by Juventud Rebelde digital@juventudrebelde.cu
January 17, 2020
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
MEXICO CITY, January 17.- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador reported Friday the availability of 4,000 jobs in the southern border of the country for the migrants who are part of the caravan that left Wednesday from Honduras toward the United States.
About 2500 to 3000 migrants come in the caravan from Honduras, and El Salvador, López Obrador said during his daily news conference, in which he announced the existence of 4000 jobs available on the southern border, he said.
The migrants, who are trying to reach U.S. soil to seek asylum, are now in Guatemala. The new president of that country, Alejandro Giammattei, said that the Mexican Executive, through its foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, assured him that it [Mexico] would prevent the entry of the new caravan.
The Mexican government has warned us that it will not let them pass, that it will use everything in its power to stop them,” Giammattei told local media, according to RT.
Nearly 1,000 people gathered in the Great Metropolitan Central, in San Pedro Sula, in northern Honduras, to start the new caravan that aims to reach the U.S. in its flight from violence, poverty and lack of employment in that Central American country.
In September 2019, President Donald Trump reached an agreement with his Honduran counterpart, Juan Orlando Hernandez, to supposedly improve asylum capacity by containing the flow of migrants from other Central American countries.
In addition, the U.S. signed a similar agreement with Jimmy Morales, former president of Guatemala, for them to become a safe third country and for Salvadoran and Honduran migrants to seek asylum in that Central American nation, not in the U.S.
On the other hand, he pressured the López Obrador government to stop migration from Central America, in exchange for not imposing tariffs on Mexican products that are exported to the United States.
By Bárbara Vasallo
January 11, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
It’s like we’re watching a low-budget fiction movie. On a profile on Facebook, that social network that many people agree is a great site, where some people are even shouting vulgarities, there are photos and videos of some masked people, using no less than one of Salvador Dali’s masks. Dalí, a Spanish painter, sculptor and writer was born in the Catalan city of Figueres on 11 May 11,1904 and died on 23 January 1989.
The use of these masks spread throughout the world precisely in anti-capitalist movements. It was used by Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, in protest against capitalist police harassment for his revelations. It was also covered by the hacker movement Anonymous since 2008, and it gained even more popularity in the series The Paper House, broadcast by Netflix (actually produced by the Spanish Antena 3), something that has nothing to do with Cuba, of course.
It demonstrates the lack of culture of the characters who call themselves Clandestinos.
For a finishing touch, they hide behind the image of the actors Luis Alberto García and Isabel Santos, central fitures of the film of the same name by Fernando Pérez. Clandestinos was a true story of love and resistance, which reflected the lives of young people who risked their lives, really, to defend a just cause, as was the struggle on the Island in the 1950s against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
Another clear example is that these characters do not know history, either…
They missed the shot from the first act of vandalism, because they chose none other than the figure of José Martí, the National Hero of Cuba, the Apostle of Independence, the Teacher, the founder of the newspaper Patria and of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, the man who always came to the unity of Cubans against colonialism, the one who early warned against imperialism so that “it would not fall with its forces on our lands of America.”
They missed the boad because Martí is the most universal of all Cubans, and in the world, his work is known, his work is respected, so there is no morality, no culture, no decency, there’s not one iota of ethics in those who attack the figure of the Teacher, even if it is a bust of plaster, plastic, bronze or a paper fence.
Martí’s thought transcends Cubans, and his imprint is as valid as it is right now everywhere we talk about him.
Clandestinos? And the authorities have already announced that they have been caught, and from outside, where the threads of infamy are woven, and more is paid to commit these atrocities, to confuse them they say it is a lie, that they do not know if those who are in prison and confessed; And from the outside, the scandal is created by those people who approve of the obsolete policy of the US government against the island. They’re the same ones who launch campaigns so that they can’t send remittances to the families, those who applaud the President’s latest stunt that he now gave by canceling the charter flights so that Cubans could not come to their country to meet their relatives.
They were wrong to use Dali’s masks, which are known throughout the world as a symbol in the fight against capitalism, even in the series of the Netflix thieves, which is already preparing its third season. They were wrong to use the symbol of Fernando Perez’s film, and they were wrong again because they do not even have the name of the clandestine, they were quickly arrested and justice will have to act to judge such infamy.
For Cubans, the clandestinos of history are those young people who fell fighting in the streets of Santiago de Cuba to see their homeland free from Batista’s tyranny, the brothers Josué and Frank País who put their bodies on the front lines before the claws of the tyrants, clandClandestinos were the Saiz brothers, who turned the province of Pinar del Río upside down, the men and women who infiltrated the counter-revolutionary gangs, what do you think! organized and financed by one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, tried to subvert the order in Cuba to request “support” from a foreign government.
Clandestine were those of the Wasp Network [The Cuban Five] at the end of the 20th century, who also put their lives in danger to alert Cuba to those terrorist acts, organized by the terrorists, who, paid by the same intelligence agency, wanted to spread panic in tourist facilities, and those who are still around today, because there are some, sacrificing their families, to defend the work that cost the lives of more than 20,000 Cubans.
Don’t give me that story about the mask or the little name, whatever the big plot of land that some people have turned the social network into, they are not so secret, nor so beautiful, according to nearby sources they talk up to their elbows, so clandestine, about what?
By Sergio Wischñevsky
January 15, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The figure of Rosa Luxemburg has many meanings. Her name alone implies a range of flags which, despite the fact that a hundred years have passed since her murder on 15 January 1919, are still in force. Flags that have not reached victory and yet were not lowered. In the pantheon of the great revolutionary figures of the early 20th century, she always had her space, by right and by her own weight, long before the great feminist wave,. Hers was a precursor of the struggle for women’s rights, but transcending that role of which she is largely a pioneer, were the times when still many multitudes could imagine a future without capitalism, could give their lives to such impersonal and collective causes as the revolutionary dream.
Born in Poland in 1871, she loved her homeland dominated by the Russian Empire, but she did not join the Polish nationalist movements because from a very young age she was convinced that the only freedom possible for her people was socialism. This idea crossed her mind completely. Her small figure contrasted with her dynamic energy. A socialist leader who knew her gave a remarkable description of her: “Rosa was small, with a large head and typically Jewish features, with a big nose, a difficult walk, sometimes irregular due to a slight limp. The first impression one got was not very favorable, but it was enough to spend a moment with her to see what life and what energy there was in that woman, what great intelligence she possessed, what her intellectual level was”.
After her arrest, she understood that she had to go to Germany, where the largest Socialist Party in the world was located, and she soon became an exceptional reference and polemicist.
The historical moment he lived through was crossed by two ideas, two conceptions of social organization in dispute. Those who believed that “the fatherland”, nationality, was above any other collective instance, and those who saw the class struggle as the engine of history, class identity above nationalities. In no other country was this contradiction put to the test as it was in Germany in 1914. Rosa Luxemburg, together with her comrade Karl Liebknecht, As a militant minority, they defended their opposition to the Social Democracy’s approval of the war credits that brought Germany into the First World War.
Socialism was voting for German workers to face death with French workers. The absurdity of that war vote was a tragedy that had Rosa as a great protagonist. Her opposition was not simply based on “pacifism”. She was not a peace activist, as has been repeated many times. That was simply not the war that the workers had to fight. It was an imperialist war according to their way of seeing it, which benefited the large economic corporations. Rosa wanted other wars, carrying other flags. Marx and Engels had written in the Communist Manifesto: “Proletarians of the world, unite.
These political positions earned her the right to spend the entire First World War in prison. But she wasted no time there, writing and plotting. She had great debates with the German leaders and even argued strongly with Lenin and Trotsky, even though she passionately supported the 1917 Russian Revolution.
Those who describe her say that among all her virtues she was not a great organizer. Perhaps because she did not believe in the Bolshevik conception of the vanguard party. She made detailed studies of the economy and wrote The Accumulation of Capital. She was against the German social democracy’s idda that they couyld come to power through elections and to build socialism by means of escalating reforms she wrote Reform or Revolution? But her understanding of that revolution was based on the idea of the inevitability of mass insurrection and prolonged strikes. She did not like Russian Bolshevik centralism and fought for greater democracy within socialism. These are very epochal polemics, debates of a very critical historical moment.
But the end of the war was catastrophic for Germany. The crisis that opened up brought together in the streets workers who paralyzed industry with soldiers returning from the war front extremely disappointed and with weapons in their hands. That year, 1919, was insurrectionary and Rosa was released believing that the Revolution was within reach.
Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had ruled Germany since 1888, took refuge in Holland. The same day Rosa was liberated, the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the German Republic from a balcony of the Reichstag. Then began what was called the Weimar Republic, and Friederich Ebert took over the presidency, formed a moderate Social Democratic Council of Ministers and called on the people to leave the streets and return to normalcy. The majority wing of the SPD wanted the republic and freedoms, while the Spartacists, the faction founded by Luxemburg and Liebknecht, wanted a proletarian revolution.
For the first time, a government was formed and run by socialists, but the revolt and popular unrest were not quieted. At the same time, that the Spartacists believed they saw this chaos as the cradle of the revolution, Adolf Hitler was honing his first weapons as a political leader, accusing the revolutionaries of being the ones to blame for the German defeat, the internal enemies, the high treason of the fatherland, the stabbing in the back.
Rosa knew that she was in grave danger, she had received multiple warnings and threats, but she decided not to flee from Berlin when it became clear that there was not going to be any revolution after a very bloody repression. At the Eden Hotel, Private Runge smashed her skull and face with a rifle butt. Another soldier shot her in the back of the head. Her body was tied to sacks of stones to make it heavier so it wouldn’t float, and then thrown into one of the Spree River canals near the Cornelius Bridge. Her body was not found until two weeks later. Only a few hours earlier, Karl Liebknecht, the only parliamentarian who had voted against German participation in the Great War in 1914, was killed. The police investigation claimed that Rosa was killed by a mob.
A woman, a Pole, a Jew, a Marxist, anti-war, and a revolutionary, she raised flags that today still fly in every corner of the planet, and so she remains charmingly dangerous.
By Hortensia Hernández
Friday, January 5, 2018
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
Considered one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, Tina Modotti (Udine, Italy; August 17, 1896 – Mexico City, Mexico January 5, 1942) was a communist militant and worked for the party in Mexico, the Soviet Union, Spain, Germany and Italy. Self-taught, she spoke four languages and learned the photograph trade from the famous photographer Edward Weston.
She was a woman with a short but intense life who surely went much further than she could have imagined when she was going through a childhood full of hardships, in Udine, northern Italy. She had to work from the age of 12 as a textile factory worker to help her mother provide for herself and her siblings while waiting to raise money to catch up with her father and older sister, who had migrated to the United States city of Los Angeles
In North America, Modotti worked as a dressmaker and, in her spare time, performed within an amateur theater group. She got some roles in Hollywood silent films, an activity that could not last after the arrival of the sound cinema, which would reveal her bad English and strong Italian accent.
When she was very young, she married a poet and painter, but she soon became a widow. This brought her closer to the artistic world and it was there that she met the photographer Edward Weston. With him she first worked as a model and then as an assistant, learning how to handle the camera and the developing process and taking her first steps as a photographer.
Modotti and Weston became a couple and moved to Mexico. There, through photography, which portrays a people in the midst of a revolutionary upheaval, they approach what would be their other great passion: politics.
Her love life united her with three successive communist leaders: Mexican Xavier Guerrero, who was Rivera’s assistant. They formed part of the revolutionary movement through the Mexican Union of Artists (UMA), made up of Diego himself, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Charles Chaplin, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Frida Kahlo and others.
In 1928, she met Julio Antonio Mella, a member of the Cuban Communist Party, with whom she worked in the “Hands Off Nicaragua” committee, for the freedom of Antonio Gramsci, the Argentinean leader Rodolfo Ghioldi, and in the collection of signatures for the freedom of Nicolás Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzzeti. Mella was murdered a year later and Modotti was expelled, accused of being an accomplice to the attempted assassination of Mexican President Pascual Ortiz Rubio.
Her third partner was the Italian Eneas Sormenti, with whom she became a member of the first Italian anti-fascist committee. They met in Mexico and met again in Moscow, where both were members of the Communist Party.
The Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska, in her biography of Modotti, entitled “Tinísima”, describes her as “a subject in search of a militant and documentary art, which tries to reconcile the aesthetic and political vanguard. A woman in search of identities through all kinds of instruments: the gaze, the word and the action”.
Tina died on 5 January 1942 of a heart attack while traveling in a taxi, although there is also the suspicion that she may have been murdered. On her tombstone in Mexico City’s cemetery is a verse dedicated to her by Pablo Neruda.
Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti, better known as Tina Modotti, at the age of 17 emigrated to the United States to catch up with her father and older sister, who already lived there. In 1921s she met Edward Weston and in 1922 she arrived in Mexico to bury her first husband Roubaix de L’Abrie Richey. In Mexico, she met and became close friends with Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Blanca Luz Brum, Nahui Ollin, Maria Tereza Montoya and Frida Kahlo. she became a member of the Mexican Communist Party in 1927. She actively supported the struggle of Augusto Cesar Sandino and helped found the first Italian anti-fascist committee. In 1928 he met Julio Antonio Mella, a Cuban student leader, when the committee in support of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti was formed.
She was known for her controversial nude photos and for the particular look she reflected in the photographs she took of Mexico. She would later witness Mella’s murder. In 1930, she was falsely accused of conspiring to assassinate Pascual Ortiz Rubio, then president of Mexico, for which she was arrested. Thanks to Diego Rivera’s help, she was released but expelled from the country.
She arrived in Germany in the mid-1930s, traveled to the Soviet Union and met again with Vittorio Vidali, whom she had met in Mexico. She participated in the International Red Relief. In 1934 she left for Spain. During the Spanish Civil War, she enlisted in the Fifth Regiment and worked in the International Brigades, under the name of Maria until the end of the war. Margarita Nelken, in one of the several praises given to her activity, tells how she cared for the children who arrived in Almeria after the exodus from the town of Malaga which was harassed during the journey on foot by the bombing of the Franco forces.
Figure 1. Tona Modotte at her exhibtion in the National University Library, 1929. Photo taken from Margaret Hooks, Tine Modotti, Photography and Revolutionary, London, Pandora, 1993)
In 1939 she returned as an asylum seeker to Mexico, where she continued her political activity, through the Giuseppe Garibaldi Antifascist Alliance . In 1940, President Lazaro Cardenas canceed her expulsion. She died on January 5, 1942. In the book “Tina”, Pino Cacucci mentions a possible murder of Tina Modotti, which has always been a controversy since there was no autopsy.
Along with Weston, she was a mentor to Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska wrote a biographical novel entitled “Tinísima”. Victor Hugo Rascon Banda wrote a play called “Tina Modotti”.
Modotti’s interest in her work was a reflection of her ideological commitment to the most vulnerable social groups. She worked as an editor and photographer for the magazine Mexican Folkways and the newspaper El Machete in 1924, and this work would lead her to be considered as a precursor of critical photojournalism in Mexico. Achieving an immediate identification with Mexico and its inhabitants that is reflected in her work.
Her work was captured by artists such as Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, who between the years 1927-1930 entrusted her with the task of photographing their works. This work represents]ed a certain historical value, which testifies to the realization of the works of these two Mexican muralists.
According to Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Tina Modotti had two periods: the romantic and the revolutionary. In the first, influenced by Weston, where she photographed flowers, objects and architectural details and the second emerged in Mexico, beginning her relationship with the Mexican muralist movement. She aimed to portray the work of these artists emphasizing details such as workers and indigenous people, in addition to her independent work, capturing images of indigenous and mestizo people and documenting the social struggle of the less privileged with great care in the composition and assembly of the scenes, but without poses or forced attitudes.
There is a period of transition in which she produced some of her most memorable photos, such as the hands of a farmer holding a shovel or the hands of a washerwoman.
By Juventud Rebelde digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Published: Saturday 28 December 2019 | 09:25:37 am
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
WASHINGTON, December 28.- A Sacramento woman was poisoned by a skin cream, leaving her in a coma. Hers was the first reported case of methylmercury poisoning in the United States, reports the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The 47-year-old woman visited a doctor in July of this year for a strange burning sensation and weakness in her arm. When she returned two weeks later with blurred vision and difficulty speaking, doctors admitted her to a University of California, San Francisco, hospital.
Then her condition quickly worsened into a delirious rage, as described by Dr. Paul Blanc of the California Division of Environmental Medicine and Poison Control System, CNN reports.
Her body contained abnormally high levels of methylmercury, he wrote. Methylmercury is highly toxic and can cause permanent damage to the nervous system, Blanc said. The CDC report indicates that her injuries are probably permanent.
The woman is now in a coma after using a mercury-contaminated face cream brought in from a Latin American country through an informal network. She used the toxic cream for years, the source said.
Her family explained to health officials that she used a skin-lightening cream, allegedly called Pond’s Rejuveness, twice a day for the past seven years. The woman acquired the cream through friends. The product is also used to remove blemishes and wrinkles.
Experts tested the cream and found that it contained 12,000 parts per million of methylmercury. The damage methylmercury inflicts on the nervous system often worsens after patients stop using or consuming contaminated products.
The condition of the patient, whose name was not published, continued to deteriorate even after she underwent chelation therapy, a treatment to remove mercury through the urine.
By Zorileidys Pimentel Miranda
November 26, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews..
PINAR DEL RÍO: The Women’s Voluntary Military Service (SMVF) is still a taboo in some Cuban families. Getting used to the boots, the olive green uniform, the backpack, the guards, the hikes, the days in the field, is very hard for women, according to many people.
However, there are families who are grateful that their daughters are living this experience. This was evident during the parliamentary hearing on the SMVF held on Tuesday in Pinar del Río, sponsored by the Committee on Defense and Internal Order of the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP).
The testimony of Odalys Orraca Castillo, mother of a young woman who was a member of the Border Brigade in Guantanamo, reached the audience. “It is always difficult to accept that a son is going to walk away. In our case, we already knew that our daughter was willing to comply with the SMVF and therefore there was an acceptance and we were all convinced that this was the best thing for her.
“The separation was difficult, but we remained calm because we always knew that they were well cared-for in every way. In the first two months after starting military service, my daughter told me: “Mom, don’t cry or worry anymore, because we are very happy; it is true that we have to work and do all the activities, but we also have fun, we have a good time, and above all, we learn a lot”.
Like this one, other stories came to the parliamentary hearing, which was attended by fighters of the Revolution, cadets, family members and representatives of various organizations and institutions from the territory.
Such was the case of Yusleidys Hernández Hernández, a member of the National Committee of the Young Communist League (UJC), who, for six months, learned what life is like in a military unit. “It was a unique experience for me. It contributed a lot to my training. Now I am more disciplined and consistent with the tasks of the Revolution. I feel great pride and satisfaction in being prepared to defend the country in any circumstance,” she said.
Then, she added that from the UJC, together with the Federation of Cuban Women, “We carried out exchanges in the educational centers, we showed videos about women who have lived this experience, we talked with the parents and we had concrete results.
For her part, Yilena Valdés Llano, a 19-year-old who finished her military service last August, said it was a 12-month apprenticeship. “I reached an incredible degree of maturity, it also taught me about military life, everything I need to know to defend the country. In addition, I was able to study and today I am in the first year of my degree in rehabilitation, something I am very passionate about.
Also participating in the hearing was Major General José Antonio Carrillo Gómez, president of the Defense Committee of the ANPP and of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, who reiterated that at present, along with the economy, defense continues to be the great task of all Cubans to maintain our social system.
By ROCÍO AYUSO
November 24, 2018
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Emma Thompson is good at everything she does. She rose to fame as an actress, a passion that earned her an Oscar with Howards End (1992). She also has an Oscar as a writer, adapting Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1995) to the screen. And as an activist she never shuts up. She fights for equality and transparency in wages in the industry of which she is a part. Moreover, she personally takes on the causes she believes in, as demonstrated by the adoption of Tindyebwa Agaba, formerly a child soldier from Rwanda.
The proximity of the 60’s does not stop this Londoner, a declared atheist and Greenpeace advocate. She went in slippers to her appointment as a lady and whose last job, a Christmas advertisement to which she has given her voice, has been banned from Icelandic television. The spot tells the story of a little orangutan named Rang-tan who walks into a girl’s bedroom after escaping the destruction of the forest by palm oil traders. Thompson, married to fellow actor Greg Wise and mother of a daughter, Gaia, is now releasing The Verdict, a film based on the novel by Ian McEwan in which she plays a British High Court judge who has to make important decisions about her life and that of a child.
QUESTION. As much as you are judged as an actress, are you also judgmental?
ANSWER. Only when you sit in the place of the judges in a courtroom, up there, do you realize how easy it is to judge from that position. How easy it is to feel above everyone.
Q. And as a star, is it also easy to feel above everyone?
A. I guess it’s easy and I make those mistakes too. But my family takes care of taking me down a peg. When you enjoy a position like mine, it’s good to go shopping for milk once in a while. And I do. I’m sure I’m a bit of a brat or a spoiled brat sometimes. But at home I do the cooking, the shopping, and I’ve cleaned a few bathrooms. I try to keep my feet on the ground, but of course I’m very spoiled because I have a personal assistant without whom it would be impossible for me to do what I do.
Q. This year alone you have collaborated in a television series (Upstart Crow), in a television film (King Lear), you have done several voice works and you have two premieres, Johnny English Strikes Again and now The Verdict. What do you do when you have a couple of hours free?
A. I sleep (laughs). I’d say I go to the movies, but there are no movies that last two hours anymore. I’m not much of a TV watcher either even though I saw The Crown in one sitting. If I have two hours, I read. I like historical novels like Philippa Gregory’s or the work of that great feminist writer Rebecca Solnit.
Q Her defense of equality, of feminism, predates the #MeToo movement. Have things improved in any way?
A. They change and don’t change. Above all, I am a feminist who believes in women’s rights and equality. And it is impossible for me to feel sympathy or faith in any institution that systematically oppresses women. That is why I am an atheist. Because religion has a long history of oppressing women.
Q. One of your latest works has been an announcement for Greenpeace that has reignited the controversy. This is not your first collaboration with the environmental organization.
A. I have a very close relationship with Greenpeace. I have travelled with them twice to the Arctic and next year we will work together again. They are a very effective organization partly because of their political stance, because they don’t mind breaking the law and using civil disobedience if it brings attention to the problems that we are facing. We are as hooked on non-renewable energy as we are on tobacco. And the easiest and quickest solution to many of our problems is a boycott.
Q. The UK is going through a difficult time with the implementation of Brexit. How is it going in the final stretch?
A: The world must think we have lost our minds. The results plunged me into grief because I was born 14 years after the end of World War II. I still remember the feeling of loss in London, in a Europe traumatized by both wars. The idea of breaking up the union makes me sad. But you have to realize that many people are disenchanted with the system. Those who feel ignored by our government or by the union of European countries. So what is born now has to be a new union, a better one. I prefer to think that this is a good time for something new to be born. I take comfort in that thought.
Young Cuban deputy Yoerky Sánchez, a member of the Council of State and director of Juventud Rebelde newspaper, spoke on Saturday at the Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Berlin
Posted: Saturday 11 January 2020 | 09:41:29 pm. Updated: Saturday 11 January 2020 | 10:24:36 pm.
by Juventud Rebelde digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
“Cuba shows that it is possible to build a socialist state of law and social justice, democratic, independent and sovereign, organized with all and for the good of all. Deputy Yoerky Sánchez Cuellar, on behalf of Cuba, explained that at the Rosa Luxemburg 2020 International Conference held on Saturday, January 11, in Berlin.
Invited by Junge Welt, a Marxist-oriented newspaper in German-speaking countries and a faithful ally of the Cuban struggle against the US blockade, Sanchez is also director of Juventud Rebelde laid out to those present the harsh economic pressures that the northern nation imposed on the Caribbean country in 2019. They reached a rate of one measure every seven days.
These measures, which included a strong communication factor, such as the campaign to discredit the Cuban medical collaborators, are a follow-up of the Blockade policy that the US government has maintained against the Caribbean country for 60 years. Sanchez explained: “The effect of this amounts to more than 138.8 billion dollars at current prices (…) It constitutes the main obstacle to the development of our nation,” said the Cuban deputy. “There is no sector of Cuban life that is unaware of the impact of this genocidal policy.
However, he said, “in the midst of the vicissitudes and deficiencies, Cuba exhibits a successful social model.
Likewise, referring to the destabilizing actions of the United States in the entire Latin American region, the Cuban congress member presented the recent events in Bolivia and Brazil as proof of the reactionary right’s attack on the continent’s progressive processes. He stated that the US government sells the neo-liberal model as a panacea and “demonizes anyone who confronts its dictates”.
Referring to Cuba’s position on issues such as the sovereignty of nations and the right to opt for a socialist system, the young Cuban said, “We advocate the right of each nation to determine its own political, economic, social and cultural system, without external interference or pressure. In this way, we reject the pretensions of Western powers to impose a single model of democracy, because this is not the patrimony of any country or region,” while assuring that Cuba “does not export its democratic model or try to give formulas to anyone.”
However, he emphasized, fidelity to our principles continues. “What we will never change is the will to continue building socialism.”
In this way, the voice and principles of Cuba were heard in an event in which intellectuals, politicians, scientists and artists from Europe, the United States, Latin America and the Middle East participate. Under the slogan Street Power – Struggle for the Future – Answering the Question of the System, is the largest conference of the left in Europe.
As in the 2019 edition, this 25th Rosa Luxemburg International was the scene of a demonstration of solidarity with the peoples of Latin America, including Cuba, Venezuela and in particular Bolivia.
Prior to his speech at the important event, the Cuban deputy held a meeting with representatives of leftist organizations in Germany. He thanked them on behalf of his country for the support provided in the fight against the bloody blockade of the island.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
In his July 4 speech to Congress in 1821, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams said that if the United States were to abandon its then non-interventionist foreign policy, it would inevitably become the “dictatorship” of the world and begin to behave accordingly.
Political scientist Jacob G. Hornberger, founder and president of the “Future of Freedom” foundation, wrote on May 10 of last year that he finished a major journalistic work entitled “The Dictatorship of the World” in which he wrote that it cannot be denied that that prediction of J.Q. Adams has become a reality.
The United States has truly become the dictatorship of the world, an arrogant, ruthless and brutal dictatorship that tolerates no dissent from anyone on earth.
“I use the term America now because that’s what Adams originally used, but in reality, it’s the United States government that has become the dictatorship of the world,” says Hornberger. A good example of this phenomenon occurred when, at the beginning of the last century, the world’s dictatorship applied its cruel system of sanctions against Cuba with vengeful ends and has maintained it to this day.
It is unfair enough to punish innocent foreign citizens with death or impoverishment for the sake of a political objective. But it is also important to note that the sanctions are an attack on the economic freedom of the American people because they involve sanctions against the American citizens involved.
If an American trades with an Iranian, a Cuban or a Venezuelan, the world’s dictator threatens, pursues and convicts him or her with vindictive intent, through criminal prosecution, civil fines, or both.
A similar system of sanctions has been applied during the 1990s against Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from the Arab world. The sanctions were.
That did not bother the dictator, at least not enough to end those sanctions. The idea was that if a large enough number of children could be killed, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would either abdicate in favor of a U.S.-approved dictator, or there would be a coup d’état or violent revolution that would accomplish the same thing.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright expressed the dictatorship’s official view when she announced that the death of half a million Iraqi children from sanctions “was worth it”.
Another example of this was the case of Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese citizen working as the financial director of the giant Chinese technology company Huawei. After being arrested by Canadian authorities and placed under house arrest, she suffered the wrath of the world’s dictatorship.
What was her alleged crime? Having violated US sanctions against Iran? What do US sanctions against Iran have to do with China? Exactly nothing! She’s a Chinese citizen, not an American. Then why was she being prosecuted by the United States government?
Sanctions have become a regular tool of US foreign policy. Hardly anyone cares about their imposition and enforcement. Their aim is to threaten foreign entities and citizens with death, suffering and economic deprivation. Its goal is to bend their governments to the will of the American dictator and her violent and brutal agents.
What could be more violent and ruthless than threatening innocent people with death and impoverishment as a way of reaching their governments? It is well known that most citizens of the world have little control over the actions of their governments,. U.S. citizens have little control over the actions of their government. What is the morality in punishing innocent citizens as a way of achieving a political objective? That is precisely why terrorism is condemned.
Washington is not content to demand that its citizens comply with its evil system. In its role as global dictator, the federal government requires everyone to comply with its evil system. The dictatorship claims world jurisdiction for itself.
Why are innocent foreign citizens the target of death and economic suffering simply because the
Why do U.S. officials not like their government? Why are the freedoms of U.S. citizens being destroyed for the same reason? And why are foreign citizens around the world criminally prosecuted for violating the federal government’s evil penalty system?
December 25, 2019.
Published: Saturday 28 December 2019 | 09:52:20 pm
By Mileyda Menéndez Dávila, Odalis Riquenes Cutiño, Liudmila Peña Herrera, Javier Rodríguez Perera, Laura Brunet Portela, Iviani Padín Geroy, Zorileidys Pimentel Miranda, email: digital@juventudrebelde.cu
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The 2019 photo gallery is loaded with images that remind us of who we are and what paths we are on. We say “we are” in the present tense, because we understand that what we have experienced during the last 12 months has marked the national sentiment, the spirit and even the geography, in such a way that today, only hours before the arrival of 2020, it is very difficult to say “we were”, because much of what happened this year marks the paths or the roads that we must travel during the coming calendar year.
We must not forget that Cuba is the compilation of our daily poetry wrapped in kisses, sweat or tears, depending on its human beings and their circumstances. Cuba is the reality of each of our realities. Therefore, every achievement, every pending task, every goal – accomplished or to be accomplished – becomes the precedent for the next step.
A more than happy man
Héctor Prieto Caraballo knows this well. Only a month ago, he thought that the greatest happiness was limited to sunrise in the countryside, breathing pure air, working the land and enjoying its fruits.
That meant seeing his father, Héctor Luis Prieto, known as the Havana Man, happy, always glued to the ground to grow the leaves of what many call, not without justified chauvinism, the best tobacco in the world.
“Planting, picking tobacco, making bushes… everything is interesting, but planting is my favorite activity. Seeing that tiny stance grow gives me a very nice feeling because I can appreciate the results of my work,” explains Prieto Caraballo, a graduate of Técnico Medio en Agronomía.
But since last November 22nd, he knows that happiness is not only wrapped in green leaves, but it is also in the form of crying, gurgling, smiles, future. Happiness photography has a new and beloved face for the young man from Pinar del Rio.
“It is incredible the power that a smile of his has. A child is the most beautiful thing you can have in life,” he says proudly, adding, “I feel like a more than happy man. This is a year I will never forget: my first child, my family, the results in production. Everything has been very good for me.
Creativity in the face of obstacles
The same cannot be said of the promoters of restaurants in Havana, cocotaxi drivers or other means of transport dedicated to tourism, room renters and business owners who were affected in 2019 by the intensification of hostile measures by the United States government towards Cuba.
For them, this has been the year of economic cutbacks, of mutilated profits, of applying creativity as a solution to the ban on U.S. cruise ship travel to the Greater Antilles. This is how Raidel Regaiferos Sánchez feels -because he has lived it-. He has been working for more than a year as a promoter of the restaurant Habana Boulevard, in the capital city.
“When I started working here, the restaurant was full almost all the time, like the rest of this type in Old Havana. But when Trump decided to have the cruise ships say goodbye to the harbor in the bay, many of the promoters changed jobs, since the pay depends on the consumption by the diners who come to the restaurant.
Faced with such a complex panorama, which translates into less income for the development of the non-state sector. Though Trump says that every measure tries to [only] affect the Cuban government, Raidel and his colleagues have no other option but to appeal to creativity and the reformulation of commercial strategies in order to “fall in love” with clients and not close the deal.
“Since then, we’ve had to update prices and update the menu, as well as implement other alternatives when it comes to promoting the site, and adding national consumers”. He says who would be happy if 2020 would bring longed-for opportunities to prosper, without measures “from outside” that attempt to destabilize “inside.”
Hope for many
Still in young Martha Regla Beltrán Boza’s memory is the devastating tornado that destroyed her home.
Photo: Mileyda Menéndez Dávila
Martha Regla Beltran Boza believed that 2019 would be the worst year for her and her family. They’re known as “the Many” because it is a nucleus with 24 people from three generations, all born and raised on the slopes of Lenin Hill, in Regla.
On the night of January 27, Martha had gone out to the street because she wanted to eat peanuts, but something in the air disturbed her and she ran back to bed with her mother. Minutes later, the roofs of the tiny wooden house fell on them, and behind them a nearby Yagruma tree, uprooted by the strong winds of the tornado that destroyed several areas in five municipalities of the capital.
“Now the family was really out on the streets,” he thought. Fortunately, a neighbor provided his small home so that a part of “los Muchos” would be aware of the recovery of the property, taken up by the Julio Antonio Mella contingent, which in this case became practically the entire onstruction, from the foundations, of three two-story masonry houses.
“They made us up to the entrance corridor, which until then was made of earth,” she says with relief. Today, she is in the third year of a pre-university educational program and dreams of soon joining a primary school classroom to teach literature, which is her favorite subject.
The usefulness of virtue
In Santiago de Cuba, the young hands of José Ruberlandis Vázquez Enrys, Sayonara Destrade Castillo and Indira Jardines Durán bear the mark of the effort to be useful in the face of the challenges posed by difficulties. Their energy and enthusiasm have been decisive in promoting the idea of food production parks, a Santiago-based initiative that is already recognized in the country for reproducing the artisanal practices of traditional gastronomy on a large scale, with a minimum of electricity and zero diesel fuel.
The alternative came to life in March 2019, in areas of the Ice Cream Wafer Factory. It’s located on Patria Avenue. Saltine cookies of various types and 100% rice cookies, candies of various shapes and flavors, homemade mayonnaise, cakes and pancakes, cassava and cassava frying, peanut and coconut nougats, pru, vinegar, sweet and dry wine, liquors, fruit and hard chilled ice cream, cassava, raspberry, Cuban pasta, instant soda, breads and sweets with flour spreaders. These make up a varied amalgam of products that are highly appreciated by the consumers who receive them. This is both in an Ideal Market and in cafeterias and points of sale in the Santiago food industry. Ruberlandis, Sayonara and Indira feel the satisfaction of having dedicated these last months to producing food for their people, using natural fuel: coal, firewood, bagasse and coconut shells. For them, 2019 can be summed up in two words: to be useful.
A “busy” year
“When the Young Communist League calls, when your university asks for a hand, when the president of the country himself trusts the young people and believes we can do more, then there is no one who is not motivated,” says Massiel Cano Garcia, a student in special education.
A pile of photos he has on his mobile phone show that 2019 was a very busy year: “It was full of proposals and opportunities to show who we are as young people today,” he says.
With his finger, he slides the snapshots of the productive activities that made his University one of the best: planting potatoes in the middle of a field, or giving away smiles at the pediatric hospital.
Massiel keeps memories of all those moments, to show that the energy of his youth is transmitted, transformed and produced. “Watching over the savings in the companies in my neighborhood was something I did to feel useful and help my country move forward,” he recalls.
“It wasn’t a question of reporting to anyone. We didn’t have plans or figures to accomplish in one day. It was just “making us feel”, making those who didn’t know how important it was to save aware of it. And she recalls that Prado went up and down in shops, bakeries, commercial establishments, companies and homes, inspiring people, winning hearts.
“The idea was to convince people that no matter how insignificant it might seem, a simple click also mattered,” says those who now dream of dedicating their lives to special education. “My greatest wish is to be a good teacher for children with special educational needs.
A high jump
For someone like Luis Enrique Zayas, who several times has considered not giving another drop of sweat for the sport he practices, still young but with several fiascos. This year has been a kind of Copernican turn for his life. With hardly any possibility of participating in the Pan American Games in Lima, almost ten days before their start, he was informed of their presence. Forecasts placed him far from the podium, but in the Peruvian capital the triumphant apotheosis took place.
It was on August 9 when the high jumper shattered all the speculations and became the biggest surprise of the Cuban delegation in Lima. He invaded the summit with the best of his life, a jump of 2.30 meters, three centimeters higher than his previous personal best, achieved in 2016 when, breaking the same predictions, he became the world youth champion.
“I concentrated a lot on the whole competition and that’s how that gold medal came out, something super big for me, my family and Cuban athletics. In the meantime, I qualified for the World Athletics Championships in Doha”, said the athlete from Santiago, who has realised that life is a stage of constant tests and he, as a “good actor”, emerged as a protagonist more than once.
In 2020, looking ahead
Diverse in nuances, complex because of the ups and downs and the obstacles; full of successes and sacrifices… 2019 is falling behind. Once again we close a cycle, but we remain with the list of what we have accomplished or what is still pending, in order to focus our gaze on what we want to mark our life since January 1st, always with the conviction that we hum along with the Buena Fe group: we will receive it “head-on” in 2020.
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