begun, and this body will approve the
nominations to the Council of State.
If the Venezuelan results will decide whether we are granted billions in
subsidies, and our relationship with our powerful neighbor to the north
is in play in those elections, the Cuban elections smell strongly of a
play whose script is already written. We don't even need surveys or
voter polls. There is no possibility of a surprise.
4 October 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/three-elections-one-country-yoani-sanchez/
Where are the CDR Revolutionaries?
Where are the CDR Revolutionaries? / Miriam Celaya
Miriam Celaya, Translator: Unstated
As has been the trend in recent years, the once nurtured and animated
Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) "fiestas" on September
27, have been added to the list of Revolutionary anniversaries on the
way to extinction.
Just by chance, for personal reasons, I was crossing the city last
Thursday and could observe how great apathy had taken over the blocks of
the capital, substituting a scandalous silence for those old festivities
where CDR neighbors shared a pot of stew in the street, made with
officially allocated scraps (some pig's head or other minor portion of
the animal) and vegetables collected from among the neighbors, seasoned
thanks to the enthusiasm of the neighborhood's Revolutionarie, along
with a sweet cake and the everlasting and fetid mass-produced rum.
There is nothing so eloquent as this capital now, dark and silent, on
the eve of the most popular Revolutionary celebration, which until
recently honored the founding of an organization conceived in power, so
that Cubans could betray each other and consecrate the
surveillance-based police state in service to a dictatorship which, like
every autocracy, despises its followers.
Nobody dresses up the blocks with garlands and multi-colored paper
flags, and just a few faithful persist in hanging a Cuban flag from
their balconies, because for decades they were led to believe that being
Cuban and being in the CDR were the same thing; only now are they
beginning to learn that they signify the exact opposite.
The few isolated fires I saw were a pathetic specter of past revelry,
simply a pretext for the neighborhood drunks, whom nobody wants, to be
as wasted as they want in the streets and to mollify their empty
stomachs with a little hot broth.
A brief look at the signs shows that all the mass demonstrations that
gave a scenic valor to the Castros' Revolution have disappeared: the
marches of the "combatants," voluntary labor, CDR guard duty, marathon
blood donations, collections of raw materials, and more recently these
parties.
The extended decline betrays that popular sympathy for the dictatorship
is neither spontaneous nor free. I don't know where Havana's
Revolutionaries were this September 27, but clearly they realize they no
longer have much to celebrate.
2 October 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/where-are-the-cdr-revolutionaries-miriam-celaya/
Miriam Celaya, Translator: Unstated
As has been the trend in recent years, the once nurtured and animated
Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) "fiestas" on September
27, have been added to the list of Revolutionary anniversaries on the
way to extinction.
Just by chance, for personal reasons, I was crossing the city last
Thursday and could observe how great apathy had taken over the blocks of
the capital, substituting a scandalous silence for those old festivities
where CDR neighbors shared a pot of stew in the street, made with
officially allocated scraps (some pig's head or other minor portion of
the animal) and vegetables collected from among the neighbors, seasoned
thanks to the enthusiasm of the neighborhood's Revolutionarie, along
with a sweet cake and the everlasting and fetid mass-produced rum.
There is nothing so eloquent as this capital now, dark and silent, on
the eve of the most popular Revolutionary celebration, which until
recently honored the founding of an organization conceived in power, so
that Cubans could betray each other and consecrate the
surveillance-based police state in service to a dictatorship which, like
every autocracy, despises its followers.
Nobody dresses up the blocks with garlands and multi-colored paper
flags, and just a few faithful persist in hanging a Cuban flag from
their balconies, because for decades they were led to believe that being
Cuban and being in the CDR were the same thing; only now are they
beginning to learn that they signify the exact opposite.
The few isolated fires I saw were a pathetic specter of past revelry,
simply a pretext for the neighborhood drunks, whom nobody wants, to be
as wasted as they want in the streets and to mollify their empty
stomachs with a little hot broth.
A brief look at the signs shows that all the mass demonstrations that
gave a scenic valor to the Castros' Revolution have disappeared: the
marches of the "combatants," voluntary labor, CDR guard duty, marathon
blood donations, collections of raw materials, and more recently these
parties.
The extended decline betrays that popular sympathy for the dictatorship
is neither spontaneous nor free. I don't know where Havana's
Revolutionaries were this September 27, but clearly they realize they no
longer have much to celebrate.
2 October 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/where-are-the-cdr-revolutionaries-miriam-celaya/
Cuba cuts education spending, shifts priorities
Cuba cuts education spending, shifts priorities
By Marc Frank | Reuters – Wed, Oct 3, 2012
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba is cutting back its hallowed free education
system and moving students into more practical careers to reduce costs
and fill needs in its work force, recently released government
statistics show.
Enrollment in the communist-run country's many and varied types of
schools fell from 3 million students in 2008 to 2.2 million last year, a
drop of 27 percent, according to the National Statistics Office.
The reductions include cuts in some of the most vaunted programs of the
Cuban revolution, which from its beginning in 1959 emphasized the
importance of education for all and incorporated ideas from Jose Marti,
the intellectual father of the country.
Soon after succeeding his brother Fidel Castro in 2008, President Raul
Castro warned of coming budget cuts in education and health care because
he said the debt-laden country was virtually bankrupt.
"What we need to root out definitively is the irresponsible attitude of
consuming, with nobody - or very few people - worrying about how much it
costs the country to guarantee that and, above all, if it can really do
so," Castro told the National Assembly in August 2008.
"Social expenditures should be in accordance with real possibilities,
and that means cutting those expenditures it is possible to do without,"
he said.
Among the hardest hit were universities, where the number of students
dropped almost 50 percent from 300,000 in 2008 to 156,000 in 2011 as
admission standards were raised and liberal arts careers slashed.
Adult education, often criticized as too informal, open to cheating and
a substitute for working, also fell dramatically.
Only 145,000 students were enrolled last year in university extension
classes, a fraction of the 578,000 signed up in 2008 for mainly liberal
arts courses.
Enrollment in adult education courses, designed to improve work skills,
dropped from 373,000 in 2008 to 129,000 as the long-standing practice of
paying state workers and farmers their full salaries to study during the
day came to an end.
SHRINKING OPPORTUNITY
The state runs the entire education system for the country's 11.2
million citizens and sets the number of places available in each area of
study based on what kind of skills it thinks Cuba needs.
These days that means more skilled workers and private farmers to boost
stagnating production, and fewer professionals.
At the high school level, new emphasis is being put on sciences,
pedagogy, agriculture and skilled trades at the expense of liberal arts.
The number of places for students in pre-university schools declined by
some 50,000 or more than 20 percent since 2008, the report stated.
More students were channeled into the skilled trades, where slots jumped
from 26,000 in 2008 to 74,000.
The data did not include provincial high schools run by the military.
"Opportunities are shrinking and competition increasing," said Sonya
Perez, a single mother who is worried about her 12-year-old daughter's
future. "I make my daughter study two hours every day and pay one of her
teachers 30 pesos each week to tutor her."
A common complaint among parents is that families who can afford tutors
increase their children's chances of obtaining a higher education and
becoming professionals, undercutting the standard of equal educational
opportunity enshrined in Cuba's constitution.
Marti, whose bust sits outside public buildings all across Cuba,
championed the concept of combining study with work, which the
revolutionary government embraced by putting free boarding schools in
the countryside.
But with the revolution bumping up against budget realities, the number
of boarding school students fell from 415,000 in 2008 to 170,000 last year
All of these changes can be jarring to Cubans who have taken a full,
free education as a birthright.
"It used to be that a university education, in one form or another, was
almost a sure thing," said Havana architect Alejandro Padron. "Now you
have to struggle. I understand that it was impossible to maintain
everyone studying, but I still want to see my son go to the university."
(Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by Tom Brown, Kieran Murray and Jackie
Frank)
http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-cuts-education-spending-shifts-priorities-184724078.html;_ylt=A2KLOzIN521QCCgAtKLQtDMD
By Marc Frank | Reuters – Wed, Oct 3, 2012
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba is cutting back its hallowed free education
system and moving students into more practical careers to reduce costs
and fill needs in its work force, recently released government
statistics show.
Enrollment in the communist-run country's many and varied types of
schools fell from 3 million students in 2008 to 2.2 million last year, a
drop of 27 percent, according to the National Statistics Office.
The reductions include cuts in some of the most vaunted programs of the
Cuban revolution, which from its beginning in 1959 emphasized the
importance of education for all and incorporated ideas from Jose Marti,
the intellectual father of the country.
Soon after succeeding his brother Fidel Castro in 2008, President Raul
Castro warned of coming budget cuts in education and health care because
he said the debt-laden country was virtually bankrupt.
"What we need to root out definitively is the irresponsible attitude of
consuming, with nobody - or very few people - worrying about how much it
costs the country to guarantee that and, above all, if it can really do
so," Castro told the National Assembly in August 2008.
"Social expenditures should be in accordance with real possibilities,
and that means cutting those expenditures it is possible to do without,"
he said.
Among the hardest hit were universities, where the number of students
dropped almost 50 percent from 300,000 in 2008 to 156,000 in 2011 as
admission standards were raised and liberal arts careers slashed.
Adult education, often criticized as too informal, open to cheating and
a substitute for working, also fell dramatically.
Only 145,000 students were enrolled last year in university extension
classes, a fraction of the 578,000 signed up in 2008 for mainly liberal
arts courses.
Enrollment in adult education courses, designed to improve work skills,
dropped from 373,000 in 2008 to 129,000 as the long-standing practice of
paying state workers and farmers their full salaries to study during the
day came to an end.
SHRINKING OPPORTUNITY
The state runs the entire education system for the country's 11.2
million citizens and sets the number of places available in each area of
study based on what kind of skills it thinks Cuba needs.
These days that means more skilled workers and private farmers to boost
stagnating production, and fewer professionals.
At the high school level, new emphasis is being put on sciences,
pedagogy, agriculture and skilled trades at the expense of liberal arts.
The number of places for students in pre-university schools declined by
some 50,000 or more than 20 percent since 2008, the report stated.
More students were channeled into the skilled trades, where slots jumped
from 26,000 in 2008 to 74,000.
The data did not include provincial high schools run by the military.
"Opportunities are shrinking and competition increasing," said Sonya
Perez, a single mother who is worried about her 12-year-old daughter's
future. "I make my daughter study two hours every day and pay one of her
teachers 30 pesos each week to tutor her."
A common complaint among parents is that families who can afford tutors
increase their children's chances of obtaining a higher education and
becoming professionals, undercutting the standard of equal educational
opportunity enshrined in Cuba's constitution.
Marti, whose bust sits outside public buildings all across Cuba,
championed the concept of combining study with work, which the
revolutionary government embraced by putting free boarding schools in
the countryside.
But with the revolution bumping up against budget realities, the number
of boarding school students fell from 415,000 in 2008 to 170,000 last year
All of these changes can be jarring to Cubans who have taken a full,
free education as a birthright.
"It used to be that a university education, in one form or another, was
almost a sure thing," said Havana architect Alejandro Padron. "Now you
have to struggle. I understand that it was impossible to maintain
everyone studying, but I still want to see my son go to the university."
(Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by Tom Brown, Kieran Murray and Jackie
Frank)
http://news.yahoo.com/cuba-cuts-education-spending-shifts-priorities-184724078.html;_ylt=A2KLOzIN521QCCgAtKLQtDMD
The “Excludables” and Tourism in Cuba
The "Excludables" and Tourism in Cuba
October 4, 2012
by Vicente Morin Aguado (photos: Caridad)
HAVANA TIMES — By the time Jimmy Carter finished his first term, he
wasn't doing too well. Nevertheless he was hoping to be reelected, as
would be expected, though he would have to come to grips with the
Iranian crisis, the state of the nation's economy and Cuban immigrants.
Carter lost the race to the cowboy Ronald Reagan, and in the middle
stood the "excludables": roughly 2,000 of the more than 100,000 Cubans
who had traveled to the United States at that time to remain there
permanently.
The Republican president determined that those individuals didn't meet
the basic legal requirements to remain in the United States, so he had
them sent back to Cuba.
Prior to leaving the island, many of them already had criminal records,
which were added to by their lives of crime in the country that had
provisionally accepted them. They lived there in the US for years,
learning the street English they would later use in their native country
as a means to continue earning a living.
One afternoon in Central Park I met Peter, a short English-speaker with
black hair, about sixty years old, and proud of being African. Smiling,
he revealed his intriguing origin as he spoke about the Seychelles, the
small group of islands where he was from; these are situated in the
Indian Ocean yet are a part of Africa, geographically speaking.
Along with this enigmatic English-African, talking in his native
language was a Cuban named Amaran, known among those who sit around the
park conversing as one of those "excludables."
He got into a taxi with the two us en route to the National Ballet of
Cuba, a ride that Amaran took advantage of by trying to sell us
everything from Havana cigars to a caravel made from precious woods.
These items were systematically rejected by the English speaker, who was
focused on the upcoming showing of a documentary about the aptly named
"four jewels" of our nation's dance company: Loipa Araujo, Aurora Bosh,
Mirta Pla and Josefina Mendez.
Salvation finally came because our companion excluded himself from the
activity, considering it to be something for "cupcakes," in addition to
being boring to him. So, we dropped him off and headed on our way to
witness those classics of dance.
The next day, Peter and I found ourselves near the corner of 23rd and
10th streets in the Vedado district, exactly in the lobby of the Charlie
Chaplin Theater. This time, after customary greetings, he said, "Don't
you think we have time for a beer?"
From that time on, this man from Seychelles, an eternal traveler, has
been my friend.
But more surprises were awaiting me with people of Shakespearean speech,
not exactly the language of the excludibles, though understandable among
them…sadly enough.
Sitting on the Havana's Malecon boardwalk, I met a producer of the
London-based BBC. He was armed with powerful cameras yet eager to learn
about Cuba. I invited him to La Abadia, a site whose ceilings remind one
of typical British religious architecture, and where they also offer
excellent mojitos as reasonable prices. Just as the conversation
started, I heard a familiar type of English being spoken by one of my
compatriots (I'm sure you can imagine who it was).
This "old friend" attacked quickly and directly, asking the Londoner in
an imposing manner to break a 20 CUC bill, wanting two 10 CUC bills as
change. As he looked at me out of the corner of his eyes with the usual
signs, I said, "We don't have any change." I then added, "Please, go to
the cashier." The "excludable" looked at me as if I were one of his
former jailers in Cuba or the United States, upset with me for not being
supportive of his "friendly request."
Perplexed or intimidated, my BBC friend had almost been ready to comply
with that unexpected order from this interlocutor who was trying to
cheat him. Having no doubt about it from the beginning that the bill was
a fake, I would have wound up being the accomplice to a scam, losing a
potential good relationship, gaining nothing except disgrace. And this
all for the emotional blackmail which says between Cubans we must cover
each other from faults when it comes to money and tourists.
Still this impertinent guy repeated his attempt, which was when I
objected to the waiter, demanding his help in removing that crooked
character from our environment. He finally disappeared, but his prints
remained on the path.
The man from the British Broadcasting Company had accepted an outing
with me for the next day at one o'clock. To my way of thinking,
punctuality is a manifestation of culture, and something proverbial when
it comes to the English. This time the dark shadow came true because the
Londoner failed to show up at the designated time.
It was Sunday, so I had come with my little godson, who amused me in my
discouragement over the get-together having fallen through. We waited
for an hour, walked along the Malecon and returned exhausted to the
planned meeting spot.
Finally the nicest thing happened amid the fears born from the night
before: Mr. BBC greeted us apologetically and at the same time was
visibly relieved when he saw the boy who would be his other guide that
afternoon.
We ended up eating at a somewhat exclusive restaurant, something away
from the center of town called "El Pedregal." It's a really beautiful
place, surrounded by fountains full of fish and where you can truly
breathe clean fresh air.
The Englishman didn't know how to apologize, and then fatigue — along
with the drinks —he did the unusual thing of letting my godson playing
with those so terribly expensive cameras, which were also too heavy for
the child.
We returned to the hotel after exhausting all of my modest idiomatic
arsenal. The man was generous, even paying for our taxi and thereby
ensuring our comfortable return home.
This time I didn't dare tell the driver to leave us a couple of blocks
away from our destination because next to me was riding a little person
who wasn't an "excludable" at all, quite the contrary, this was someone
to whom was owed a lot for the "climate change" between the afternoon
and evening of that excellent day.
——
Vincent Morin Aguado. morfamily@correodecuba.cu
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79663
October 4, 2012
by Vicente Morin Aguado (photos: Caridad)
HAVANA TIMES — By the time Jimmy Carter finished his first term, he
wasn't doing too well. Nevertheless he was hoping to be reelected, as
would be expected, though he would have to come to grips with the
Iranian crisis, the state of the nation's economy and Cuban immigrants.
Carter lost the race to the cowboy Ronald Reagan, and in the middle
stood the "excludables": roughly 2,000 of the more than 100,000 Cubans
who had traveled to the United States at that time to remain there
permanently.
The Republican president determined that those individuals didn't meet
the basic legal requirements to remain in the United States, so he had
them sent back to Cuba.
Prior to leaving the island, many of them already had criminal records,
which were added to by their lives of crime in the country that had
provisionally accepted them. They lived there in the US for years,
learning the street English they would later use in their native country
as a means to continue earning a living.
One afternoon in Central Park I met Peter, a short English-speaker with
black hair, about sixty years old, and proud of being African. Smiling,
he revealed his intriguing origin as he spoke about the Seychelles, the
small group of islands where he was from; these are situated in the
Indian Ocean yet are a part of Africa, geographically speaking.
Along with this enigmatic English-African, talking in his native
language was a Cuban named Amaran, known among those who sit around the
park conversing as one of those "excludables."
He got into a taxi with the two us en route to the National Ballet of
Cuba, a ride that Amaran took advantage of by trying to sell us
everything from Havana cigars to a caravel made from precious woods.
These items were systematically rejected by the English speaker, who was
focused on the upcoming showing of a documentary about the aptly named
"four jewels" of our nation's dance company: Loipa Araujo, Aurora Bosh,
Mirta Pla and Josefina Mendez.
Salvation finally came because our companion excluded himself from the
activity, considering it to be something for "cupcakes," in addition to
being boring to him. So, we dropped him off and headed on our way to
witness those classics of dance.
The next day, Peter and I found ourselves near the corner of 23rd and
10th streets in the Vedado district, exactly in the lobby of the Charlie
Chaplin Theater. This time, after customary greetings, he said, "Don't
you think we have time for a beer?"
From that time on, this man from Seychelles, an eternal traveler, has
been my friend.
But more surprises were awaiting me with people of Shakespearean speech,
not exactly the language of the excludibles, though understandable among
them…sadly enough.
Sitting on the Havana's Malecon boardwalk, I met a producer of the
London-based BBC. He was armed with powerful cameras yet eager to learn
about Cuba. I invited him to La Abadia, a site whose ceilings remind one
of typical British religious architecture, and where they also offer
excellent mojitos as reasonable prices. Just as the conversation
started, I heard a familiar type of English being spoken by one of my
compatriots (I'm sure you can imagine who it was).
This "old friend" attacked quickly and directly, asking the Londoner in
an imposing manner to break a 20 CUC bill, wanting two 10 CUC bills as
change. As he looked at me out of the corner of his eyes with the usual
signs, I said, "We don't have any change." I then added, "Please, go to
the cashier." The "excludable" looked at me as if I were one of his
former jailers in Cuba or the United States, upset with me for not being
supportive of his "friendly request."
Perplexed or intimidated, my BBC friend had almost been ready to comply
with that unexpected order from this interlocutor who was trying to
cheat him. Having no doubt about it from the beginning that the bill was
a fake, I would have wound up being the accomplice to a scam, losing a
potential good relationship, gaining nothing except disgrace. And this
all for the emotional blackmail which says between Cubans we must cover
each other from faults when it comes to money and tourists.
Still this impertinent guy repeated his attempt, which was when I
objected to the waiter, demanding his help in removing that crooked
character from our environment. He finally disappeared, but his prints
remained on the path.
The man from the British Broadcasting Company had accepted an outing
with me for the next day at one o'clock. To my way of thinking,
punctuality is a manifestation of culture, and something proverbial when
it comes to the English. This time the dark shadow came true because the
Londoner failed to show up at the designated time.
It was Sunday, so I had come with my little godson, who amused me in my
discouragement over the get-together having fallen through. We waited
for an hour, walked along the Malecon and returned exhausted to the
planned meeting spot.
Finally the nicest thing happened amid the fears born from the night
before: Mr. BBC greeted us apologetically and at the same time was
visibly relieved when he saw the boy who would be his other guide that
afternoon.
We ended up eating at a somewhat exclusive restaurant, something away
from the center of town called "El Pedregal." It's a really beautiful
place, surrounded by fountains full of fish and where you can truly
breathe clean fresh air.
The Englishman didn't know how to apologize, and then fatigue — along
with the drinks —he did the unusual thing of letting my godson playing
with those so terribly expensive cameras, which were also too heavy for
the child.
We returned to the hotel after exhausting all of my modest idiomatic
arsenal. The man was generous, even paying for our taxi and thereby
ensuring our comfortable return home.
This time I didn't dare tell the driver to leave us a couple of blocks
away from our destination because next to me was riding a little person
who wasn't an "excludable" at all, quite the contrary, this was someone
to whom was owed a lot for the "climate change" between the afternoon
and evening of that excellent day.
——
Vincent Morin Aguado. morfamily@correodecuba.cu
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79663
Rip-off and Scam Control, a New Work Option in Cuba
Rip-off and Scam Control, a New Work Option in Cuba
October 2, 2012
By Veronica Vega
HAVANA TIMES — In an otherwise anonymous dictionary entitled "On the
Incredible", I came across this quote: "In the fifteenth century,
workers in the mills substituted grains of wheat with a an indigestible
mineral dust and cartilage of dried cuttlefish and squid. This is one of
the earliest known cases of adulteration. "
Let me tell you, it came as quite a surprise because in our arrogance we
have come to think Cuba has a monopoly in outright deception and
thinking up scams, especially during the worst of the special period,
when things got so bad they were putting condoms in the pizzas instead
of cheese and when they were selling mince "meat" made from floor cloths.
Whatever. As Einstein once said, every crisis is a challenge that forces
us to exploit our potential to the full, and since scammers and rip-off
merchants are here to stay, it seems to me, we might as well create the
job of "Scam Detector ", especially with the renewed enthusiasm there is
today for self-employment.
I'm talking about someone you could consult at the crucial, delicate
moment of making a purchase, someone tuned into the endless variety of
the adulterations I see daily at food stands, in the fruit and
vegetables markets, in just about everything that ends up on the market
or in the shops with or without the sanction of the state.
Yes, state stores are also "infiltrated" by such products, and today
authenticity has taken on a new meaning and there is no way of
determining with any certainty the origins of many of these authentic
inventions.
For example:
I know that pumpkin slices (cut not only to make it easier to weigh but
to also raise customer confidence), are rubbed with sandpaper on the
side to give them a shine and make them look a brighter yellow, so they
don't qualify as watery.
Some time ago I found out that butter "sold under the counter", is mixed
with water and margarine and churned in a washing machine, put in the
freezer and then wrapped in bars of silver paper to take us all in. Just
put it in a bowl and wait a few hours and you'll see how much liquid and
solid there is in the concoction.
And take those bars of ground peanuts that used to be delicious. Now
they're mixed with wheat flour to save on the precious peanut kernels,
the same wheat flour they mix with the tomato puree to give it a
deceiving thickness.
Rather ironic, don't you think, after the great lengths our ancestors
went to adulterate wheat now Cubans are using wheat to adulterate all
sorts of other products.
And then there's the common everyday tomato. Be warned, the "tomato" in
many purees can be chili peppers, beetroot, or even carrots. Hence the
variety of shades of color (and flavors).
Then there's tamales. Mixed with processed cornmeal, they taste dry and
they look dry. But then again, corn is also very expensive.
Even those sweet little baby coconut balls we love so much, are grated
potato, it turns out, and to add insult to injury the bars are made of
"guava", God help us !, I wouldn't like to inquire into what they are
using to replace the traditional guava but the giveaway is that they are
so hard and sticky it's almost impossible now to cut off a strip with a
knife.
A former neighbor of my mother used to send the boys in the building to
bring her empty ice cream tubs, the kind people buy in the hard currency
stores and then chuck them in the trash can or on the street.
She'd go and buy a tub of Guarina ice cream in the Alamar fun park,
refill the tubs she got from the boys with her own recipe and with the
help of a "contact", slip them into the freezer of a foreign currency
kiosk where the unwitting customers bought them for their brand names:
Nestlé, Alondra, Varadero. At the same price of course as the originals.
More than one person has told me in disgust about buying a deodorant
only to discover it "seems filled with water, there's something wrong
with it." So scams and rip-offs are reaching top levels in the supply chain.
A friend told us of a family member of his who works in Coppelia, the
ice-cream parlor, whose standard of living is visibly rising while the
taste of the famous ice cream is visibly inconsistent and tasteless.
According to him, the problem can be traced to the same factory where
they multiply the artificial thickeners to create this bubble of
deception and disappointment they insist on calling ice cream.
Analyzing all this, I concluded that courses on "Scam Detectors." are
urgently needed. Maybe some expert can tell us why the bread we get with
our ration book lacks substance and is so volatile it makes you think
maybe some impressionist artist was at work on it.
But in this struggle for survival we've been engaged in since the
beginning of the never-ending (post '90s) special period economic
crisis, the real challenge would be if these guardians of probity could
not be bribed, like some inspectors and even social workers ended up
succumbing to.
However before anyone comes up with a solution, they could make a start
by printing "Anti Scam" booklets and sell them in the shops as part of
the University for All Program.
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79570
October 2, 2012
By Veronica Vega
HAVANA TIMES — In an otherwise anonymous dictionary entitled "On the
Incredible", I came across this quote: "In the fifteenth century,
workers in the mills substituted grains of wheat with a an indigestible
mineral dust and cartilage of dried cuttlefish and squid. This is one of
the earliest known cases of adulteration. "
Let me tell you, it came as quite a surprise because in our arrogance we
have come to think Cuba has a monopoly in outright deception and
thinking up scams, especially during the worst of the special period,
when things got so bad they were putting condoms in the pizzas instead
of cheese and when they were selling mince "meat" made from floor cloths.
Whatever. As Einstein once said, every crisis is a challenge that forces
us to exploit our potential to the full, and since scammers and rip-off
merchants are here to stay, it seems to me, we might as well create the
job of "Scam Detector ", especially with the renewed enthusiasm there is
today for self-employment.
I'm talking about someone you could consult at the crucial, delicate
moment of making a purchase, someone tuned into the endless variety of
the adulterations I see daily at food stands, in the fruit and
vegetables markets, in just about everything that ends up on the market
or in the shops with or without the sanction of the state.
Yes, state stores are also "infiltrated" by such products, and today
authenticity has taken on a new meaning and there is no way of
determining with any certainty the origins of many of these authentic
inventions.
For example:
I know that pumpkin slices (cut not only to make it easier to weigh but
to also raise customer confidence), are rubbed with sandpaper on the
side to give them a shine and make them look a brighter yellow, so they
don't qualify as watery.
Some time ago I found out that butter "sold under the counter", is mixed
with water and margarine and churned in a washing machine, put in the
freezer and then wrapped in bars of silver paper to take us all in. Just
put it in a bowl and wait a few hours and you'll see how much liquid and
solid there is in the concoction.
And take those bars of ground peanuts that used to be delicious. Now
they're mixed with wheat flour to save on the precious peanut kernels,
the same wheat flour they mix with the tomato puree to give it a
deceiving thickness.
Rather ironic, don't you think, after the great lengths our ancestors
went to adulterate wheat now Cubans are using wheat to adulterate all
sorts of other products.
And then there's the common everyday tomato. Be warned, the "tomato" in
many purees can be chili peppers, beetroot, or even carrots. Hence the
variety of shades of color (and flavors).
Then there's tamales. Mixed with processed cornmeal, they taste dry and
they look dry. But then again, corn is also very expensive.
Even those sweet little baby coconut balls we love so much, are grated
potato, it turns out, and to add insult to injury the bars are made of
"guava", God help us !, I wouldn't like to inquire into what they are
using to replace the traditional guava but the giveaway is that they are
so hard and sticky it's almost impossible now to cut off a strip with a
knife.
A former neighbor of my mother used to send the boys in the building to
bring her empty ice cream tubs, the kind people buy in the hard currency
stores and then chuck them in the trash can or on the street.
She'd go and buy a tub of Guarina ice cream in the Alamar fun park,
refill the tubs she got from the boys with her own recipe and with the
help of a "contact", slip them into the freezer of a foreign currency
kiosk where the unwitting customers bought them for their brand names:
Nestlé, Alondra, Varadero. At the same price of course as the originals.
More than one person has told me in disgust about buying a deodorant
only to discover it "seems filled with water, there's something wrong
with it." So scams and rip-offs are reaching top levels in the supply chain.
A friend told us of a family member of his who works in Coppelia, the
ice-cream parlor, whose standard of living is visibly rising while the
taste of the famous ice cream is visibly inconsistent and tasteless.
According to him, the problem can be traced to the same factory where
they multiply the artificial thickeners to create this bubble of
deception and disappointment they insist on calling ice cream.
Analyzing all this, I concluded that courses on "Scam Detectors." are
urgently needed. Maybe some expert can tell us why the bread we get with
our ration book lacks substance and is so volatile it makes you think
maybe some impressionist artist was at work on it.
But in this struggle for survival we've been engaged in since the
beginning of the never-ending (post '90s) special period economic
crisis, the real challenge would be if these guardians of probity could
not be bribed, like some inspectors and even social workers ended up
succumbing to.
However before anyone comes up with a solution, they could make a start
by printing "Anti Scam" booklets and sell them in the shops as part of
the University for All Program.
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79570
Prices and Taxes in Cuba
Prices and Taxes in Cuba
October 4, 2012
Fernando Ravsberg*
Even people with the lowest incomes, such as this retired teacher, are
also required to make purchases in hard-currency stores and pay inflated
prices.
HAVANA TIMES — At the last meeting of the Council of Ministers, it was
announced that one of their objectives is to "establish principles for
the setting of prices for the public using a comprehensive approach,"
while assuring a "monetary equilibrium between incomes and the
circulation of retail goods."
This issue is essential for a large portion of the nation's population,
especially those living off of government wages paid in Cuban pesos,
despite these people having to buy some staples in convertible pesos
(which are equivalent to the dollar).
It's true that many of these items have to be imported, though the
government assures us that the national economy is no longer capable of
subsidizing these as it had done for decades. However this isn't the
only factor that inflates retail prices.
Since the early 1990's when Cubans were allowed to use the dollar, a 240
percent sales tax was placed on all products sold in hard currency. It
was said that the objective of this was to redistribute incomes, using
the money from that tax to subsidize the poorest members of the population.
Recalling the Cuban filmmaker "Titon" (Tomas Gutierrez Alea), one could
say that the script wasn't bad but the staging was a disaster. The
measure was applied to all products, even basic necessities, some of
which are only sold in the state-run network of hard-currency stores.
The disappearance or reduction of subsidies required all citizens to buy
part of their family staples in those stores, where — thanks to that 240
percent sales tax — the cost of one quart of soybean cooking oil is
equivalent to the wages of several days of work.
Then too, there are the additional "fines" applied to goods by state
shopkeepers. There are imported products that I've seen cost 500 percent
more than in their countries of origin. All this shows that the price
increases aren't really aimed at redistribution in the interest of those
who are poorest.
To prevent this theft against consumers, the government recently
announced price leveling on 100 essential items, meaning that now all
hard-currency stores are required to sell those products at exactly the
same prices.
It seems logical that now they're establishing a system of pricing that
takes into account people's incomes, though one would think they'd also
eliminate or minimize the tax burden on staples.
To really achieve the redistribution of wealth, taxes should be applied
only on luxury goods, those products that aren't necessary for life.
Applying them on milk, cooking oil, soap and meat ends up being
punishment against the poor.
Kiosks have been opened in all the districts selling products in
convertible hard-currency. One needs only to stand around one of those
to witness how many of the people who shop there are clearly poor people
who have to save every penny to buy the most indispensible items.
A few days ago people were complaining that detergent was scarce in the
hard-currency stores. The problem was actually that only large packages
were being sold, while the fact is that many Cubans can barely manage to
scrape together the 50 cents (USD) for the smallest packets.
The gradual disappearance of ration books is perhaps a measure that's
economically reasonable, but if the subsidies are removed there have to
be guarantees that no one, not even the state-run stores, will be able
to speculate when it comes to people's food.
Citizens can understand the need to pay the costs that are entailed in
the international cost of oil, transportation and business expenses; but
artificially multiplying goods by almost two and a half times to arrive
at a final price seems excessive.
In other countries of the world, their value-added taxes can approach 20
percent, which is not a negligible amount demanded by their governments
given that VATs apply to everything sold in those countries, from a
liter of milk to a house.
To improve the situation in Cuba, the Council of Ministers wouldn't even
have to change the script; it would suffice to raise taxes only on
luxury goods, ensuring the lowest possible prices for staples.
If the announced "comprehensive approach" on pricing takes into account
"the incomes of consumers," surely this measure would have the
wholehearted support of the majority of Cubans, who would feel that the
reforms were no longer economic abstractions but were beginning to
benefit their daily lives.
—–
(*) An authorized Havana Times translation of the original published by
BBC Mundo.
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79688
October 4, 2012
Fernando Ravsberg*
Even people with the lowest incomes, such as this retired teacher, are
also required to make purchases in hard-currency stores and pay inflated
prices.
HAVANA TIMES — At the last meeting of the Council of Ministers, it was
announced that one of their objectives is to "establish principles for
the setting of prices for the public using a comprehensive approach,"
while assuring a "monetary equilibrium between incomes and the
circulation of retail goods."
This issue is essential for a large portion of the nation's population,
especially those living off of government wages paid in Cuban pesos,
despite these people having to buy some staples in convertible pesos
(which are equivalent to the dollar).
It's true that many of these items have to be imported, though the
government assures us that the national economy is no longer capable of
subsidizing these as it had done for decades. However this isn't the
only factor that inflates retail prices.
Since the early 1990's when Cubans were allowed to use the dollar, a 240
percent sales tax was placed on all products sold in hard currency. It
was said that the objective of this was to redistribute incomes, using
the money from that tax to subsidize the poorest members of the population.
Recalling the Cuban filmmaker "Titon" (Tomas Gutierrez Alea), one could
say that the script wasn't bad but the staging was a disaster. The
measure was applied to all products, even basic necessities, some of
which are only sold in the state-run network of hard-currency stores.
The disappearance or reduction of subsidies required all citizens to buy
part of their family staples in those stores, where — thanks to that 240
percent sales tax — the cost of one quart of soybean cooking oil is
equivalent to the wages of several days of work.
Then too, there are the additional "fines" applied to goods by state
shopkeepers. There are imported products that I've seen cost 500 percent
more than in their countries of origin. All this shows that the price
increases aren't really aimed at redistribution in the interest of those
who are poorest.
To prevent this theft against consumers, the government recently
announced price leveling on 100 essential items, meaning that now all
hard-currency stores are required to sell those products at exactly the
same prices.
It seems logical that now they're establishing a system of pricing that
takes into account people's incomes, though one would think they'd also
eliminate or minimize the tax burden on staples.
To really achieve the redistribution of wealth, taxes should be applied
only on luxury goods, those products that aren't necessary for life.
Applying them on milk, cooking oil, soap and meat ends up being
punishment against the poor.
Kiosks have been opened in all the districts selling products in
convertible hard-currency. One needs only to stand around one of those
to witness how many of the people who shop there are clearly poor people
who have to save every penny to buy the most indispensible items.
A few days ago people were complaining that detergent was scarce in the
hard-currency stores. The problem was actually that only large packages
were being sold, while the fact is that many Cubans can barely manage to
scrape together the 50 cents (USD) for the smallest packets.
The gradual disappearance of ration books is perhaps a measure that's
economically reasonable, but if the subsidies are removed there have to
be guarantees that no one, not even the state-run stores, will be able
to speculate when it comes to people's food.
Citizens can understand the need to pay the costs that are entailed in
the international cost of oil, transportation and business expenses; but
artificially multiplying goods by almost two and a half times to arrive
at a final price seems excessive.
In other countries of the world, their value-added taxes can approach 20
percent, which is not a negligible amount demanded by their governments
given that VATs apply to everything sold in those countries, from a
liter of milk to a house.
To improve the situation in Cuba, the Council of Ministers wouldn't even
have to change the script; it would suffice to raise taxes only on
luxury goods, ensuring the lowest possible prices for staples.
If the announced "comprehensive approach" on pricing takes into account
"the incomes of consumers," surely this measure would have the
wholehearted support of the majority of Cubans, who would feel that the
reforms were no longer economic abstractions but were beginning to
benefit their daily lives.
—–
(*) An authorized Havana Times translation of the original published by
BBC Mundo.
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=79688
Spaniard to face trial for car wreck death of Cuba's Paya
Spaniard to face trial for car wreck death of Cuba's Paya
Thu Oct 4, 2012 1:37pm EDT
* Prosecutors reportedly seeking seven years in prison
* Paya was winner of 2002 Sakharov Prize for human rights
* Paya family accused government of involvement in wreck
By Jeff Franks
HAVANA, Oct 4 (Reuters) - A Spanish political activist involved in a car
crash that killed prominent Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya goes on trial
on Friday in a politically charged case that has strained Cuba's
relations with Spain.
According to Spanish newspapers, prosecutors are seeking seven years
imprisonment for Angel Carromero, the leader of the youth wing of
Spain's ruling People's Party, who faces two counts of vehicular
manslaughter for the July 22 accident.
Paya, 60, and dissident colleague Harold Cepero, 31, died when Carromero
lost control of the small rental car he was driving and smashed into a
tree near the city of Bayamo 415 miles (668 km) southeast of Havana.
They and Jens Aron Modig, a young conservative activist from Sweden,
were on their way to meet supporters of Paya's Christian Liberation
Movement.
Paya was awarded the European Union's Sakharov Prize for human rights in
2002 for leading the Varela Project, a campaign to reform Cuba's
one-party political system.
The case touched off charges from Paya's family and other dissidents
that government agents ran the car off the road, but Carromero and Modig
have said no other vehicle was involved.
The Spanish government has been scrambling behind the scenes to try to
get Carromero, 27, off the hook and has said little publicly about the case.
Since the conservative People's Party ousted the Socialists in an
election last year, Cuba-Spanish relations have cooled and could worsen,
depending on the outcome of Carromero's trial, western diplomats in
Havana say.
One diplomat said Cuba is insisting that Spain publicly declare it
agrees the Cuban government had no hand in the car wreck, but so far
that has not happened.
Cuba has been equally tight-lipped, but staged a July 30 press
conference with Modig to show that foreign involvement with Cuban
opposition is not limited to its usual foil, the United States, and that
dissidents get money for their activities, a charge the government uses
to discredit them with the Cuban people.
'ILLICIT ACTIVITIES'
Modig, who like Carromero suffered only minor injuries in the wreck,
admitted giving Paya 4,000 euros ($4,900) from his Christian Democratic
Party and apologized for "having come to this country to carry out
illicit activities."
Shortly afterwards, he was released and sent back to Sweden, where he
has kept a low profile.
The balding, lightly bearded Carromero, appearing in a video at the
press conference, alluded to his biggest worry - that the case would get
wrapped up in international politics.
"I ask the international community to please concentrate on getting me
out of here and to not use the traffic accident that could have happened
to any other person for political ends," he said.
He also downplayed his culpability in the accident, saying he "took the
precaution of any other driver" by applying the brakes when he drove
over a section of road that was under repair and slid out of control.
The Cuban government said he was driving too fast, did not heed warning
signs about the road construction and jammed on the brakes too abruptly.
Spain is hoping Carromero avoids a fate similar to that of U.S.
contractor Alan Gross, who in 2011 was sentenced to 15 years in prison
for illegally setting up Internet networks in Cuba under a U.S. program
promoting political change on the island.
Cuba considers the program part of longstanding U.S. efforts to topple
the communist government.
Foreign diplomats in Havana generally think Carromero will not be
treated so harshly, if for no other reason than Spain has a previously
signed accord with Cuba that allows prisoners from their respective
countries to return to their homeland to serve their sentences, if the
host country concurs.
But there is also a feeling that Cuba does not want to alienate Spain -
and perhaps Europe - by keeping Carromero behind bars.
"Cuba doesn't want to open another front in its ideological battles. It
may not love the current Spanish government, but it doesn't hate it in
the same way it does the United States, and it doesn't want to take the
risk of alienating all of Europe," said a European diplomat who asked
not to be named.
Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human
Rights, said the loss of Paya was "irreparable," but could have been
worse if the dissident community was not made up of various groups.
"If the dissident movement was a monolithic movement, the loss of its
leader would something devastating, terrible, but since in reality he
was the leader of one group we see the other organizations working as
always and the repression continues to be high," he said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/cuba-spain-dissident-idUSL1E8L4CH820121004?type=marketsNews
Thu Oct 4, 2012 1:37pm EDT
* Prosecutors reportedly seeking seven years in prison
* Paya was winner of 2002 Sakharov Prize for human rights
* Paya family accused government of involvement in wreck
By Jeff Franks
HAVANA, Oct 4 (Reuters) - A Spanish political activist involved in a car
crash that killed prominent Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya goes on trial
on Friday in a politically charged case that has strained Cuba's
relations with Spain.
According to Spanish newspapers, prosecutors are seeking seven years
imprisonment for Angel Carromero, the leader of the youth wing of
Spain's ruling People's Party, who faces two counts of vehicular
manslaughter for the July 22 accident.
Paya, 60, and dissident colleague Harold Cepero, 31, died when Carromero
lost control of the small rental car he was driving and smashed into a
tree near the city of Bayamo 415 miles (668 km) southeast of Havana.
They and Jens Aron Modig, a young conservative activist from Sweden,
were on their way to meet supporters of Paya's Christian Liberation
Movement.
Paya was awarded the European Union's Sakharov Prize for human rights in
2002 for leading the Varela Project, a campaign to reform Cuba's
one-party political system.
The case touched off charges from Paya's family and other dissidents
that government agents ran the car off the road, but Carromero and Modig
have said no other vehicle was involved.
The Spanish government has been scrambling behind the scenes to try to
get Carromero, 27, off the hook and has said little publicly about the case.
Since the conservative People's Party ousted the Socialists in an
election last year, Cuba-Spanish relations have cooled and could worsen,
depending on the outcome of Carromero's trial, western diplomats in
Havana say.
One diplomat said Cuba is insisting that Spain publicly declare it
agrees the Cuban government had no hand in the car wreck, but so far
that has not happened.
Cuba has been equally tight-lipped, but staged a July 30 press
conference with Modig to show that foreign involvement with Cuban
opposition is not limited to its usual foil, the United States, and that
dissidents get money for their activities, a charge the government uses
to discredit them with the Cuban people.
'ILLICIT ACTIVITIES'
Modig, who like Carromero suffered only minor injuries in the wreck,
admitted giving Paya 4,000 euros ($4,900) from his Christian Democratic
Party and apologized for "having come to this country to carry out
illicit activities."
Shortly afterwards, he was released and sent back to Sweden, where he
has kept a low profile.
The balding, lightly bearded Carromero, appearing in a video at the
press conference, alluded to his biggest worry - that the case would get
wrapped up in international politics.
"I ask the international community to please concentrate on getting me
out of here and to not use the traffic accident that could have happened
to any other person for political ends," he said.
He also downplayed his culpability in the accident, saying he "took the
precaution of any other driver" by applying the brakes when he drove
over a section of road that was under repair and slid out of control.
The Cuban government said he was driving too fast, did not heed warning
signs about the road construction and jammed on the brakes too abruptly.
Spain is hoping Carromero avoids a fate similar to that of U.S.
contractor Alan Gross, who in 2011 was sentenced to 15 years in prison
for illegally setting up Internet networks in Cuba under a U.S. program
promoting political change on the island.
Cuba considers the program part of longstanding U.S. efforts to topple
the communist government.
Foreign diplomats in Havana generally think Carromero will not be
treated so harshly, if for no other reason than Spain has a previously
signed accord with Cuba that allows prisoners from their respective
countries to return to their homeland to serve their sentences, if the
host country concurs.
But there is also a feeling that Cuba does not want to alienate Spain -
and perhaps Europe - by keeping Carromero behind bars.
"Cuba doesn't want to open another front in its ideological battles. It
may not love the current Spanish government, but it doesn't hate it in
the same way it does the United States, and it doesn't want to take the
risk of alienating all of Europe," said a European diplomat who asked
not to be named.
Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human
Rights, said the loss of Paya was "irreparable," but could have been
worse if the dissident community was not made up of various groups.
"If the dissident movement was a monolithic movement, the loss of its
leader would something devastating, terrible, but since in reality he
was the leader of one group we see the other organizations working as
always and the repression continues to be high," he said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/04/cuba-spain-dissident-idUSL1E8L4CH820121004?type=marketsNews
US urges Cuba to allow Md. man to see US doctor
Posted on Wednesday, 10.03.12
US urges Cuba to allow Md. man to see US doctor
By BRADLEY KLAPPER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration wants an American imprisoned in
Cuba to see his personal physician amid concerns he may have a cancerous
growth on his shoulder.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland says Maryland native Alan
Gross should be released. Short of that, she says Gross should be
allowed to see a U.S. doctor.
The 63-year-old Gross has been in prison since 2009. He was a U.S.
government subcontractor when he was arrested for bringing illegal
communications equipment into the country. His case has become a thorn
in U.S.-Cuba relations.
Cuba says Gross' health is normal.
But an American physician who reviewed medical records sent by Cuba says
Gross may have a cancerous growth. Radiologist Dr. Alan A. Cohen
believes the mass appeared months ago and must be presumed cancerous
unless proven harmless.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/03/3032634/us-urges-cuba-to-allow-md-man.html
US urges Cuba to allow Md. man to see US doctor
By BRADLEY KLAPPER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration wants an American imprisoned in
Cuba to see his personal physician amid concerns he may have a cancerous
growth on his shoulder.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland says Maryland native Alan
Gross should be released. Short of that, she says Gross should be
allowed to see a U.S. doctor.
The 63-year-old Gross has been in prison since 2009. He was a U.S.
government subcontractor when he was arrested for bringing illegal
communications equipment into the country. His case has become a thorn
in U.S.-Cuba relations.
Cuba says Gross' health is normal.
But an American physician who reviewed medical records sent by Cuba says
Gross may have a cancerous growth. Radiologist Dr. Alan A. Cohen
believes the mass appeared months ago and must be presumed cancerous
unless proven harmless.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/03/3032634/us-urges-cuba-to-allow-md-man.html
Nothing New Under the Sun
Nothing New Under the Sun / Lilianne Ruiz
Lilianne Ruiz, Translator: Unstated
Now one of the photos I had put in my posts has been taken by State
Security and put in a 17 minute documentary to try to accuse Señora
Martha Beatriz Roque and twenty other Cubans of faking their hunger strike.
I wasn't able to watch the documentary because my television broke some
weeks ago. Following the appearance of the photo (where I appear in the
company of women I greatly admire), I had won the opportunity to be
heard by some people who didn't know about the hunger strike.
In reality, this protest is also targeted to the arbitrariness of the
system that doesn't recognize our rights and tries to destroy us. So it
was not covered by any Cuban news media but merited an entire production
by the Revolutionary "artists," who offered proof — once again! — of how
over time they patrol, monitor, and keep our lives under surveillance.
So in the later edition and with the efficient work of a sound engineer,
or maybe just a simple sound guy, part of the Cuban public has taken it
as "proof" that the hunger strikers, and especially Martha Beatriz, were
not in a state of complete starvation, having been given vegetables
through the window on a date, according to what I was told, of September
18, which is when the strike ended after having received a response from
Chaviano's kidnappers.
I've worn myself out trying to explain to my neighbors that if someone
wants to say it's a hunger strike and later wants to eat their fill
secretly, they can hide the food before beginning the process. I have
noted the magic of editing and sound, with which you can do almost
anything in audiovisual material, which is why it doesn't prove anything.
Martha Beatriz did not move from her deathbed where I saw her, did not
let anyone in, and always refused to receive medical care. One of the
women companions of the strikers, who were there to help them, had to
revive her on several occasions when she lost consciousness. There
wasn't any doctor from the clinic like they showed in the documentary.
Ultimately I decided to investigate, consulting several publication
about when and how many times and based on what it was said, or F.
Castro said from the podium, or from the position of an accusing witness
(as in Huber Matos's trial), that Cubans who opposed and do oppose the
politics of the Castro regime that has become Cuban communism are not
representing themselves. To put it another way: in my country, from the
beginning of this great scam, they have accused the opposition of being
mercenaries.
A mercenary is someone who is not involved in the cause for which he
risks his life, and who receives payment from those who truly are
interested. When my country received a huge amount of money and arms,
including nuclear weapons as in the October Crisis, from the Soviet
Empire with the condition that communism would be installed, who was the
mercenary in that economic relationship?
But earlier, when the former Cuban president Prío Socarrás and the then
president of Costa Rica in 1958 supported the armed insurrection of the
rebels of the Sierra Maestra with money and arms, what did the
opposition against Batista use this money for that was not taboo and in
an case was it necessary and just to use it for something that was never
the freedom of the Cuban people?
What happens in Cuba is that the State is the owner of all jobs,
including the self-employed who take care not to annoy the State. And
the State pays a salary of less than 20 CUC (< $20 US) to its employees.
And if one of them behaves in a way that turns into a "deserter" from
the hyper-controlled politics (which above all tries to keep Cubans with
an idiotic beatific smile of socialism on their faces, waving flags and
worshiping the government icons) it turns out that this uncomfortable
atom in sick and dangerous society will be left, in the first place,
without a job, if they decided ahead of time that they weren't going to
continue to receive — as a mercenary! — a salary from the abhorring
State dictatorship.
Then, as the Cuban opposition is peaceful and doesn't buy weapons, State
Security and its campaign of manipulation whip up the people who receive
half a pound of oil for the whole month against people who eventually
could be consuming olive oil.
The political prisoner Martha Beatriz Roque, the only woman among the 75
arrested during the 2003 Black Spring, and Antunez, and the many people
they slander on television are not compensated, let alone with $50
million dollars, because no one is asked if they are willing to suffer
everything they narrate in their testimonies and in the end if they
would be given this sum would choose such an ordeal for their life. A
life so short, so fleeting, so exhausting, like that of the whole world.
Their health, their youth, their life, their freedom, cannot be
compensated with money. Our time is too short to sell it.
It takes courage and faith in God to believe that Cuba can still be free
of the plague that darkens it.
October 2 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/nothing-new-under-the-sun-lilianne-ruiz/
Lilianne Ruiz, Translator: Unstated
Now one of the photos I had put in my posts has been taken by State
Security and put in a 17 minute documentary to try to accuse Señora
Martha Beatriz Roque and twenty other Cubans of faking their hunger strike.
I wasn't able to watch the documentary because my television broke some
weeks ago. Following the appearance of the photo (where I appear in the
company of women I greatly admire), I had won the opportunity to be
heard by some people who didn't know about the hunger strike.
In reality, this protest is also targeted to the arbitrariness of the
system that doesn't recognize our rights and tries to destroy us. So it
was not covered by any Cuban news media but merited an entire production
by the Revolutionary "artists," who offered proof — once again! — of how
over time they patrol, monitor, and keep our lives under surveillance.
So in the later edition and with the efficient work of a sound engineer,
or maybe just a simple sound guy, part of the Cuban public has taken it
as "proof" that the hunger strikers, and especially Martha Beatriz, were
not in a state of complete starvation, having been given vegetables
through the window on a date, according to what I was told, of September
18, which is when the strike ended after having received a response from
Chaviano's kidnappers.
I've worn myself out trying to explain to my neighbors that if someone
wants to say it's a hunger strike and later wants to eat their fill
secretly, they can hide the food before beginning the process. I have
noted the magic of editing and sound, with which you can do almost
anything in audiovisual material, which is why it doesn't prove anything.
Martha Beatriz did not move from her deathbed where I saw her, did not
let anyone in, and always refused to receive medical care. One of the
women companions of the strikers, who were there to help them, had to
revive her on several occasions when she lost consciousness. There
wasn't any doctor from the clinic like they showed in the documentary.
Ultimately I decided to investigate, consulting several publication
about when and how many times and based on what it was said, or F.
Castro said from the podium, or from the position of an accusing witness
(as in Huber Matos's trial), that Cubans who opposed and do oppose the
politics of the Castro regime that has become Cuban communism are not
representing themselves. To put it another way: in my country, from the
beginning of this great scam, they have accused the opposition of being
mercenaries.
A mercenary is someone who is not involved in the cause for which he
risks his life, and who receives payment from those who truly are
interested. When my country received a huge amount of money and arms,
including nuclear weapons as in the October Crisis, from the Soviet
Empire with the condition that communism would be installed, who was the
mercenary in that economic relationship?
But earlier, when the former Cuban president Prío Socarrás and the then
president of Costa Rica in 1958 supported the armed insurrection of the
rebels of the Sierra Maestra with money and arms, what did the
opposition against Batista use this money for that was not taboo and in
an case was it necessary and just to use it for something that was never
the freedom of the Cuban people?
What happens in Cuba is that the State is the owner of all jobs,
including the self-employed who take care not to annoy the State. And
the State pays a salary of less than 20 CUC (< $20 US) to its employees.
And if one of them behaves in a way that turns into a "deserter" from
the hyper-controlled politics (which above all tries to keep Cubans with
an idiotic beatific smile of socialism on their faces, waving flags and
worshiping the government icons) it turns out that this uncomfortable
atom in sick and dangerous society will be left, in the first place,
without a job, if they decided ahead of time that they weren't going to
continue to receive — as a mercenary! — a salary from the abhorring
State dictatorship.
Then, as the Cuban opposition is peaceful and doesn't buy weapons, State
Security and its campaign of manipulation whip up the people who receive
half a pound of oil for the whole month against people who eventually
could be consuming olive oil.
The political prisoner Martha Beatriz Roque, the only woman among the 75
arrested during the 2003 Black Spring, and Antunez, and the many people
they slander on television are not compensated, let alone with $50
million dollars, because no one is asked if they are willing to suffer
everything they narrate in their testimonies and in the end if they
would be given this sum would choose such an ordeal for their life. A
life so short, so fleeting, so exhausting, like that of the whole world.
Their health, their youth, their life, their freedom, cannot be
compensated with money. Our time is too short to sell it.
It takes courage and faith in God to believe that Cuba can still be free
of the plague that darkens it.
October 2 2012
http://translatingcuba.com/nothing-new-under-the-sun-lilianne-ruiz/
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Hialeah business supplies spare parts for Cuban autos
Posted on Wednesday, 10.03.12
Hialeah business supplies spare parts for Cuban autos
Drivers in Cuba who need to keep their cars running look to Hialeah for
hard-to-find spare parts.
By Juan Carlos Chavez
jcchavez@ElNuevoHerald.com
Fernando Sardiñas uses his weekends to work as an illegal taxi driver in
Havana. He does it in his loyal but beaten up Moskvich, a car from the
Soviet era that continues running thanks to the ingenuity and creativity
of its owner. But also thanks to the spare parts Sardiñas manages to
find through a friend who frequents a business on the other side of the
Florida Straits.
The business is located at about 229 miles away from Sardiñas' house —
in Hialeah. Here, at the epicenter of exile, a creative and able
entrepreneur of Russian-Cuban origin, Fabián Zakharov, implemented an
idea that not only has surpassed his expectations but has also opened up
wide-range, mid-term possibilities.
"It came to mind when we needed to get a part for one of those little
cars, a Lada 1600," said Zakharov, a 38-year-old electrical engineer. "I
found the part, and someone sent it to him in Cuba."
Zakharov lived in Russia with his parents during his early childhood.
Then he went back to the island and finally ended up setting up shop in
South Florida six years ago.
The beginning was complicated. Zakharov could have found a job
associated to his profession or perhaps pursue another career. However,
fate and the necessities of the Cuban auto-parts demands took him on a
different path.
"The most extravagant thing they have asked me is to bring a complete
Lada," Zakharov said from his shop at 552 Hialeah Drive. "But we work
with spare parts that can be adapted mainly to models of the 1990s and
the 2000s."
Zakharov acknowledges that the need for original spare parts for
automobiles in Cuba, like the classic Lada and Moskvich, has been
growing as the economy on the island has tightened.
In an attempt to downsize bureaucracy and improve productivity in state
resources, the Cuban government announced a labor reorganization. The
government also ordered the gradual layoff of hundreds of thousands of
workers nationwide, 10 percent of the workforce. Another million state
workers could be laid off in the next few years.
In the context of the economic adjustments, there are openings for
foreign capital as well as expanding self-employment in dozens of
categories.
Cuban-Americans who travel to Cuba to visit their families take spare
auto parts and other needed items in their luggage. Others hire
specialized agencies that can use a recently established direct and
regular maritime shipment of merchandise, a first in the 50 years of a
U.S. embargo against the island. The service allows transporting
merchandise that Washington categorizes as "humanitarian aid," which
includes medicine and clothes, electric appliances and furniture, even
construction material and automobile spare parts.
Zakharov has increased gradually the size and type of spare parts
available for his Cuban clientele and customers in Latin America and
Europe. His inventory includes Aleko parts, as well as cylinders, brakes
and complete kits to repair Lada engines for models 1600, 2105 and 2107,
among others.
"We have paid for three containers from Russia to Miami and are working
on the fourth one," Zakharov said. "We are analyzing opening another
shop in Miami because there is ample demand."
According to Cuban-American exiles and residents who send packages to
family and friends in Cuba, the auto-parts service provides an exchange
that favors Cuban families on both sides of the Florida Straits.
Luis García, who lives in Southwest Miami-Dade County, said that he is
renting various Lada cars in Havana. A couple of them recently needed
transmission maintenance, which required a kit of original spare parts.
"In Cuba, we talk about a scarcity of parts that, when you find them,
they charge the price they want," García said. In that context, he added
that a carburetor could cost $150 in Miami while in Havana it can easily
reach a price of $230.
Disney Serras started in this line of business three years ago. Serras
is the owner of MZParts Miami, 5706 W. Flagler St., which sells spare
parts for automobiles and motorcycles. He focuses on the sale of parts
for Lada, Jupiter and MZ, Java and Karpaty. His business is regularly
visited by clients who need a part right away.
"I started out with something really small," Serras said. "Our initial
inventory was $300 and now we handle more than $500,000. This should
give you an idea of the existing demand."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/03/3032361/hialeah-business-supplies-spare.html
Hialeah business supplies spare parts for Cuban autos
Drivers in Cuba who need to keep their cars running look to Hialeah for
hard-to-find spare parts.
By Juan Carlos Chavez
jcchavez@ElNuevoHerald.com
Fernando Sardiñas uses his weekends to work as an illegal taxi driver in
Havana. He does it in his loyal but beaten up Moskvich, a car from the
Soviet era that continues running thanks to the ingenuity and creativity
of its owner. But also thanks to the spare parts Sardiñas manages to
find through a friend who frequents a business on the other side of the
Florida Straits.
The business is located at about 229 miles away from Sardiñas' house —
in Hialeah. Here, at the epicenter of exile, a creative and able
entrepreneur of Russian-Cuban origin, Fabián Zakharov, implemented an
idea that not only has surpassed his expectations but has also opened up
wide-range, mid-term possibilities.
"It came to mind when we needed to get a part for one of those little
cars, a Lada 1600," said Zakharov, a 38-year-old electrical engineer. "I
found the part, and someone sent it to him in Cuba."
Zakharov lived in Russia with his parents during his early childhood.
Then he went back to the island and finally ended up setting up shop in
South Florida six years ago.
The beginning was complicated. Zakharov could have found a job
associated to his profession or perhaps pursue another career. However,
fate and the necessities of the Cuban auto-parts demands took him on a
different path.
"The most extravagant thing they have asked me is to bring a complete
Lada," Zakharov said from his shop at 552 Hialeah Drive. "But we work
with spare parts that can be adapted mainly to models of the 1990s and
the 2000s."
Zakharov acknowledges that the need for original spare parts for
automobiles in Cuba, like the classic Lada and Moskvich, has been
growing as the economy on the island has tightened.
In an attempt to downsize bureaucracy and improve productivity in state
resources, the Cuban government announced a labor reorganization. The
government also ordered the gradual layoff of hundreds of thousands of
workers nationwide, 10 percent of the workforce. Another million state
workers could be laid off in the next few years.
In the context of the economic adjustments, there are openings for
foreign capital as well as expanding self-employment in dozens of
categories.
Cuban-Americans who travel to Cuba to visit their families take spare
auto parts and other needed items in their luggage. Others hire
specialized agencies that can use a recently established direct and
regular maritime shipment of merchandise, a first in the 50 years of a
U.S. embargo against the island. The service allows transporting
merchandise that Washington categorizes as "humanitarian aid," which
includes medicine and clothes, electric appliances and furniture, even
construction material and automobile spare parts.
Zakharov has increased gradually the size and type of spare parts
available for his Cuban clientele and customers in Latin America and
Europe. His inventory includes Aleko parts, as well as cylinders, brakes
and complete kits to repair Lada engines for models 1600, 2105 and 2107,
among others.
"We have paid for three containers from Russia to Miami and are working
on the fourth one," Zakharov said. "We are analyzing opening another
shop in Miami because there is ample demand."
According to Cuban-American exiles and residents who send packages to
family and friends in Cuba, the auto-parts service provides an exchange
that favors Cuban families on both sides of the Florida Straits.
Luis García, who lives in Southwest Miami-Dade County, said that he is
renting various Lada cars in Havana. A couple of them recently needed
transmission maintenance, which required a kit of original spare parts.
"In Cuba, we talk about a scarcity of parts that, when you find them,
they charge the price they want," García said. In that context, he added
that a carburetor could cost $150 in Miami while in Havana it can easily
reach a price of $230.
Disney Serras started in this line of business three years ago. Serras
is the owner of MZParts Miami, 5706 W. Flagler St., which sells spare
parts for automobiles and motorcycles. He focuses on the sale of parts
for Lada, Jupiter and MZ, Java and Karpaty. His business is regularly
visited by clients who need a part right away.
"I started out with something really small," Serras said. "Our initial
inventory was $300 and now we handle more than $500,000. This should
give you an idea of the existing demand."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/03/3032361/hialeah-business-supplies-spare.html
Cuba 'people to people' trips back on track for Americans
Cuba 'people to people' trips back on track for Americans
8:38AM EST October 3. 2012 - After months of bureaucratic red tape and
delays that forced several U.S. companies to cancel their popular
"people to people" Cuba programs, the trips appear to be back on track.
New York-based Insight Cuba received its renewal license from the U.S.
Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) late last week and is
featuring more than 100 departures for the remainder of 2012 and 2013.
It brought about 3,000 Americans to Cuba between August 2011 and June
2012, but had dropped 150 trips and laid off 22 staff members after its
license lapsed.
Other travel companies getting recent governmental green lights to
extend or launch Cuba cultural tours include Friendly Planet,Grand
Circle Foundation, Geographic Expeditions and MotoDiscovery, which
offers motorcycle tours led by Cuba expert and guidebook author
Christopher P. Baker.
Authorized by President Obama last year as a way to boost Americans'
engagement with everyday Cubans despite a five-decade U.S. trade embargo
to the communist island, the 140 licenses for "people-to-people"
programs have been in high demand with many programs sold out or
wait-listed through 2012.
The licenses exclude trips that are "primarily tourist oriented" and
require mandatory participation in "a full-time schedule of educational
exchange activities." But in May, in response to reports of "abuses,"
the Treasury Department tightened regulations. It now requires U.S.
companies to provide a sample itinerary, assign a representative to each
tour and explain how the exchanges would "enhance contact with the Cuban
people, support civil society, and/or help promote the Cuban people's
independence from Cuban authorities."
The OFAC license application grew from six pages to "essentially
hundreds of pages," notes the Detroit Free Press, and "organizations
seeking renewal had to document every minute of every day for every
single trip they had done in the past year" to prove they were not
engaging in regular tourism.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/dispatches/2012/10/03/travel-cuba-americans-people-to-people/1609629/
8:38AM EST October 3. 2012 - After months of bureaucratic red tape and
delays that forced several U.S. companies to cancel their popular
"people to people" Cuba programs, the trips appear to be back on track.
New York-based Insight Cuba received its renewal license from the U.S.
Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) late last week and is
featuring more than 100 departures for the remainder of 2012 and 2013.
It brought about 3,000 Americans to Cuba between August 2011 and June
2012, but had dropped 150 trips and laid off 22 staff members after its
license lapsed.
Other travel companies getting recent governmental green lights to
extend or launch Cuba cultural tours include Friendly Planet,Grand
Circle Foundation, Geographic Expeditions and MotoDiscovery, which
offers motorcycle tours led by Cuba expert and guidebook author
Christopher P. Baker.
Authorized by President Obama last year as a way to boost Americans'
engagement with everyday Cubans despite a five-decade U.S. trade embargo
to the communist island, the 140 licenses for "people-to-people"
programs have been in high demand with many programs sold out or
wait-listed through 2012.
The licenses exclude trips that are "primarily tourist oriented" and
require mandatory participation in "a full-time schedule of educational
exchange activities." But in May, in response to reports of "abuses,"
the Treasury Department tightened regulations. It now requires U.S.
companies to provide a sample itinerary, assign a representative to each
tour and explain how the exchanges would "enhance contact with the Cuban
people, support civil society, and/or help promote the Cuban people's
independence from Cuban authorities."
The OFAC license application grew from six pages to "essentially
hundreds of pages," notes the Detroit Free Press, and "organizations
seeking renewal had to document every minute of every day for every
single trip they had done in the past year" to prove they were not
engaging in regular tourism.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/dispatches/2012/10/03/travel-cuba-americans-people-to-people/1609629/
Cuba’s Fragile Power Grid Needs Renewable Energy
Cuba's Fragile Power Grid Needs Renewable Energy
By Ivet Gonzálezl
HAVANA, Oct 3 2012 (IPS) - Only 3.8 percent of the electric power
generated in 2011 in Cuba came from renewable sources, compared to 18
percent in 1979 – a retreat that alarms experts, who fear for the
system's sustainability.
"Insufficient availability of electricity could slow down the country's
development," researcher Conrado Moreno told IPS. "There is no question
that the use of renewable energy sources is highly viable," but
investment and changes to Cubans' everyday living habits are needed, he
said.
The high international prices of fossil fuels mean that the use of
"renewable energy sources has reached cost levels that make them
competitive," Moreno said. These sources are "unlimited, natural and
freely accessible," and they contribute to sustainable development and
energy sovereignty, he added.
The fragility of Cuba's national electric power system, which stems from
its almost exclusive use of a single source, hydrocarbons, set off
alarms in early September, when a breakdown in a high-tension line
caused outages in eight provinces.
From the evening of Sept. 9 to the following morning, a break in
transmission was reported for a 220,000-volt line that runs between the
central provinces of Ciego de Avila and Villa Clara, according to a
press release from the National Electrical Union (UNE) that was reported
by the local media.
For a little over six hours, partial blackouts occurred in the provinces
of Camagüey, Ciego de Ávila and Sancti Spíritus, while a total power
outage occurred from Villa Clara to Pinar del Rio, leaving almost the
entire western part of the island in the dark. The cause of the
breakdown has not been reported.
"I saw almost all of Havana without power," said Olga Palacios, a
pensioner who lives in the Cerro municipality in the capital, who said
the outage occurred as she was driving back from a visit to her daughter
in the Miramar district.
In the capital "things have been stable; there were no major blackouts
over the summer," she told IPS.
Cubans have not forgotten the lengthy blackouts of the early 1990s, at
the start of the economic crisis triggered when Cuba lost its main
trading partner and oil supplier, the former Soviet Union. "We would go
for more than 24 hours without electricity, and when it came back on, it
would only last a little while," Palacios recounted.
Ana San Juan, who lives in Mayabeque province, which borders the
capital, told IPS that any problem with the electricity supply worries
her. "We prepare our food with electrical appliances," she pointed out.
About 69 percent of Cuban families cook with electricity, which has
caused demand for energy to skyrocket.
Moreno proposed three ways for the country to increase power generation:
"increasing electricity production from fossil fuels, improving energy
efficiency, and bolstering the use of renewable sources." "An
appropriate combination of these three elements is the key to success,
because none of them can meet the objective on its own," he said.
While the use of oil derivatives is still essential, steps should be
taken toward reducing their use and eliminating the Cuban economy's
heavy dependency on these fuels, Moreno said. "There is no other way,"
he added, recommending an increase in the use of solar, wind and
hydraulic energy, among others.
Most of the electricity used in Cuba is produced in eight thermoelectric
plants. The largest is the Antonio Guiteras plant in Matanzas province,
about 100 kilometres east of the capital. Five years ago, the national
electric grid was modernised with small and medium-capacity generators
that mostly use fuel-oil, which is cheaper than diesel.
However, the authorities hope to "boost the use of different sources of
renewable energy, basically biogas, wind and hydraulic energy, biomass,
solar, and others, prioritising those that have the greatest economic
impact," according to the policy document for the economic reform
process underway since 2007.
In the coming years, the national electricity system is expected to use
more environmentally-friendly sources. Some 100 megawatts are expected
to be generated from hydropower sources in the near future.
Likewise, the state electrical enterprise will soon be connected to its
first solar photovoltaic power plant, designed to produce 1,500
megawatts/hour annually, without using a drop of oil. And in 2013,
construction will begin on a 50-megawatt wind park in Las Tunas, 654
kilometres southeast of the Cuban capital.
According to an article by expert Mario Alberto Arrastra, "For the
gradual predominance of renewable energy," up to 600 megawatts from wind
sources may be added to the power grid, although the system requires
improvements so that more clean energy sources can be added. And for
that, technology for storing energy is needed, Arrastra says.
Cuba has wind power potential of about 2,000 megawatts and further high
potential in unexploited hydro-energy, and every square metre of the
country receives an average of 1,800 kilowatt hours of solar energy
annually, says Arrastra's article, published in August in the local
newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/10/cubas-fragile-power-grid-needs-renewable-energy/
By Ivet Gonzálezl
HAVANA, Oct 3 2012 (IPS) - Only 3.8 percent of the electric power
generated in 2011 in Cuba came from renewable sources, compared to 18
percent in 1979 – a retreat that alarms experts, who fear for the
system's sustainability.
"Insufficient availability of electricity could slow down the country's
development," researcher Conrado Moreno told IPS. "There is no question
that the use of renewable energy sources is highly viable," but
investment and changes to Cubans' everyday living habits are needed, he
said.
The high international prices of fossil fuels mean that the use of
"renewable energy sources has reached cost levels that make them
competitive," Moreno said. These sources are "unlimited, natural and
freely accessible," and they contribute to sustainable development and
energy sovereignty, he added.
The fragility of Cuba's national electric power system, which stems from
its almost exclusive use of a single source, hydrocarbons, set off
alarms in early September, when a breakdown in a high-tension line
caused outages in eight provinces.
From the evening of Sept. 9 to the following morning, a break in
transmission was reported for a 220,000-volt line that runs between the
central provinces of Ciego de Avila and Villa Clara, according to a
press release from the National Electrical Union (UNE) that was reported
by the local media.
For a little over six hours, partial blackouts occurred in the provinces
of Camagüey, Ciego de Ávila and Sancti Spíritus, while a total power
outage occurred from Villa Clara to Pinar del Rio, leaving almost the
entire western part of the island in the dark. The cause of the
breakdown has not been reported.
"I saw almost all of Havana without power," said Olga Palacios, a
pensioner who lives in the Cerro municipality in the capital, who said
the outage occurred as she was driving back from a visit to her daughter
in the Miramar district.
In the capital "things have been stable; there were no major blackouts
over the summer," she told IPS.
Cubans have not forgotten the lengthy blackouts of the early 1990s, at
the start of the economic crisis triggered when Cuba lost its main
trading partner and oil supplier, the former Soviet Union. "We would go
for more than 24 hours without electricity, and when it came back on, it
would only last a little while," Palacios recounted.
Ana San Juan, who lives in Mayabeque province, which borders the
capital, told IPS that any problem with the electricity supply worries
her. "We prepare our food with electrical appliances," she pointed out.
About 69 percent of Cuban families cook with electricity, which has
caused demand for energy to skyrocket.
Moreno proposed three ways for the country to increase power generation:
"increasing electricity production from fossil fuels, improving energy
efficiency, and bolstering the use of renewable sources." "An
appropriate combination of these three elements is the key to success,
because none of them can meet the objective on its own," he said.
While the use of oil derivatives is still essential, steps should be
taken toward reducing their use and eliminating the Cuban economy's
heavy dependency on these fuels, Moreno said. "There is no other way,"
he added, recommending an increase in the use of solar, wind and
hydraulic energy, among others.
Most of the electricity used in Cuba is produced in eight thermoelectric
plants. The largest is the Antonio Guiteras plant in Matanzas province,
about 100 kilometres east of the capital. Five years ago, the national
electric grid was modernised with small and medium-capacity generators
that mostly use fuel-oil, which is cheaper than diesel.
However, the authorities hope to "boost the use of different sources of
renewable energy, basically biogas, wind and hydraulic energy, biomass,
solar, and others, prioritising those that have the greatest economic
impact," according to the policy document for the economic reform
process underway since 2007.
In the coming years, the national electricity system is expected to use
more environmentally-friendly sources. Some 100 megawatts are expected
to be generated from hydropower sources in the near future.
Likewise, the state electrical enterprise will soon be connected to its
first solar photovoltaic power plant, designed to produce 1,500
megawatts/hour annually, without using a drop of oil. And in 2013,
construction will begin on a 50-megawatt wind park in Las Tunas, 654
kilometres southeast of the Cuban capital.
According to an article by expert Mario Alberto Arrastra, "For the
gradual predominance of renewable energy," up to 600 megawatts from wind
sources may be added to the power grid, although the system requires
improvements so that more clean energy sources can be added. And for
that, technology for storing energy is needed, Arrastra says.
Cuba has wind power potential of about 2,000 megawatts and further high
potential in unexploited hydro-energy, and every square metre of the
country receives an average of 1,800 kilowatt hours of solar energy
annually, says Arrastra's article, published in August in the local
newspaper Juventud Rebelde.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/10/cubas-fragile-power-grid-needs-renewable-energy/
Retired spy in Brothers to the Rescue case lives in obscurity in Havana
Posted on Tuesday, 10.02.12
Retired spy in Brothers to the Rescue case lives in obscurity in Havana
By Tracey Eaton
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
HAVANA -- Lt. Col. Juan Pablo Roque wore his Rolex with pride — the
unique pride of a Cuban double agent who once worked for the FBI.
But now the man who was once one of Cuba's most illustrious spies is out
of cash. And he wants to sell his prized watch and his house in Havana.
"I need the money," Roque said in his most extensive interview in more
than 15 years.
His story illustrates the uncertain life that awaits Cuban spies whose
covers are blown. But it's also a reminder of the extent and success of
Cuban spying even now, 21 years after the Cold War's end.
Roque, a former fighter pilot with Hollywood good looks, staged his
defection from Cuba in 1992, swimming to the U.S. naval base at
Guantanamo Bay and declaring opposition to Fidel Castro.
He became a pilot for Brothers to the Rescue, a group dedicated to
searching for rafters in the Florida Straits. But then he stunned
everyone in 1996, slipping back into Cuba the day before Cuban MiGs shot
down two civilian aircraft flown by members of the exile group.
Now 57 and living with his girlfriend in a cramped Havana apartment,
Roque said he's sorry four people were killed in the Feb. 24, 1996,
incident.
"If I could travel in a time machine," he said, "I'd get those boys off
the planes that were shot down."
The four dead included Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, Pablo Morales and
Armando Alejandre Jr.
Alejandre's sister, Maggie Khuly, said justice was never done.
"Speaking for the families, my family in particular, we're looking
forward to the day when Roque faces U.S. courts on his outstanding
indictment," said Khuly, a Miami architect.
Spy for spy
The shoot-down drove U.S.-Cuba relations to a new low and prompted
then-President Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Act, which ramped
up economic sanctions against Cuba.
Since then, U.S.-Cuba relations remain as chilly as ever. President
Barack Obama loosened some travel restrictions to Cuba after taking
office, but has done little else to ease the tension. In fact, U.S.
officials have worked steadily to undermine the socialist government,
spending more than $200 million on Cuba democracy programs since 1996.
Cuban spies in Miami and Havana watch these efforts carefully, sometimes
foiling U.S. plans. In 2009, Cuban authorities arrested Alan Gross, a
development worker from Maryland. He was a subcontractor for the Agency
for International Development and was caught smuggling sophisticated
satellite communication gear into Cuba. Cuban authorities slapped him
with a 15-year prison term in 2011.
Cuban authorities say they're willing to trade Gross for Cuban agents
arrested in Florida after the FBI broke the so-called Wasp spy network
in September 1998.
Four of those agents remain in American prisons. A fifth spent 13 years
in jail and is now free, but can't return to Cuba until he serves three
years' probation in the United States.
The agents are known as the Cuban Five. For 14 years, they have been at
the center of a massive Cuban propaganda campaign. They are celebrated
as heroes who were defending their homeland. They are household names in
Cuba and their likeness is plastered all over signs, billboards and
buildings.
Roque's spying exploits were as dramatic as any of the Cuban Five, but
he returned to the island to live a life of obscurity.
U.S. authorities haven't forgotten him, however, and some Cuban exiles
demand that the Cuban government return him to Florida to face charges.
A federal indictment charged Roque with failing to register as a foreign
agent and conspiring to defraud the United States in May 1999.
Asked about the charges, Roque sighs. He said he believes the Cuban
government was justified in defending its air space, but he should not
be held responsible for the deaths.
"I am not to blame. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't order anyone
killed," he said. "The decision to shoot down the planes was a decision
of the sovereign Cuban government. The decision to shoot down the planes
was taken because of the constant air incursions, violating air space."
Some critics question his sincerity.
"If Roque is so convinced of his innocence, then he should turn himself
in to stand trial and clear his name," said Thomas Van Hare, co-author
of Betrayal, a 2009 book about the shoot-down.
"He's a maggot," added the book's second author, Matt Lawrence.
Brothers to the Rescue leader José Basulto said it's difficult to know
if Roque knew about the shoot-down in advance, but he "was instrumental"
in the incident and there's "nothing to be forgiven about that. He's
just guilty."
No doubt, Roque is one of the most hated figures in South Florida after
the Castro brothers. He's the spy who got away. And after a home video
of him singing, drinking liquor and greeting his mother in Spain
surfaced on YouTube in 2011, Cuban exiles in Miami pounced.
"The son of a dog reappears," the video proclaimed.
"This cockroach is the main person to blame for the death of four brave
ones from Brothers to the Rescue," one comment read. "If I get a hold of
him, I'll torture him."
"He's a handsome man," another comment read. "What a shame, the human
being that he is."
Isolated in Cuba
"Richard Gere's Cuban double," as Roque has been called, learned to fly
MiGs in the former Soviet Union.
He was soon a darling in Miami's exile community. The largest exile
organization, the Cuban American National Foundation, even financed his
memoirs, The Deserter, in which he slams Cuban officials as "fat
communists" and "heavy beer drinkers."
Photos in the book show Roque hobnobbing with such anti-Castro lawmakers
as U.S. Sen. Robert Menéndez, D-N.J., and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.
Roque remembers those days with a mix of nostalgia and regret.
He said he's alone in Cuba now and misses his relatives in the United
States.
"I have my three brothers, my uncles and my cousins there. I had a
magnificent relationship with them while I was there."
Alejandro Roque, 48, said he hasn't been in touch with his older brother
since 1996. He said he didn't agree with Roque's ideas back then.
"The world situation is complex, and often the ideologues fail to
distinguish between governments and people ... bandits and victims,"
Alejandro Roque said.
Asked if he had any regrets, Juan Pablo Roque said he wishes he had done
more to stop the shoot-down.
"Perhaps now … I'd try to play a much stronger role in the things that
happened," he said. "I'd try to play a better role. If I played it bad
or good, let the people decide. Let those who want to judge me, judge me."
Roque remains convinced that Cuba was right to defend itself against
exile organizations in Florida. A Salvadoran who said Cuban exiles paid
him to plant bombs in Cuba is serving a 30-year term for an attack that
killed an Italian tourist in Havana in 1997. Roque believes exiles were
bent on provoking chaos in Cuba that would justify U.S. military
intervention.
"There still are groups that want a confrontation, that want blood. They
want three, four, five days to kill," Roque said.
Former members of Brothers to the Rescue admit that they occasionally
dropped political leaflets that landed in Havana, but said their primary
mission was humanitarian. In the early 1990s, they flew hundreds of
missions over the Florida Straits, spotting more than 17,000 Cuban
rafters and helping save their lives. They contend that Roque lied about
the group to the FBI, painting it as an extremist group interested in
carrying out acts of sabotage in Cuba.
"I know of no one, not anyone who flew the Brothers mission, to have any
intent in their souls to do anything other than save lives," Lawrence
said. "Mr. Roque and the rest are spies, and lie as spies do."
Roque wants the United States and Cuba to end the hostilities and
normalize relations. He dreams of seeing fighter pilots from the United
States, Cuba, Vietnam and Russia joining together to share ideas.
"I hope that moment arrives and we'll sit down at a table and smoke a
peace pipe," he said. "Well, I don't smoke, but I'll hold it in my hand,
too. With pleasure, with pleasure, I'll do it."
Broke and desperate
Ana Margarita Martínez doesn't believe a word of it — and it's no
wonder. As part of his elaborate cover, Roque married her in 1995 only
to abandon her and her two children less than a year later.
"If you look up the definition of sociopath, it describes him well," she
said.
"He thought he was going to be somebody in Cuba and he's a nobody. He
tasted freedom in the U.S. and now he has none. He can't even say what
he really feels for fear of repercussions. He sold his soul to the devil
and is now paying a high price. I pity him."
But Van Hare, who co-authored the book about Roque, doesn't share that
pity. "An intelligence operative who is revealed and publicly identified
is essentially out of a job. I do not feel bad for him — he chose his
path in life and was no doubt fully aware of how intelligence agents in
Cuba 'retire' and what little they get as a result."
Roque concedes that adjusting to life in Cuba since his forced
retirement at age 40 has been "very, very, very brutal."
He considers his time in Florida his "four best professional years. And
all of a sudden, as pilots say, the engines went out."
"I would have liked to continue flying. I would have liked a job that's
more in line with what I've learned. But, well, I didn't get that."
It could have been worse. Roque could have landed in an American jail.
"I thought about that several times," he said. "The only thing that
saved me spiritually was that I wasn't doing anything bad."
He was surprised at how aggressively U.S. authorities pursued other
members of the Wasp spy network.
"I thought they were going to let them go right away, put them on a
plane to Cuba."
The accused ringleader, Gerardo Hernández, received two life sentences.
That was "grossly unfair," Roque said, because Hernández didn't even
approach any of the exile organizations. "Gerardo wasn't into absolutely
anything. He didn't participate in anything, nothing."
Khuly isn't sympathetic to Hernández's plight.
"He has had every opportunity that the United States offers its citizens
to defend himself — all the way up to the Supreme Court — and he's not
even a U.S. citizen," Khuly said.
"I'm more than satisfied with his conviction. My brother Armando, Mario,
Pablo and Carlos never had the chance to defend themselves. Shooting
down unarmed civilian aircraft is an egregious violation of
international law. There's no excuse for that."
Roque, meantime, is free, but not entirely content. He said he misses
the American way of life: "the discipline, the love of work."
"I did so many jobs. I asphalted streets there. I took on that job with
African-Americans. They liked me a lot. Every time they asked me where I
was from, I told them I was Cuban. They asked me if that was near
Alaska. But I felt a lot of solidarity with them.
"We asphalted streets at 10 at night. We worked all night. It was very
tough job."
Repair crews aren't nearly as disciplined in Cuba, where workers lay
asphalt "at 10 in the morning, at noon. A truck runs over it. Then
another. They do very sloppy work."
Roque said he worked hard in America, but "you saw the results and I
liked that a lot."
Now unemployed, Roque said he reads as much as he can about science,
aviation and the cosmos. He works out regularly and prefers
weightlifting and parallel bar exercises, a regimen he learned in the
Soviet Union.
He said if he had to swim to the Guantanamo naval base again — some 6
kilometers, or 3.7 miles, from the Cuban side — he wouldn't hesitate.
"I am not exaggerating if I tell you I could do it now without any kind
of problem. I love to swim."
He declined to disclose the price of the two-story, three-bedroom home
he is selling. The house belonged to his parents and has a lush backyard
filled with tropical plants and fruit trees.
The ex-spy's Rolex is a GMT Master II, a model designed for pilots with
the help of Pan Am Airways in the 1950s.
"He wore it here all the time," said his ex-wife in Miami. "I never
understood how he was able to go and buy a Rolex. Later I realized he
bought it with the money the FBI had given him to be an informant."
Used GMT Master II watches go for $4,500 and up on eBay, but Roque hopes
his will fetch more than that in an auction.
"I think that an American collector might be interested in buying it.
Someone who likes James Bond."
The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news
organization supported by foundations and individual contributions. For
more information, visit fcir.org.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/02/v-fullstory/3031432/retired-spy-in-brothers-to-the.html
Retired spy in Brothers to the Rescue case lives in obscurity in Havana
By Tracey Eaton
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
HAVANA -- Lt. Col. Juan Pablo Roque wore his Rolex with pride — the
unique pride of a Cuban double agent who once worked for the FBI.
But now the man who was once one of Cuba's most illustrious spies is out
of cash. And he wants to sell his prized watch and his house in Havana.
"I need the money," Roque said in his most extensive interview in more
than 15 years.
His story illustrates the uncertain life that awaits Cuban spies whose
covers are blown. But it's also a reminder of the extent and success of
Cuban spying even now, 21 years after the Cold War's end.
Roque, a former fighter pilot with Hollywood good looks, staged his
defection from Cuba in 1992, swimming to the U.S. naval base at
Guantanamo Bay and declaring opposition to Fidel Castro.
He became a pilot for Brothers to the Rescue, a group dedicated to
searching for rafters in the Florida Straits. But then he stunned
everyone in 1996, slipping back into Cuba the day before Cuban MiGs shot
down two civilian aircraft flown by members of the exile group.
Now 57 and living with his girlfriend in a cramped Havana apartment,
Roque said he's sorry four people were killed in the Feb. 24, 1996,
incident.
"If I could travel in a time machine," he said, "I'd get those boys off
the planes that were shot down."
The four dead included Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, Pablo Morales and
Armando Alejandre Jr.
Alejandre's sister, Maggie Khuly, said justice was never done.
"Speaking for the families, my family in particular, we're looking
forward to the day when Roque faces U.S. courts on his outstanding
indictment," said Khuly, a Miami architect.
Spy for spy
The shoot-down drove U.S.-Cuba relations to a new low and prompted
then-President Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Act, which ramped
up economic sanctions against Cuba.
Since then, U.S.-Cuba relations remain as chilly as ever. President
Barack Obama loosened some travel restrictions to Cuba after taking
office, but has done little else to ease the tension. In fact, U.S.
officials have worked steadily to undermine the socialist government,
spending more than $200 million on Cuba democracy programs since 1996.
Cuban spies in Miami and Havana watch these efforts carefully, sometimes
foiling U.S. plans. In 2009, Cuban authorities arrested Alan Gross, a
development worker from Maryland. He was a subcontractor for the Agency
for International Development and was caught smuggling sophisticated
satellite communication gear into Cuba. Cuban authorities slapped him
with a 15-year prison term in 2011.
Cuban authorities say they're willing to trade Gross for Cuban agents
arrested in Florida after the FBI broke the so-called Wasp spy network
in September 1998.
Four of those agents remain in American prisons. A fifth spent 13 years
in jail and is now free, but can't return to Cuba until he serves three
years' probation in the United States.
The agents are known as the Cuban Five. For 14 years, they have been at
the center of a massive Cuban propaganda campaign. They are celebrated
as heroes who were defending their homeland. They are household names in
Cuba and their likeness is plastered all over signs, billboards and
buildings.
Roque's spying exploits were as dramatic as any of the Cuban Five, but
he returned to the island to live a life of obscurity.
U.S. authorities haven't forgotten him, however, and some Cuban exiles
demand that the Cuban government return him to Florida to face charges.
A federal indictment charged Roque with failing to register as a foreign
agent and conspiring to defraud the United States in May 1999.
Asked about the charges, Roque sighs. He said he believes the Cuban
government was justified in defending its air space, but he should not
be held responsible for the deaths.
"I am not to blame. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't order anyone
killed," he said. "The decision to shoot down the planes was a decision
of the sovereign Cuban government. The decision to shoot down the planes
was taken because of the constant air incursions, violating air space."
Some critics question his sincerity.
"If Roque is so convinced of his innocence, then he should turn himself
in to stand trial and clear his name," said Thomas Van Hare, co-author
of Betrayal, a 2009 book about the shoot-down.
"He's a maggot," added the book's second author, Matt Lawrence.
Brothers to the Rescue leader José Basulto said it's difficult to know
if Roque knew about the shoot-down in advance, but he "was instrumental"
in the incident and there's "nothing to be forgiven about that. He's
just guilty."
No doubt, Roque is one of the most hated figures in South Florida after
the Castro brothers. He's the spy who got away. And after a home video
of him singing, drinking liquor and greeting his mother in Spain
surfaced on YouTube in 2011, Cuban exiles in Miami pounced.
"The son of a dog reappears," the video proclaimed.
"This cockroach is the main person to blame for the death of four brave
ones from Brothers to the Rescue," one comment read. "If I get a hold of
him, I'll torture him."
"He's a handsome man," another comment read. "What a shame, the human
being that he is."
Isolated in Cuba
"Richard Gere's Cuban double," as Roque has been called, learned to fly
MiGs in the former Soviet Union.
He was soon a darling in Miami's exile community. The largest exile
organization, the Cuban American National Foundation, even financed his
memoirs, The Deserter, in which he slams Cuban officials as "fat
communists" and "heavy beer drinkers."
Photos in the book show Roque hobnobbing with such anti-Castro lawmakers
as U.S. Sen. Robert Menéndez, D-N.J., and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.
Roque remembers those days with a mix of nostalgia and regret.
He said he's alone in Cuba now and misses his relatives in the United
States.
"I have my three brothers, my uncles and my cousins there. I had a
magnificent relationship with them while I was there."
Alejandro Roque, 48, said he hasn't been in touch with his older brother
since 1996. He said he didn't agree with Roque's ideas back then.
"The world situation is complex, and often the ideologues fail to
distinguish between governments and people ... bandits and victims,"
Alejandro Roque said.
Asked if he had any regrets, Juan Pablo Roque said he wishes he had done
more to stop the shoot-down.
"Perhaps now … I'd try to play a much stronger role in the things that
happened," he said. "I'd try to play a better role. If I played it bad
or good, let the people decide. Let those who want to judge me, judge me."
Roque remains convinced that Cuba was right to defend itself against
exile organizations in Florida. A Salvadoran who said Cuban exiles paid
him to plant bombs in Cuba is serving a 30-year term for an attack that
killed an Italian tourist in Havana in 1997. Roque believes exiles were
bent on provoking chaos in Cuba that would justify U.S. military
intervention.
"There still are groups that want a confrontation, that want blood. They
want three, four, five days to kill," Roque said.
Former members of Brothers to the Rescue admit that they occasionally
dropped political leaflets that landed in Havana, but said their primary
mission was humanitarian. In the early 1990s, they flew hundreds of
missions over the Florida Straits, spotting more than 17,000 Cuban
rafters and helping save their lives. They contend that Roque lied about
the group to the FBI, painting it as an extremist group interested in
carrying out acts of sabotage in Cuba.
"I know of no one, not anyone who flew the Brothers mission, to have any
intent in their souls to do anything other than save lives," Lawrence
said. "Mr. Roque and the rest are spies, and lie as spies do."
Roque wants the United States and Cuba to end the hostilities and
normalize relations. He dreams of seeing fighter pilots from the United
States, Cuba, Vietnam and Russia joining together to share ideas.
"I hope that moment arrives and we'll sit down at a table and smoke a
peace pipe," he said. "Well, I don't smoke, but I'll hold it in my hand,
too. With pleasure, with pleasure, I'll do it."
Broke and desperate
Ana Margarita Martínez doesn't believe a word of it — and it's no
wonder. As part of his elaborate cover, Roque married her in 1995 only
to abandon her and her two children less than a year later.
"If you look up the definition of sociopath, it describes him well," she
said.
"He thought he was going to be somebody in Cuba and he's a nobody. He
tasted freedom in the U.S. and now he has none. He can't even say what
he really feels for fear of repercussions. He sold his soul to the devil
and is now paying a high price. I pity him."
But Van Hare, who co-authored the book about Roque, doesn't share that
pity. "An intelligence operative who is revealed and publicly identified
is essentially out of a job. I do not feel bad for him — he chose his
path in life and was no doubt fully aware of how intelligence agents in
Cuba 'retire' and what little they get as a result."
Roque concedes that adjusting to life in Cuba since his forced
retirement at age 40 has been "very, very, very brutal."
He considers his time in Florida his "four best professional years. And
all of a sudden, as pilots say, the engines went out."
"I would have liked to continue flying. I would have liked a job that's
more in line with what I've learned. But, well, I didn't get that."
It could have been worse. Roque could have landed in an American jail.
"I thought about that several times," he said. "The only thing that
saved me spiritually was that I wasn't doing anything bad."
He was surprised at how aggressively U.S. authorities pursued other
members of the Wasp spy network.
"I thought they were going to let them go right away, put them on a
plane to Cuba."
The accused ringleader, Gerardo Hernández, received two life sentences.
That was "grossly unfair," Roque said, because Hernández didn't even
approach any of the exile organizations. "Gerardo wasn't into absolutely
anything. He didn't participate in anything, nothing."
Khuly isn't sympathetic to Hernández's plight.
"He has had every opportunity that the United States offers its citizens
to defend himself — all the way up to the Supreme Court — and he's not
even a U.S. citizen," Khuly said.
"I'm more than satisfied with his conviction. My brother Armando, Mario,
Pablo and Carlos never had the chance to defend themselves. Shooting
down unarmed civilian aircraft is an egregious violation of
international law. There's no excuse for that."
Roque, meantime, is free, but not entirely content. He said he misses
the American way of life: "the discipline, the love of work."
"I did so many jobs. I asphalted streets there. I took on that job with
African-Americans. They liked me a lot. Every time they asked me where I
was from, I told them I was Cuban. They asked me if that was near
Alaska. But I felt a lot of solidarity with them.
"We asphalted streets at 10 at night. We worked all night. It was very
tough job."
Repair crews aren't nearly as disciplined in Cuba, where workers lay
asphalt "at 10 in the morning, at noon. A truck runs over it. Then
another. They do very sloppy work."
Roque said he worked hard in America, but "you saw the results and I
liked that a lot."
Now unemployed, Roque said he reads as much as he can about science,
aviation and the cosmos. He works out regularly and prefers
weightlifting and parallel bar exercises, a regimen he learned in the
Soviet Union.
He said if he had to swim to the Guantanamo naval base again — some 6
kilometers, or 3.7 miles, from the Cuban side — he wouldn't hesitate.
"I am not exaggerating if I tell you I could do it now without any kind
of problem. I love to swim."
He declined to disclose the price of the two-story, three-bedroom home
he is selling. The house belonged to his parents and has a lush backyard
filled with tropical plants and fruit trees.
The ex-spy's Rolex is a GMT Master II, a model designed for pilots with
the help of Pan Am Airways in the 1950s.
"He wore it here all the time," said his ex-wife in Miami. "I never
understood how he was able to go and buy a Rolex. Later I realized he
bought it with the money the FBI had given him to be an informant."
Used GMT Master II watches go for $4,500 and up on eBay, but Roque hopes
his will fetch more than that in an auction.
"I think that an American collector might be interested in buying it.
Someone who likes James Bond."
The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news
organization supported by foundations and individual contributions. For
more information, visit fcir.org.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/02/v-fullstory/3031432/retired-spy-in-brothers-to-the.html
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