Uncertainty
EL NUEVO HERALD
Uncertainty
By ALEJANDRO ARMENGOL 2009
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Anywhere in the world we can determine how good a functionary is. In Cuba, however, the unknown quantity is for how long.
It doesn’t matter that a doctor spends his time overseeing the economy or that a general is put in charge of the cultivation of sugar cane. Efficiency is not the main concern.
If anything has functioned well on the island over the past year it is international relations, and it is precisely in this arena that the most striking changes have been made.
One might argue that such successes are not solely due to the foreign minister, but it is also worth noting that they would not have been achieved without his input. At the least, one ought to concede that he was a good messenger.
Except that in Havana it is easier to replace the messenger than the source of the tidings. That’s why you can have a minister who is brilliant today and “unworthy” tomorrow.
Ministerial changes take place everywhere, as do political intrigues. Power is equally corrupting in capitalism and socialism. But in thinking about the changes that have transpired during the past week, there is something else, over and above all the explanations, that seems almost ghoulish: the recurrence of a seemingly never-ending mechanism that transforms someone from saintliness to dishonor, from representing the country’s best to sinking into its worst, dropping them from heaven to hell.
It is like turning the Bible into a simple gangster saga. It reduces a political process into the turf battles of a mafia family. It is like governing a country the way you might run a store, where the owner suddenly tells the customers that he had to fire the butcher because after ten years he just discovered that the butcher wasn’t washing his hands when he went to the bathroom.
Seen from the perspective of a week, the Cuban events lead one to think that one of the objectives has been to produce uncertainly, or its big brother: fear, even terror. With the publication of Fidel Castro’s “reflection,” what began on Monday as a broad restructuring of the government turned into a hint of something more sinister: a preventative blow against a possible conspiracy, with the government getting rid of figures in whom the “external enemy” might have hopes.
The changes of last Monday were first seen as a step taken by Raúl Castro to consolidate his power and move forward in establishing his own more institutional style of government, without using groups and individuals who – outside the bounds of governmental structures – wielded a considerable measure of power because they answered directly to Fidel Castro. Above all it was another response to the worry that “the revolution could be destroyed by its own members.” If Fidel Castro thought the solution lay in a generational change, Raúl sees it in sticking with the “historics.”
So there was an initial explanation, both for the fall of Carlos Lage “the reformer” and Felipe Pérez Roque “from the new generation.” It doesn’t matter that neither of them fully fit those roles, because a lot depends on perception, and especially on how they were seen abroad.
Then Fidel Castro’s “reflection” changed this initial perception, and their removal was explained by the conduct of both individuals. The (ex?) Commander-in-Chief leveled strong accusations, and came close to calling them traitors. His characterization of them as “unworthy” is reminiscent of previous trials: once again a potential threat is being thwarted.
By resigning all their posts, Lage and Pérez Roque carry out their final acts of loyalty to Fidel Castro. In two letters, whose only difference was the paper they were written on, both carry out their final assignment in support of the Comandante.
In a different period things would have gone worse for them: suicide or the firing squad. Now it seems that a piece of paper is enough. It is another illustration that the saga has drawn to a close. Cuba has returned to the epoch of generals and bureaucrats. Both the “reflection” and the letters seem aimed at making the process of restructuring into some form of a purge.
Therefore analysts and experts should resist the temptation to think that they already have the perfect explanation. Fidel Castro’s demand seems clear. In this drama he cannot appear to be the loser. Not because he was not ready to cede, which he has done, nor to deny that in the final analysis the whole movement is decided between both brothers. Here appearances are what is important, along with the image presented to the outside world, which is what he is most interested in.
And now the replacement of Fernando Remírez de Estenoz as head of the International Relations Department of the Communist Party (PCC) creates new speculation. The news has not been officially confirmed by Havana. But it leads us to wonder whether the departure of this official is related to the wave of firings. He had been vice-minister of foreign relations and headed Cuba’s diplomatic mission in Washington in the days when Havana was fighting for the return of young Elián González, and is a figure very closely linked to Lage.
It is hard to imagine that Remírez de Estenoz will go on to hold a higher position than the one he had, because on various occasions in the past his name had been raised as the possible foreign minister, a post to which Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla has just been named.
If he is kept removed from diplomatic functions –which seems to be the present situatio – Cuba is ruling out one of the most competent figures for potential negotiations with the United States, and it reaffirms the conclusion that Fidel and Raúl Castro feel they do not need “intermediaries” in this matter. In any case, they have just shown that there is no safety at their side, except in terms of the distance you keep, something that friends as well as enemies might bear in mind.
Will Havana Prosper?
Will Havana Prosper?
By Iroel Sánchez
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
March 21, 2017
Some time ago I published some questions about Havana:
“Is it a coincidence that places like Parque Lenin or Coppelia [ice-cream parlor in Vedado], symbols of the democratization of recreation and the access of the majority to refinement –opened by the collective project of the Revolution– languish between bad service and structural deterioration, while the idea that the good and the beautiful are the exclusive patrimony of the pre-revolutionary past? Why is the Latin American Stadium increasingly called the “Estadium del Cerro” in our media?
“Is it a Havana for tourists the one that will reach its 500th anniversary, reproducing the celebrations with the colonial flavor that –unlike what happened with the half millennium of Santiago de Cuba– took place in many of the towns founded by the Spaniards? Or as in Santiago, the neighborhoods built by the Revolution –and now more or less vandalized– (Camilo Cienfuegos, San Agustín, Alamar, Mulgoba, Reparto Electrico …) can renew their (lack of) urbanism and raise the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of Havana workers who have never been able to sit in a “paladar” [private restaurant]?
“Will the newly refurbished Capitolio of Havana be an old building for a new democracy, or a shell that –between marbles and bronzes, so dear to the dictatorships and plutocracies– forgets to consecrate the name of Jesus Menendez, the black working-class parliamentarian who imposed on the Yankees and the Cuban bourgeoisie a fair deal for the sugar workers. As a result, he was murdered despite his parliamentary immunity in “the most democratic period in contemporary Cuban history,” a phrase taken from an article in the Spanish newspaper El País signed by a Cuban “historian”?
And I return to these questions because, fortunately, for a few months now in the capital of the country we can see the growth of a transformative effort in favor of the majorities: renewing public spaces –like those mentioned in my questions– accessible to those who lack the resources to visit the new recreation centers which have prospered under the new economic measures. Large agricultural markets have been opened on the outskirts of the city. State-run gastronomic facilities with popular prices have been rescued. Fountains that had been without water for decades are running again. And other achievements are beginning to take shape with the decentralized funds collected by the municipalities. It can be said that, through these actions, the city thrives, because most of its inhabitants prosper.
But if that effort is not accompanied by the participation of the people in creating a culture of civic order and urbanity, all this effort will be like pedaling on a stationary bicycle. This participation must stem from a popular debate –we have the organizations and media to do so– that would serve for the dissemination and production of consensus around the rules that regulate and punish –if they were enforced– the frequent aggressions against common property.
To give just one example: the debris generated by construction work –for repairing opulent mansions acquired by landlords and the new rich in the most central municipalities of Havana– will continue to be dumped with impunity on street corners, so that the state sector –that is: the lowest paid workers– pay for its free collection without taking into account that, as explained by the British academic Emily Morris:
“As the non-state sector has developed, it has become increasingly clear that the relatively inefficient private firms have been able to thrive within the national economy since their costs in Cuban pesos, including labor, are undervalued at the CADECA / CUC rate they use for their transactions. In fact, the Cuban state is subsidizing the new non-state sector through the underrated rate of CADECA. Meanwhile, state-owned enterprises have to use the overvalued official exchange rate, a serious disadvantage in terms of their competitiveness. A form of “monetary illusion” which means that efficient state-owned enterprises report losses and therefore cannot raise capital for investment; while private entrepreneurs operating at very low productivity levels enjoy strong hidden state subsidies but complain of excessively high taxes.”
The non-state economy has much to contribute in Cuba; but illegality, tax evasion, hoarding, appropriation of the common good, and speculation with deficit products are not the best allies to convince of its virtues.
The first thing that should be clarified is what we mean when we use the verb “to prosper”.
In those economically “most prosperous” territories (such as: Trinidad –where business has developed along with the growth of garbage in the streets, and the notorious tax evasion reached such extremes that the ONAT [National Office for Tax Collection] of Sancti Spiritus had to be moved over there; Viñales –where teachers have to be taken from other municipalities and private pools try to steal the scarce water supply in times of drought; or Havana, where part of the efforts to supply popular restaurants and cafeterias, education and health centers, drains to private restaurants or bars that remain open until five in the morning –not until 3:00 am as it is regulated) businesses are favored by the indirect subsidies of the CADECA 25 to 1 exchange rate, the low rates of water, gas and electricity conceived for domestic use, but used for profit; the free disposal of increased amounts of solid waste –as if this waste came from the kitchen of a home.
In this way development and prosperity will be patrimony of a few to the detriment of the majority.(CubAhora)
Venezuela: Facts and Misinformation
Venezuela: Facts and Misinformation
Editorial
April 1, 2017
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Thanks to Nelson Valdes who brought this to my attention
and helped revise the translation for posting here.
The unfolding Venezuelan political crisis is being accompanied by an incessant media campaign that seeks to plant in international public opinion the idea that the South American country is going through a government-sponsored coup process that has little to do with reality.
This recent propaganda war against the democratically-elected Venezuelan government has been compounded in recent weeks by the political attacks originating at the Organization of American States –a multilateral organization presumably engaged in the pursuit of dialogue– and the rightwing and ultra-right regimes of the Latin American region
The facts are that the Venezuelan Constitution continues to be in operation, the president is still in office –which, in a presidential regime like the Venezuelan, makes it absurd to speak of the existence of a coup–, all constitutional guarantees are in force.
The internal life of all political parties and respect for freedom of expression persists. Paradoxically, those very constitutional rights are being used to describe the regime as a dictatorship. In addition, the notion that the legislative power was dissolved is no more than absurd, since no parliamentarian has been dismissed and the legislative assembly can resume its functions as soon as it complies with an order of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) issued on January 5, 2016 .
The tale of a coup or self-coup by the government of President Nicolas Maduro is an uninformed interpretation of the decision adopted on Thursday, March 30, by the Constitutional Chamber of the TSJ, with which the TSJ assumed the powers of the National Assembly of Venezuela (ANV, Venezuela’s unicameral parliament), as it puts an end to the situation of contempt in which it finds itself caused by the illegal swearing in of three opposition deputies.
It should be remembered that the present situation of a prolonged confrontation between the Venezuelan right grouped in the Democratic Unity Table (MUD) and the Maduro government has its origin in the legislative elections of December 2015, when the opposition managed to snatch a majority from the pro-Chavez Parliament.
In the election then, large irregularities were verified and verified in the state of Amazonas were documented. This caused the annulment of the election of three MUD deputies and the high court also ordered the reinstatement of the corresponding votes. The opposition decided to use its parliamentary majority to swear in the legislators, in open violation of legality, and for that reason the courts declared the opposition in contempt by the TSJ.
It is also necessary to point out that the decision by which the TSJ temporarily assumes the powers of the assembly is based in Venezuelan law and responds to the need to unlock the operation of the oil sector, which is crucial to facing the serious economic crisis of the country.
In short, it is imperative to put an end to systematic disinformation that only exacerbates an already delicate conflict, and the outcome will determind the welfare and social peace of millions of Venezuelans. The Venuelans are the ones who must resolve their differences within the framework of their own laws, while the external actors who wish to contribute must do so while fully respecting the sovereignty of Venezuela and with the sole purpose of facilitating the implementation of resolutions adopted internally.
Is it Time to Change?
Is it Time to Change?
By Orlando Marquez
NUEVA PALABRA
February /2009 No. 182
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
After working for more than a year by request from the Washington Center for National Policies (CNP) a two-party team lead by former USA ambassador to Mexico James J. Jones and formed by Thomas Wenski, assistant bishop of Miami, University professor Max Castro, and Cuban American businessman Carlos Saladriga presented a report called “Cuba-United States Relations: time for a new approach” on January 23 2003.
In this 20-page report it was stated that “the United States will attain its goals with Cuba with a higher probability by using negotiation than by isolation”. The report didn’t recommend former President George W. Bush to lift the embargo. But, it recommended initiating a new policy and allowing American citizens to visit the Island. It also advised facilitating the sale of medicines and food products; to eliminate the limit set on money transfers to Cuban families; to review current legislations on Cuba, and facilitate scientific, professional and academic exchange. It recommended developing bilateral cooperation on issues of mutual interest like drug and people traffic, fighting crime and environmental protection. These recommendations were ignored at first, and a year later the government did just the opposite.
At the end of 2007 I met a former government official in Washington. Naturally, we talked about the United States and Cuba. He agreed with me that the isolation policy inherited, maintained and strengthened by his government had no followers. “So?” I asked. He talked about liberty, human rights… I agreed. I added that isolation had only created more problems and asked him if he thought China and Saudi Arabia, two of his country’s main associates, were good examples of liberty and human rights. He had no further arguments, and then he confessed that his superiors could not forgive, among other things, that former President Fidel Castro would have thought of launching a nuclear attack against the United States during the missile crisis, in 1962!… I was the one who ran out of arguments, because there is nothing to say when confronted with irrationality and passion. I must add that this government official did not agree with this policy, he only said that decision was out of his hands.
This issue has been treated very differently on our side! Certainly, there has been a lot of passion. Besides our “achievements in health and education” there has been no other issue more important in our national media than the evils of the United States. They have talked about presidential ineptitudes, economic crisis, social violence, racism (this may change somewhat after Obama’s election), police abuse, homeless, the millions of citizens without medical insurance, drug addicts… It would seem that every evil in the world is there, and only there, the worst, the most despicable. And, the attempt to distinguish between the American government and the “noble people of the United States” – that elect them- sounds absurd and untenable.
“A letter that put a mark on history” was the title chosen by Granma newspaper last year to accompany the fifty year old –four years before the missile crisis- letter they published. The letter was written by the Commander in Chief of the Rebel Army, Fidel Castro Ruz, to Celia Sanchez, after army planes had bombed the ‘bohio’ of a peasant with bombs made in the United States. In this letter the former Cuban President wrote; “When I saw the bombs they threw at Mario’s house I promised myself that the Americans will pay dearly for what they are doing now. After this war is over, I will start another war, longer and bigger: the one I am going to wage against them. I realize that this is my true destiny.” There is no proof that the former president kept on thinking the same way after the United States stopped selling armament to Fulgencio Batista’s government months later. This statement was not repeated later. Although it was reprinted, like this time on June 5. 2008, with a title that suggests, or intends to confirm, that our history is marked by eternal conflict with the United States.
Notwithstanding the fact that the United States government support of Fulgencio Batista’s government is criticizable, as is the fastidious and reprehensible interference in Cuban matters during the first half of the 20th century, Should our present and future history depend on the ill-fated attack on the humble home of a peasant that took place more than fifty years ago and on the feelings expressed in a letter written while those feelings were intense? Must we always suffer the consequences of what might have been, but didn’t happen, during the missile crises in 1962? I don’t think so.
During his campaign, Barack Obama, against all previously established molds, declared he was willing to talk to the leaders of all the countries considered as United States enemies, including Cuba. On our side, the will to establish a dialogue couldn’t be more evident, as President Raul Castro has declared more than once.
For many in his own country, Obama is still an enigma. And, for Cuba? Well, here, it is even more so. Many Cubans, including me, are waiting to see if the change in policy making in the United States and, therefore, in its external policy, also means a change in U. S, relations with Cuba.
However, Cuba is only pressing for Cubans. It is not very probable that Cuban issues will have a high priority for the new American government. Nevertheless, Cuba (with Cubans holding different points of view) shouldn’t be ignored. Cuba is too near, too active. It has a very large international and regional influence, as well as inside the United States. Cuba is too defying, and perhaps, it even has too much oil waiting to be extracted.
In spite of the willingness expressed by both presidents, some people have raised the alarm -both here and there – against a new status in the relations among the two countries. The ghostly remoras of the Cold War rise once more, ignoring the demands of millions of people. On that side some talk about the dangers of “recognizing” a dictatorship that never changes. On this side, those that always warned against an imminent military invasion, an argument that is already worn out, warn against a “cultural invasion” that can destroy us.
SOURCE: Original Spanish not available. Sorry!
Mario Conde’s Havana Noir
PAGINA 12 (Argentina)
Mario Conde’s Havana Noir
The investigations of Leonardo Padura’s detective are in audiovisual form now. Jorge Perugorria plays the detective who investigates a series of crimes in a colorful and decadent Cuba
The script of the series is based on four novels by the Cuban author.
FOUR SEASONS IN HAVANA, by NETFLIX
By Federico Lisical
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Los argumentos de la serie están basados en cuatro de las novelas del autor cubano.
“I decided to make a character who was in conflict with the reality he was living,” Leonardo Padura once told this newspaper. The Cuban writer was referring to Mario Conde, the officer who was the main character ofj his police novels and who now centers the NETFLIX miniseries Four Seasons in Havana (that since last Friday can be seen online). The series is based on stories in Padura´s four novels: Past Perfect, Winds of Lent, Masks, and Autumn Landscape.
This disenchanted but noble man, who does not seem to be a police lieutenant and has a great love for books, is interpreted by Jorge Perugorría. Almost to his regret, the best thing he knows how to do is solve mysteries and write up his wanderings with a typewriter. “There is no one better than Mario Conde to get into Havana, rummage through its darkness, and draw some light. That special insight the detective has, is particularly revealing. What I wanted to do was to make a kind of chronicle, a testimony of what recent Cuban life has been like. In each of his investigations, he reveals a sector of Cuban society, but also the humanity of a number of characters who live that reality day-to-day,” said the writer in another interview.
In total there are four episodes, ninety minutes each. They were directed by the Spaniard Felix Bizcarte, and the role of Padura himself in the adaptation was key, as well as that of his wife Lucia López Coll. Their intention was to preserve the tone of the novels and let the Cuban reality filter in naturally. What is the resulting Havana? One that shows its darkest and most sinful side. There is corruption, traffickers of all kinds –of drugs and influence– has been but there is also the dream of what the revolution could have been. Conde is a romantic who goes around throwing phrases for whoever wants to listen: “Havana has fallen so much that is has gone to shit”; “Cops investigating cops… What the hell is going on?”
The context is crucial as the books were published between 1991 and 1998 and reflected what was happening on the island after the end of the Cold War, the tightening of the embargo, and the regime’s opposite sides. As the author said, “… I learned from Hammett, Chandler, Vázquez Montalbán and Sciascia that a police novel can have a real relationship with the country’s environment; that it can denounce or touch concrete facts and not just imaginary realities.” “El Conde” moves about the capital of Cuba as a Philip Marlowe who suffers the heat, and fights his destiny, “doing what I have to do, but never what I really want to do.” The big difference with the iconic detective of suburban Los Angeles is that Conde is a cop. “It was totally unrealistic to have someone who was not a police officer investigate a crime in Cuba, especially if it was a murder,” Padura explained. But Conde also dreams of being a writer and that is what saves him.
This jaded subject is summoned to investigate the murder of a high school teacher while he is also looking into another case that has to do with his own past. In all of these there are several criminal associations. As in every noir police story, in addition to the investigations there are institutions tainted with indolence, elites complicit with business interests, femmes fatale, jazz music and seedy bars. Its main character is a researcher of the shadows but with a complex humanity and far from clichés. “Conde represents a generation of Cubans who believed in a country project that will never be, and feeds heavily on nostalgia. He’s a fucking nostalgic, as he defines himself, “said the actor who has the role.
The photography (by Spaniard Pedro J. Márquez) is one of the highest points of the production. The tone is twilight and oblivious to any “for export” intention. The rundown houses of the old quarters convey the stupor of the characters; and the danger in a harbor city when the sun goes down. The scenes of violence are given in unusual settings that can capture the audiences. In short, there are four genre stories within a very unique context that reflects the day-to-day life of the Caribbean city and its surroundings. One can easily perceive how the characters are linked: their body language, how they breathe and perspire, their unrefined speech that mispronounces sounds, how their food smells, and how they have sex. Four Seasons in Havana is, above all, a sensory experience. “Noir was never so colorful,” said one of the promotions for the miniseries; but it may be exactly the other way around.
Colombian Journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina’s Route
Once Again They Want To Change Colombian Journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina’s Route
Inconceivable branded a “terrorist” by the US, they diverted the Air France he was traveling on so it wouldn’t cross over US territory. Now, for the same reason, they made him change flights before boarding.
By Marina Mendez Quintero
May 27 2009 00:25:17 GMT
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Because we have become accustomed to living with an arrogance that has triggered two wars, it doesn’t surprise us that Washington has allotted itself the prerogative of including countries, organizations or innocent people in its “terrorist” lists.
But what is really unbelievable and is apparently an escalade into the absurd is that one of those people (without even having been notified of such charges!) has been forced in two consecutive instances to change the course of a trip because he “has been forbidden” to fly over United States territory.
Mind you, we are not talking about touching or stepping on [US soil]: it is simply the act of passing a thousand feet above it. Even when the subject- of course, unarmed! – and, without looking down, is only reading a newspaper, comfortably sitting in an airplane.
Now, sitting in front of the reporter, with that clear and candid smile that always accompanies the Colombian journalist and researcher Hernando Calvo Ospina, “the defendant” is still surprised.
“Nobody understands it, and I still do not understand it. I can not understand how they came up with this “level of hazard”, they have assigned me.
The first time was April 18 last, and the news spread like wildfire, turning into a scandal. Perhaps you read it in this same newspaper: an Air France plane full of passengers, in a Paris-Mexico route, had to change course in mid-flight because the U.S. did not allow it to fly across its territory. The reason they gave was that one of the passengers was a person who constituted “a threat to its national security”.
The change of course happened when we were reaching Mexico. It lengthened the trip and took the passengers to an unexpected excursion to Martinique. This was because the fuel they had was not enough to take all those turns and the plane had to be refueled. Some children got sick and vomited, and many adults arrived finally in Mexico with leg cramps.
The person most surprised was Calvo Ospina himself when they told him he was the cause of the detour. He was the ‘unwelcome” person in the air above the U.S.
The worst thing is that this strange situation repeated itself, more or less the same, a few days ago.
He was traveling to Havana from Paris, where he resides, and three hours before boarding the phone rang. ‘Hernando Calvo Ospina? This is Air France calling. We can not let you board the plane because it will pass through U.S. airspace to enter Cuba’. These were more or less the words they used.
They changed the tickets and “sent” him via Madrid.
Calvo Ospina now wonders whether Air France gives U.S. authorities the passenger lists of its company’s flights that will cross U.S airspace.
– What will you do when you get back to Paris?
– First, I have to ask Air France for an explanation. But I think I will sue them and-most importantly- the United States on the issue of my image.
– How do you feel, a man like you, who has fought terrorism for so long, and is now in one of those lists?
– Look, it’s a very difficult situation because one already knows what they could do: put me in prison, torture me. But, the thing is. You think: What did I do that was so bad? I’ve never shot a gun! I have spoken with the French authorities, and they also do not understand it. I can not understand it either. Are there other games going on under the table to put pressure on someone through me? Where or whom? It is the first time in the history of Air France that this happens, there is no precedent.
“French authorities also did not understand that the course of the plane was altered when president Obama was meeting with almost all Latin American presidents (Summit of the Americas), and told them: ‘We are going to change our ways, we will respect. “
– Why do you think you were included?
– What I have been able to find out from colleagues and friends, is that there seems to be four reasons: the articles I have published against the Colombian government, the articles I’ve done against the U.S. policy towards Latin America, my relationships and interviews with the leaders of Colombian guerrillas, and my relations with countries ‘hostile’ to the U.S.
“Now, I do not know which Latin American countries are hostile to the U.S., because what I do know is that the U.S. is the one who has been hostile to several Latin American countries. But I do not think that these four “reasons” are enough to justify all the things that happened.”
I did not ask him what route he will use to return to France … In any case, Hernando Calvo Ospina has a clear conscience. His only arsenals are the dozens of articles where he has denounced many of the White House dirty policies, and a dozen books in which he speaks of a real terror: the one successive U.S. administrations wage against Latin America.
Alejandro Armengol
Alejandro Armengol
About Me
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Alejandro Armengol was born in Cuba and has lived in the United States since 1983. He studied Electrical Engineering and Nuclear Physics in the University of Havana, and holds degrees in Psychology and Sociology, two professions he has never practiced. A journalist for more than fifteen years, his work has been published in journals and newspapers in the United States and Europe, and some of them have received the National Association of Hispanic Publications award. He writes a weekly column in El Nuevo Herald and another in the online newspaper Encuentro en la red. He is an associate professor in the University of Miami. In 2000 he published his books La galería invisible (short stories) and Cuaderno interrumpido (poems), and in 2003 his book Miamenses y Más. You can write to him at aarmengol@herald.com
I received clarification from the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs about the statements made by Thomas Shannon, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, incorrectly published by the news agency EFE since the very beginning, as I said both in my blog and my Monday column.
It only remains for me to add that, even if it comes out on Monday, I write my column on Thursday or Friday, so that the relevant page in El Nuevo Herald is ready for print right on Friday. I had not come to the newspaper since last Thursday, so I have just found out about this information, which I now pass on to the readers of my column and to Cuaderno de Cuba:
In his “retirement”, Fidel swims, writes, reads the papers and studies Darwin
Clarín
In his “retirement”, Fidel swims, writes, reads the papers and studies Darwin
By Hinde Pomeraniec
December 3, 2009
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
All the news we’ve had until now about Fidel Castro’s condition after almost three years of nonstop surgery and illness were his photographs with various heads of State and the articles he writes for the Cuban press on a regular basis. On Saturday, the Argentinean political scientist and sociologist Atilio Boron was in for a surprise while having lunch at a restaurant in Havana: someone came to tell him that Fidel would receive him that day at 5 p.m., so they would come to pick him up in a little while. Two days later, Fidel wrote about their one-hour-and-forty-minute-long meeting and sang the praises of a paper Atilio had presented in a conference of economists. At a later date, Mr. Boron gave Clarín unheard-of details about Castro’s daily life and the conversation they had in a place hitherto undisclosed.
“Truth is, I thought I would see a disabled person, but what I found was quite the opposite: he had a very good color and muscle tone, which I could check for myself in his handshake and hug when we said goodbye to each other”, Boron recalls. It was a summer afternoon, and Fidel was wearing the typical uniform of Cuban athletes, except for the short pants that revealed “very strong legs, a sign that he’s following his therapist’s instructions to the letter. He looks very bright”.
Fidel is not at a clinic, but in a house fitted with medical equipment for emergencies and facilities to move around and work out, and even a small pool where he can swim. He receives few visitors, his contacts with officials limited to “one or two meetings with Raúl”. You don’t see many people working in the house; he’s the one who seems to be working hard as befits “a soldier in the Battle of Ideas” and very happy and relaxed for not being in power.
We met in a living room where there was a desk, a run-of-the-mill PC, no cell phone, and the folders with clippings he’s always kept near since he was President. Boron also noticed a number of blue notebooks, organized by topic, where Fidel writes his reflections. And what about the voice of the great speaker who would talk to his audience for hours on end? “He’s never been one for speaking in a loud voice, on the contrary: he spoke slowly, still his usual self, a Fidel who chews on his every syllable”, Boron assured, adding that Fidel drank nothing nor was ever interrupted to take any medicine.
Always on top of current events, in the days of Darwin’s anniversary Castro reads his work while devouring what text on nanotechnology he can get his hands on. The chat with Boron centered on the economic crisis, and Fidel said he was worried about what he believes its great impact on the region will be like. “He thinks the continent’s certain shift to the left in the last few years will be compromised. Fidel understands the circumstances very well and fears the right will have a new lease on life”, he explained.
Did you talk about President Kirchner’s visit?
Yes, and he said to be quite impressed by how energetically she defends her positions. We also talked about the problems in the countryside, and he was shocked at the way it happened and as much concerned about the consequences as he was about other issues, for instance, Paraguay, as he believes President Lugo has many obstacles in his path.
Did you talk about the United States?
I’ve got the feeling he has taken a certain liking to Obama, but without building his hopes up too much. He said, “Obama will soon learn that the Presidency is one thing, but the Empire is another matter altogether”.
Your meeting took place at the end of a very hectic week in Cuba when changes were made in the government…
He started to talk about that and nothing else, going into greater detail about what he had already said that the enemy outside had built up their hopes with these officials, but it was made clear that what he meant was that Cuba’s enemies had raised their hopes over them. He mentioned they had made mistakes, sometimes because of excessive political ambition or personal impatience…
To get an idea of Fidel’s condition –keeping in mind that he’s almost 83– Boron points out that he can walk without anybody’s help and had even taken a stroll around the surrounding area a few weeks ago, alone and under no escort, to buy a newspaper. He was standing in line like any other Cuban and, they say, a woman recognized him and a small urban tsunami of emotions broke out in that Cuban neighborhood.
Woman and Violence
Women and Violence: A Community Health Problem?
By Alexis Culay Pérez, Félix Santana Suárez, Reynaldo Rodríguez Ferra and Carlos Pérez Alonso
SOURCE: Rev Cubana Med Gen Integr 2000;16(5):450-4
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
ABSTRACT
A descriptive horizontal study was carried out to learn the behavior of violence against women in the micro-district “Ignacio Agramonte”, of the “Tula Aerie” Policlinic in Camagüey. The period studied was from August 1st, 1997 to January 31st, 1998. From a total of 1088 women between the ages of 15-49, 310 were chosen to conduct a survey. The size of the survey was calculated using the well known statistical program EPIDAT. The results of the survey showed that 226 women reported some type of violence. This is 72,9% of the women interviewed. Psychological violence was reported by half the women, sexual violence by a third and physical violence was the least reported. The majority of women who reported violence were 30-39 year-old women with high school education. The great majority of the women victimized didn’t request professional help.
Gaceta Médica Espirituana 2008; 10(2)
Original paper
Medical Faculty “Dr. Faustino Pérez Hernández”
Family violence and adolescence
By Dra. Help Walls García1, Dra. Anabel González Muro2, Dr. Jorge Luis Toledo Prado3, Dr. Ernesto Calderón González4, Dra. Yurien Negrín Calvo5
1 First grade Specialist in Child Psychiatry. Adjutant Professor, Resident MGI
2 First grade Specialist in General Psychiatry. Adjutant Professor
3 First grade Specialist in General Psychiatry
4 First grade Specialist in MGI 5
A CubaNews translation by Giselle Gil
Edited by Walter Lippmann
ABSTRACT
Due to frequent reports of family violence against adolescents received at Clinic No.29 of the Sancti Spíritus Area Mental Health Community Center a research was carried out. The main objective of this study was to describe some of the characteristics of family violence. A horizontal descriptive study was made which included 63 adolescents between the ages of 10-18. We calculated the violence frequency as well as that of age and sex, abuse types, parent-child relations to the victim, symptoms associated with abuse and if the family is conscious of this violence. Results showed a high percent of family violence towards girls and towards children in the 13-15 year old group. Violence was found to be mostly psychological rather than physical. We also found mothers are more violent and that low self esteem and aggressiveness are the most common symptoms. Only a low percent of the families were aware of being violent. Based on these results we made a proposal to investigate this problem further in the different health areas. Further study will also help design community intervention strategies to eliminate or reduce this violence that affects adolescents and the rest of the family.
Is family violence, a health problem?
By Dr. Mario C. Muñiz Ferrer, Dra. Yanayna Jiménez García, Dra. Daisy Ferrer Marrero and Prof. Jorge González Pérez
A CubaNews translation by Giselle Gil
Edited by Walter Lippmann
ABSTRACT
A descriptive study of the results of the test “what I don’t like about my family” was carried out with the objective of studying family violence and how to confront it in a health area. The test was applied to 147 5th and 6th grade children studying in the “Roberto Poland” School located in the “Antonio Maceo” neighborhood of the municipality of Cerro. The different types of family violence were classified and grouped by incidence frequency. Family violence prevalence was also calculated, as well as its possible relation to drinking. The results allowed us to establish that family violence is a health problem and that it is related to the intake of alcoholic beverages.
INTRODUCTION
One of the most pressing problems that humanity faces in the XXI century is violence. We live in a world in which violence has become the most common way of solving conflicts. Today it is a social problem of great magnitude that systematically affects millions of people in the whole planet in the most diverse environments, without distinction of country, race, age, sex or social class.
Psychological gender violence is a covert form of aggression and coercion. Because its consequences are neither easily seen nor verified, and because it is difficult to detect, it is more and more used. Its use frequently reflects the power relationships that place the masculine as axis of all experience, including those that take place inside the family environment.1
Psychological gender violence expressed in the family environment acquires different shades depending on the context in which it takes place. In a rural environment, we generally find families with specific characteristics such as low schooling, resistance to change, inadequate confrontation and communication styles. All this favors the stronger persistence of patterns belonging to a patriarchal culture in this area rather than in urban areas, and therefore, women become victims, especially of violence.2
Cuba has a large population in urban as well as in rural areas, and so doesn’t escape from this reality (that of feminine victimización), even when our social system contributes decisively to stop many of the factors that favor violence against women. Also, we have propitiated substantial modifications of the place and role of the family as a fundamental cell of society. But, even today, we haven’t achieved a radical reorganization of the patriarchal features present in the national identity or on socializing agents like family.
The Novel of His Memories
The Novel of His Memories
Author: Fidel Castro Ruz
17 de abril de 2014 21:33:15
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
SOURCE: Granma Internacional. 08/12/02 page 8
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Gabo and I were in the city of Bogotá on the sad day of April 9, 1948 when [Colombian Liberal leader and presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer] Gaitán was killed. We were both 21-year-old Law students and witness to the same events. Or at least that’s what we thought, because neither of us had heard of the other. We were complete strangers, even to ourselves.
Almost half a century later, Gabo and I were chatting on the eve of a trip to Birán, the place in eastern Cuba where I was born in the early morning of August 13, 1926. Our meeting had the hallmarks of those intimate, family-like occasions when you swap reminiscences and fond memories in a warm atmosphere that we shared with a group of Gabo’s friends and some of my fellow leaders of the Revolution.
That evening I went over the images engraved in my mind: ‘Gaitán is dead!’, were the words on everyone’s lips that April 9 in Bogotá, where I was together with a number of other young Cubans to organize a Conference of Latin American students. Baffled and stock-still, I gazed at a crowd of people who were dragging the killer along the streets while others set fire to stores, office buildings, movie theaters and tenement houses, and still others were carrying pianos and cupboards on their shoulders. I could hear the sound of glass being shattered and posters being torn. From street corners, balconies full of flowers and smoldering buildings further away, voices shouted in frustration and grief. A man was venting his anger by banging his fists on a typewriter, and to spare him the bother of such a colossal, unusual effort I took it away from him and threw it hard against the cement floor, where it smashed into pieces. Gabo was listening as I spoke, probably taking my words as proof of his assertion that very few Latin American and Caribbean writers have ever needed to invent anything because here fact is stranger than fiction, so maybe his biggest problem has been how to make his own reality credible. The main thing is that, near the end of my story, I was surprised to hear that Gabo had been there too, a coincidence I found revealing in that we had perhaps walked down the same streets and lived through the same frightening, astonishing and urging experiences that made me be a part of that stormy sea of people who suddenly came down the surrounding hills. So I shot the question with my chronic curiosity. “And what were you doing during the Bogotazo[1]?” Unruffled, entrenched in his remarkable, lively, unruly and exceptional imagination, he smiled at me and replied with the clever, emphatic spontaneity of his metaphors: “Fidel, I was that man with the typewriter”.
I have known Gabo for a very long time, and we may have first met at any moment or place of his luxuriant poetic geography. As he admitted himself, he has on his conscience that he had initiated me into, and kept me up-to-date on, “the addiction to speed-reading bestsellers as a purification method against official documents”, to which we should add that he’s responsible for convincing me not only that I would like to be a writer in my next reincarnation, but also that I would like to write like Gabriel García Márquez, gifted as he is with a headstrong attention to detail on which he builds, as if it were the philosopher’s stone, all the credibility of his dazzling exaggerations. He even said once that he saw me eat eighteen scoops of ice-cream at one sitting, something that I denied emphatically, as you might expect.
Then I remembered a time when, after reading the preliminary text to Del amor y otros demonios (Love and other demons) –where a man rides his eleven-month-old horse– I suggested the author: “Look, Gabo, put two or three more years on that horse, because at that age this one’s still a foal”. Later on I read the printed novel, and what comes to mind is a passage where Abrenuncio Sa Pereira Cao, whom Gabo describes as the most notable and controversial physician in the city of Cartagena de Indias at the time the story is set, is sitting on a stone by the side of the road, crying next to his dead horse, who would have been a 100 years old come October but whose heart had stopped as they were coming down a steep descent. Gabo, as expected, turned the animal’s age into an exceptional circumstance, an incredible happenstance of indisputable truthfulness.
His books are irrefutable evidence of his sensitivity and steadfast adherence to his roots, the inspiration he draws from Latin America, his loyalty to the truth, and his progressive thoughts.
We share an outrageous theory, likely to sound godless to academics and men of letters, about the relative nature of words, and I stick to it with as much passion as I feel for dictionaries, especially one that he gave me for my 70th birthday, a real gem in which every definition is followed by famous quotations from Spanish American writers as examples of the proper way to use your vocabulary. Besides, as a public man obliged to write speeches and recount events, I share with this renowned author what you may call an endless obsessions: we both take great pleasure in looking for the exact word until the phrase turns out the way we want, faithful to the feeling or idea we wish to convey and always from the premise that it can be improved. I admire him most of all when he simply invents a new word if the right one doesn’t exist. How envious I am of such liberty!
Now Gabo writes about Gabo: he has published his autobiography, that is, the novel of his memories, a work that I believe stems from nostalgia for the four o’clock thunderclap, the instant full of bolts of lightning and magic that his mother Luisa Santiaga Márquez Iguarán missed when she was far from Aracataca, the unpaved hamlet of never-ending downpours, alchemists, telegraph, and the stormy sensational love affairs that would impregnate Macondo, the small town in the pages of one hundred lonely years, with all of Aracataca’s dust and charm. As a token of our old and warm friendship, Gabo usually sends me his manuscripts, much as he sends his rough drafts to other dear friends of his as a gesture of kindness and unaffectedness. This time, he delivers himself with honesty, innocence and energy, the qualities that disclose what he really is: a man with the goodness of a child and infinite talent, a man of tomorrow whom we thank for the things he’s been through and for having lived to tell the tale.
[1] The Bogotazo refers to the massive riots that followed the assassination of Gaitán.
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